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Star Wars:Rebels

2021-05-24T14:55:16Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* Season 3 */

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell Resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells. Alderaan is pretty openly building the rebel fleet the way [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Remus George Remus] bootlegged liquor: by stealing it from themselves.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons rather than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop foiling our plans, you rebel scum!'']]

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials not named Thrawn, Palpatine or Vader from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick metal droids and people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems

==Imperial Incompetence?==
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic.

However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tula their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.

Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

Another moment was when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, which effectively throws off Wullf Yularen... but not Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? Thrawn knows the scapegoat officer isn't that skilled, and someone as clever as Fulcrum wouldn't get caught that easily. But the kicker is the helmet Ezra was captured with; Thrawn immediately recognized the custom paint-job as Sabine's handiwork, identifying its owner as the young Jedi Ezra, and the fact that Kallus didn't tell them their "captive" was Ezra proved Kallus was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the Death Star project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it, and the TIE Defender project was only stopped due to Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. He knew about the planet Atollon from folklore, which is where he found the rebel base, but didn't look further and learn about the godlike Force entity Bendu who enabled the Rebels to escape. To be fair, while Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force, Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes then and was only beaten by Ezra using the Force to call a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

In summary, Rebels gives Thrawn fair treatment as one of the most dangerous men in the Empire. He's not a force-choking sith lord, and he's not a power crazed moff with a superweapon. He's an efficient and brutally intelligent admiral who will use everything at his disposal to hunt down the empire's enemies, and the only way to beat him is to exploit the flaws of his officers or hit him with something nobody would expect.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2021-05-24T14:54:36Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* Season 3 */

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell Resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells. Alderaan is pretty openly building the rebel fleet the way [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Remus George Remus] bootlegged liquor: by stealing it from themselves.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop foiling our plans, you rebel scum!'']]

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials not named Thrawn, Palpatine or Vader from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick metal droids and people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems

==Imperial Incompetence?==
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic.

However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tula their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.

Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

Another moment was when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, which effectively throws off Wullf Yularen... but not Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? Thrawn knows the scapegoat officer isn't that skilled, and someone as clever as Fulcrum wouldn't get caught that easily. But the kicker is the helmet Ezra was captured with; Thrawn immediately recognized the custom paint-job as Sabine's handiwork, identifying its owner as the young Jedi Ezra, and the fact that Kallus didn't tell them their "captive" was Ezra proved Kallus was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the Death Star project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it, and the TIE Defender project was only stopped due to Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. He knew about the planet Atollon from folklore, which is where he found the rebel base, but didn't look further and learn about the godlike Force entity Bendu who enabled the Rebels to escape. To be fair, while Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force, Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes then and was only beaten by Ezra using the Force to call a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

In summary, Rebels gives Thrawn fair treatment as one of the most dangerous men in the Empire. He's not a force-choking sith lord, and he's not a power crazed moff with a superweapon. He's an efficient and brutally intelligent admiral who will use everything at his disposal to hunt down the empire's enemies, and the only way to beat him is to exploit the flaws of his officers or hit him with something nobody would expect.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars Movies

2021-05-24T14:50:41Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* The coming of the prequel trilogy */

{{Skubby}}
==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making their own, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights. However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision. Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia. His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]

==The coming of the prequel trilogy==
With the year 2000 coming, George Lucas felt that special effects technology had reached the level he wanted and began to create the first three movies in the star wars story he had envisioned. (As a side-note, he also made some touch-ups to the three original films, re-mastering them with special effects and a couple of extra scenes that weren't doable with the eighties' animatronics. But those were mostly accepted/shrugged away since they didn't deeply modify anything.The fandoms opinion on the matter however, remains a very heated [[Skub|debate]].)

The hype for the movies was immense.

And then the first movie, Episode One ''The Phantom Menace'' came out.....and there was nerd rage beyond expectation.

Part of the problem was that the immense expectations of the fandom had grown until anything less-than-perfect simply would not do, so perhaps that is somewhat to blame for the reaction to the prequel trilogy. In a vacuum one has to admit that they aren't completely ''[[Twilight|terrible films]]'' .

Episode Two ''Attack of the Clones'' and Episode Three ''Revenge of the Sith'' followed after a few years each and didn't garner nearly as much hatred, though fans complained they didn't match the greatness of the original trilogy, more concerned with flashy action and effects than competent story-telling; but hooo-boy did it deliver in flashy action, with laser armed [[MI-24 Hind|MI-24's]] full of <s>storm</s>troopers extracting jedi from a coliseum full of shooty killbots.

''Revenge of the Sith'' did, however, receive higher ratings than ''Return of the Jedi'', and is generally seen as <s>the best and most-complete of the three prequel films as a story and many even consider it their favorite Star Wars film</s> boring as shit until the Order 66 scene. Unusually the novelization alters some details and is considered a legitimately good book on its own merits.

What was generally more well received (despite a rocky start with a two hour pilot being pressed into service as a movie and an art style that took some time to gel) during this time for Star Wars was the Clone Wars animated series (both the traditionally-animated ''Clone Wars'' and the later seasons of the CGI show '''''The''' Clone Wars'', the latter of which most everyone agrees is what the prequels should have been), following the war between the Republic and the Confederacy that sprung up during the time between the second and third of the prequels.

It'd be ''really'' hard to find a group of movies more skubtastic than the prequel trilogy, and saying a good or bad thing about it in front of the wrong crowd's sure to provoke huge amounts of nerdrage. In defense of the prequel trilogy's sins, they did at least do their own thing. Because of how much money the original trilogy made, practically every form of media in the 80s and 90s aped it to some form or another, and instead of falling back on the same old shit the prequels branched out and tried to get out of the franchise's comfort zone a bit. While a lot of it sucked, it blazed a trail for better writers to follow and helped liven up the universe by showing us the galaxy beyond fuckhueg spaceships and faux-Western shitholes like Tatooine. And all but the most [[Neckbeard|diehard OT purists]] can get behind shit like Naboo architecture, the Clone Army and Mace "The Ace" Windu. From a story perspective the worst sin of the prequels was demystifying the force, and subsequent works have largely swept that detail under the carpet. Then Disney bought Star Wars and prequels become popular. Makes sense considering they had good scenario, sense and original events and characters and other things sequels do not have. Not to forget that they are a goldmine for [[meme|memes]].

==Disney and the sequel trilogy==

Finally, all the efforts by Disney to woo George Lucas paid off and in 2012 Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise for 4 billion dollars, with LucasFilm becoming part of Disney, appointing film producer Kathleen Kennedy as its president. This was immediately followed by an announcement that they would produce a new trilogy of films set after the original trilogy.

Expectations were almost as high as the private fears of the fans. Bringing on the creative talent behind the [[skub|skubtastic]] ''[[Star Trek]]'' reboot was equally... well, [[skub|take a wild guess (and that's before we factor in identity politics)]]. The end result saw millions of voices cry out in terror, and were suddenly subsumed into hitherto unseen levels of [[Skub]]. Tellingly, even SEVERAL OF THE LEAD ACTORS THEMSELVES have criticized the filmmakers or how the film was made, including John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Luke Skywalker himself - Mark Hamill; also, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have become to Star Wars what [[C.S Goto]] is to Warhammer. Rumors are circulating that the Disney trilogy may even get declared non-canon, which is bound to create a shockwave of skub so powerful that oldfags might actually side with the prequel fans for once.

For sake of sanity, these section have been condensed. Read at your own peril.
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===Episode 7: The Mouse Awakens===
''Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens'' debuted in December of 2015, and reception was what you would expect: the film was immediately a massive success from a monetary standpoint as everyone ([[China|almost]]) everywhere rushed to the theaters in response to the hype, with children engaging in as many repeat viewings as their parent's money could allow as fans did the same thing with their own. It has become a financial hit with the general public and a (critically) generally well-reviewed piece, with decent cinematography, special effects, technical stuff, etc. It also went on to become the third biggest financial success in film history (at the time), when not adjusted for inflation.
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Fan response was a good deal more mixed. Many criticize the plot for rehashing Episode IV, without doing anything to establish its own identity and claim that it had a bland main character, [[Mary Sue|who had too many abilities]] whereas others find the replication of ''Star Wars'' feel an acceptable trade and praise it for being a decent action film, [[skub|and claim the lead doesn't outdo any of the previous main characters]].

Some would argue that by rehashing the original trilogy it basically nullified the accomplishments of the original crew; the Empire's still around, they've got yet another superweapon, Han & Leia split up, Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi, etc. Other fans praised it simply for being a new Star Wars that was better than the prequel trilogy (expectations were lowered due to those, to be honest). Some see poor storytelling when there was no proper showing of what went on in the galaxy 3 decades since Palpatine died, and not explaining what caused big character changes like why Han returned to his old ways or Luke ran from his friends was critical. Other say this is going to be explained in the next film and people should keep their curiosity. Some argue even with their superweapon, none of the villains feel threatening. Others argue the incompetence of the main villain is a fresh change and the point of the plot will be to see him change, to be more competent, or even learn to become good.

Overall, those against argued JJ Abrams' mystery box approach may do well for a TV series but does not mesh with films that take years to make. Defendants held the position that fans should wait to see whether the next film will do anything with the unexplained plot points.

Coincidentally, when Hamill and Fisher were originally approached by Disney to reprise their roles as Luke and Leia, they ''didn't want to do it'' right from the start. But, they didn't want to give an out-and-out "no" answer either, so they told Disney they'd return if Harrison Ford agreed to return as Han Solo as well. Knowing how much Ford ''hated'' Solo, Hamill and Fisher figured they were safe, until Disney irresistibly sweetened the deal for Ford by agreeing to kill off his character, thus forcing a reluctant Hamill and Fisher to make good on their deal... [[skub|only for the three characters to never appear on the screen at the same time, and now that Carrie Fisher's dead...]] To be fair, Hamill has a history of saying he won’t do something only to immediately agree like he’s making a standard sitcom gag in real life, even if that usually just applies to still voicing the Joker in Batman media.
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===Star Wars: Rogue One===
December of 2016 brought us the first standalone Star Wars movie, "Rogue One", showing the theft of the original Death Star plans.
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While "Rogue One" can be justly criticized for lacking in character development, that was basically mandated by being set just before another movie whose actors were now decades too old (or, in the case of Peter Cushing, too dead) to reprise their previous roles. The cast of the movie includes almost no one who appears in Episode IV, and the few familiar faces who do appear show up as cameos. (Fair warning: spoilers)

Accordingly, every main character dies by the end. It still manages to pack quite a lot of [[awesome]] into the movie, with Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk and Darth Vader all used to great effect. Rogue One also answers several questions, plugs several plot holes, and just generally makes A New Hope make a lot more sense in retrospect ("I'm on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan." "Bitch, I saw the tail end of this ship over Scarif twenty minutes ago."). It also has the distinctions of being the only Star Wars movie to focus on regular soldiers instead of Jedi, and being more like the original Star Wars than any of the sequels, including the other two of the main trilogy. The original, back before it was "A New Hope", was a genre mashup of samurai + gunslinger rescue princess from space Nazis, then team up for a World War II dogfight. This one is wuxia cast + heist crew rob a space Nazi base, then team up for a World War II dogfight ''in the South Pacific''. Much, much [[Skub]] still exists of course, since no Star Wars movie will ever please all the neckbeards but out of the five post-Disney Star Wars movies released so far, this one is definitely the least divisive and arguably the best of the bunch.
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===Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!)===
On December 14 2017, ''Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi'' was released world wide. The critical reception was [[Bullshit|extremely positive]], with many critics considering it the best movie in the series since The Empire Strikes Back. The fan reception has been a great deal more negative and [[Skub|mixed]], and a number of fans are convinced that Disney leaned on media outlets to shill the new movie or else. If you have watched the Empire Strikes Back, you ''WILL'' be [[Rage|disappointed at best]], if you want to see a Star Wars film that would finally expand the characters of Kylo Ren and Rey, you ''WILL'' be satisfied and disappointed at the same time, if you want to watch the film because it is the last film starring the great and wonderful Carrie Fisher, you ''WILL'' feel hollow and sad inside, and if you came to see a pair of lightsaber-wielding punks involved in one of the greatest lightsaber battles of the franchise, you ''WILL'' be pleased. The Last Jedi is seen as the most divisive film in the franchise by the fandom, [[FAIL|which is one hell of an achievement]] considering other films.
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The complaints about The Last Jedi are many: the treatment of Luke (which even his actor, Mark Hamill, hated, to the point that he has no interest in playing Luke again), Leia's Superman asspull, Finn's plot arc that serves practically zero purpose and has him undergo the same character arc as the last movie, the forced humor, the complete disregard for established [[fluff]], disregard for even the most basic laws of physics, the fact that the central conflict is essentially the same as the one in the originals right down to the last stand ripped straight out of ''Empire'', the PC bullshit (a hipster admiral who the plot always treats as being in the right despite killing 90% of the Resistance, the Gilded Age planet arc that [[Namek|sucks up a third of the movie to no benefit,]] Rose expressing her desire to get BLACKED with a horrendous and forced #LoveTrumpsHate one-liner in the final act) added solely to virtue-signal and the whole thing being basically a 2,5h screed against the franchise it belongs to and the culture which spawned it.

Fans have also criticized the movie for dropping or discarding major plot points from TFA and repeatedly invoking Shamalamadingdong-tier plot twists for cheap gotchas that are somehow less interesting than the recycled cliches they play off of. Director Rian Johnson responded by shitting on said critics - including also mocking them with a character in his next film "Knives Out" - and trying to defend the film on social media like something out of an ED or RW article (Important note: George Lucas never tried to defend the prequels, despite the huge backlash at the time, and he agreed with fans that [[C.S Goto|The Star Wars Holiday Special]] was an abomination.) It later came out that Johnson had not been given any kind of roadmap beyond Lucas' old and unfinished concept scripts and was not allowed to see what Abrams had done until TLJ was too far into production to write in most of the previous movie's plot points, which makes the fail Disney's fault just as much as it is Johnson's. Except we also know that he had at least a modicum of influence over the ending of TFA, so they must have talked on at least some degree, and Rian's 100% to blame for his shitting on critics. As with TFA Lucasfilm has tried to paper over the holes with tie-in material, and just like TFA the fans recognize the damage control.

World-building is also of major note as The Last Jedi not only disregards fluff but also fails to come up with anything of interest. The best it could do is a casino planet which solely exists to preach about capitalism. Meanwhile by comparison, while The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were the most [[skub|skubtastic]] Star Wars movies before the sequels, each of them still did arguably more for world-building than all three originals combined, laying the groundwork for things to come, most notably [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]]. People simply wanted to see more of the universe. Meanwhile TLJ only managed to lead to [[Star Wars:Resistance]] and the lack of fan interest in it speaks for itself as many have decided to not watch it solely due to it being set in the sequel era. What I am trying to say is that Star Wars is by nature a very lore-heavy franchise so how could they fuck it up so badly? The reason is quite simple: [[Heresy|Rian Johnson outright admitted that canon, lore and world-building is of no interest to him and he doesn't care about anything outside the story he is trying to tell. Lore contradictions? Don't matter. World-building? Waste of time. What happens to the story after he is done? Not his problem]] <ref>https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/03/03/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-admits-he-didnt-care-about-star-wars-canon-and-history/</ref> Why a guy like that would ever be hired to make a movie in such a lore-heavy franchise and why was he allowed to contradict canon as he wished is beyond us. But with that taken into consideration, it is certainly no wonder that The Last Jedi was so hated and that it caused people to lose interest in not only the trilogy but the sequel era as a whole.

The Last Jedi has without a doubt torn the fanbase apart in ways even the prequels and most of the Legends didn't come close to, with many fans declaring that they have dropped the sequel trilogy. Even Star Wars' famous merchandising has taken a mauling, as [[/toy/]] giggles at Rose Tico, Admiral Holdo and General Hux figures warming shelves while new product shipments go straight from the transport case to the clearance bin. Many had even said that The Last Jedi caused them to lose interest in Disney Star Wars as a whole until [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]] managed to drag the franchise back up again.
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===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo]===
On May 25th 2018, the 41st anniversary of the franchise, ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' was released. The general consensus seems to be that it is the most average film in the series. At the very least, most people agree that it is at least better than The Last Jedi (if barely) and the backlash from that movie can be felt even in Solo: many fans have chosen to boycott the movie. Even before release, many fans had derided the whole affair as unnecessary: no one was really asking for a Han Solo origin movie, particularly one without Harrison Ford. Han Solo's entire life history had already been explored thoroughly in EU novels and comics, so the movie could only be a retread or a retcon, both things most fanbases tend to disapprove of.
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Whether it is because of this boycott or not, [[Not as planned|something no one expected happened:]] ''Solo'' was a box office bomb. Its opening weekend performed way below expectations and it didn't even manage to break even. Disney still continued to labor under the delusion that China would save their bottom line regardless of the fact that Star Wars has never been popular in China.

So what is it like? Well, rather than being a space opera like the other films, this is a space Western. Rather than being about large-scale battles and saving the galaxy from tyranny, it's about heists and the galactic underworld. (Except for the Mimban sequence, which you'd swear was lifted from a live-action Imperial Guard movie.) It's essentially Disney's reboot/retcon of the old EU Han Solo novels, taking things that were mentioned offhand in the original trilogy (like how Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) and making that the subject of an entire movie. The film was perhaps cursed from the beginning due to its [[Fail|troubled production.]] How troubled? The lead needed an acting coach to get through his shoots (Han may have walked away with the Falcon, but Donald Glover's Lando stole the spotlight every time) and 70% of the movie had to be reshot by a different director due to [[Butthurt|creative differences]] between Lucasfilm and the original directors.

The fail only compounded when it premiered and fans got to see what those "creative differences" may have wrought: the writing staff started spewing bullshit to the press about Lando being "pansexual" with no precedent in any Star Wars production including ''Solo'' (not to forget he was quite a ladiesman in the originals), the film's tone is a schizophrenic nightmare to the last-minute reshoots. Perhaps the most damning sin is that these are the movie's only notable qualities: take them away and you're left with a movie that would make you think "Huh, that was okay," and then never think about it again for the rest of your life, were it not for the crippling disappointment of seeing one of the most beloved franchises in the world fall so far. Between the boycotts, the mediocrity of the movie itself, and [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gawker certain news outlets] claiming that the driving force behind said boycotts was [[/pol/]], ''Solo'' cratered so badly that [[Exterminatus|all non-''Episode 9'' Star Wars movies were for a short time shelved indefinitely, and the only side-movie still being worked on is the obligatory Boba Fett origin movie, which is more likely to sell tickets based on the name alone.]] Incidentally, one of the writers picked by Lucasfilm to handle ''Solo'''s tie-in content, Cavan Scott, has been hired by [[Games Workshop]] for the [[Warhammer Adventures]] series.
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===Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space)===
Your opinion of this movie is very easy to predict based on what you thought of the others; if you found The Last Jedi to be "refreshing", you'll absolutely HATE this one. If you hate all Disney content aside from ''maybe'' The Mandalorian, you'll hate this one as much as the others. If you absolutely detested The Last Jedi but have mixed opinions of the rest, you'll probably consider this to be the best of the new movies to varying degrees of actual enthusiasm. The movie largely undoes or ignores swathes of the previous one.
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After finishing shooting, the film was shown to test audiences (which JJ Abrams lied never happened). The film was extremely poorly received, one of many reasons being because it had [[Mary Sue|Rey curb-stomping Palpatine by herself in the final battle]] (test audiences reportedly either laughed at the film or had to be stopped from walking out of the test screenings). The poor showing made Disney CEO Bob Iger - who was overseeing the screening - furious, and he immediately ordered the film to be reshot. The resulting reshoots were so extensive, [http://archive.ph/RLj94 they spanned months and the film didn't have a final edit till December 2019, the month of release], causing trailers to be so desperate for footage that wouldn't be cut they had to fill half the length with footage from prior films and stuff used in prior trailers. To make matters worse for Disney, the plot was leaked months before release, and said plot turned out to be ''very stupid''. Despite Disney spokespeople and media outlets extensively denying the leaks, the leaks were proven correct by getting then unrevealed names and plot objects right. Camera leaks the week before release showed very little of the fantastically stupid content leaked months beforehand was changed, only minor details.

Before reading on, be aware that Rey and Kylo are no longer movie-type Force users, they have been changed to video game characters. Like KOTOR and Jedi Academy type where you just get powers by killing enough dudes. None of the powers are new to the franchise, but have been rarely seen and in some cases never before have in movies. You should also know that unlike the first Visual Dictionary that mostly just gave little prop trivia and plot hooks for other works, and the second which was mostly irrelevant until it gets referenced in a decade or two, the final Visual Dictionary is damn near required reading (this shit will get a "VD" to indicate it) since a lot of explanations were cut in the reshoots and recuts. Like for example the connection between Rey and Kylo is a "Force Dyad", basically one soul in the Force that inhabits two bodies (setting up a bit of a snarl what happens when one dies and not the other, and implying the personality is mostly in the brain which is why they can have unique experiences, but whatever) and warps space/time. This is why Rey was inexplicably powerful and knew how to do shit instinctively, because Kylo's training passed onto her, and likewise her nonstop playing with X-Wing training sims as a child made him a badass pilot. Dyads used to be far more common in the KOTOR era, and were apparently the inspiration for the Sith Rule Of Two. This is never mentioned in the final cut of the film, but leaks show it was in one of the earlier ones.

The movie pressed on with breakneck speed that doesn't have time for musical interludes or wipe transitions, the opening crawl informing you that Palpatine has somehow returned and sent a message to the galaxy with the Resistance trying to rebuild and gather information, Rey being trained by Leia on the planet Ajan Kloss (AKA not!Yavin #2, VD) after repairing Anakin's lightsaber (VD) who had received partial training from Luke before stopping for reasons explained later in the movie and supplementing the rest with her pouring over the Jedi texts, and Kylo Ren trying to find Palpatine because his existence is a threat to his rule. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from KOTOR era lore with Ren finding a Sith McGuffin Holocron-type navigation device on Mustafar (VD) showing him the secret planet of the Sith (not Korriban/Pesegam/Moraband, this one is a planet in a red nebula that is under constant lightning storms called Exegol). There he finds a MASSIVE Sith cult that has kept itself secret and managed to not only build a fucking massive fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with planetkiller guns like something straight out of the old canon, but divisions of Stormtroopers, technicians, and officers to fill them along with the typical cultists in robes who administer to keeping Palpatine alive and seeing to his Sith alchemy shit...which includes tanks containing multiple clones of Snoke, revealing the guy was literally born looking like that with a manufactured backstory all so Palpatine could use him as a puppet to create the First Order (which is almost a meta commentary about the backstory controversy).

Kylo is offered the chance to be the new Emperor by Palpatine, who is a corpse kept barely alive through methods some would consider... Unnatural, while strapped to a machine with [[Lord Kroak|his spirit sticking nearby]] (the filmmakers zig-zagged on the nature of this; first it was the original Palpatine who had somehow duped everyone in ''Return of the Jedi'' with a clone stand in, then the reshoots changed it to the original's zombie-like rotting corpse animated by his lingering spirit and Lucasfilm later retconned him to be a zombie-like clone of Palpatine after the film's release). The only requirement for Palps to pass him Emperorship is killing Rey, although Ren is immediately suspicious of the other strings attached (including choking a guy in a hissyfit when that concern is voiced) and decides instead to recruit Rey again, this time as a co-Emperor.

Finn and Poe obtain information about a spy within the First Order (yeah, you know its fucking Hux even before they say there is a spy at all) while Rey gets visions during her training with Leia. The spy confirms that Palpatine is legit and the info about the fuckmassive deathfleet is legit, and Rey finds the Jedi texts contain notes from Luke about his search for that planet. They go to his last clue, a desert planet that isn't Tatooine and is the middle of a festival where they find Lando has been holed up enjoying himself since him and Luke traveled there. They are immediately spotted by the First Order and escape from them to find the ship of one of Palpatine's servants who had last been seen there. They fall into sinkholes around the ship created by giant tunneling worms, and find the skeleton of Sheev's boy as well as a Sith dagger. 3PO is programmed with the Sith language, but his programming from the Old Republic era forbids him from giving the translation to civilians. Rey manages to get the sand worms to leave them alone by using Force powers to heal one's wound, and they attempt to get the Sheev's servant's ship up and running before they are attacked by the First Order. Chewie is taken prisoner and Rey wrecks Kylo's TIE Fighter before the two engage in a Force tug of war to pull the transport Chewie is on, which ends in Rey accidentally Force Lightning it and causing it to explode when she becomes frustrated with the stalemate. Chewie is revealed to have been on another transport and is taken to Ren's flagship Star Destroyer while the heroes, instead of do something sensible like seek a Rebel leader who can give security clearance for 3PO's protocol (Leia's the obvious choice), they head to a planet under VERY Nazi-like occupation to find a droid technician who can hack 3PO's memory. They encounter a woman from Poe's past, revealing he was a former spice smuggler like Han until abandoning his crew (causing them to fall into debt and become bitter at him) to join the Resistance. She threatens to turn the group in to pay off their debt [[Mary Sue| but Rey kicks her ass, earning her respect and she takes them to the technician without further incident.]] The technician unlocks 3PO's memory at the cost of wiping him. The translation reveals the dagger is the key to finding the Sith navigation McGuffin they are looking for. During this BB-8 reactivates Sheev's servant's old droid, who doesn't do much.

The heroes proceed to board Ren's flagship with the help of a First Order officer's badge, and shoot their way through as they free Chewie. Rey and Ren have another linked vision where her parents are revealed to have attempted to hide her from her grandfather Palpatine, who wanted to merge the souls of himself and '''ALL''' other preceding Sith (presumably not Revan, since his redemption is canon) while he discovers they are on his ship and orders it put on lockdown. Rey is confronted in the hangar by Ren, who offers her to join him again. She refuses and the Falcon appears, the engines blowing away the Stormtroopers while Rey jumps aboard. The crew head to Endor after finding out from Sheev's servant's old droid that it was where he was going to go next (this is the only thing the droid does other than serve as a "pet the dog moment" for the cast a few times) where the Death Star wreckage of the disk and throne room landed, encountering a division of former child-soldier Stormtroopers like Finn who went AWOL. The dagger has a slide-out metal prong from the handle which perfectly lines up with the corridor leading to Sheev's throne room. The team work on repairing the Falcon while Rey presses on ahead, alone, to the Death Star wreckage. Once in the throne room a hidden door opens, revealing a sanctum full of crystal mirrors that are the same as the ones she saw in her vision in The Last Jedi (the scene where she snaps her fingers and all the mirrored ones do as well). There she finds the Sith McGuffin and gets a "The Cave" vision of herself as a Sith with a red double-bladed lightsaber which she fights. Kylo is waiting for her in the throne room, and crushes the Sith McGuffin in his hand before informing her they are linked in the Force as one soul inhabiting two bodies and offering her again to be the Vader to her Palpatine which she again refuses. The two fight while Finn and one of the Stormtroopers try to rescue her. They fight their way onto the remnants of the Death Star hangar, reminiscent of Anakin and Obi-wan in Revenge Of The Sith with water instead of lava, before Ren freezes as he senses his mother start to die. This pause gives Rey time to grab his lightsaber and stab him before she freezes sensing Leia actually pass away. Rey uses the Force to heal him, then steals his TIE Fighter while Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base. Rey initially attempts to hide on Luke's monastery to let Palpatine's bloodline die with her, but after lighting Kylo's TIE on fire (so she's destroyed 2 of his personal TIE Fighters at this point) Luke appears as a Force ghost to tell her <strike>Rian Johnson</strike> he was wrong, and was motivated by fear when he tried to hide. He reveals that all the Jedi who came before are rooting for her, and tells her where Leia's lightsaber is hidden. He reveals she stopped her training because in a vision she saw that her son would be destroyed by the Dark Side, and a Light Side counterpart would take up her blade instead. Meanwhile, Kylo is visited by the memory of Han. The two reenact the scene from Force Awakens, only this time Kylo throws his lightsaber into the sea and renounces the name Kylo Ren to become simply Ben again. Meanwhile the First Order blow up Poe's home planet where the droid technician and Poe's old crew were, although they had managed to get offworld by that point. Also, R2-D2 restores C-3PO's memory wipe by finding a backup which contains everything from before the mission.

Luke lifts his X-Wing from the waves and Rey scavenges the Sith McGuffin from the flaming wreck of Kylo's ship. As she proceeds to the Sith planet she sends out a beacon to track her progress, giving the entire galaxy a map to the Sith fleet. Poe, now leader of the Resistance, sends Lando with the Falcon and Nien Nunb to gather any forces they can, all the ones who refused to aid them in The Last Jedi, while the rest of the Resistance gears up to attack Sheev's fleet before they can leave the storm cloud. The initial plan is to destroy the navigation device which orients them to the rest of the galaxy without which the fleet cannot leave, until the commander of the flagship (a former Imperial officer) realizes what they are doing and orders it to be shut down so his own ship could serve as the navigation for the rest. Rey confronts Sheev in a coliseum/throne room full of the Cultist parents of the personnel of the fleet (VD) and is informed of his plan to have her kill him so all the Sith could merge with her and rule as basically the God Emperor of Star Wars. She raises her lightsaber before using the strange wormhole Force connection thing they have to pass it to Ben, who had gotten there with a salvaged TIE from the Death Star wreckage and was being beaten by his former servants, the Knights Of Ren. Armed with Luke's old lightsaber he kills them and proceeds to the throne room. Ben arrives and the two attempt to fight him. He simply Force Pushes them back and forces them to kneel before draining a portion of their souls, the "two bodies one soul" thing apparently being a massive source of Force power he can heal himself with to rule in his own rejuvenated body again (but with Darth Maul eyes) rather than Rey's. Meanwhile, the ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance ground personnel lead by Finn land on the flagship Star Destroyer (its still in the atmosphere of the Sith planet, thus gravity and breathable air applies) and due to bringing goat-horse things from Endor are not affected by onboard EMP that would otherwise short out speeders and tanks (which is a thing from past canon, mostly comics and novels, which they use to explain why such a thing doesn't happen more often). Meanwhile, Lando appears with a fucking enormous fleet (remember the backstory that the New Republic didn't have a fleet, instead paying for every planet to have a militia of their own which would unite when there was a big enough threat? Well, JJ finally remembered because all those fucks show up alongside a neat little game of "spot that ship from the series you know" in a few shots). They begin attacking the superweapons underneath the Star Destroyers directly, causing chain reactions that blow the entire ship.

Ben is Force-pushed by Sheev into a pit as revenge for how Vader did the same thing to him before taunting the dying Rey and unleashing a MASSIVE Force Lightning storm which shorts out the fleet. While this is going on the spirits of all the dead Jedi (like pretty much anyone they could find to record a line from any of the past movies or shows, including Ahsoka; which is pretty lame since it means she was killed off-screen, with natural causes being unlikely since Ahsoka wouldn't have been 80 yet, and even that's below the average Togruta life expectancy, though this may not necessarily be the case according to Filoni) who inhabit her body the same way that Palpatine is currently full of all the Sith. Rey manages to stand and deflects his Force Lightning with Leia's lightsaber, which isn't enough until Ben manages to climb out of the pit and throw her Luke's lightsaber; with the two together she's able to walk close enough to Sheev for his Force Lightning to burn him, and despite this being the third fucking time this has happened he does not turn off the lightning and instead Raiders Of The Lost Ark's himself into a skeleton before blowing up and destroying not only himself but the spirits of all the past Sith. Despite Palpatine's plan being to possess Rey when she kills him, for some reason he doesn't do so. The Jedi spirits leave Rey and she dies, with the barely lingering on Ben healing her. They share a kiss (<s>reminder that since Sheev created Anakin, they're basically cousins</s> Innacurate him and Plagueis tried to build a "weapon" using the Force but having none of that shit it backlashed and created Anakin, and their relationship is so adversarial it makes Edward and Bella's from Twilight look healthy, something the novelization tries to claim is "purely platonic") before Ben dies. His body vanishes, as does Leia's. The Resistance/Militia fleet destroy all the Star Destroyers after Finn's ground crew hijacks one of the cannons of the flagship to shoot at the ship bridge, killing the last of the old Empire and First Order leadership.

The heroes return to the Resistance planet where they celebrate, scenes showing the rest of the galaxy shooting the last of the First Order Star Destroyers play, Chewie is given Han's old medal from A New Hope, and the ex-Stormtrooper leader is hinted to be Lando's daughter or grandaughter implying a spinoff with the two (also shares a gay kiss with another woman... which was cut to appease China's and Singapore's media watchdogs). After the celebrations Rey returns to Luke's old home on Tatooine where she buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers, revealing she built her own from her Force vision only with yellow blades instead of red ones. An old woman who was a neighbor of Owen and Beru comments nobody had been to that place in years and asks Rey's name. Seeing the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia, she tells the woman her name is Rey Skywalker. The End.

Because the fandom has become fractured like never before, there was immediately fan wars going on everywhere Star Wars fans are found. Fans accused haters of review bombing, those who hated the movie claimed the critic score (which, if you recall, is mostly people who liked The Last Jedi and hate this movie for doing a U-turn on it) vindicates them. The fan fighting probably won't ever end, since now we apparently have to reevaluate if A New Hope and the Kenner Star Wars toys were ever good in the first place because some contrarians now claim the prequels are the pinnacle of Star Wars. Whatever the case, Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in the middle of the work week in late February 2020, before coming a couple of months later, with insiders saying he's "livid" over certain changes, and there's an absolutely chaotic mess regarding the possibility of firing Kathleen Kennedy for the whole situation that happened under her charge and as a producer for each sequel trilogy film.

For anyone interested, here is a video explaining why the Rise of Skywalker failed musically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8-dWSLDWI

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{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars Movies

2021-05-24T14:50:02Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* The coming of the prequel trilogy */

{{Skubby}}
==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making their own, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights. However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision. Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia. His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]

==The coming of the prequel trilogy==
With the year 2000 coming, George Lucas felt that special effects technology had reached the level he wanted and began to create the first three movies in the star wars story he had envisioned. (As a side-note, he also made some touch-ups to the three original films, re-mastering them with special effects and a couple of extra scenes that weren't doable with the eighties' animatronics. But those were mostly accepted/shrugged away since they didn't deeply modify anything.The fandoms opinion on the matter however, remains a very heated [[Skub|debate]].)

The hype for the movies was immense.

And then the first movie, Episode One ''The Phantom Menace'' came out.....and there was nerd rage beyond expectation.

Part of the problem was that the immense expectations of the fandom had grown until anything less-than-perfect simply would not do, so perhaps that is somewhat to blame for the reaction to the prequel trilogy. In a vacuum one has to admit that they aren't completely ''[[Twilight|terrible films]]'' .

Episode Two ''Attack of the Clones'' and Episode Three ''Revenge of the Sith'' followed after a few years each and didn't garner nearly as much hatred, though fans complained they didn't match the greatness of the original trilogy, more concerned with flashy action and effects than competent story-telling; but hooo-boy did it deliver in flashy action, with laser armed [[MI-24 Hind|MI-24's]] full of <s>storm</s>troopers extracting jedi from a coliseum full of shooty killbots.

''Revenge of the Sith'' did, however, receive higher ratings than ''Return of the Jedi'', and is generally seen as <s>strikethrough:the best and most-complete of the three prequel films as a story and many even consider it their favorite Star Wars film</s> boring as shit until the Order 66 scene. Unusually the novelization alters some details and is considered a legitimately good book on its own merits.

What was generally more well received (despite a rocky start with a two hour pilot being pressed into service as a movie and an art style that took some time to gel) during this time for Star Wars was the Clone Wars animated series (both the traditionally-animated ''Clone Wars'' and the later seasons of the CGI show '''''The''' Clone Wars'', the latter of which most everyone agrees is what the prequels should have been), following the war between the Republic and the Confederacy that sprung up during the time between the second and third of the prequels.

It'd be ''really'' hard to find a group of movies more skubtastic than the prequel trilogy, and saying a good or bad thing about it in front of the wrong crowd's sure to provoke huge amounts of nerdrage. In defense of the prequel trilogy's sins, they did at least do their own thing. Because of how much money the original trilogy made, practically every form of media in the 80s and 90s aped it to some form or another, and instead of falling back on the same old shit the prequels branched out and tried to get out of the franchise's comfort zone a bit. While a lot of it sucked, it blazed a trail for better writers to follow and helped liven up the universe by showing us the galaxy beyond fuckhueg spaceships and faux-Western shitholes like Tatooine. And all but the most [[Neckbeard|diehard OT purists]] can get behind shit like Naboo architecture, the Clone Army and Mace "The Ace" Windu. From a story perspective the worst sin of the prequels was demystifying the force, and subsequent works have largely swept that detail under the carpet. Then Disney bought Star Wars and prequels become popular. Makes sense considering they had good scenario, sense and original events and characters and other things sequels do not have. Not to forget that they are a goldmine for [[meme|memes]].

==Disney and the sequel trilogy==

Finally, all the efforts by Disney to woo George Lucas paid off and in 2012 Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise for 4 billion dollars, with LucasFilm becoming part of Disney, appointing film producer Kathleen Kennedy as its president. This was immediately followed by an announcement that they would produce a new trilogy of films set after the original trilogy.

Expectations were almost as high as the private fears of the fans. Bringing on the creative talent behind the [[skub|skubtastic]] ''[[Star Trek]]'' reboot was equally... well, [[skub|take a wild guess (and that's before we factor in identity politics)]]. The end result saw millions of voices cry out in terror, and were suddenly subsumed into hitherto unseen levels of [[Skub]]. Tellingly, even SEVERAL OF THE LEAD ACTORS THEMSELVES have criticized the filmmakers or how the film was made, including John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Luke Skywalker himself - Mark Hamill; also, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have become to Star Wars what [[C.S Goto]] is to Warhammer. Rumors are circulating that the Disney trilogy may even get declared non-canon, which is bound to create a shockwave of skub so powerful that oldfags might actually side with the prequel fans for once.

For sake of sanity, these section have been condensed. Read at your own peril.
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===Episode 7: The Mouse Awakens===
''Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens'' debuted in December of 2015, and reception was what you would expect: the film was immediately a massive success from a monetary standpoint as everyone ([[China|almost]]) everywhere rushed to the theaters in response to the hype, with children engaging in as many repeat viewings as their parent's money could allow as fans did the same thing with their own. It has become a financial hit with the general public and a (critically) generally well-reviewed piece, with decent cinematography, special effects, technical stuff, etc. It also went on to become the third biggest financial success in film history (at the time), when not adjusted for inflation.
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Fan response was a good deal more mixed. Many criticize the plot for rehashing Episode IV, without doing anything to establish its own identity and claim that it had a bland main character, [[Mary Sue|who had too many abilities]] whereas others find the replication of ''Star Wars'' feel an acceptable trade and praise it for being a decent action film, [[skub|and claim the lead doesn't outdo any of the previous main characters]].

Some would argue that by rehashing the original trilogy it basically nullified the accomplishments of the original crew; the Empire's still around, they've got yet another superweapon, Han & Leia split up, Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi, etc. Other fans praised it simply for being a new Star Wars that was better than the prequel trilogy (expectations were lowered due to those, to be honest). Some see poor storytelling when there was no proper showing of what went on in the galaxy 3 decades since Palpatine died, and not explaining what caused big character changes like why Han returned to his old ways or Luke ran from his friends was critical. Other say this is going to be explained in the next film and people should keep their curiosity. Some argue even with their superweapon, none of the villains feel threatening. Others argue the incompetence of the main villain is a fresh change and the point of the plot will be to see him change, to be more competent, or even learn to become good.

Overall, those against argued JJ Abrams' mystery box approach may do well for a TV series but does not mesh with films that take years to make. Defendants held the position that fans should wait to see whether the next film will do anything with the unexplained plot points.

Coincidentally, when Hamill and Fisher were originally approached by Disney to reprise their roles as Luke and Leia, they ''didn't want to do it'' right from the start. But, they didn't want to give an out-and-out "no" answer either, so they told Disney they'd return if Harrison Ford agreed to return as Han Solo as well. Knowing how much Ford ''hated'' Solo, Hamill and Fisher figured they were safe, until Disney irresistibly sweetened the deal for Ford by agreeing to kill off his character, thus forcing a reluctant Hamill and Fisher to make good on their deal... [[skub|only for the three characters to never appear on the screen at the same time, and now that Carrie Fisher's dead...]] To be fair, Hamill has a history of saying he won’t do something only to immediately agree like he’s making a standard sitcom gag in real life, even if that usually just applies to still voicing the Joker in Batman media.
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===Star Wars: Rogue One===
December of 2016 brought us the first standalone Star Wars movie, "Rogue One", showing the theft of the original Death Star plans.
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While "Rogue One" can be justly criticized for lacking in character development, that was basically mandated by being set just before another movie whose actors were now decades too old (or, in the case of Peter Cushing, too dead) to reprise their previous roles. The cast of the movie includes almost no one who appears in Episode IV, and the few familiar faces who do appear show up as cameos. (Fair warning: spoilers)

Accordingly, every main character dies by the end. It still manages to pack quite a lot of [[awesome]] into the movie, with Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk and Darth Vader all used to great effect. Rogue One also answers several questions, plugs several plot holes, and just generally makes A New Hope make a lot more sense in retrospect ("I'm on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan." "Bitch, I saw the tail end of this ship over Scarif twenty minutes ago."). It also has the distinctions of being the only Star Wars movie to focus on regular soldiers instead of Jedi, and being more like the original Star Wars than any of the sequels, including the other two of the main trilogy. The original, back before it was "A New Hope", was a genre mashup of samurai + gunslinger rescue princess from space Nazis, then team up for a World War II dogfight. This one is wuxia cast + heist crew rob a space Nazi base, then team up for a World War II dogfight ''in the South Pacific''. Much, much [[Skub]] still exists of course, since no Star Wars movie will ever please all the neckbeards but out of the five post-Disney Star Wars movies released so far, this one is definitely the least divisive and arguably the best of the bunch.
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===Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!)===
On December 14 2017, ''Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi'' was released world wide. The critical reception was [[Bullshit|extremely positive]], with many critics considering it the best movie in the series since The Empire Strikes Back. The fan reception has been a great deal more negative and [[Skub|mixed]], and a number of fans are convinced that Disney leaned on media outlets to shill the new movie or else. If you have watched the Empire Strikes Back, you ''WILL'' be [[Rage|disappointed at best]], if you want to see a Star Wars film that would finally expand the characters of Kylo Ren and Rey, you ''WILL'' be satisfied and disappointed at the same time, if you want to watch the film because it is the last film starring the great and wonderful Carrie Fisher, you ''WILL'' feel hollow and sad inside, and if you came to see a pair of lightsaber-wielding punks involved in one of the greatest lightsaber battles of the franchise, you ''WILL'' be pleased. The Last Jedi is seen as the most divisive film in the franchise by the fandom, [[FAIL|which is one hell of an achievement]] considering other films.
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The complaints about The Last Jedi are many: the treatment of Luke (which even his actor, Mark Hamill, hated, to the point that he has no interest in playing Luke again), Leia's Superman asspull, Finn's plot arc that serves practically zero purpose and has him undergo the same character arc as the last movie, the forced humor, the complete disregard for established [[fluff]], disregard for even the most basic laws of physics, the fact that the central conflict is essentially the same as the one in the originals right down to the last stand ripped straight out of ''Empire'', the PC bullshit (a hipster admiral who the plot always treats as being in the right despite killing 90% of the Resistance, the Gilded Age planet arc that [[Namek|sucks up a third of the movie to no benefit,]] Rose expressing her desire to get BLACKED with a horrendous and forced #LoveTrumpsHate one-liner in the final act) added solely to virtue-signal and the whole thing being basically a 2,5h screed against the franchise it belongs to and the culture which spawned it.

Fans have also criticized the movie for dropping or discarding major plot points from TFA and repeatedly invoking Shamalamadingdong-tier plot twists for cheap gotchas that are somehow less interesting than the recycled cliches they play off of. Director Rian Johnson responded by shitting on said critics - including also mocking them with a character in his next film "Knives Out" - and trying to defend the film on social media like something out of an ED or RW article (Important note: George Lucas never tried to defend the prequels, despite the huge backlash at the time, and he agreed with fans that [[C.S Goto|The Star Wars Holiday Special]] was an abomination.) It later came out that Johnson had not been given any kind of roadmap beyond Lucas' old and unfinished concept scripts and was not allowed to see what Abrams had done until TLJ was too far into production to write in most of the previous movie's plot points, which makes the fail Disney's fault just as much as it is Johnson's. Except we also know that he had at least a modicum of influence over the ending of TFA, so they must have talked on at least some degree, and Rian's 100% to blame for his shitting on critics. As with TFA Lucasfilm has tried to paper over the holes with tie-in material, and just like TFA the fans recognize the damage control.

World-building is also of major note as The Last Jedi not only disregards fluff but also fails to come up with anything of interest. The best it could do is a casino planet which solely exists to preach about capitalism. Meanwhile by comparison, while The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were the most [[skub|skubtastic]] Star Wars movies before the sequels, each of them still did arguably more for world-building than all three originals combined, laying the groundwork for things to come, most notably [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]]. People simply wanted to see more of the universe. Meanwhile TLJ only managed to lead to [[Star Wars:Resistance]] and the lack of fan interest in it speaks for itself as many have decided to not watch it solely due to it being set in the sequel era. What I am trying to say is that Star Wars is by nature a very lore-heavy franchise so how could they fuck it up so badly? The reason is quite simple: [[Heresy|Rian Johnson outright admitted that canon, lore and world-building is of no interest to him and he doesn't care about anything outside the story he is trying to tell. Lore contradictions? Don't matter. World-building? Waste of time. What happens to the story after he is done? Not his problem]] <ref>https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/03/03/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-admits-he-didnt-care-about-star-wars-canon-and-history/</ref> Why a guy like that would ever be hired to make a movie in such a lore-heavy franchise and why was he allowed to contradict canon as he wished is beyond us. But with that taken into consideration, it is certainly no wonder that The Last Jedi was so hated and that it caused people to lose interest in not only the trilogy but the sequel era as a whole.

The Last Jedi has without a doubt torn the fanbase apart in ways even the prequels and most of the Legends didn't come close to, with many fans declaring that they have dropped the sequel trilogy. Even Star Wars' famous merchandising has taken a mauling, as [[/toy/]] giggles at Rose Tico, Admiral Holdo and General Hux figures warming shelves while new product shipments go straight from the transport case to the clearance bin. Many had even said that The Last Jedi caused them to lose interest in Disney Star Wars as a whole until [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]] managed to drag the franchise back up again.
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===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo]===
On May 25th 2018, the 41st anniversary of the franchise, ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' was released. The general consensus seems to be that it is the most average film in the series. At the very least, most people agree that it is at least better than The Last Jedi (if barely) and the backlash from that movie can be felt even in Solo: many fans have chosen to boycott the movie. Even before release, many fans had derided the whole affair as unnecessary: no one was really asking for a Han Solo origin movie, particularly one without Harrison Ford. Han Solo's entire life history had already been explored thoroughly in EU novels and comics, so the movie could only be a retread or a retcon, both things most fanbases tend to disapprove of.
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Whether it is because of this boycott or not, [[Not as planned|something no one expected happened:]] ''Solo'' was a box office bomb. Its opening weekend performed way below expectations and it didn't even manage to break even. Disney still continued to labor under the delusion that China would save their bottom line regardless of the fact that Star Wars has never been popular in China.

So what is it like? Well, rather than being a space opera like the other films, this is a space Western. Rather than being about large-scale battles and saving the galaxy from tyranny, it's about heists and the galactic underworld. (Except for the Mimban sequence, which you'd swear was lifted from a live-action Imperial Guard movie.) It's essentially Disney's reboot/retcon of the old EU Han Solo novels, taking things that were mentioned offhand in the original trilogy (like how Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) and making that the subject of an entire movie. The film was perhaps cursed from the beginning due to its [[Fail|troubled production.]] How troubled? The lead needed an acting coach to get through his shoots (Han may have walked away with the Falcon, but Donald Glover's Lando stole the spotlight every time) and 70% of the movie had to be reshot by a different director due to [[Butthurt|creative differences]] between Lucasfilm and the original directors.

The fail only compounded when it premiered and fans got to see what those "creative differences" may have wrought: the writing staff started spewing bullshit to the press about Lando being "pansexual" with no precedent in any Star Wars production including ''Solo'' (not to forget he was quite a ladiesman in the originals), the film's tone is a schizophrenic nightmare to the last-minute reshoots. Perhaps the most damning sin is that these are the movie's only notable qualities: take them away and you're left with a movie that would make you think "Huh, that was okay," and then never think about it again for the rest of your life, were it not for the crippling disappointment of seeing one of the most beloved franchises in the world fall so far. Between the boycotts, the mediocrity of the movie itself, and [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gawker certain news outlets] claiming that the driving force behind said boycotts was [[/pol/]], ''Solo'' cratered so badly that [[Exterminatus|all non-''Episode 9'' Star Wars movies were for a short time shelved indefinitely, and the only side-movie still being worked on is the obligatory Boba Fett origin movie, which is more likely to sell tickets based on the name alone.]] Incidentally, one of the writers picked by Lucasfilm to handle ''Solo'''s tie-in content, Cavan Scott, has been hired by [[Games Workshop]] for the [[Warhammer Adventures]] series.
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===Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space)===
Your opinion of this movie is very easy to predict based on what you thought of the others; if you found The Last Jedi to be "refreshing", you'll absolutely HATE this one. If you hate all Disney content aside from ''maybe'' The Mandalorian, you'll hate this one as much as the others. If you absolutely detested The Last Jedi but have mixed opinions of the rest, you'll probably consider this to be the best of the new movies to varying degrees of actual enthusiasm. The movie largely undoes or ignores swathes of the previous one.
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After finishing shooting, the film was shown to test audiences (which JJ Abrams lied never happened). The film was extremely poorly received, one of many reasons being because it had [[Mary Sue|Rey curb-stomping Palpatine by herself in the final battle]] (test audiences reportedly either laughed at the film or had to be stopped from walking out of the test screenings). The poor showing made Disney CEO Bob Iger - who was overseeing the screening - furious, and he immediately ordered the film to be reshot. The resulting reshoots were so extensive, [http://archive.ph/RLj94 they spanned months and the film didn't have a final edit till December 2019, the month of release], causing trailers to be so desperate for footage that wouldn't be cut they had to fill half the length with footage from prior films and stuff used in prior trailers. To make matters worse for Disney, the plot was leaked months before release, and said plot turned out to be ''very stupid''. Despite Disney spokespeople and media outlets extensively denying the leaks, the leaks were proven correct by getting then unrevealed names and plot objects right. Camera leaks the week before release showed very little of the fantastically stupid content leaked months beforehand was changed, only minor details.

Before reading on, be aware that Rey and Kylo are no longer movie-type Force users, they have been changed to video game characters. Like KOTOR and Jedi Academy type where you just get powers by killing enough dudes. None of the powers are new to the franchise, but have been rarely seen and in some cases never before have in movies. You should also know that unlike the first Visual Dictionary that mostly just gave little prop trivia and plot hooks for other works, and the second which was mostly irrelevant until it gets referenced in a decade or two, the final Visual Dictionary is damn near required reading (this shit will get a "VD" to indicate it) since a lot of explanations were cut in the reshoots and recuts. Like for example the connection between Rey and Kylo is a "Force Dyad", basically one soul in the Force that inhabits two bodies (setting up a bit of a snarl what happens when one dies and not the other, and implying the personality is mostly in the brain which is why they can have unique experiences, but whatever) and warps space/time. This is why Rey was inexplicably powerful and knew how to do shit instinctively, because Kylo's training passed onto her, and likewise her nonstop playing with X-Wing training sims as a child made him a badass pilot. Dyads used to be far more common in the KOTOR era, and were apparently the inspiration for the Sith Rule Of Two. This is never mentioned in the final cut of the film, but leaks show it was in one of the earlier ones.

The movie pressed on with breakneck speed that doesn't have time for musical interludes or wipe transitions, the opening crawl informing you that Palpatine has somehow returned and sent a message to the galaxy with the Resistance trying to rebuild and gather information, Rey being trained by Leia on the planet Ajan Kloss (AKA not!Yavin #2, VD) after repairing Anakin's lightsaber (VD) who had received partial training from Luke before stopping for reasons explained later in the movie and supplementing the rest with her pouring over the Jedi texts, and Kylo Ren trying to find Palpatine because his existence is a threat to his rule. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from KOTOR era lore with Ren finding a Sith McGuffin Holocron-type navigation device on Mustafar (VD) showing him the secret planet of the Sith (not Korriban/Pesegam/Moraband, this one is a planet in a red nebula that is under constant lightning storms called Exegol). There he finds a MASSIVE Sith cult that has kept itself secret and managed to not only build a fucking massive fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with planetkiller guns like something straight out of the old canon, but divisions of Stormtroopers, technicians, and officers to fill them along with the typical cultists in robes who administer to keeping Palpatine alive and seeing to his Sith alchemy shit...which includes tanks containing multiple clones of Snoke, revealing the guy was literally born looking like that with a manufactured backstory all so Palpatine could use him as a puppet to create the First Order (which is almost a meta commentary about the backstory controversy).

Kylo is offered the chance to be the new Emperor by Palpatine, who is a corpse kept barely alive through methods some would consider... Unnatural, while strapped to a machine with [[Lord Kroak|his spirit sticking nearby]] (the filmmakers zig-zagged on the nature of this; first it was the original Palpatine who had somehow duped everyone in ''Return of the Jedi'' with a clone stand in, then the reshoots changed it to the original's zombie-like rotting corpse animated by his lingering spirit and Lucasfilm later retconned him to be a zombie-like clone of Palpatine after the film's release). The only requirement for Palps to pass him Emperorship is killing Rey, although Ren is immediately suspicious of the other strings attached (including choking a guy in a hissyfit when that concern is voiced) and decides instead to recruit Rey again, this time as a co-Emperor.

Finn and Poe obtain information about a spy within the First Order (yeah, you know its fucking Hux even before they say there is a spy at all) while Rey gets visions during her training with Leia. The spy confirms that Palpatine is legit and the info about the fuckmassive deathfleet is legit, and Rey finds the Jedi texts contain notes from Luke about his search for that planet. They go to his last clue, a desert planet that isn't Tatooine and is the middle of a festival where they find Lando has been holed up enjoying himself since him and Luke traveled there. They are immediately spotted by the First Order and escape from them to find the ship of one of Palpatine's servants who had last been seen there. They fall into sinkholes around the ship created by giant tunneling worms, and find the skeleton of Sheev's boy as well as a Sith dagger. 3PO is programmed with the Sith language, but his programming from the Old Republic era forbids him from giving the translation to civilians. Rey manages to get the sand worms to leave them alone by using Force powers to heal one's wound, and they attempt to get the Sheev's servant's ship up and running before they are attacked by the First Order. Chewie is taken prisoner and Rey wrecks Kylo's TIE Fighter before the two engage in a Force tug of war to pull the transport Chewie is on, which ends in Rey accidentally Force Lightning it and causing it to explode when she becomes frustrated with the stalemate. Chewie is revealed to have been on another transport and is taken to Ren's flagship Star Destroyer while the heroes, instead of do something sensible like seek a Rebel leader who can give security clearance for 3PO's protocol (Leia's the obvious choice), they head to a planet under VERY Nazi-like occupation to find a droid technician who can hack 3PO's memory. They encounter a woman from Poe's past, revealing he was a former spice smuggler like Han until abandoning his crew (causing them to fall into debt and become bitter at him) to join the Resistance. She threatens to turn the group in to pay off their debt [[Mary Sue| but Rey kicks her ass, earning her respect and she takes them to the technician without further incident.]] The technician unlocks 3PO's memory at the cost of wiping him. The translation reveals the dagger is the key to finding the Sith navigation McGuffin they are looking for. During this BB-8 reactivates Sheev's servant's old droid, who doesn't do much.

The heroes proceed to board Ren's flagship with the help of a First Order officer's badge, and shoot their way through as they free Chewie. Rey and Ren have another linked vision where her parents are revealed to have attempted to hide her from her grandfather Palpatine, who wanted to merge the souls of himself and '''ALL''' other preceding Sith (presumably not Revan, since his redemption is canon) while he discovers they are on his ship and orders it put on lockdown. Rey is confronted in the hangar by Ren, who offers her to join him again. She refuses and the Falcon appears, the engines blowing away the Stormtroopers while Rey jumps aboard. The crew head to Endor after finding out from Sheev's servant's old droid that it was where he was going to go next (this is the only thing the droid does other than serve as a "pet the dog moment" for the cast a few times) where the Death Star wreckage of the disk and throne room landed, encountering a division of former child-soldier Stormtroopers like Finn who went AWOL. The dagger has a slide-out metal prong from the handle which perfectly lines up with the corridor leading to Sheev's throne room. The team work on repairing the Falcon while Rey presses on ahead, alone, to the Death Star wreckage. Once in the throne room a hidden door opens, revealing a sanctum full of crystal mirrors that are the same as the ones she saw in her vision in The Last Jedi (the scene where she snaps her fingers and all the mirrored ones do as well). There she finds the Sith McGuffin and gets a "The Cave" vision of herself as a Sith with a red double-bladed lightsaber which she fights. Kylo is waiting for her in the throne room, and crushes the Sith McGuffin in his hand before informing her they are linked in the Force as one soul inhabiting two bodies and offering her again to be the Vader to her Palpatine which she again refuses. The two fight while Finn and one of the Stormtroopers try to rescue her. They fight their way onto the remnants of the Death Star hangar, reminiscent of Anakin and Obi-wan in Revenge Of The Sith with water instead of lava, before Ren freezes as he senses his mother start to die. This pause gives Rey time to grab his lightsaber and stab him before she freezes sensing Leia actually pass away. Rey uses the Force to heal him, then steals his TIE Fighter while Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base. Rey initially attempts to hide on Luke's monastery to let Palpatine's bloodline die with her, but after lighting Kylo's TIE on fire (so she's destroyed 2 of his personal TIE Fighters at this point) Luke appears as a Force ghost to tell her <strike>Rian Johnson</strike> he was wrong, and was motivated by fear when he tried to hide. He reveals that all the Jedi who came before are rooting for her, and tells her where Leia's lightsaber is hidden. He reveals she stopped her training because in a vision she saw that her son would be destroyed by the Dark Side, and a Light Side counterpart would take up her blade instead. Meanwhile, Kylo is visited by the memory of Han. The two reenact the scene from Force Awakens, only this time Kylo throws his lightsaber into the sea and renounces the name Kylo Ren to become simply Ben again. Meanwhile the First Order blow up Poe's home planet where the droid technician and Poe's old crew were, although they had managed to get offworld by that point. Also, R2-D2 restores C-3PO's memory wipe by finding a backup which contains everything from before the mission.

Luke lifts his X-Wing from the waves and Rey scavenges the Sith McGuffin from the flaming wreck of Kylo's ship. As she proceeds to the Sith planet she sends out a beacon to track her progress, giving the entire galaxy a map to the Sith fleet. Poe, now leader of the Resistance, sends Lando with the Falcon and Nien Nunb to gather any forces they can, all the ones who refused to aid them in The Last Jedi, while the rest of the Resistance gears up to attack Sheev's fleet before they can leave the storm cloud. The initial plan is to destroy the navigation device which orients them to the rest of the galaxy without which the fleet cannot leave, until the commander of the flagship (a former Imperial officer) realizes what they are doing and orders it to be shut down so his own ship could serve as the navigation for the rest. Rey confronts Sheev in a coliseum/throne room full of the Cultist parents of the personnel of the fleet (VD) and is informed of his plan to have her kill him so all the Sith could merge with her and rule as basically the God Emperor of Star Wars. She raises her lightsaber before using the strange wormhole Force connection thing they have to pass it to Ben, who had gotten there with a salvaged TIE from the Death Star wreckage and was being beaten by his former servants, the Knights Of Ren. Armed with Luke's old lightsaber he kills them and proceeds to the throne room. Ben arrives and the two attempt to fight him. He simply Force Pushes them back and forces them to kneel before draining a portion of their souls, the "two bodies one soul" thing apparently being a massive source of Force power he can heal himself with to rule in his own rejuvenated body again (but with Darth Maul eyes) rather than Rey's. Meanwhile, the ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance ground personnel lead by Finn land on the flagship Star Destroyer (its still in the atmosphere of the Sith planet, thus gravity and breathable air applies) and due to bringing goat-horse things from Endor are not affected by onboard EMP that would otherwise short out speeders and tanks (which is a thing from past canon, mostly comics and novels, which they use to explain why such a thing doesn't happen more often). Meanwhile, Lando appears with a fucking enormous fleet (remember the backstory that the New Republic didn't have a fleet, instead paying for every planet to have a militia of their own which would unite when there was a big enough threat? Well, JJ finally remembered because all those fucks show up alongside a neat little game of "spot that ship from the series you know" in a few shots). They begin attacking the superweapons underneath the Star Destroyers directly, causing chain reactions that blow the entire ship.

Ben is Force-pushed by Sheev into a pit as revenge for how Vader did the same thing to him before taunting the dying Rey and unleashing a MASSIVE Force Lightning storm which shorts out the fleet. While this is going on the spirits of all the dead Jedi (like pretty much anyone they could find to record a line from any of the past movies or shows, including Ahsoka; which is pretty lame since it means she was killed off-screen, with natural causes being unlikely since Ahsoka wouldn't have been 80 yet, and even that's below the average Togruta life expectancy, though this may not necessarily be the case according to Filoni) who inhabit her body the same way that Palpatine is currently full of all the Sith. Rey manages to stand and deflects his Force Lightning with Leia's lightsaber, which isn't enough until Ben manages to climb out of the pit and throw her Luke's lightsaber; with the two together she's able to walk close enough to Sheev for his Force Lightning to burn him, and despite this being the third fucking time this has happened he does not turn off the lightning and instead Raiders Of The Lost Ark's himself into a skeleton before blowing up and destroying not only himself but the spirits of all the past Sith. Despite Palpatine's plan being to possess Rey when she kills him, for some reason he doesn't do so. The Jedi spirits leave Rey and she dies, with the barely lingering on Ben healing her. They share a kiss (<s>reminder that since Sheev created Anakin, they're basically cousins</s> Innacurate him and Plagueis tried to build a "weapon" using the Force but having none of that shit it backlashed and created Anakin, and their relationship is so adversarial it makes Edward and Bella's from Twilight look healthy, something the novelization tries to claim is "purely platonic") before Ben dies. His body vanishes, as does Leia's. The Resistance/Militia fleet destroy all the Star Destroyers after Finn's ground crew hijacks one of the cannons of the flagship to shoot at the ship bridge, killing the last of the old Empire and First Order leadership.

The heroes return to the Resistance planet where they celebrate, scenes showing the rest of the galaxy shooting the last of the First Order Star Destroyers play, Chewie is given Han's old medal from A New Hope, and the ex-Stormtrooper leader is hinted to be Lando's daughter or grandaughter implying a spinoff with the two (also shares a gay kiss with another woman... which was cut to appease China's and Singapore's media watchdogs). After the celebrations Rey returns to Luke's old home on Tatooine where she buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers, revealing she built her own from her Force vision only with yellow blades instead of red ones. An old woman who was a neighbor of Owen and Beru comments nobody had been to that place in years and asks Rey's name. Seeing the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia, she tells the woman her name is Rey Skywalker. The End.

Because the fandom has become fractured like never before, there was immediately fan wars going on everywhere Star Wars fans are found. Fans accused haters of review bombing, those who hated the movie claimed the critic score (which, if you recall, is mostly people who liked The Last Jedi and hate this movie for doing a U-turn on it) vindicates them. The fan fighting probably won't ever end, since now we apparently have to reevaluate if A New Hope and the Kenner Star Wars toys were ever good in the first place because some contrarians now claim the prequels are the pinnacle of Star Wars. Whatever the case, Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in the middle of the work week in late February 2020, before coming a couple of months later, with insiders saying he's "livid" over certain changes, and there's an absolutely chaotic mess regarding the possibility of firing Kathleen Kennedy for the whole situation that happened under her charge and as a producer for each sequel trilogy film.

For anyone interested, here is a video explaining why the Rise of Skywalker failed musically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8-dWSLDWI

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{{Star Wars}}

Darklord

2021-05-24T03:50:11Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* Isolde & Nepenthe */

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{{Topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

The '''Darklords''' are the rulers ''and'' prisoners of the plane of [[Ravenloft]], from the D&D setting of the same name.

You might be wondering "How are they both rulers and prisoners at the same time?" The reason for this is simple: each Darklord was pulled into the plane by the nebulous forces known only as the Dark Powers after an especially heinous deed (known in-universe as a "Act of Ultimate Darkness"), which reshapes a part of the plane into [[Demiplane of Dread|a realm tailored to each Darklord's defining crime]]. In its own realm a Darklord is a BBEG to rule over all other BBEGs, with absolute power over everything except whatever they desire most - whatever thing that might be, it is always dangled ever so slightly out of their reach by the Dark Powers to amplify their torment further. They have no mouth, and they must scream. (Thus the common description of the setting as "Hell, but not for you".)

=Common Characteristics of Darklords=
The exact abilities and backstories of Ravenloft's Darklords have varied from edition to edition, but almost all exert considerable control over their individual domains, and many Darklords also rule their domains (assuming the domain has a population to rule), either openly or behind the scenes. Many Darklords are also extremely dangerous to confront in open combat, or otherwise have hidden powers up their sleeves that can neutralize entire groups of player characters even without combat.

Keeping in line with the Gothic Horror theme of Ravenloft, the presence and persistence of insidious evil on this plane is the rule and not the exception. By contrast, lasting triumphs of good are vanishingly rare possibilities. As such, PCs aren't really supposed to go toe-to-toe with Darklords and expect to come out on top like your average group of [[murderhobos]] in other D&D settings. Trying to storm through Castle Ravenloft or Castle Avernus (not the Avernus of [[Baator]]) and expecting to put Strahd's or Azalin's skulls on a pike by the end of the play session will most likely either end in a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|total party kill]] or a fate worse than death, assuming the Dungeon Master is at all trying to run the game in a thematically appropriate way. At most, the PCs' efforts might preserve a bit of light in the ever-present mists and hope their activities stay beneath the local Darklord's notice. [[Grimdark|Heroes in this benighted plane are not guaranteed a peaceful death in bed surrounded by family and friends, or a life of glory and deeds well remembered.]] Openly going up against a Darklord is one of the surest ways of ending your character's life and career for good.

A few things about Darklords have remained constant throughout Ravenloft's editions, however. First, unless the Dark Powers will it, Darklords are completely unable to leave their own domains (note that certain "pocket domains" are in fact mobile and can travel between larger domains, but the Darklord within is still powerless to leave its own pocket domain as any other). If PCs manage to leave a Darklord's domain, that specific Darklord is usually powerless to personally come after them (but see "Closing the Borders" below). Second, almost every Darklord has a weakness, usually in the form of something or someone they desire above all else that they would risk anything and everything for, or a personal vulnerability tied to its curse that is usually well-hidden and hard to figure out. Discovering and exploiting these weaknesses are one of the only ways to accomplish some good in spite of a Darklord's efforts, but if it comes to that you've likely already attracted (or will very soon attract) a Darklord's attention and are in deep trouble. A couple other abilities common to Darklords are discussed below.

===Closing the Borders===
The vast majority of Darklords have the ability to force others to share in their imprisonment by supernaturally closing the borders of their domains, usually leaving no way out even with the aid of magic. Trying to leave a closed domain border will just result in a grisly death or automatic failure, and teleportation magic won't work past a closed domain border either. As Ravenloft was an early AD&D product, the designers gave this handy tool to DMs so as to stop players from just up and leaving without going through the DM's plot. Improperly used it can smack of railroading, but it fits well within the Gothic Horror genre convention of having characters get trapped in sinister and dangerous locales with no safe passage out, until a situation is resolved (or the Darklord opens the borders again, as in the case of Ravenloft).

The few Darklords who cannot supernaturally close their borders either lack that ability as part of their curse, or are unable to do so as part of their nature. Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia for instance disdains magic and the supernatural, and in line with this attitude gained no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders upon becoming a Darklord. However, even these Darklords have more mundane ways of barring escape from their domains, such as sending their numerous lackeys to patrol the borders, though thankfully this doesn't impede magical methods of escape. An even smaller number of Darklords are completely unable to close their domain borders in any way, such as Haki Shinpi of Rokushima Taiyoo who was cursed to become a powerless geist upon becoming Darklord (rather than becoming a Death Knight as he originally planned) and was doomed to watch everything he built in his life's conquest literally sink into ruin through the squabbling of his sons.

===Immortality===
Another reason to avoid going up against Darklords is that many of them have ways of returning from death, rendering all of your hard work moot. Even those who don't have explicitly mentioned methods of cheating death, like Strahd, generally have many contingency plans to avoid ever being at risk of getting truly destroyed. To make a bad situation worse, the Dark Powers appear to get occasionally "attached" to their playthings, and frown harshly upon attempts to take their toys away. In game terms, this means that certain Darklords are truly indestructible and can ever only be put out of commission temporarily, and even the attempt at doing so may end up drawing the Dark Powers' attention to whoever tries such a feat. Mercifully, these individuals are the exception, not the rule.

By contrast, some Darklords are fairly ordinary people with no significant combat skills and no more resistance to being killed off for real than their subjects. However, as mentioned above, even these seemingly vulnerable BBEGs often still have the means or minions to deal with a bunch of murderhobos, and most of these non-combat-focused Darklords are still savvy enough to be wary of any potential threats to their survival, and to nip those threats in the bud via underhanded means.

Outside of these extremes, permanently destroying most Darklords requires either killing one in a very specific manner and/or destroying a Darklord's means of cheating death (which in some cases might be nigh-impossible, such as killing every specimen of a very numerous type of creature in a domain before confronting the Darklord). Finding out this information is likely to require a good deal of questing and research to find out, but can make for a great campaign if properly handled. However, even accomplishing all this does nothing to stop the Dark Powers from "promoting" someone in the realm evil enough to assume the mantle of Darklord, possibly leaving the realm and its inhabitants in [[Not as planned|a worse situation than before]]. In fact, not a few of the "current" Darklords assumed their positions by killing the previous ones. In other cases, the title and sometimes even the personality of the Darklord is immediately passed down to another being on the moment of the Darklord's death, thus ensuring that their position is never lost.

===What happens if you permanently destroy a Darklord somehow?===
It's likely that some of you action-oriented elegan/tg/entleman reading this are just champing at the bit to claim a Darklord's skull for your trophy rooms, but as noted above, the odds and the themes of the setting itself are decidedly against you. Or maybe you're a DM who wants to run a Ravenloft campaign where good really can make a difference and want to know what happens when these Gothic Horror BBEGs finally bite the dust for real and no one takes their place.

Unfortunately, the rulebooks have historically been rather ambivalent and lacking in detail about the answer to this question and the resulting implications. Some Ravenloft rulebooks say that once a Darklord is permanently destroyed and no successor is forthcoming, the destroyed Darklord's associated domain might simply disappear, leaving open the question of what happens to all the people who were living there. If the people there simply disappear as well, were they never real in the first place, instead being undispellable illusions made up whole-cloth by the Dark Powers to torment the Darklord? That might work out just fine if your group stuck to playing [[Weekend in Hell]] style adventures in Ravenloft, but what would it say about PCs native to Ravenloft, or even native to the domain now without a Darklord? Or were the people in the Darklord-less domain no more real (and therefore no more morally troubling to harm in any way) than characters in a video game, making the whole "Powers Check" mechanic moot with regards to harming innocents? Is there now a gaping misty void where the previous domain used to be?

Canonically, the answer might be found in how two domains (Arkandale and Gundarak) where the Darklords lost their darklordship were absorbed by neighbouring ones, essentially meaning the people inside those domains just exchanged one insidious tyrant for another. This solution is probably the smoothest way to incorporate the plot element of Darklords being permanently destroyed in your campaign. On the other hand, geographically isolated domains (such as one of the numerous "Islands of Terror" that are completely surrounded by the Mists), or mobile pocket domains with no notable population of sentients can just disappear back into the mists with no larger consequences to other domains upon the permanent death of their Darklords. It still leaves open the question of what happens to the population of sentients in domains situated in the middle of nowhere that suffer a sudden lack of a Darklord, though.

Strahd himself is explicitly mentioned to be a special case with regards to permanent destruction, most probably due to his status as the posterboy of the entire Ravenloft setting (even in universe, it's noted that the Demi-Plane of Dread didn't seem to exist until Strahd's damnation). In 5e's Curse of Strahd module, it is said that in the absurdly unlikely event he is permanently killed with all of his failsafes destroyed or deactivated, the Dark Powers will intervene to resurrect him within a month [[Grimdark|because they refuse to allow the possibility of ending his torment]]. They're "possessive" about their favourite playthings like that.

Players crying foul about this should note that the Dark Powers are mighty enough to bar the gods themselves from coming to Ravenloft. In light of that, something like bringing a Darklord back to life looks like a trivial feat by comparison.

5e Overhall of some domains of Dreads gives some more definitive insight, either hinted at or explicit With some of the newer darklords stealing rulership from older ones. Darklordship Darkon is a prime example of a missing Darklord, as, without Azalin Rex, the domains is slowly dissolving.

Bottom line? Hash it out with your DM beforehand, or if you're a DM yourself, make sure you have a sensible plot thread lined up if you choose to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords, while keeping in mind how important Darklords are to the themes of Ravenloft.

=Notable Darklords=

==The "Hammer Horror" Darklords==
With the horror films by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions Hammer Film Productions] officially cited as a major source of inspiration for the setting of Ravenloft, the Darklords who are patterned after the horror monster archetypes featured in those films will be listed here.

===Strahd von Zarovich===
{{main|Strahd von Zarovich}}
Darklord of Barovia, and the first Darklord to be introduced to the setting--in fact, it's named after his own castle. He is the archetypal vampire darklord in the setting, though by no means the only one, and his appearance is clearly based off of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula in the 1958 ''Dracula'' film by Hammer Film Productions.

Originally the conqueror of a region called Barovia that he claims was the ancestral home of his family, Strahd came to lust after a woman called Tatyana who rejected him in favor of his younger brother Sergei. Strahd took this very badly; badly enough that at some point he made what he called "a pact with Death" that turned him into a [[vampire]] in a desperate attempt to restore his youth. This too failed to win her over, and on the day Tatyana was to be married to Sergei, Strahd killed him and drove her to suicide.

His realm is a copy of Barovia from the Prime Material plane (the original apparently still exists but nothing is said about its current condition or even which D&D setting it originated from), which he has absolute power over to the point where he can enter any private home uninvited in spite of the fact most vampires are unable to do so (since as he boasts, "I am the land"), and he can ignore the standard vampiric weaknesses to mirrors, garlic or holy symbols, none of which ordinary vampires can do. He isn't even "killed" when staked through the heart like ordinary vampires are (though he is effectively paralyzed while staked) and can resist up to ten rounds of sunlight exposure before being destroyed, though he has always a contingency spell cast on himself that will teleport him away to a hidden mountain sanctuary should he ever be exposed to sunlight or staked by a prepared party, much like Bram Stoker's own Dracula had many coffins to sleep in to make his final destruction more difficult. However, Strahd's curse is to have the events leading to his damnation repeat themselves forever--once every generation he will encounter a woman who he believes to be Tatyana's reincarnation, only to be rejected by her in spite of all his vampiric mind control powers, and become responsible for her death once more, all while being unable to simply give up on trying to win her love.

===Ankhtepot===
Darklord of Har'Akir, partially based on the monster from the 1959 film ''The Mummy'' by Hammer Film Productions. He is the archetypal Mummy-based Darklord in the setting, but he is not the only "Ancient Dead" (i.e., a preserved corpse animated into undeath) who happens to be a Darklord.

Ankhtepot in life was a hubristic ruler of a land also named Har'Akir, patterned after Ancient Egypt and sharing the same pantheon of gods. As the head priest of the sun god Ra, the chief god of his land, Ankhtepot was [[Nagash|obsessed with death and became consumed with the desire to live forever]]. Despite sparing no expense (nor quite a few lives, for that matter) his efforts were in vain, and in his rage he razed several temples, stormed into the greatest one and cursed the gods for withholding his heart's desire. For this blasphemy, Ra contacted Ankhtepot directly and said that Ankhtepot would indeed live after death, though he might wish otherwise. Anhktepot was confused about this, but later discovered that he had received a dire curse (making him one of the few outlander Darklords to have received the majority of his curse ''before'' being taken into Ravenloft); anyone he touched was dead by nightfall, and those he killed in this fashion rose from their tombs to serve him absolutely as undead mummies, because apparently Ra considers having mindless servants a punishment. Taking this in stride despite killing many of his relatives, he used his new undead servants to tighten his grip over Har'Akir, but his fellow priests rebelled, killed Ankhtepot in his sleep, and mummified him, little knowing he was still conscious and going insane inside his sarcophagus during his month-long funeral. After being entombed in a remote area with one small village named Mudar, the mists of Ravenloft claimed Ankhtepot, his tomb, and the nearby village, leaving no trace of them in Ankhtepot's home plane.

As Darklord, Ankhtepot spends most of his time in a deathless dream of better days in his tomb, but he can be roused from this state in a few ways, such as if his tomb is disturbed, or if the people of Mudar are anxious or otherwise distressed. His hubris and pride followed him into undeath, and similarly his greatest torment is his desire to be human again, as the god-king of a great empire he once was, while in reality he "rules" over a barren patch of desert with naught but a small mud-hut village. To frustrate him further, the Dark Powers granted Ankhtepot the ability to regain his human form and mortality by draining a human of moisture and life force in a dread sunrise ceremony, but this reversion to mortality lasts only from dawn to nightfall, and during those few daylight hours "under Ra's gaze" he loses all his supernatural powers, once again becoming a normal human with no appreciable abilities until nightfall, whereupon the transformation is undone. Knowing that he would face an eternity of solitude were he to sacrifice everyone in his domain to fleetingly experience mortality again, Ankhtepot generally prefers to wait and dream until he might rule a larger population, a time he seems unaware will never come.

With respect to his crunch, Ankhtepot can be an unholy terror in his Greater Mummy form. He retains much of the high-level spellcasting ability he had in life, his touch-delivered Mummy Rot is both more virulent and harder to cure than almost any other Ravenloft Mummy's, and those who become infected and are mummified alive become Greater Mummies under his total control. Other aces up his sleeve (or rather, his bandages) are the fact that he commands virtually every mummy in his domain, so if sufficiently provoked he can summon up an entire shambling army of mummies to do his bidding, and the fact that a certain item on his person allows him to heal lost hitpoints very quickly, even if reduced below zero, unless that item is removed from him or his downed "corpse." Ankhtepot can, however, easily be killed during his bouts of mortality (even though doing so might attract the attention of the Dark Powers since he poses no real threat during these times), but if he is killed while an ordinary human he can reanimate if he is mummified and entombed again. As a result of a possible oversight by the writers, no mention is made of how Ankhtepot might be able to return to unlife should he be defeated in his Greater Mummy form nor how he might be permanently destroyed, though he can simply reform in his tomb in the case of the former and the latter might simply require that both his tomb and his physical body be completely destroyed, resulting in the village of Mudar returning to its home plane and Ankhtepot's desert joining an adjacent domain.

Given the relative lack of sex appeal for mummies compared to the far more famous vampires and werewolves (unless you're a fan of the [[Tomb Kings]] or [[Mummy: The Curse]]), Ankhtepot and his domain more or less dropped off the face of Ravenloft canon after the AD&D version, and even in AD&D he was fairly passive. Even so, he did affect Ravenloft and D&D at large in one way by creating the first Greater Mummies (AKA "Children of Ankhtepot") to ever exist in a D&D system, though they have since significantly changed from their original incarnation. Ankhtepot has also been known to send his Mummy and Greater Mummy servants outside of his domain to track and kill grave robbers who defile his tomb and other unfortunates who incur his wrath.

Ankhtepot and his domain made his first appearance as the star villain of the classic ''Touch of Death'' Ravenloft module in 1991.

Despite not having shown up since AD&D, he was re-introduced to the setting in 5e, albeit with some significant retcons.

In an ancient country the inhabitants called the Land of Reeds and Lotuses, Ankhtepot served three generations of pharaohs as high priest. When the second pharaoh died, her unworthy son ascended to the throne. The new pharaoh quickly became unpopular among the people and priests, and Ankhtepot came to believe that the gods wanted himself to take the pharaoh's place. On the day of the pharaoh's coronation, Ankhtepot rallied his loyal priests and murdered their liege. Unfortunately he had misjudged both the people's loyalty and the gods' wills. The people rose up and killed him and his fellow priests, and when he died the gods forsook him and barred him from the afterlife. The gods returned him to the world, but stripped away a piece of his soul called the ka -- the vital essence that inspires all living beings.

He awoke immobilized and trapped in his sarcophagus, during which he felt the pain of every cut and every organ removed as if he were alive. One day, after untold years of this suffering, he a voice asking if he still felt he was worthy to rule. Still arrogant after all he had been through, he answered with certainty, and thus emerged from his crypt into the domain of Har’Akir. In this new land, Ankhtepot found a pious people devoted to the same gods he once served, and immediately set to wiping that religion out and replacing their gods with false idols of his own invention. Using blasphemous rites, Ankhtepot resurrected the priests once buried alongside him as powerful mummies, replacing their heads with those of beasts holy to his new faith. These Children of Ankhtepot served him as they did in life, and together the dead conquered the souls of Har’Akir.

Since then he has seen much, and known many things, but now he seeks one thing only: to be reconnected with his lost Ka, which he believes will allow him to finally die. Where and what his Ka is now is left up to the DM to decide, as is what happens when he is reunited with it. All of the suggested results are pretty grim, ranging from him being reborn as a living tyrant far more decadent and sadistic than he was as an undead, to discovering that he cannot be returned to mortality and deciding to wipe out all life in his domain out of spite.

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===Alfred Timothy===
Darklord of Verbrek, and the archetypal werewolf Darklord of the setting, though by no means the only lycanthrope Darklord in Ravenloft. Alfred Timothy was born to Nathan Timothy (former werewolf Darklord of Arkandale) and an unknown mother. Disdained by Nathan for being frail and sickly in his human form, Alfred in turn disdained his father for his "overly human" interest in ferrying cargo and passengers with his paddleboat (in truth, Nathan was cursed as Darklord of Arkandale to become cripplingly nauseous with "land sickness" anytime he tried to set foot on dry land, but instead of suffering from this curse, Nathan grew so accustomed to boating and the company of his human passengers that he unknowingly lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction, despite still being confined to river waters and remaining an unrepentant serial killer).

Leaving to find his own way and to escape the perpetual treatment as the runt of the litter, Alfred happened upon villagers in his father's domain who regularly made sacrifices to appease a savage being they called [[the Wolf God]] in the hopes of relief from continual attacks by bloodthirsty wolves. Taking inspiration from the sight of humans propitiating a lupine deity and perhaps indulging more than a little megalomania at the prospect of being an object of worship or leading a werewolf-centric religion, Alfred wandered the domains and interrogated clerics he met, sometimes lethally, on how he could become a cleric of this "Wolf God" and use its granted powers to inaugurate a werewolf-led reign of terror over humans. Unfortunately, his efforts and sacrifices were fruitless in provoking any response from this "deity," and he began to take out his frustrations on any clerics and religious buildings he could find whenever his latest interrogation target failed to provide the missing ingredient to contacting and receiving spells from the Wolf God. After [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=425913 one such iconoclastic rampage], Alfred incautiously fell asleep near the mutilated corpses and smouldering wreckage of his latest failure. Not content to "let sleeping dogs lie," Alfred was discovered, chained, and about to be burned at the stake by vengeful villagers, were it not for a mother-daughter pair of prescient Vistani who purchased his freedom and told Nathan that for this stay of execution, he must allow all Vistani safe passage in the future. Enraged at the possibility of being bound by a bargain struck with "mere" humans, Alfred promptly killed the Vistani mother, and the mists of Ravenloft claimed him for this betrayal, leaving him within his new domain of Verbrek, which eventually grew to encompass his father's former domain of Arkandale.

Now a Darklord, Alfred was initially delighted at having truly become a cleric of the Wolf God, receiving divine spells and being able to "converse" with it (assuming it exists, but if you decide to play with a nonexistent Wolf God, Ravenloft's Dark Powers have been known to grant divine spells and Alfred might just be hearing voices in his head). The price, as ever with Darklords, was an insidious curse. Alfred wants nothing more than to revel in the bestial fury and passion he once enjoyed as a werewolf, but as Darklord he is forced to transform back into his human form should he ever succumb to any kind of base passion: fear, rage, or lust. Having built a cult of savagery, wanton bloodshed, and debauchery among a large pack of werewolves as the chief priest of the Wolf God, his uncharacteristic unwillingness to practice what he preaches by frequently refraining from hunts and hesitance at finding a mate means his position is growing increasingly precarious. Realizing that widespread knowledge of his weakness would spell his doom (because [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=262657 "being an alpha means proving it every full moon"]), Alfred is trying to divest himself of his humanity by commanding and occasionally participating in ever-greater acts of slaughter, dedicating and offering them to his god who has remained silent on this one pressing issue, with the only exceptions to his wrath being the Vistani as he still remembers what happened the last time he killed one.

Crunch-wise, Alfred is rather conventional as lycanthrope BBEGs go, aside from his cleric levels and being forced to fight in a calculating and tactical manner unlike most werewolves lest he be forced to return to his much weaker human form. He doesn't cast a shadow (since his domain is effectively the shadow he casts on Ravenloft), and can even teleport from shadow to shadow within his domain whenever the moon is visible. As an ironic reminder from the Dark Powers of his fundamental weakness, Alfred cannot even supernaturally close the borders of his own domain, short of sending his dire wolf and werewolf minions to patrol them, though the true nature of this additional curse is likely lost on him, since he probably doesn't know about other Darklords and their ability to close their domain's borders supernaturally. Though not specifically mentioned, Alfred's fluff implies that even ''[https://youtu.be/ZxcljnLb95M?t=1m8s harsh language]'' might be one of the most potent weapons against him; if PCs can recognize him in either his wolf or hybrid forms and manage to enrage him through taunts, he will be forced to return to human form and at a minimum be robbed of the natural weapons of his alternate forms, or even be forced to kill any wolf or werewolf witnesses to his weakness with his clerical powers before turning his attentions to the PCs. However, even if Alfred is killed (and his crunch does not mention any method through which he could cheat death), it is likely the Darklordship (and possibly even Alfred's curse) will simply pass to whichever werewolf in his domain is evil enough for the Dark Powers' liking, preserving Verbrek as a separate domain unless every werewolf in the domain is killed or driven out before the current Darklord's death. Even then, the Dark Powers can always make more Darklordship candidates, though a more darkly ironic postmortem fate for Alfred's cult and domain might be for the Wolf God cult to scatter to the winds after Alfred's death, in essence metastasizing and spreading its cell members and evil elsewhere, while Alfred's father returns to Arkandale just in time to resume his old Darklordship and hear about his son's death, saying only ''"So that self-righteous runt finally bit off more than he could chew. No matter. Runts have always thought themselves to be bigger than they are."''

On a side note, players who want to play a Ravenloft campaign set in Verbrek, but who also want to use [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition|D&D 5e]] rules instead of relying on older books, might opt to use the official Magic-the-Gathering-to-D&D-5e conversion [[Innistrad|''Plane Shift: Innistrad'']] book, using its rules to play a campaign set in Innistrad's Kessig province. Kessig is thematically similar to Ravenloft's Verbrek as both are "werewolf country" locations, minus Darklords and other Ravenloft-exclusive mechanics. Until the Ravenloft setting is more fully adapted for D&D 5e, the Innistrad conversion is probably the best foundation for playing Verbrek in 5e.

===Dr. Victor Mordenheim/Adam===
Co-Darklords of Lamordia, of a sort. Like the character of Victor Frankenstein (best known for creating Frankenstein's monster) he was based on, Dr. Victor Mordenheim sought to create life and was certain that a soul was not necessary for it to exist. To show him the error of his ways, the gods saw fit to endow the doctor's creation with a soul--specifically, an irredeemably evil soul. The newly created dread flesh [[golem]] was dubbed Adam, and he soon grew jealous of the love that his maker's wife Elise and adopted daughter Eva had for him. Adam's plan to kidnap Elise failed, and instead he killed Eva and wounded Elise so badly she went into a vegetative state. It was at that time that the doctor and his creation were taken together into Ravenloft.

The doctor himself resides in his own mansion, Schloss Mordenheim, spending most of his time obsessively trying to revive his comatose-but-alive wife (who has herself long since gone mad due to her life support system causing her constant pain simply by being active), up to the point of continually constructing new bodies out of exhumed or painlessly-killed female corpses for her, but is cursed to never succeed and to never stop trying. Note that this is not out of love, though Mordenheim still believes that it is--it has become nothing more than a compulsion that has become his only reason for living. Meanwhile, Adam is now the "ruler" of an inhospitable island aptly dubbed the Isle of Agony in the middle of Lamordia inhabited solely by himself, forever cut off from the acceptance that he sought, cursed to feel the doctor's pain as his own, and rejected by the very land that he supposedly controls (as it is influenced by Mordenheim and not Adam). Adam's only form of solace comes from sabotaging Dr. Mordenheim's attempts at reviving Elise just to spite him. Player characters who meet Adam and treat him without pity or revulsion may be able to get some useful information out of him or even get him to open the borders of Lamordia, but he is very prone to anger and is virtually unstoppable once enraged.

So strong is Mordenheim's disbelief in magic that his own domain also (potentially) interferes with divine magic of any kind, making it unreliable, and may even block any magical attempts to heal Elise. Worse still, Mordenheim's attempts at training apprentices over the years in the vain hope that they might just achieve the necessary breakthrough to restoring Elise has unleashed quite a few mad scientist villains, or monsters born of mad science (such as the Living Brain, a disembodied brain in a life-support jar that uses its psionic powers to direct and dominate a major organized crime ring), onto Ravenloft at large.

In a curious twist, Adam is the Darklord and is the one with the power to close Lamordia's borders, but both Adam and his creator are effectively immortal and ageless, and Mordenheim even shares his creation's immunities and regenerative properties. If either is killed and their corpse completely destroyed by fire, acid, or even disintegration, either will simply reincarnate into the nearest most recently deceased male corpse (for Mordenheim) or flesh golem corpse (for Adam, and there are a quite a number of these running around Lamordia, made either by Mordenheim as failed bodies for Elise and futile attempts to recreate Adam's "success," or Adam's frustrated attempts at making sympathetic company for himself), and will shortly thereafter shape their new bodies into looking just like their previous selves. The only way to destroy Adam and Mordenheim for good is to destroy them together at the same time. If DMs decide to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords (see above), then the fate of Elise and Lamordia itself is up to them; one appropriate denouement could be that the permanent deaths of Adam and Mordenheim might just be the spark Mordenheim's machinery needs to briefly restore Elise long enough to rise up and forgive their long-suffering spirits before leading both to their afterlives, just before the land suddenly twists and shifts to reflect the curse and nature of its new Darklord.

Adam and Dr. Mordenheim first appeared in the one-shot adventure in a 1994 boxed set named "Adam's Wrath," intended for outlander PCs to undertake a [[Weekend in Hell]] adventure.

===Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken===
The "Jekyll & Hyde" Darklord of Nova Vaasa. Sir Hiregaard is a staunch, gruff but sincerely righteous man who is dedicated to his people and his land. However, he also plays host to Malken- an alternate personality that takes over Tristen's body, warping it into [[Caliban (Ravenloft)|a form so hideously ugly one can't recognize they're the same person]] and who delights in killing anyone who stands in the way of Hiregaard's repressed desires.

Strangely, Tristen did nothing at all to earn the position of Darklord; Malken is an entity born from a curse that was placed on Tristen's ''father'' by Tristen's mother Romir that compelled him to kill every woman he loved and any man who crossed him; Hiregaard Senior was an intensely jealous man and killed his wife and the man teaching her how to waltz in a fit of rage, thinking she was having an affair with him. When he killed himself to escape the curse, the curse passed to Tristen instead. Six years and nine killings after the curse first manifested itself in him, Tristen was taken into the mists and the secret jealousies and angers born from the curse coalesced into the being known as Malken. Tristen is only partially aware of Malken's existence, just enough to have his guards lock him into his personal chambers when he feels a fit of jealousy or anger coming on. For years he has assumed this has kept Malken in check, but as of late he is starting to suspect that Malken is too clever to be thwarted by mundane confinement despite the latter's attempts at keeping his influence a secret. Were he to discover the whole truth, he would be willing to do anything to end the curse.

This curse is the key to Malken's immortality; if Tristen is killed, then Tristen's eldest living male descendant will be possessed - and Malken will keep going down the chain each time his host dies, meaning that unless you find "the right way" to kill him, Malken can only be stopped by massacring Tristen's entire family line... which the players could potentially belong to. However, if Malken's host is killed by a woman genuinely in love with that man, then Malken will be dragged screaming into whatever hell-hole awaits him. And given that this would be a massive act of betrayal on that woman's part, she would likely end up becoming the new Darklord herself.

It should also be noted for DMs that "the struggle within his soul" prevents Malken from achieving the proper focus to Close the Borders of his domain, so if you want to run a session or campaign focussed around Nova Vaasa, you had better have a compelling in-universe reason to keep the PCs from simply up and leaving, since canonically DMs can't force the issue and simply lock the PCs into Nova Vaasa like they can with most other Darklords. It's possible that if Malken possesses a more evil host, he might just be able to Close the Borders then, but the form such a closed border would take has never been revealed in canon.

==Other Darklords==

===Addar===
{{main|Addar}}
The father of [[Shadow Unicorn]]s and a Darklord of questionable canon. More info on his page.

===Azalin Rex===
Darklord of Darkon. A powerful mage who inherited the rule of the city-state of Knurl, his draconian rule culminated in the execution of his son when he was caught freeing political prisoners. Soon afterward, Azalin became a [[lich]] and devoted himself to searching for a spell that could resurrect the dead; he believed that his son's sense of compassion was due to a mistake in his upbringing and assumed that if he could be revived that mistake could be fixed.

As soon as he was taken into Ravenloft he lost the ability to learn any new magic at all- a terrible thing for any magic user, and even worse for a lich like him who became undead for the sole purpose of gaining more knowledge. This power over memory affects anyone else who enters Darkon as well; staying there for more than three months at a time causes a visitor's memories to be erased and replaced with false ones of spending one's whole life in Darkon. Originally an ally of Strahd when he first entered the mists, their relationship soured quickly after a failed attempt at escaping the Demi-plane of Dread temporarily split the former into two separate beings and they've remained enemies ever since. Another ill-fated attempt at breaking free in which he planned to become a demilich backfired even more spectacularly. Instead of allowing his essence to be freed from Ravenloft, it dispersed his essence across Darkon and destroyed the domain's capital. It took five years for him to reassume a corporeal form and take control of his realm again.

In 5th edition, Azalin has mysteriously gone missing. Did he finally outsmart the Dark Powers and escape? The only clue about where he went is that when he vanished a strange golden star or starlike thing called The King's Tear appeared in the sky and hasn't moved since and the sun and moon pass ''behind'' it instead of in front of it every day.

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===Baron Urik von Kharkov===
Considered one of the goofier Darklords, albeit not as bad as Tristen ApBlanc, and with a much more usable domain in Valachan. Baron Kharkov is basically half-Blacula and half-Werepanther; he was a black panther that a Red Wizard of Thay turned into a human being to use as an assassin. The Red Wizard arranged for him to fall in love with his rival, and then undid the transfiguration spell on him while they were together so he would tear her apart as a panther. When he was turned back into a human, he freaked out and ran off into the Mists. He found himself in Darkon, where he spent 20 years as a member of Azalin's secret police (turning into a Nosferatu in the process). He later escaped and subsequently became the Darklord of Valachan after entering the Mists again. We don't know what he did that turned him into a Darklord, in part due to his own fuzzy memories of what happened during that time, but he claims he killed many people while in the mists, including the Red Wizard that transformed him the first time.

Anyway, he's a blood-drinking black vampire cursed with yellow eyes (that turn into cat's eyes when he's pissed off) and with hands that resemble paws, being covered in fur and bearing retractile claws. He can still turn into a panther, in which state his bite turns people into werepanthers, and controls panthers instead of the normal wolves. His curse is to basically relive his most traumatizing event over and over again; he's constantly seeking a human bride, but once he has one, he can never trust her not to find out that he's not human, and inevitably murders her in a fit of paranoid fury. (He should try dating a [[Furry]] fan or Jaqueline Reiner, that would solve it.)

In 5th edition he has been killed and succeeded by Chakuna.

===Bluebeard===
A rare darklord actually ''liked'' by his subjects, Bluebeard rules over Blaustein (German: "Blue Stone"), a small nation from an unknown world. His rule was considered just and fair, and as a ruler he was considered to be quite generous. Unfortunately for him, he was an incredibly ugly man -- a blue-tinted beard and all -- which to his credit, he overcame with his own charms... and being incredibly wealthy didn't hurt either. Despite all of his good qualities, however, Bluebeard could not achieve a lasting marriage.

He would find a woman to marry, and soon after the wedding he would leave the castle for a time, handing its care over to his new wife. He would give her a set of keys to every door in the castle, and pointing out the one special golden key which opened a room at the very top floor. His instruction was to never open that particular door, with vague consequences. So far none of his wives have been able to overcome this temptation; and when they did open the door they found his grisly collection of former wives, hung up by meat-hooks with their throats slit. By opening the door, the key -- which was magical in nature -- would have a bloody mark that would appear that could not be removed except by Bluebeard himself. He would return to the castle soon after, and demand to see the keys. If the woman had given into temptation (which each invariably did), she would then share the fate as the other women in the room. Marcella was his fourth wife and victim. Her death was not the final, but eventually Bluebeard's repeated murders brought Blaustein into Ravenloft.

After becoming a darklord, Bluebeard was gifted by the Dark Powers with a minor charisma increase, which does not make him handsome by any means but does not leave him as ugly as he once was. He is also able to perfectly detect any lie. Even after the Mists took hold, Bluebeard is still the de facto leader of Blaustein, although his rule was twisted to be even more sadistic. Simply displeasing him is a death sentence, yet the populace still holds him in incredibly high regard. This is because he also has complete control over their memories, and freely erases or rewrites their recollections of his atrocities.

He is unable to marry any woman native to Blaustein, as their visages always twist to the posthumous appearance of one of his dead wives. This curse does not affect women who were born foreign of Blaustein, and Bluebeard along with his subjects are always on the constant lookout for any attractive women who fit this criteria. Lorel, an outlander he grabbed through the Mists, was his latest wife (and victim).

Bluebeard is also haunted by the ghosts of the wives he killed. Every third night must be spent in his castle in order to sleep, and he always awakes to the frightening caress of the specters of his murdered wives. Like his subjects, they are utterly devoted to him, yet in the most twisted way possible. While he considers this distressing, it has not stopped him from sending another wife to the same fate.

It is currently unknown if he has any dealings with any other nation or darklord, at least beyond welcoming in his harbour ships including those engaged in piracy.

He's mentioned in a single sentence in 5e, which states that apparently his spectral wives overthrew him and now endlessly torment him. Exactly how this happened or what this entails is not elaborated upon.

===Captain Alain Monette===

Darklord of L'ile de la Tempete. A violent and cruel privateer and captain of the ''Ouragan''. Eventually his crew snapped from his vicious temper and regular abuse and mutinied against him, keelhauling him thrice before throwing him into the sea. This was meant to be an execution- keelhauling, or dragging a sailor around the keel of a ship to be cut by the barnacles growing on it and hit against the ship's hull, is traumatic even when it's only done once and the victim is taken on board the ship afterward. But Alain survived, and washed up on the shores of a small island in the mists. Vampire bats came to drink the blood from his wounds, and Alain survived in turn by eating them- which turned him into a werebat.

Alain thus recovered from his keelhauling, but physical health was a cold comfort as he soon found that even with the flight he gained as a werebat, he could not leave his lonesome island. Driven mad by the isolation and cut off from the sea, he now vents his frustrations on those who sail as he no longer can. His island contains a lighthouse, but as with many things in Ravenloft, it's a trap in the guise of something helpful. Anyone, even outside the Mists, who investigates the light is drawn to the hazardous waters near his lighthouse, where most are shipwrecked. If any survivors somehow make it to shore, Alain will greet them. He'll be quite friendly, at first- he's starved for company and news of the outside world. But he's even more starved for flesh, and within a few days at most he will attack and kill them.

===Captain Pieter van Riese===
Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Originally from Gothic Earth's version of the Netherlands, Pieter was a ship's captain obsessed with finding the legendary Northwest Passage. When his ship was sunk in an encounter with an iceberg, he offered his own life along with the lives of his crew to any being who could help them forward, and the Dark Powers answered him. Naturally, they didn't actually give him what he wanted.

Pieter is now a ghost, and the captain of the ghost ship ''The Relentless''. He has the power to summon the ghosts of those who killed others and then were killed in the Sea of Sorrows to crew his ship, and can sail anywhere in his domain. However, he can no longer explore as he wishes, since the island domains in the Sea of Sorrows move around and he can only sail to land that he's chartered to go to.

Pieter is Ravenloft's answer to the legends of the ''Flying Dutchman'', a ghost ship that is unable to make port and sails the seas forever. Most versions say that the curse is because of her captain, Hendrick van der Decken, refusing to go to port while crossing the Cape of Good Hope, declaring that he would not make port "though I should beat about here till the day of judgment". He got shipwrecked in a storm, and the ghost of his ship is now bound by his curse to never be able to rest at port.

===Councilor Dominic d'Honaire===
The darklord of Dementlieu. Originally born in Mordentshire, Dominic led his nanny to suicide at age 7 and then manipulated his family to move away to avoid the Mordentshire police, with the mists giving him the domain of Dementlieu. Dominic is not the domain's temporal leader but does serve as an adviser for Marcel Guignol, Dementlieu's head of state. However, Dominic has much more power than his official position would suggest. The darklord's power is domination over the minds of other people on a prodigious scale. A great many in the land, including its recognized head, are his obedients and through this network he knows whatever goes on in his land.

His personal curse is that any woman he woos sees him as more repulsive the more he is attracted to her. Also, for some time his rule is challenged by an entity who is called (and virtually is) the Living Brain (re: ''Sherlock Holmes''' Moriarty), the last remains of Rudolph von Aubrecker, the youngest son of Lamordia's political ruler.

in 5e, the domain was revamped and the Darklord is now Saidra d’Honaire, though there is a plot hook that hints he's still around and trying to get his position back (then again Dementlieu is now a place where everyone pretends).

==="Death"===
Darklord of Necropolis (formerly Il-Aluk, the capital of Darkon). He is one of several minor Darklords that took over pieces of Darkon in Azalin's absence during the [[Grim Harvest]] and the only one of them to become a full Darklord after Azalin came back. Originally a clone of Azalin made by him as part of a convoluted scheme to bypass his curse, he was transformed into a negative energy elemental by the prototype version of the "Doomsday Device" Azalin thought would make him into a demilich. When it backfired, the massive surge of negative energy it released killed the whole of Il-Aluk's population. "Death" then claimed the ruined capital and its remaining undead inhabitants as its own, and after Azalin reconstituted himself Necropolis became its own domain. A shroud of negative energy still remains over Necropolis, which instantly kills all non-undead which attempt to enter its borders.

===Draga Salt-Biter===

Darklord of Saragoss, a watery domain where the only analogue to 'land' is 'places where the seaweed is clumped particularly tight'. Draga is a [[Therianthrope|wereshark]] pirate [[Cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] with a deep-rooted fear of sharks. Yes, it's ironic that he hates sharks while being able to turn into one. He knows. He got both his wereshark infection and his fear of sharks in the same incident; as a child, he was captured by a crew of pirates, who stuck a hook into one of his calves and dangled him into shark-infested waters, understandably traumatizing the kid. And after his own piracy and terrorism of the seas in Umberlee's name caught the Dark Powers' attention, they saw no reason to mess with a perfectly good case of irony and gave him a neat selection of new powers... all of which were shark-themed. He controls sharks, can only breathe underwater (though he also has a ring of air-breathing that allows him to surface for a few hours at a time), and his resurrection method involves his spirit being reborn via sharks. He's also becoming increasingly shark-like in mentality as time passes, a prospect which terrifies him.

===Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth===

Darklord of Dominia. Reknowned throughout the Demiplane of Dread as an expert on mental illness, few know the dark secret behind his knowledge. Terrified of falling victim to the heredity madness that plagued his family, Heinfroth conducted horrific experiments on his mental patients to deepen his understanding of insanity. One of these experiments turned him into the first cerebral vampire, a vampire subspecies that feeds on cerebral fluid instead of blood.

===Dr. Frantisek Markov===
Darklord of Markovia. Originally a pig farmer from Barovia, he grew increasingly obsessed with the anatomy of the pigs he butchered and began to perform bizarre experiments on them that wouldn't be out of place in a [[Haemonculus]]' laboratory. When his "subjects" inevitably died, he simply sold the meat without telling anyone what he had done to it first. Eventually his wife discovered his gruesome hobby and threatened to expose him, at which time she ended up becoming one of his experiments as well. After three days of vivisection, she finally expired- her corpse was so horrifically mangled that when it was first discovered it was mistaken for the remains of a monster. When Markov's involvement in her death became clear, the mists claimed him and made him a Darklord.

Fittingly, Markov's curse allows him to shapeshift into any animal form he wishes (save for his head, which remains human), but is incapable of assuming his original human form. As a result, he normally takes the shape of a gorilla in order to continue his increasingly deranged experiments without being impeded by a lack of thumbs. Said experiments culminated in the creation of the "[[Broken One]]s"- animals (and the occasional unlucky human) that have been surgically mutilated into a human-animal hybrid form and given a semblance of intellect, similar to the Beast Folk of ''The Island of Dr. Moreau''. Like said Beast Folk, they too are highly prone to reverting to their primal instincts and bestial appearance after only a few days.

===Easan the Mad===
Darklord and ruler of Vechor. Easan has the power to reshape the land, and even reality itself, within his domain. Combined with his capricious whims, his power makes the realm a place of constant change.

Easan is a short wood elf and former agitator for a war against Iuz the Evil. For his efforts, he was seemingly driven mad by the possession of a fiend. Now Easan only looks for a cure to his madness, but he is willing to tear many innocent lives apart, and maybe even reality itself, to find a cure. His vile research has focused on souls and soul transference. Among other monstrosities, his research created the dread mechanical golem from fellow outlander Ahmi Vanjuko.

It all started on the outlander world of Oerth. Easan argued the cause for war to his colleagues among the rulers of a tiny elf kingdom bordering Iuz's empire. To make an example of the upstart elf, Iuz ordered his agents to kidnap Easan. With Easan rendered helpless before him, Iuz bound a fiend to Easan.

The presence of the fiend within Easan began eating away at his mind. Many magical means of expulsion failed, including the divine magic of [[St. Cuthbert]]'s followers. In an effort to find a way to free himself from the fiend, Easan visited a far-off island of mystics. They managed to suppress the fiend for a time, but eventually the monks and their island were rent asunder by a disaster of mysterious circumstances. Only Easan came out of it alive. The cause of the incident was Iuz's visit to the island and his ensuing frustration at Easan's seeming mastery over the fiendish spirit within. Iuz brought about the magical destruction that wiped out the entire island.

Whereas Easan emerged from the disaster with his body intact, his mind had only deteriorated further. The fiend had returned, but Easan did not give up hope. Where religion had failed, Easan resolved to find a way to banish the fiend with perverse experiments. Easan sacrificed many lives in his pursuit for a cure before he was taken in by the Mists.

Eventually, Easan noticed he was in a foreign, if familiar, land where he was viewed as a god. Indeed, he now had the power to warp reality (albeit slowly) within his own domain. Although he enjoys this from time to time, for the most part he remains obsessed with finding secrets of the soul. For all his power, he cannot seem to best his own inner demons, for he has all but forgotten the reasons why he began his foul research.

In truth, Easan never had a fiend implanted in him at all. It was all merely a deception to throw him off balance. Still, Easan's mind locked onto it, and when others couldn't detect the nonexistent affliction, Easan turned to his own methods for finding a cure.

===Ebonbane===
First introduced in the Darklords sourcebook, Ebonbane is a villainous character strongly associated with the mythos surrounding the Shadowborn Family and the Shadowlands cluster. In universe, Ebonbane is a source of horrific evil that has been opposed by Lady Kateri Shadowborn and her kin for almost two centuries, going back to the Heretical Wars on the Prime Material Plane. Once a powerful fiend known as Lussimar, Ebonbane was conjured and trapped inside a sword by mortal spellcasters. Ebonbane struck back at its summoners and enslaved them. After Ebonbane killed Kateri Shadowborn, it became darklord of Shadowborn Manor, the former residence of its nemesis.

===Elena Faith-Hold===
Darklord of Nidala. Elena was a [[Paladin]] of the god [[Belenus]] that acted as a guardian of a land also called Nidala, but her devotion to Belenus was tainted by her fondness for the adoration of the masses. Following a great crusade against the forces of evil, the people began to scorn those who did not worship Belenus. The more zealous members of the clergy appealed to her vanity and drive to please Belenus, and soon she grew so fanatical that after the "non-believers" were wiped out, she turned on followers that she deemed unworthy, always finding some new target for her purges. For this, Belenus withdrew his support, but Elena never realized that she fell because her formerly [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies had blossomed into full-fledged self-righteousness- thus leaving her incapable of even considering that she might have gone astray from her god's teachings.

Believing her fall to be only a test of faith, she grew ever more ruthless in purging those who she deemed unclean, until she was eventually drawn by the Mists into the Demiplane of Dread. She didn't actually become a Darklord until later, when she started slaughtering entire villages because she saw more evil than good in them (not knowing that she was only looking at the worst parts of each town). At that point, she was given the domain of Nidala, which she runs as a dour police state, forbidding all practices she sees as evil while allowing her cult of personality to reach new heights. When she considers a town to be too corrupted, she and her followers destroy it, blaming the deed on the fictional [[dragon]] Banemaw. Ironically enough, in her domain the true dogma of Belenus is considered [[Heresy]], and her servant/"spiritual guide" Theokos (a fiend-like entity masquerading as a [[Cleric]] of Belenus) strives to wipe it out entirely.

As a Darklord, Elena has her paladin powers back, except they're from the Dark Powers, so they're warped in ways that Elena is in severe denial about (to the point where she's a straight [[Blackguard]] in some writeups). Her unicorn steed is now fiendish, she commands undead instead of turning them, her Aura of Courage is an Aura of Despair, she can only heal herself or her steed, and most notably her Detect Evil power instead detects strong emotions that others feel towards her (any emotion works, so someone who genuinely loves her will still be detected as "evil" with predictable results), leaving them vulnerable to her version of Smite Evil. Naturally, Elana refuses to believe that her Detect Evil power doesn't actually work as it's supposed to and insists that the inability of anyone else to use Detect Evil in the Demiplane of Dread is proof of their spiritual impurity. She is also able to "convert" foes to her side as loyal servants who will gladly die for her, which functions like an enhanced humanoid-only version of Charm Monster.

She is cursed with bouts of self-doubt, and once every week she must take a midnight ride as a chorus of voices denounce her for becoming one of the forces of evil she once fought against.

===Eli Van Hassen===

Darklord of the Endless Road, and a creation of the 4th edition to replace the infamously-dubious Headless Horseman and his Winding Road domain. Eli, unlike the Horseman, has an actual known reason to be Darklord, with the Horseman being downgraded to part of Eli's curse.

Eli was once a minor nobleman who ruled over a hamlet called Tranquility, despite having much grander ambitions. When his lands were ravaged by a hydra, a wandering horseman came by and slew the beast, being lauded as a hero. Eli was filled with envy as the huntsman received praise and admiration that he didn't, and his daughter falling in love with the man was the last straw. He forced the girl to claim that the Horseman had raped her, whipped the denizens of Tranquility into a frenzied mob, and executed the innocent man. Drawn to the Demiplane of Dread for this crime, Eli is now trapped on his estate, for the Headless Horseman, the spectre of the hero he murdered, wanders the road outside and will kill Eli if he ever steps beyond his estate's boundaries.

===Gabrielle Aderre===
Darklord of Invidia. A [[half-Vistani]] whose mother was raped by Drakov and was rejected by her fellow Vistani, she had always fantasized about her father's identity and resented her mother's unwillingness to speak of him, as well as her warning that if she bore a child it would end in disaster for everyone around her. When her mother was attacked by a werewolf, Gabrielle refused to aid her until she revealed the truth about her father. But when her mother did so, Gabrielle refused to believe it and left her to die. The mists took her after that, and she came to be cursed with an inability to cause direct harm to the [[Vistani]], either physically or magically. Soon afterward she came to become the temporal leader of Invidia as well as its darklord, an opportunity that allowed her to begin persecuting the Vistani in spite of her curse.

She took many lovers as Invidia's ruler, though she only truly loved one of them, a wolfwere called Matton Blanchard. However, she was later seduced by the incubus calling himself "The Gentleman Caller" and left pregnant by him. Her son Malocchio soon proved to be one of the Dukkar- one of the rare males of Vistani blood with The Sight. On its own this would be a cause for concern among the Vistani, as the Dukkar is effectively the Vistani equivalent of the Antichrist; however, Gabrielle went even further and taught him to hate the Vistani as much as she did. Ultimately she taught him too well, as Malocchio betrayed Gabrielle and took the position of Invidia's temporal ruler for himself. She survived due to the intervention of Blanchard, but since then Malocchio has been the ruler of Invidia, persecuting the Vistani far more effectively than Gabrielle ever could have done. The only reason he has yet to kill her is because he knows that if she dies, he will inevitably inherit her title of Darklord, which he has no interest in gaining.

===Gregor Zolnik===

Darklord of Vorostokov. The only known Darklord from [[Birthright]], Gregor is descended from Azrai, and lives down to the bloodline's negative reputation. Gregor was an excellent hunter, and back in Cerilia, his skills saved his village during an exceptionally harsh winter. Gregor loved being a hero to the people, but his talent for hunting couldn't work so well every winter. And so, to keep bringing back meat, he started hunting humans. This drew Vorostokov into Ravenloft, where the winter has continued ever since (though recently it has shown some signs of abatement). Gregor still "hunts" for his people, although they've started to cotton on to Gregor's lies and resent their dependence on him, they have no other choice, for Gregor forbids anyone else from hunting.

Gregor is a [[Loup du Noir]], and the boyarsky who support him are the same, as he infected them. His two sons are also nascent Loup du Noir, but the younger, Mikhail, wishes to escape him.

===Gwydion the Sorceror-Fiend===
Darklord of the Shadow Rift, and such an asshole that even the ''Shadow Fey'' think he's a monster. He is also responsible for their current state, as prior to Ravenloft, he was a powerful warlord on the Plane of Shadow, and to sate his ambitions, he kidnapped a bunch of normal fey, turned them into the Shadow Fey, and told them to create an interdimensional portal so he could use them as an army to conquer other planes. This worked as well as could be expected [[Derp|considering he had no mental domination of his creations]]. The Shadow Fey made a portal, alright... but it wasn't to the Prime Material and the armies that marched through it were actually a mass exodus of the Shadow Fey, hidden by illusions.

Gwydion eventually discovered the Shadow Fey's treachery, but it was too late, and by the time he got to the portal to stop them, the exodus was almost complete. The Shadow Fey king, Arak, held Gwydion back long enough for the Shadow Fey to all escape and seal the portal while Gwydion was going through it, trapping the Sorceror-Fiend. The other side of the portal led to the Demiplane of Dread, where the Dark Powers created the Shadow Rift to contain Gwydion further.

And that's pretty much how it remains. Aside from a failed escape attempt during the Grand Conjunction, Gwydion has remained stuck in that portal, unable to do anything but watch and send Shadow Fey an occasional bad dream.

===Haki Shinpi===
Darklord of Rokushima Táiyoo. He's a powerless [[Geist]] that, in life, was a powerful [[samurai]] and clan leader that forged a big and powerful empire. He felt pride in the fact that his clan and lands held together while others fell to discord, despair, and war, which he helped to instigate via manipulation and betrayal. Haki Shinpi somewhat lived by the code of Bushido but abused and exploited it to manipulate his nemeses, play them against each other, and run their hopes into the ground.

Shortly prior to Haki's death, he made it known that each of his six sons would inherit part of his conquered lands evenly. As expected, this went swimmingly for everyone involved. After his death, his children turned to bickering and then all out war against each other. Two of his children met their doom, and their islands were leveled by earthquakes before Rokushima Taiyoo was brought into the Demiplane of Dread.

Far from the influential and powerful man he was in life, Haki Shinpi can now do little to keep his sons from tearing his land apart in civil war.

===Harkon Lukas===
Darklord of Kartakass. A [[wolfwere]] bard from the [[Forgotten Realms]] unusual among his kind for his highly social nature, as most wolfweres are lone predators who only come together temporarily to breed. Seeing as how he couldn't get other wolfweres to agree to hang around together, he started focusing more on integrating into human society. He still hunted and ate humans, but he also gained a genuine love of human culture and of the idea of being somebody important. One day, for no reason since he'd basically been doing the same stuff any wolfwere does, just spending a bit more time in town in between kills, the Dark Powers grabbed his ass and yanked him into Barovia. At which point he went on an anti-wolf killing spree for, again, no particular reason. This attracted Strahd's attention, and he nearly killed Lukas, forcing the wolfwere to flee into the Mists, which gave him his own domain of Kartakass. Which, much to his frustration, is a tiny, rustic place where the most power he'll ever have is being mayor of a small town, so he's got the letter of what he wanted but not the spirit, making for a hollow victory.

The 5th edition version of Harkon Lukas is a [[Loup-garou]] instead of a wolfwere, and it changes some of the other details about him. As in the original, he had dreams of a [[werewolf]] society - an empire of werewolves, in fact - but that dream was dashed by the werewolf indifference to gathering in large numbers. So he tried to forge an empire amongst [[human]]s, this time actually directly getting involved; ultimately, he led a revolution against a king by faking his own death as a martyr to stir up riots, then using these to get him close enough to the king that he could burst out of the coffin his followers were carrying him around in, rip the king to shreds, and take the king's crown for himself... which was when the mists swallowed him and he found himself in Kartakass. His curse is also tweaked slightly as well; rather than being doomed to never rise above the position of mayor, he's doomed to never rise above the even less prestigious position of nearly-forgotten, washed-up performer.
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===Hazlik===
Darklord of Hazlan. A gay [[Forgotten Realms|Red Wizard of Thay]] who was publicly humiliated and stripped of his status by his female rival and her boyfriend, the latter of which he lusted after. As revenge, he murdered the guy, made his girlfriend eat his corpse, then tortured her to death as well, at which time he was then swept up by the mists. His curse is to suffer from nightmares of his now-inaccessible rivals defeating him with impunity and generally humiliating him every night, which has made him even more fixated on getting revenge against the Red Wizards. So he's crafting plans to cast a spell that will genocide all members of his race, the Mulan, throughout the multiverse. To escape being killed by said genocide spell himself, he's prepared to bodysnatch his female Rashemani apprentice when he's ready to use it.

The 5e version retcons him quite a bit. Once an ambitious Red Wizard with a habit of horribly scarring his rivals, Hazlik came to believe that his lover/rival, a man named Indreficus, was planning to betray him. In retribution, he captured Indreficus and subjected him to a nightmarish experiment that left him permanently transformed into a pain-wracked living portal. Hazlik presented what had become of his former lover as to the zulkirs with hopes to impress them, only to be told Indreficus did not betray him and he had merely been manipulated by the zulkirs into thinking so as a way to halt the ambitious pair's ascent. They then declared Hazlik’s transformation of Indreficus an abomination, and that as punishment, every rival Hazlik had defeated could exact a penance of their choosing upon him. In desperation, Hazlik fled through the twisted portal that had been Indreficus and found himself in the demiplane of dread, where he eventually found his way to a realm that knew nothing of magic.

As well as his old nightmares (which are now of Indreficus taunting him for his failures), he also has a new curse borrowed from the now-absent Azalin Rex, making him unable to learn any new magic. On top of no longer being able to advance the magical research that used to drive his life, he's also absolutely terrified that anyone will learn of his limitations.

===Hive Queen===
Darklord of the sewer domain of Timor that lies beneath Paridon, and a half-Marikith because somebody thought it was time to rip off the Aliens franchise. She wasn't always a monster, though. She was originally a spoiled princess who decided one day to scare her mother to death. To do this, she seduced a wizard into casting an illusion of her transforming into a half-Marikith, but when said wizard saw her with her real lover, he decided to spice up the spell a bit by removing the 'illusion' bit and ''actually'' transforming her. She now lurks in the sewers as the Queen of the Marikiths, regularly laying more Marikith eggs. But she fears being usurped even from what little power she has, so if any of those eggs hatches another Marikith Queen, the Hive Queen kills the hatchling.

===Illithid God-Brain===
The darklord of Bluetspur is an [[illithid]] [[Elder Brain]], a massive conglomeration of the brain of every dead illithid, merged together into a new, living, entirely alien entity. It's the reason using psionic powers in Ravenloft is a dicey proposition, as the God-Brain might notice and attempt to integrate you into itself. It's notable for having '''no''' attempt to justify its position in Ravenloft whatsoever, with the original writeup in the Red Box, the original Ravenloft campaign setting collection, literally saying that nobody knows why it's in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], what crime it committed to end up here, or even how it's actually being tormented by its stay here!

The ''Book of Sacrifices'' gives it a backstory and reason for its Darklordship. Its core persona was once a human psion named Seldrid, whose people were at war with the Illithids. Eventually, they began to win for good once the Illithid Elder Brain started to die, but unfortunately for them, Seldrid had come to admire the Illithids' power and discipline, and merged with the Elder Brain to revive it. This act of betraying his people to such a great evil caught the Dark Powers' attention, and as the Illithids sacked his home city, they drew the country into the Demiplane of Dread as Bluetspur, with the Seldrid-brain as Darklord. Seldrid's curse is an inability to transfer his consciousness as he once did or to integrate any new consciousnesses into himself. Now trapped as a giant brain in a pool with nothing but Illithid tadpoles for company, unable to make himself more mobile or gain any outside experiences, Seldrid has gone quite insane.

5th edition has its own take on the idea. In a nutshell, the God-Brain hails from the era when the Illithid empire was at its peak, performing whatever blasphemous experiments took its fancy until it literally thought something that was unthinkable. That is, it had a thought so blasphemous, so utterly inimical to reality itself, that even an Elder Brain couldn't actually think it. Becoming obsessed with this ineffable thought, the God-Brain began cannibalizing other Elder Brains to try and upgrade itself to the point where it could finally contemplate this mysterious thought-form. Instead, it just gave itself a kind of aggressive psychic cancer, which began fatally necrotizing the God-Brain's neural tissues. Aghast at its behavior and terrified of catching the disease themselves, the other Elder Brains pooled their powers and tried to erase the God-Brain from existence; thanks to the meddling of the [[Dark Powers]], they only succeeded in banishing the God-Brain to the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Now the God-Brain struggles endlessly to both find a cure for its disease and to manifest the alien thought-form still gestating inside of it, all the while subconsciously aware that there is '''nothing''' it can do to achieve either goal, but desperate to fight for every last moment of life.

===Inza Magdova Kulchevitch===

The current Darklord of Sithicus, replacing Lord Soth. She was born in Gundarak, on the night Duke Gundar was assassinated, and two years later, her caravan wandered into Sithicus, where they were trapped, although her mother Magda managed to bargain for protection with Soth.

Inza's dark mindset showed from a very early age. Even as a child she loved thieving and manipulating the giorgio of Sithicus, and for the most part stood aside from her tribe. Her only friend was Piotr, a boy 1 year her senior, and this wasn't such a good thing as Inza pushed him to join her in both emnity to the giorgios and bullying a boy named Nikolas for his kindness towards non-Vistani. Their friendship eventually came to an end when Inza allowed Nikolas to be brutally beaten and pinned the blame on Piotr. Inza also hated animals, since they were not fooled by her facade of innocence, and would torture and kill them on the sly. None of this disturbing behavior ever reached Magda, who doted on her daughter, but by adulthood her rampant kleptomania and unlikeable personality had alienated most of the other Vistani.

Inza became Darklord of Sithicus after betraying her mother and caravan to Malocchio Aderre, breaking the caravan's oath to Lord Soth in the process. She attempted to usurp Soth's power, but was foiled and as the surviving members of her caravan hunted her down, she leapt into a chasm to escape. The darkness within the chasm surrounded and embraced her, turning her into the new Darklord.

As Darklord, Inza exists as a force of corruption. Her curse is twofold- first, her form has become a mass of shadow, and she has to concentrate to look human. Second, she stole, manipulated, and was a general bitch because of her philosophy that everyone was as evil as her at heart. The presence of true heroes in her domain (to say nothing of the redeemed spirit of Lord Soth himself) has shaken her to the core, and despite all her efforts to stomp out the forces of good in her domain, they still exist as thorns in her side.

===Ivana Bortisi===

Darklord of Borca, and a reference to the titular character of ''Rappaccini's Daughter''. Ivana inherited the domain by poisoning her lover for cheating with her mother Camille (who she also poisoned). Thus, Ivana inherited Camille's domain, along with immunity and power over poison. This, of course, came with a curse- Ivana cannot turn her lethally poisonous touch ''off'', and thus will never be able to take a lover.

Ivana is best known for the creation of Ermordenung, humans infused with poison to make them super-assassins. The first of these was Nostalia Romaine, Ivana's childhood friend and the one to actually do the dirty work of killing Camille.

5e retcons her a bit, though not nearly as much as Borca's other Darklord. While the whole thing with her mother seducing her lover did still happen, there's no mention of her poisoning her lover and it's not the only reason she kills her mother. Rather, she murdered her brothers and mother in an attempt to force her father to name her his heir. When he still refused to do so, insisting that her cousin Ivan Dilisnya would be his sole inheritor instead, she murdered him and all of their servants with poison gas. She's still terrified of the possibility of her father's will being found, as that would mean that the business she's worked so hard to grow would go to her childish and depraved cousin.

Her poisonous touch is gone, with her curse now being the more mundane and psychological torments of boredom due to feeling like no one around her is her intellectual peer, and the fact that she is never given the respect she feels she is owed, always being doubted, second-guessed, and looked down upon just like her father did.

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===Ivan Dilisnya===

Co-Darklord of Borca, and former darklord of Dorvinia. He's a cousin to Ivana Bortisi, and shares many similarities with her, most notably his love of poisoning people who draw his ire. After he poisoned his sister (who he lusted after) and her husband, he became a Darklord. His curse is simple but effective; his greatest pleasure aside from killing was fine food and drink, so he lost his sense of taste, rendering all the luxury around him hollow and unenjoyable.

His similar nature and modus operandi to his cousin caused their domains to fuse together under the name of Borca during the Grand Conjunction. Both he and Ivana are immune to poison and can create any toxin they can imagine, but Ivana has one more gift- agelessness. Ivan is desperate to learn the secret to her immortality, and refuses to believe she has no idea how she came by the gift (the Dark Powers granted it). Unlike Ivana, Ivan doesn't create Ermordenung, but he does have one nasty trick up his sleeve: Borrowed Time, a poison that only he can create. It stays in one's bloodstream for life and causes lethal convulsions every sunset unless you've ingested the antidote, 'Mercy', which is also something only Ivan can create, that day. Most of his minions are thus held hostage, knowing that Ivan holds the key to each day of their lives.

5e retcons him heavily. While he's still the cousin of Ivana and co-darklord of Borca who envies his cousin's immortality, that's pretty much all that stays the same. Ivan was groomed from a young age to be the head of a noble family, but despite all the opportunity in the world he instead took to wallowing in childish depravity, his family ignoring and enabling his worst and strangest impulses as they hoped he would grow out of it. He of course did not grow out of it, only becoming more violent and immature as he aged. On the same night that Ivana Boritsi poisoned her family, Ivan learned of his parents’ intention to send his beloved sister Kristina to a prestigious boarding school, and murdered his entire family for it.

He now resides in the Dilisnya family estate, a twisted funhouse that he lures people to to torment. Those unable to escape are eventually forced to don the colorful uniforms of the Dilisnya household staff and become Ivan’s new servants. He rarely leaves the estate, instead communicating through letters and acting through his "toys," animate creatures of clockwork or cloth provided to him by the Dark Powers.

===Jaqueline Reiner===

Darklord of Richemulot. Appropriately to the name, she's a natural wererat, born to a wererat branch of the Reiner family. The Reiners followed their patriarch Claude into the mists, where he reigned as Richemulot's original Darklord, but eventually Jaqueline had enough of his abuse and killed him, taking on his title of Darklord in the process. And while that title came with neat perks like control over Richemulot, it also came with a pair of curses.

First, Jaqueline suffers from intense monophobia. She hates nothing worse than being alone, but her entire family is made up of evil wererats whom she ''also'' really hates, so being in their company is not that much better. Second, while Jaqueline falls in love easily, she will involuntarily shift into rat form whenever she's alone with someone she truly loves. And while that love is as genuine as anything Jaqueline has experienced, she can never muster up the trust that her lover will accept her as a wererat, and she almost invariably then kills him. She might make a good pair with Urik von Kharkov, but Darklords can never leave their domains and it's uncertain if she knows about him.

5e replaced her with the very-slightly-differently-named Jacqueline Reiner, details about which can be found in her own section below.

===King Crocodile===
Yes, Ravenloft even has Darklords that are talking animals! No, you cannot [[Furry|play as one yourself]].

King Crocodile is the savage and bestial Darklord of the equally savage and bestial Wildlands, which is based on Rudyard Kipling's ''Just-So Stories'' and ''The Jungle Book''. This talking crocodile was so bloodthirsty and ferocious to his fellow talking animals in the jungle, they begged the hairless apes (i.e. humans) to come and kill him, but instead of holding up their end of the bargain, the hairless apes just started destroying the jungle for resources and colonizing it. This drove the other talking animals into pleading for King Crocodile to kill the hairless apes, and he agreed on the condition that the other animals all loan him their powers, which they did with the exception of the Python (the "wisest of the animals") and the Fly (whom King Crocodile thought was too insignificant to matter).

King Crocodile did slake his bloodthirsty appetite on the hairless apes and drove them out, but instead of returning the other animals' powers when he was finished as he had promised, he instead returned to his old ways of gorging himself on the animal population even more wantonly and gluttonously than before. It was at this point that the Python told King Crocodile a prophecy, which was that King Crocodile would either be killed by one of the hairless apes or by something he thought was pathetic and beneath him. With this done, the Python and his fellow snakes left King Crocodile's jungle to its fate at the hands of Ravenloft's Dark Powers, who quickly claimed the land as their own.

True to the Python's words, King Crocodile is slowly dying of the sleeping sickness spread by the flies, and the only thing that might help him are the hairless apes. But he is unable to keep himself from attacking any who might cure his affliction, and might attack them even if they do help him. The other talking animals still live in fear of King Crocodile and will implore any player characters they meet to dispose of him, but the cycle of betrayal in this land is only doomed to repeat itself. As a result, even if the player characters succeed in killing King Crocodile none of the talking animals will honour their words and the other crocodiles will fight to the death to assume King Crocodile's crown (and his cursed fate), as "''gratitude is not a quality well-known in the jungle.''"

===Kas===
Darklord of Tovag. The infamous vampire who betrayed [[Vecna]] and cut off his hand and eye. Was drawn into the mists at the same time as Vecna and the two of them were at constant war with each other until Vecna escaped. It is confirmed in 5th edition that Kas is still in the Demiplane of Dread and also is unaware that Vecna is gone. He repeatedly sends out armies to attack Vecna which never return, leaving him increasingly frustrated.

In the [[World Axis]] cosmology from 4th edition, he's not a Darklord, but he ''does'' hang out in the Domain of Dread called Monadhan; because he's figured out how to freely leave the domain whenever he wishes, he's turned it into his own personal base under the nose of its [[dracolich]] Darklord.

===Lemot Sediam Juste===
Darklord of Scaena, one of the few Domains capable of traveling through the mists. Scaena is a theater house, and one that Juste worked at as a playwright prior to his becoming a Darklord. Juste was a well-known and talented writer of comedies and dramas, but this never satisfied him, as he wished to write tragedies. Unfortunately for him, his [[Grimdark]] always came out as grimderp, and the actors invariably played his tragic works as farces, since they weren't good for much else. Driven to a deep bitterness by his failure to fulfill his obsession with tragedy, he wrote one last play- this one designed to be a real-life tragedy that killed all of his actors, and when the audience booed this one too, he locked up the house and burned it down with them inside.

Now, as a Darklord, Lemot has ultimate control of his theater, allowing him to trap people in his plays and alter reality for these press-ganged performers, but all this is undercut because he can't believe any of it; for his Darklord curse, the Dark Powers have taken away his suspension of disbelief, forcing him to always see actors, props, and scenery for what they truly are instead of what he wants them to be.

===Lord Wilfred Godefroy===
Darklord of Mordent (the same place from the old Ravenloft II module). A nobleman who murdered his wife when she was unable to produce a son for him as an heir and then murdered his daughter for trying to stop him, and then framed their deaths as an accident. Their ghosts came back to haunt him for a year until he killed himself to make it stop, and when Azalin and Strahd inadvertently drew Mordent into the mists Godefroy (now a ghost himself) became its darklord. His curse is to be continually tormented by the ghosts of his wife and daughter just as he was in life, who tear him apart every night as they curse him for murdering them.

While he was formerly known to be rather passive as a Darklord, in recent times he has taken to enslaving other ghosts to do his bidding. In particular, he's had the mayor of Mordentshire under his thumb for years by holding the ghost of his wife hostage.
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===Maharaja Arijani===
[[Rakshasa]] darklord of Sri Raji, Arijani attained his position after betraying both his kind and his father, Ravana (or rather, the Avatar of Ravana), having received the scorn of the rakshasa for most of his life. Although Ravana is a deity venerated by the rakshasa, Arijani's mother was Mahiji, then high priest of the hated goddess Kali and a leader of the Dark Sisters. To compound things, the Avatar of Kali delivered Arijanni to a home of low caste rank. He lived as a pariah shunned by his fellow rakshasa and languished in a position of low social importance. This alienated Arijani from his own kind, such that he arranged the death of many rakshasa in the conflict with humans. Gradually, Arijani's manipulations became so great that the people of Bahru began hunting their former hunters.

Arijani's depredations climaxed with rakshasa retaliatory siege against Bahru. Although the city fell, the cost was massive casualties on both sides and the city left in ruins. Angered and disgusted by Arijani's actions, Ravana sent his avatar to dispatch his prodigal son. However, Arijani conspired with Mahiji and lured the avatar into a trap. Thus rendered helpless, Ravana offered Arijani a wish in return for his release. Ravana accepted the offer, wishing to become immune to the attacks of rakshasas. The wish was granted, but Arijani slew the avatar anyway. Such was the level of his treachery that the Mists brought Sri Raji into the Demiplane of Dread.

The Maharaja's curse is that, although he is a talented illusionist, Arijani cannot disguise himself in a pleasing form, as most rakshasa do. Instead, he can only assume despicable aspects, such as that of the viewer's worst enemy. Maharaja Arijani resides in Mahakala, in Bahru. There, he is served by the Dark Sisters, whom through him, must provide to Kali daily human sacrifice.

Beyond the threat of an all weretiger cult called "The Stalkers" that were huge fans of his dad trying to kill him, Arijani's greatest fear is the very weapon he used to kill the avatar with, knowing full well it's somewhere in the jungle and very likely to be used on him just like Ravana.

===Maligno===
Darklord of Odiare, and originally from Gothic Earth's version of Italy. In the same vein as Pinocchio, he was originally a marionette brought to life through his toymaker "father" Giuseppe's wishes for a son. Though beloved by the children of Odiare, the adults of the village did not consider him to be a "real" boy. He soon grew bitter over the discovery that he wasn't truly alive, and after terrorizing Guiseppe into making more [[carrionette]]s like himself he had them kill every adult at one of his performances. It was this act that drew Odiare into the Mists as an Island of Terror.

Later on, he planned to have the carrionettes steal the bodies of every surviving adult there so they would be forced to love him, but due to the intervention of the PCs in the module "The Created" he was forced to simply kill the adults off instead. The children now adore him only out of fear, and as they grow older they wonder when Maligno will come for them as well.

Maligno's curse is that he can never be human as he craves, as he alone among the carrionettes is unable to steal the bodies of others. Furthermore, he cannot kill Guiseppe because any injury he suffers is inflicted on Maligno himself. Instead, the old toymaker was driven insane and now exists solely to create more toys for his "son" to command. Should Maligno's body be totally destroyed, Guiseppe is compelled to rebuild it, with the foul puppet's spirit claiming the new body as its own.

In 5e, Maligno was originally called ''Figlio'', which at least is an actual Italian name and not literally calling him "Evil" from the start.

===Marquis Stezen d'Polarno===
Darklord of Ghastria. As Strahd is for Dracula, Dr. Mordenheim for Dr. Frankenstein, and Tristren/Malken for Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so is Stezen to Dorian Grey, of ''The Picture of Dorian Grey''. But unlike Dorian, Stezen was a piece of work before his cursed painting came into play. As a noble in an unknown land, he enjoyed sowing chaos and rebellion and assassinated many people, but his charismatic nature meant that he hung on to a good reputation. But after one particular attempted coup went too far, his king had enough. Consulting with his mistress, a master of dark arts, he laid a curse upon d'Polarno that would do the Dark Powers proud; trapping a good chunk of Stezen's soul in a painting, he robbed him of all his charisma, vibrance, and capacity for enjoyment.

In retaliation, Stezen poisoned the king and his family, which drew the land into the mists. But he wasn't yet its Darklord. That happened when he realized that, once per season, he could temporarily reclaim his soul from the painting- at the cost of up to 50 other souls, each granting him one hour of rejuvenation. Now, once per season, he'll invite every stranger in Ghastria to a party (he'll grab some peasants if not enough foreigners answer). The party is for him, and him alone. With the exception of a few guests that he debauches himself with/upon, all guests are exposed to the painting, giving him up to 50 hours of being able to enjoy himself again before he returns to his normal drab state. While this is when he's at his most dangerous, it's also when he's most vulnerable- when his soul is still in the painting, he's essentially immortal, but when he's whole, he is as vulnerable as any other (And ''unlike'' the original Dorian, killing the painting won't work until Stezen is dead).

===Prince Ladislav Mircea===
Darklord of Sanguinia. Ladislav's story is a ripoff of the Edgar Allan Poe classic ''The Masque of the Red Death'', with the prince abandoning his people to a lethal plague, and retreating to a closed castle with his friends. And like in the original story, the plague entered the castle anyway. When Ladislav caught the plague, he turned to alchemy in a desperate attempt to cure himself. This failed and he died, only to rise as a Vrykolaka (usually mindless plague-carrier vampires that feed on bodily humors) and become Darklord of Sanguinia. He still experiments with alchemy to cure himself of his undeath, but this is unlikely to ever succeed.

===Sisters Mindefisk===
The three [[Hag]] co-Darklords of Tepest, and based the "the three wicked witches" from folkloric stories. Three sisters who were left as babies for a humble farm wife who wished for daughters, but from their birth displayed mysterious traits. Most notably, after their mother died from the strain of caring for the three sickly girls (or possibly because they drained her life), their father (who had often voiced his dislike of "weakling daughters") tried to leave the three 2-year olds for dead repeatedly, but they always came back. Eventually he let them stay as long as they cooked for him and his sons. Growing up dissatisfied with their surroundings, they took to seducing, murdering, and eating travelers to build up a stockpile of money so they could ultimately leave the farm. This worked until one final traveler tried to turn them against each other, only to be murdered so none of the sisters could claim him as theirs. This was what ultimately led to their being taken into the Mists and stuck in the depths of a forest full of [[goblin]]s and witch-burning, faerie-chasing bumpkins. They still lure in any unwary travelers to their cottage, taking advantage of the locals' blaming the goblins for their victims' deaths, but otherwise have little influence on their domain.

The sisters consist of Laveeda, an Annis Hag, Leticia, a Sea Hag, and Lorinda, a Green Hag. Though they can shapeshift, they are cursed to always see themselves and each other as their true forms no matter which shape they take.

====Mother Lorina====
In the 5e version of Tepest, only Lorinda is the darklord, having imprisoned her sisters when they refused to let her make and rear a child despite how badly she wanted to be a mom. Which ignores the complete and utter lack of maternal feelings they had in past editions, but whatever. She desperately yearns to have a family, but is thwarted by both her own inherently controlling, murderous nature, her inability to trust that her offspring genuinely love her (and the subsequent smothering, demanding, overbearing way that this makes her act), and the curse that any child she magics up for herself is a short-lived, ravenous monster; she can only make [[hexblood]]s for other people.
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===Sodo===
Darklord of Paridon. A low-ranked dread [[Doppelganger]] who resented being born into a lowly clan and thus being prevented from rising through the ranks by merit. After acquiring a magical Hat of Disguise, he fulfilled this previously-thwarted ambition by killing the elders who ruled over the clans and impersonating them, while also offing anyone else who questioned him. For managing the impressive feat of committing a betrayal egregious even by doppelganger standards, he was claimed by the Mists and given Darklordship of Paridon, and nailed with three separate curses: inability to control his shapeshifting, a healing touch (which wouldn't be much of a curse to anyone else, [[Dark Eldar|but Sodo's a sadist]] and this along with the previous curse renders him unable to effectively torture people), and an extra dose of paranoia for flavor.

===Thakok-An===
Darklord of Kalidnay, formerly from Athas. She was a templar of Kalidnay's sorceror-king, Kalid-Ma. To help him ascend to dragonhood, she sacrificed her family for the ascension ritual- an act which, ironically, would ruin it, as the Dark Powers took notice and drew Kalidnay into Ravenloft, in one of the few occasions in which being in the Demiplane of Dread was an improvement for most people. But not for Thakok-An nor Kalid-Ma, as the failed ritual put Kalid-Ma into a coma. Thakok-An remains active, ruling the realm as a theocracy of Kalid-Ma, despite said lord being comatose and all her efforts being for naught.

===Tsien Chiang===
Originally from the continent of Kara-Tur on the world of Toril, Tsien Chiang was beautiful and powerful wizard, who hated all men due to her father's dismissal of her abilities. After killing him and disabling her relatives, she seized control of her family lands. She used her charm and position to marry a total of four men, each of whom fathered a child with her before she killed him and moved on to the next. Three of the daughters so produced were evil, with the fourth, Nightingale, being truly good-hearted and adored by the gods. Tsien Chang would go on to commit various evil acts, including the desecration of four sacred bells and four sacred trees, but her mistreatment of Nightingale is what ultimately led to her being taken by the mists. On the fourth time that Nightingale objected to her family's atrocities, Tsien Chang decided to do far worse than merely beat her as they had the last three times, and she and her evil daughters were taken by the mists as the torture began. Tsien Chiang imprisoned the living remains of Nightingale in the Tower of Broken Promises as the Mists tore I'Cath from Kara-Tur forever.

If you're wondering why the number four is mentioned so much, it's because it's homophonous with "death" in most Chinese languages and is considered bad luck in many east-Asian cultures.

Her 5e incarnation gives her such a radically different backstory that pretty much the only things that remain are the four daughters and a magic bell.

When Tsien Chiang was a child, her home was destroyed by invaders, forcing her to flee into frozen mountains where she expected to die. Luckily for her, she was found and taken in by a gold dragon who took pity on her, and she served him as an attendant in thanks for saving her life. While serving the dragon, she learned much of magic and medicine, growing to become an accomplished wizard. The dragon refused to teach her any truly dangerous or powerful magic though, knowing that she would only use it for revenge. In her studies, she learned of the Nightingale bell, an artifact that could make its ringer’s dreams come true -- but creating the bell required the scale of a gold dragon. Knowing her mentor would never provide a scale she attempted to drug him so she could steal a scale while he slept, but got the mixture wrong and not only killed him, but caused his entire hoard to be destroyed, with all that remained being a single scale. Chiang crafted the bell and took it to her home, where she used it to wish away the invaders, which instantly vanished. In awe and gratitude, the people elevated her to royalty and she became their queen.

She ruled well for years, enacting vast reforms and strict but sensible laws in pursuit of creating the perfect empire. She had a family, taking particular pride in her four beloved daughters. Though her kingdom was prosperous, her people eventually began to chafe under her strict laws and demanding orders and revolted. Chiang was swift and merciless in her attempts to quell the rebellion, but her ruthlessness only caused the resistance against her to grow. When she ordered her armies to kill the families of all insurrectionists, assassins struck Tsien Chiang’s palace and killed her family. Distraught, Chiang climbed to the highest tower of her palace, looked out over her burning dreams, and struck the Nightingale Bell. Rather than granting her vengeful wish, the bell cracked and spilled a golden mist across the land. When the mist cleared, Tsien Chiang’s perfect city was gone, replaced by the unreal prison-city of I’Cath.

I'Cath is a city divided in two: The true I'Cath of the waking world, and Tsien Chiang's impossible, perfect dream. In the waking world the city is a silent and chaotic labyrinth composed of surreal, knotted streets and citizens trapped in eternal slumber. In the dream the city is vibrant and living, a place of ultimate beauty and efficiency where all things move according to Tsien Chiang's design, and a nightmare of constant drudgery for her people. Every twilight, Tsien Chiang climbs the spirit-infested Ping’On Tower and tolls the Nightingale Bell. This renews the magic of her dream world and keeps her citizens asleep, but it also calls forth a legion of jiangshi, which emerge from their tombs to reshape the waking city’s mazelike streets in a fruitless attempt to match Tsien Chiang’s perfectionist vision.

Her curse is that while the dream is near-perfection in her eyes, that only makes the imperfections of the waking world all the more obvious and inescapable. No matter how many times she tries to bring the same order and beauty she sees in her dream to the waking world, I'Cath's streets grow only more twisted and labyrinthine. She spends as much time as she can with the dream-versions of her daughters though she knows they aren't real, and in the waking world she actively avoids the twisted reflections of her daughters that wander the true I'Cath's streets.

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===Tristen ApBlanc===
Darklord of Forlorn. A Vampyre (living vampire) born when his dad was turned into a vampire but refused to leave his wife, which resulted in their son being born a vampyre. Tristen's parents were killed by fearful peasantfolk, but not before his mom gave him to the druid Rual to be raised. By all accounts, Rual was a pretty good foster mom, but when he was fifteen years old, Rual caught him drinking the blood of a deer. Believing she had betrayed him when he saw her talking to other druids, he attacked her- only to get his ass impaled by a blessed deer antler she was carrying, and when he drank her blood, he was both poisoned and partially cured of his vampyrism by the holy water she'd just drank. As she died, Rual cursed Tristen to be trapped in the sacred grove where he killed her, and to (agonizingly) die and become a ghost each night, and rise as a vampyre each morning. This makes him one of the few Darklords to receive most of his curse prior to Darklordship, as Forlorn was only pulled into Ravenloft centuries later, when Tristen engineered a bloody civil war to take control of the land.

As it is now, Forlorn really lives down to its name; there's little there except savage goblyns, a few beleagured Druids, and Castle Tristenoira, where Tristen is stuck, along with the ghosts of his family. The castle is split between three separate time periods that adventurers can shift between, thought to be because of all the ghostly shenanigans. Because there's really not much to do in Forlorn besides exploring Castle Tristenoira and trying not to get eaten by goblyns, it has no real political importance and is ignored by basically everyone, despite being most likely the second-oldest domain after Barovia.

He gets some very minor retcons in 5e, but since he only gets a single paragraph there's not much in the way of details. Seemingly the only changes are that he's now a dhampir (which is really more-or-less the same thing as a vampyre) and that he was taken by the mists almost immediately after killing the druids.

===Vlad Drakov===
Darklord of Falkovnia. He was originally the leader of a mercenary band called the Talons of the Hawk in [[Dragonlance|Krynn]]. For their wanton brutality and bloodlust, they were taken into Ravenloft and claimed Falkovia for themselves (after a failed invasion of Darkon that was repulsed by Azalin's undead).[[Berserk|If this seems familiar]] then good, you're paying attention.

This rivalry with Azalin has since become part of Drakov's curse, though he seems unaware of it. While four other countries (that have themselves agreed to an alliance should Falkovnia ever attack one of them) surround him, Drakov considers them "women and fops" not worth the effort of invasion, obsesses over an enemy he has no way of defeating, and is forever unable to gain the approval and respect of the great military leaders that he has sought all his life. And even if he did somehow conquer Darkon, [[fail|no Darklord can ever leave his own realm]] so he would never actually get to conquer it himself. Another factor in his defeats is that his way of doing war is distinctly and doggedly medieval (no gunpowder, no magic), so on the rare occasions he decides to try his luck at conquering other neighbouring domains than Darkon (all of which are at a higher technological level than Falkovnia) his forces almost always get shot to pieces by firearms or, more rarely, blown to pieces with magic. Oddly enough, his realm may in fact be, on the whole, a net ''benefit'' to the other domains of the Core, as his penchant for overworking his peasantry/slaves (when he's not busy having them impaled for his entertainment, of course) means that his realm produces large amounts of grain and foodstuffs which he sells for funds to equip and train his forces, unintentionally making Falkovnia "the breadbasket of the Core."

In addition, Drakov may be unique as the one of the most "conventional" Darklords in Ravenloft in the sense that he is statted like a run-of-the-mill fighter-class BBEG, and much like this archetype he has no magical abilities aside from a few magical weapons and armour at his disposal, coupled with no ability to cheat death, and no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders (all of which are in line with his disdain for magic and the supernatural), except for a good amount of inherent magic resistance that will also work against beneficial spells (so if he's ever in a tight enough bind to require magical healing, he's screwed). However, PCs and DMs shouldn't mistake his one-dimensional combat abilities as a sign that Falkovnia would be easy to liberate from his iron-fisted rule via a [[Raven Guard|simple decapitation raid]]; the totalitarian and thoroughly abusive nature of his rule means that those he trusts enough to carry out his orders are all likely evil enough and think enough like him to instantly assume his mantle of Darklord should Drakov ever be killed, just like similar totalitarian regimes in real life can survive the deaths of multiple successive leaders. Truly liberating Falkovnia in a thematically appropriate way would require the PCs to either engineer a full-scale revolution, or otherwise ensure the complete destruction of his regime, much like truly destroying a cancerous tumour in real life requires removing or destroying every last cancer cell. And all of this says nothing about which neighbouring realm would end up absorbing Falkovnia on the off-chance it ever gets truly liberated, though at this point even Azalin would be a better ruler than Drakov given that the lich dispenses harsh but fair justice and otherwise leaves his subjects alone to continue his arcane pursuits.

5th edition got rid of him, since the developers found him redundant. He's replaced by Ledeska Drakov, and Falkovnia was reskinned with a zombie apocalypse vibe.

===Yagno Petrovna===
Darklord of G'Henna. The Petrovna family was one of those taken by the Mists when Barovia was absorbed into Ravenloft, and although they avoided Strahd's attention by hiding away in the mountains this in turn led to inbreeding. As Yagno grew up, it became clear to all that he was insane- he conversed with imaginary people and cowered from beasts that weren't there. One day, he was locked out of his family's home and had to take shelter in a cave for the night. When he woke up, he saw the name "[[Zhakata]]" scrawled on a wall.

Yagno concluded that Zhakata was the name of the god that had protected him when he slept that night and created a shrine to his savior. (In reality, the name was written by his brother as a prank and meant absolutely nothing.) At first he merely sacrificed animals to Zhakata, but then he moved on to sacrificing people. When he was caught trying to offer his sister's newborn baby to Zhakata, he was chased out of Barovia by his family. The Mists welcomed him to the domain of G'henna, where he became the Darklord.

Yagno is cursed to constantly suffer doubts about whether or not Zhakata is real. No matter how many sacrifices he makes or how many people he commands to starve themselves in the name of Zhakata, he can never quite get rid of his nagging disbelief and the worry that all his devotion has been directed towards a lie. This eventually led Yagno to call upon a wizard who claimed he could summon Zhakata; as he could not summon a nonexistent god, a nalfeshnee by the name of Malistroi answered the summons instead and told Yagno that Zhakata was just a figment of his imagination. The Darklord immediately flew into a rage and killed the wizard, while Malistroi later escaped to ravage G'Henna. Since then, he has merely redoubled his fanaticism in a futile attempt to dispel his doubts.

==Former Darklords==
You remember that section where the permanent death of Darklords is discussed? Well, it's actually happened in the past, though never yet to a band of plucky adventurers, and the results usually haven't been good. These Darklords for whatever reason no longer rule their domain, usually because some asshole killed them and was promptly saddled with their domain as the new Darklord.

===Bakholis===
Former Darklord of Invidia, and formerly a tyrannical king whose kingdom was claimed by the mists when he was spurned by a woman named Marta, and in return had her lover killed and eaten in front of her and Marta herself raped to death by his soldiers. As she died, Marta cursed him to be the beast he was inside and never be free of the blood of loved ones on his hands, which manifested as turning him into a werewolf. Unlike most Darklords, Bakholis said 'fuck this' to angst and [[Dark Eldar|embraced his curse]], descending to ever-greater depths of savagery until, to everyone's relief, the half-Vistani Gabrielle Aderre showed up and promptly murdered his ass, succeeding him as Darklord of Invidia.

===Camille Boritsi===
The mother of Ivana Boritsi and the first Darklord of Borca, who earned her position by poisoning her husband and his lover. She was cursed to be betrayed by any man she trusted, which left her with serious issues relating to men and a blindspot towards scheming women, which ultimately proved her downfall when her daughter Ivana turned the poison tables by killing ''her'' for sleeping with Ivana's lover. She was succeeded as Darklord by her daughter and murderer, Ivana Boritsi.

===Claude Reiner===
The first darklord of Richemulot. The patriarch of a family of wererats who lead his family into the mists to escape hunters, gaining his domain when his monstrous cruelty caught the attention of the Dark Powers. He was eventually killed when his granddaughter Jaqueline had enough of his abuse, making her the new Darklord of Richemulot.

===Duke Nharov Gundar===
Former Darklord of Gundarak, prior to being betrayed and usurped by Daclaud Heinfroth, who would later gain his own, separate domain. As Darklord of Gundarak, he enforced the worship of the malevolent trickster-god [[Erlin]] and taxed basically everything he could think of (with a special emphasis on the birth of girls), but little else is known of his rule. During the Grand Conjunction, Gundarak was absorbed by Barovia and Invidia.

But that wasn't the end of Nharov Gundar. He was a vampire, and though Heinfroth had staked him, he remained alive, but dormant. His skeletal remains somehow found their way to the traveling curio show of Professor Arcanus, where some complete berk went and yanked the stake out. This brought him back to life, though his time spent as a skeleton has reduced him to a near-bestial state, only vaguely remembering Heinfroth's betrayal.

===Lord Soth===
{{main|Lord Soth}}
The infamous Death Knight of Krynn was for a time the Darklord of Sithicus. More details can be found on his page, but suffice to say that the Dark Powers grew tired of him, and he was succeeded as Darklord by the [[Vistani]] Inza Kulchevitch.

===Nathan Timothy===
Darklord of Arkendale. There are more details on him in the section for his more important son Alfred, but suffice to say that Nathan was possessed of a deep-seated wanderlust, which the Dark Powers curtailed by cursing him such that he couldn't leave the river Musarde, lest he be crippled by land sickness. Nathan rolled with the curse and adapted so well to being a boatman that he outright lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction. He's still confined to river waters, but Arkendale has been absorbed into Alfred's domain of Verbrek.

===Vecna===
{{main|Vecna}}
Yes, THAT Vecna, the Maimed God; the guy whose eye and hand are still around for PCs to mess (and ''be'' messed) with.

The whole tale of Vecna's ascension to godhood is complicated, but at one point where he was 'merely' a demigod, he and Kas were pulled into the Mists after a bunch of meddlesome adventurers thwarted one of his plans. Not one to be contained for long, Vecna has the dubious honor of being the only Darklord to force his way out of the Demi-Plane of Dread after being drawn in by the Mists. On top of that, he managed to get himself 'promoted' to full-fledged minor God in the process, which is how he got the Dark Powers to kick him out due to their ban on allowing gods to influence Ravenloft. (The full story is recounted in the modules ''Vecna Lives!'', ''Vecna Reborn'' and ''Die Vecna Die!''.)

==Netbook Darklords==
These darklords represent the rulers of fan-made domains from [[netbook]]s such as the [[Books of S]], the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]], [[Quoth the Raven]], and other projects from the [[Fraternity of Shadows]].

===Ahasveros===
Darklord of Incitatus. Once, Ahasveros (male human) was the greatest scientist of his civilization, until the day his homeland was drawn into a great war against a rival nation. He invented the Adamas theory, a device that could be used to generate a mighty tidal wave to devaste the enemy's fleets and harbors.

But that wasn't enough for Ahasveros; he became obsessed with improving the device, banishing his assistants when they protested the potential dangers of doing so, cutting off all contact with those who might challenge his beliefs, and reducing the time he spent running his calculations.

The result was, when the device was used, Ahasveros lost control of it and the tidal wave annihilated ''his'' homeland as well, drowning him in the tower from whence he'd launched it.

Ever since then, the bussengeist he became has lingered in his tower, unable to decide whose fault the mess was, alternating between blaming his associates and himself. Honestly, he's not much of a darklord, and this is reflected by how empty and meaningless Incitatus is. He currently occupies a limbo; too dull to be truly absorbed into the [[Demiplane of Dread]], but still too evil and in denial of what he did to be released, either.

Ahasveros' existence is completely tied to the remnants of the Adamas machine. Only by destroying it, which will unshackle his spirit, and performing a brief rite to the long-forgotten sea god of ruined Misenos, which requires lighting the lanterns in the temple and praying for both Misenos and Ahasveros, will his torment end.

If Ahasveros wishes to seal his domain's borders, those attempting to cross it are overwhelmed by misery and the urge to seek comfort, which only those outside of the border can give them.

===The Barons Gustav===
Darklords of Gustavstan.

Baron Gustav the Elder is a male human ghost who once ruled a small kingdom in his homeland. Though he had intended to pass his holdings on to his younger brother Klaus, the younger sibling had no interest in ruling, so the elderly Gustav took a wife and fathered a son, Gustav the Younger. Then, when his son was fifteen, Gustav the Elder stepped on a snake in his garden and was fatally bitten.

Gustav the Younger (male human [[Fighter]]) was inconsolable, his mind fracturing under the sudden death of his beloved father. In his grief, he refused to take up the throne, forcing his uncle Klaus to become Baron in his place - as well as to wed Ingrid, Gustav the Elder's widow and Gustav the Younger's mother, to secure the Younger's inheritance. Unfortunately, this gesture was misunderstood by ''both'' Gustavs; the Younger began to despise his uncle and mother for their apparent disloyalty, whilst the Elder's restless spirit also became incensed at Klaus's apparent betrayal. He seized upon the idea of exploiting his son's fractured mind to both weaponize him against Klaus and to make him vulnerable, so the Elder could live again by stealing his son's body.

This domain is basically [[grimdark]] Hamlet, in case it's not obvious already.

So Gustav the Elder manifests to his son, lies that he was murdered by Klaus, and convinces his half-crazed son that Klaus wants to steal the throne for himself. Klaus the Younger swallows this bullshit hook, line and sinker, and pretending to be even madder than he actually was, he began preparing to kill his uncle and his mother both - ignoring that Gustav the Elder wanted Ingrid spared, having figured that once he stole his son's body, [[/d/|he could reclaim her as his wife]].

This led to Gustav the Younger murdering the father of Elaine, the woman he loved, and driving her so insane that she ended up committing suicide by throwing herself off the battlements of the castle - which didn't do Gustav Junior's sanity any great shakes. Instead, it provoked him into finally battling his uncle, killing Klaus and his mother in the process. Which was when Gustav the Eldler showed up and, horrified at his wife's death, he revealed the truth about how he'd played his son for a fool. Enraged, the son attacked his father's ghost, and that was when Gustavstan was snatched up by the mists.

Gustav the Younger now burns with the urge to hunt his father's spirit down and destroy him, a task not helped by his paranoia. Every night, he is haunted by the angry ghosts of Elaine and Klaus, who spend the night cursing him out for their murders.

Gustav the Elder now spends his days haunting the local insane asylum, where Ingrid - who actually survived her son's attack, but was left a raving madwoman - is now kept. At night, he strives to manipulate others into killing his son.

Neither darklord can be permanently destroyed by violence; they regenerate and revive from destruction. Only by killing Ingrid will their resurrective regeneration cease... but doing this will cause the killer to immediately suffer a failed [[Powers Check]], whilst those who watch get to roll one.

===Benada Nameless===
Darklord of Vin'Ejal. Conceived when the Eye of Toldun, the fake prophet of a phony goddess called Appissa (actually a powerful half-breed [[yuan-ti]] [[psion]] magically held in stasis), used a potion given to him by his goddess to drug and rape a woman named Dillura Ogfenhauer, Benada's mother despised her daughter from the moment she was born. Only Benada's uncle, Dillura's 12-year-old brother Ekkim, cared for her, and he raised her throughout her life, even taking her off with him to be his squire when he went to war after discovering her nature as a [[psion]]icist [[weresnake]]. Even when they returned, however, Dillura wanted nothing to do with her bastard daughter.

Finally, the enraged Benada sought to confront her mother one evening, only to track her to the Shrine of the Eye. When she saw Dillura embracing the Eye, she realized that this man was her father. Filled with hatred, she grabbed a bone knife and fatally stabbed her mother, before psionically torturing her father to death. As she turned to leave, she found herself confronted by her uncle Ekkim, who had seen everything. Realizing she couldn't let him live now, a weeping Benada killed the only person to ever show her love, transporting Vin'Ejal to the Misty Realm.

Benada's curse seems to be an insatiable hunger that only human flesh can sate; she only gives in to its demands once per month, however, as she fears depleting her domain's population. If she wishes to close the domain, the waters around Vin'Ejal decrease in temperature to the point that would-be swimmers will freeze solid, whilst hail begins savagely pelting down from above.

===Baroness Ilsabet Obour===
Darklord of Kislova. This female human [[alchemist]] was born the youngest daughter and favored child of Baron Janosk Obour of Kislova, and remained loyal and obedient to him even as he descended into brutal tyranny and made a failed attempt to conquer a neighboring barony, only to be crushed, captured and executed. Before he died, Janosk commanded each of his three children to take steps to both preserve their family and avenge the loss of their power.

Of the three, Ilsabet was the most loyal to her father, honing her alchemical skills and delving into dark alchemical practices, focusing on hideous poisons and the creation of alchemical undead. She crippled and maimed many prisoners who had dared to rebel against her father's rule before his conquest by Baron Peto, created a unique strain of alchemical vampires, fatally poisoned her elder siblings for perceived disloyalty to their father's dying wishes, and finally married Baron Peto herself and bore him a son in order to gain the opportunity to poison him with a paralytic venom. It was only as she administered what she intended to be the final, fatal dose, killing her mentor (and true love) to do so, that the Mists finally claimed her.

Ilsabet currently suffers two curses. Her most direct darklord-related curse is that her desire for power and revenge are thwarted; though her husband, Baron Peto, remains incurably paralyzed, he also remains unkillable - no matter what she does, he always returns to life. As a result, she remains forever his regent, rather than the true Baroness of Kislova, which she regards as unacceptable; she yearns to resume the interrupted reign of her own family. Secondly, Ilsabet has become a vampire-like creature that feeds on pain, and must have one person killed every day in order to survive.

Unlike many Darklords, Ilsabet has no particular powers of supernatural survival. If you can beat an 11th level [[wizard]] protected by her guard of alchemical vampires, you can kill her.

When Ilsabet closes the borders, a poisonous green mist surrounds Kislova, inflicting irresistable damage per round until the would-be escapee returns to Kislova.

===Bethany Stone===
Darklord of Stonewall. A sad, broken, bitter woman, Bethany was born the daughter of a family of puritans, self-righteous and obsessed with sin. When her father discovered the child Bethany, a cheerful, whimsical young girl, had dreams of leaving the family home to become a dollmaker, he destroyed the dolls she had painstakingly constructed over years of work and beat her within an inch of her life. Later, when she came of age, he arranged her marriage to a man of high standing.

After long years of often-lonely marriage, pregnant with her sixth child, Bethany's father and husband were caught in a terrible accident, with the former dying and the latter being left in a coma. That was hardship enough, but as she cared for her husband, Bethany discovered his diary, in which he revealed he had only wed her to cover up his "sinful" nature as a homosexual. Enraged, Bethany began tampering with her husband's medicine to ensure he remained comatose, and then launched her own moral crusade, something aided by the fact she established her charismatic but broken-willed son Clarence as the town's minister.

When the Salem Witch trials broke out, Bethany eagerly spread their madness to Stonewall. But the tenth victim was the friend of Bethany's youngest daughter, Katherine, who unearthed evidence that this was really a way for Bethany to resolve a land-dispute between their families in the Stone's favor. When Katherine tried to intervene, she called out her mother for the cold, twisted monster that she was. Bethany promptly stabbed Katherine in the heart, and that was when the Mists took the town.

Bethany Stone is now a [[harpy]], although she has limited shapeshifting abilities that let her masquerade as a human. Her curse is that she will be forever doomed to lose her children before they are fully ready, whether by death, betrayal or abandonment. Though she doesn't know it yet, as part of this curse, she will become spontaneously pregnant and give birth to a human child every 5 years. Both of her arms are permanently blood-red from the elbow down, although she considers it a sign of her righteousness and so doesn't hide it.

The borders of Stonewall are permanently closed; unless the departee has the approval of either Bethany or Clarence to leave, they will be struck by lightning bolts until they turn back. It's unknown if lightning immunity will nullify this border, but it's not explicitly countered.

Nothing explicitly says that Bethany cannot just be killed in a fight (and, frankly, Stonewall is described as the kind of place where wiping out everybody is actually the heroic thing to do), but she ''does'' have an explicit method of redemption. If the party can find one of the dolls she made as a child, as one survived her father's wrath, and present it to her, she will break down in tears. If consoled and successfully reminded of her long-lost dreams, the rest of the town will break down weeping with her, and then Stonewall will slide out of the Mists and back to the prime material. On the other hand, if they fail, then she'll destroy the doll herself and become even more fanatical.

===Caleb Wicks===
Darklord of Wayward on the Bone Sands. Even at the age of 10, Caleb was a fearless, stubborn, trouble-making brat. The only thing able to scare him into obedience were stories of a local boogeyman: Black Hat the Swordslinger.

Caleb's transformation from mere brat to full-blown Darklord came when his family were hired by the lord of the distant Hangingshire, which required a long trek that passed through a desert region known as the Bone Sands. During this leg of the journey, Caleb's family were seperated from the caravan and veered their wagon over a tall, steep dune as a result of a sudden sandstorm. The wagon was destroyed, their horses killed, and Caleb's elder brother Horatio was severely injured. Though they initially settled in to wait for the caravan to send a rescue party after them, their food swiftly ran out and they realized they would have to try and walk out of the desert on foot... a journey that Horatio couldn't make.

The senior Wicks came to a grim realization: Horatio wasn't going to live much longer anyway, so when he died, the family would eat his body for sustenane before making their trek towards safety. They were content to wait... but Caleb found out about their plans, and taunted his brother with this fact; when Horatio began to scream and cry, Caleb panicked and stabbed him to death with a cooking knife. Caleb's parents were horrified, but ultimately decided there was nothing left to do. They ate their dead son, and then broke camp the next morning.

As they were traveling, Caleb found himself separated from his family by another sandstorm, wandering on his own for days before he stumbled across a small town called "Wayward". Mad with hunger, he murdered the first townsman who tried to offer him help, devouring as much of the man's flesh as he could before fleeing into the night. The next morning, he revealed himself to the horrified townsfolk and claimed that he had witnessed Black Hat kill and eat the man. Unable to believe a youngster like Caleb could be responsible for so monstrous a crime, the townsfolk believed him, and opened their homes to the young cannibal.

Caleb became a beloved fixture of the community... and then, the neighboring [[gnome]] community of Rumbleton was destroyed in an earthquake that crushed the subterranean village like an egg. They begged Wayward for shelter whilst they tried to rebuild, and the humans took them in. But rebuilding a new gnomish settlement wasn't easy, as Rumbleton had already been built in what was considered the most stable, accessible ground for miles around. With little choice, the gnomes began to put down roots in Wayward.

Which was a problem: Wayward already had troubles supporting its own population before the gnomes came in, and now things were worse than ever. The population increase led to a famine, known as "The Lean Times" by the locals, and tensions began to grow between humans and gnomes... tensions only fanned by Caleb, who began advocating the humans of Wayward should eat the baby gnomes born after the refugees settled in their village. Whilst initially this proposal was rejected, the gnomes took affront when they learned of its proposal at all, and relations only continued to deteriorate... especially because Caleb was continuing to egg things on, pushing his cannibalistic plan in secret.

Finally, it all came to a head; on the first night of the full moon, the Waywarders, driven mad with hunger, descended on the gnome shantytown and abducted as many gnomish children as they could, cannibalizing them in a disgusting, bloody orgy. Over the next two days they massacred the surviving gnomes and ate them as well, then they ate the few Waywarders who had protested "The Feast", as it was dubbed. And on that final full moon night, as the cannibal villagers slept off their full bellies, Wayward on the Bone Sands was pulled into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Caleb and the other villagers are now [[quevari]]. They spend most of their time in an enchanted slumber, only waking when visitors come to town. Like all quevari, they are peaceful and innocent-seeming during the day, but revert to bloodthirsty cannibals at night, as the first three nights after outsiders arrive are all full moons - after those three nights, they fall back into slumber until disturbed again. It's unclear what happens if a survivor somehow avoids being killed on that third night.

Wayward itself has a couple of curses. Firstly, there are no children here; all of their youths were left behind when the village was pulled into the Misty Realms, and none of the women ever fall pregnant, save when Caleb is killed (we'll get to that). Secondly, all food and drink in the domain is inherently inedible - even foods brought in from outside instantly spoil, although the look and smell perfectly fine. Finally, none of the villagers will ever age beyond the day they were when they committed their sins.

Caleb himself is a 5th level [[quevari]] [[thief]] who wields an enchanted knife +3 of bleeding. He can Charm Person 1/day by speaking to them, and still carries the Triangle of the Feast - the triangular dinner bell he played before the cannibalism of the gnomes. This can function as a Chime of Hunger that only affects non-Waywarders 3/day, and can also summon 2d6 Waywarders to his aid at will. The other quevari only openly recognize him as their lord and master during the night, but still are fiercely protective of him during the day. He can potentially be driven away in fear by forcefully invoking Black Hat - this requires something like disguising yourself ''as'' the boogeyman or telling a Black Hat story, simply saying the name won't scare him.

If killed, one of the Wayward women will find herself pregnant within a week, and give birth to Caleb's reincarnation a month later. Caleb will resume his true form as an elven year old a month after being born. The only way to kill Caleb for good is to wipe out the entire town of Wayward, which frankly you should be wanting to do anyway.

Caleb can close the borders by summoning tornadoes that lash all around the domain's periphery, kicking up lethal sandstorms and making it impossible to flee.

===Cassandre Desesprits===
Darklord of Miseria. Born to a humble farmer's family, Cassandre was gifted with the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, which also made her a very effective seer. When this was revealed to her village, she became an immediate celebrity, and this situation - never permitted time to herself or any true friends, but also showered in displays of good will and thanks - twisted her heart. She became completely self-centered, egotistical and immoral, regarding all others as nothing more than things to use for her own amusement and gratification.

When a war broke out amongst the local villages over the ability to use her seer powers, Cassandre exploited this to become a veritable queen, feeding just the right predictions to all factions to keep the war dragging on perpetually for over two years, wallowing in opulence whilst others bled, died and starved over her. Inevitably, the war drew to its climax, with both factions preparing to launch a decisive blow with a super-spell; Cassandre manipulated them into both acting at the exact same time, figuring that this would cause the spells to negate each other and stalemate, thus preserving the war and her power. Instead, they magnified each other, resulting in the annihilation of the warring armies and Cassandre being literally blown into Miseria.

Cassandre's curse is, fundamentally, that she will never again enjoy the lifestyle she once enjoyed. Although surrounded by people who genuinely like and care for her rather than her gifts, she pines for the days when people doted upon her every wish and resents being forced to work for a living as a barmaid. Her [[diviner]] powers have dwindled and become almost useless, but her spiritual powers have expanded; she now commands incorporeal [[undead]] with the proficiency of a master [[necromancer]], and her life is supplement with the years drained by her [[ghost]]ly minions. None of her schemes to regain her "royal" status will ever work, and so she seems doomed to an eternity as a beloved but otherwise unremarkable barmaid.

When she closes the borders, Miseria is surrounded by thick red fog that causes those who try to leave to age and eventually crumble to dust, whereupon they become ghosts under her command.

If slain, Cassandre becomes a ghost herself, but then resurrects 2d4 days later. Only if she is confronted in ghost form by an exorcist of the local deity Saint-Ambroise who can denounce her for her crimes in life will she be banished from the world of the living forever.

===Coyote===
Darklord of Yatehcaa. Once, this animal god aided the First Man in protecting his American Aboriginal-flavored world from powerful monsters. But his greed, malice and cruelty led to him committing many dark acts, and so the gods declared him unfit to remain amongst their ranks. First Man took back Coyote's cloak of stars, condemning him to stay forever on the world and be vulnerable to the monsters he had once battled. But Coyote showed no regret, no compassion, no willingness to learn from his mistakes or to try and make amends, and so he found himself trapped in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Ever since, he has continued his old ways, playing cruel, malicious tricks on the people of Yatehcaa, all the while trying to distract himself from how afraid he is that some day, he might be caught and killed by "The Dark Watchers", the antediluvian monsters whom he once battled alongside First Man.

Technically, nothing protects Coyote from death, but between his lack of shame and utter cowardice combined with his powerful magical abilities, actually killing him in a fight is easier said than done.

===Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez===
Darklord of Resistencia. Born the son of a once-great noble family in the Holy Republic of Aragona, Santiago's family had fallen in stature to such a degree that the impoverished patricians had mortaged their lands to the hilt and lived a life barely above that of their peasant tenats. They scrimped and saved to send Santiago to court, but the Don of Quijada found himself a laughing stock, regarded as little better than a jumped up hayseed peasant. This only fueled a lifelong hatred for those lacking in noble blood.

Desperate to try and reclaim the respect he had been taught from birth his family name deserved, Santiago bought a commission in the army. He proved little better here than he had in the court; poor of health, average at best with the sword, and no genius in the command of men or the intricacies of tactics and strategy. His only saving grace was his thoroughness and dedication... but even this went sour, breeding in him an obsession with discipline, cleanliness and presentation, and a love of punishment so extreme that even the Aragonan army considered him a draconian tyrant.

Though Santiago managed to win a few fairly creditable actions early in his career, his faults quickly stole away what his successes had won him, sending him into a self-inflicted downward spiral of ever-worsening behavior and failures as a result. He was appointed as the governor a rebellious backwater province, and only made things worse as he extended the same tyrannical, brutal law he held over his military forces to the population.

Then he was offered the chance to take up governship in a minor overseas colony called Neuva Aragona, which was also currently rebelling. Despite recognizing that this was intended to be a sentence of exile, Santiago accepted, dreaming of reversing his fortunes. Instead, he proved the absolute ''worst'' choice for the role; a born-and-bred monarchist with no sympathy for the lot of the peasants, he ignored the legitimate grievances of the rebels and remained fundamentally convinced that the isle of Manzanilla - renamed "Resistencia" by the rebels - was home to a silent majority of good, loyal followers of the kings. Ignoring all opportunities efor a diplomatic solution, he launched into his trademark brutality, which only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the natives.

Among his many atrocities, he took captive the pregnant wife of the rebel leader Martin Jose Maconda, one Isabel de Maconda. Simultaneously smitten with her and repulsed by her loyalty to the rebel's cause, he alternatively cajoled her and brutalized her, culminating in his ordering that she would be permitted no midwife when she went into labor. The birth went bad, and both mother and child died.

All his atrocities were for nothing, ineptitude and his habit of overworking his never-great health led to him dying in his sickbed, on the very day the last of his depleted forced were overwhelmed and Neuva Aragona formally seceded independence. But even as he died, he cursed that the rebels must be defeated at any cost.

Santiago now exists as a ghost, cursed to forever mentally relieve every battle he lost on Resistencia and see with perfect clarity how he could have won. And, of course, he's also cursed that no matter how he schemes and plots, on those rare moments he tears himself away from his biter memories and dreams of glory to actually try and do something, his plans to re-conquer Manzanilla are doomed to fail.

If defeated in battle, Santiago reforms in his burial chamber below Castillo Ascension, although he remains trapped there until the next full moon. The only way he can be destroyed is if his personal sword is stolen from this chamber and used to deliver the death blow in combat.

When he closes the borders, the sea surrounding Resistencia takes on an eerie, unnatural calm; sailing ships cannot move, and rowers will find that they simply can't get more than a half-mile away from the coast.

===Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll===
Darklord of Immerabt. This female human alchemist could in many ways be considered a mirror to Dr. Mordenheim of Lamordia. Like him, she was born a scientific prodigy who had neither time nor patience for religions and matters of faith. When she was twelve, Dorothy's mother died in childbirth giving birth to a son, something Dorothy blamed upon both the local priest - for he had both refused to allow Dorothy to be present at the birth, despite her knowledge of herbs and medicines, for her lack of faith, and proven unable to save Lady Hemphyll's life with his limited divine magic - and her father, for he had listened to the priest.

This became the cornerstone of Dorothy's growing loathing for religion, something that grew ever stronger as she aged. She went abroad to study medical sciencies, [[transmuter|transmutation magic]] and [[alchemist|philosophical alchemy]], always seeking to refine her medical skills. She also visited the dark, seedy corners of society: brothels, dog-fighting arenas, drug-fueled parties and other such realms that further convinced her of the absence of divine intervention.

The kicker was when she met and fell in love with another medical student of noble ancestry; Hermann Leawly. Despite her feelings, she refused to marry him, for that would require submitting to a religious ceremony she wanted nothing to do with. But he bent under the pressure from his traditional family and returned to their home, something that enraged Dorothy, who now derided him as a weakling.

After a long, bloody war, a terrible plague gripped her homeland, and Dorothy came up with an idea for a new method to care for the terminally ill. She purchased an abandoned penitentiary on a small rocky island and converted it into a sickbay, hiring the best healers she could find (so long as they weren't divine spellcasters). One of those she hired was Hermann. She became ever-more obsessive, pushing her followers brutally, and gaining the first attention of the [[Dark Powers]]. When she perfected her prototype life support mechanisms and began abducting the terminally ill from her hospice to install them in the devices, trapping them at the brink of life and death in a state of constant, unrelenting pain, they grew anticipatory. But it wasn't until she got drunk at a party celebrating her newly produced plague vaccine, and revealed to Hermann her monstrous experiments, injecting him with concentrated plague serum and deliberately waiting for him to reach the still-incurable terminal stage of the disease before strapping him into one of her hideous living death machines that they seized her and transformed goal island into Immerabt.

Dorothy's curse is three-fold, and could be a considered a blend of Mordenheim's and Azalin's. Though she is well-aware of the fact that the local industries of Immerabt are poisoning the population, her attempts to plan and execute social projects to counter the pollution invariably fail due to being rejected or ignored. Secondly, she is kept so busy working her daily job that she cannot devote the time to furthering her understandings of magic and alchemy, preventing her from attaining the greater power she needs to pursue her goal of the ultimate curatives. Finally, she is unable to invent a vaccine to cure those suffering from the terminal effects of the plague, which means she cannot cure Hermann, who remains bound and suffering in his life-support in the depths of her sanitarium.

Unlike many darklords, Dorothy has no inherent abilities that make her unkillable, although her disease-bearing touch and biomechanical golem guards make her a force to be reckoned with in combat. She can regenerate, but she's vulnerable to fire.

If she wishes to close the borders of Immerabt, violent storms with strong winds and heavy rain surround the archipelago, whilst the waters boil with mutated [[shark]]s and other aquatic predators.

===Elizabeth Michelle Cole III===
Darklord of Hibernate. This female human [[vampire]] was born to the noble family of the Coles in the land of Hybernaya on Boram'ith. Despite her aristocratic lineage, she did not believe in the inherent superiority of her bloodline, and fell in love with a peasant boy, whom her parents had executed on trumped-up charges. This engendered a deep hatred for her parents in Elizabeth's heart, and at the age of 28, she left home to "think about things".

In her wanderings, she met and fell in love with a man named Alexander Berzinski, a [[vampire]] who converted her into one as well. They traveled together for seven years before parting, whereupon Elizaeth returned home, murdered her parents, and ruled their lands with an iron first for a decade.

During this time, she became a high priestess of [[Thanatos]], and attempted to lure a prophesied warrior known as "The Son of the Black Moon" into Thanatos' service. A task she delighted in, for she fell in love with him when she met him - a one-sided love, for he was devoted to his [[half-elf]] girlfriend. When he died escaping from his contract with the dark god, Elizabeth had him resurrected and attempted to lure him through a portal to the [[Lower Planes]], only to find herself alone in Darkon. Here, she fell afoul of the Kargat and fled to the Sea of Sorrows, only to find herself bound to the newly formed isle of Hibernate when she set foot there.

She has risen to power as the madame of the most well-respected brothel in Hibernate, leading a force of twenty eight call girls, all of whom she has turned into [[vampire]]s. Her curse is that she yearns to find the Son of the Black Moon and claim him for herself, but he has never materialized in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Elizabeth is unaffected by Hibernatian holy symbols, due to the combined facts that they represent a non-existant god and the lack of true faith endemic in Hibernate's people, but can be slain by a pine wood stake, or paralyzed with any other kind of stake. If Elizabeth is killed, one of her vampire prostitutes will fall into a month-long coma, during which she will physically and mentally be subsumed and transformed into a new incarnation of Elizabeth. It's unclear how this can be prevented.

When she wishes to close the domain, Hibernate's borders are choked by a thick fog that is impossible to navigate; those who try only find themselves circling back to Hibernate, no matter how hard they try.

The [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002 version of Elizabeth emphasizes her fundamental selfishness and cruelty, and also notes that her Undying Soul will allow her to possess any woman in Hibernate should all of her prostitutes be killed.

===Gatwe and Mr. Klein===
The domain of Nzari is home to two darklords, struggling for dominance.

'''Gatwe''' is the original Darklord; an Mwele man who was forever questioning the traditions of his people even from a youth and who burned to hold power. He apprenticed himself to the tribal shaman, whom he perceived held the true power, but his ambitions remained unchecked. When the most beautiful woman in the village chose to marry a respected hunter, that was the last straw; he forsook all the traditional limits on the shaman and began practicing sorcery. He used curses to sicken and kill those he hated, and goad the tribe into war, slowly building an empire from the scattered tribes of the Mwele. When suspicion began to fall upon him, he murdered his own family to try and throw it off, assuming the form of a leopard to plant a curse-bundle that would kill them all slowly and painfully. When he began to resume his human form, that was when the [[Dark Powers]] struck, trapping him in a twisted [[Broken One|nightmarish conglomerate form]], incapable of wielding his former magic, and launching Nzari into the Misty Realm.

'''Mr. Klein''' came to Nzari after its appearance in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. A fanatical devotee of [[Ezra]], he yearned to be a missionary, but found that goal stymied during the initial rush to explore the Sea of Sorrows; the merchants who controlled the expedition wanted profits, not proselytizing. Only when Nzari was discovered, with its savage cannibal tribes and vast wealth of ivory, did Mr. Klein finally find his desire within his grasp. He founded the Dementlieur Exploration Company, and led its first expedition to Nzari. The Mwele naturally resisted this foreign invasion, but Klein had the zeal of a fanatic and pressed on, resorting to ever-more brutal tactics as months of battle and disease took its toll on his followers. Eventually, he caught the attention of Gatwe, but managed to fight the feared "leopard-devil" off - an act that won him inroads amongst the Mwele. His followers swelled in numbers, and he seemed to make real progress in "civilizing" Nzari... until he realized that his followers were not worshipping Ezra, but Klein himself, and that those he conquered were merely paying lip service to his commands. Furious, he resorted to to ever-more draconian methods to "stamp out the heathenism", but succeeded only in pushing the Mwele to rebel. Klein counter-attacked viciously with his own forces, and responded by flaying every last one of them alive before he had them beheaded, their bodies cast into the river, and their heads impaled on stakes around his house.

In the face of such brutality, the Dark Powers aren't sure ''which'' of the two better deserves the title of Darklord.

Gatwe's curse is simple: he is forever cut off from the adoration and power he changes. No Mwele will have anything to do with one so obviously marked as a sorcerer, and he cannot change or disguise his form regardless of what artifice he tries. Mr. Klein, on the other hand, is cursed that when he sleeps, he sees the world through Gatwe's eyes, experiencing the broken one's life as he lives it. Both, ironically, share the curse of wanting to change the Mwele culture, but being completely incapable of doing so.

The two Darklords ''despise'' each other. Gatwe has become convinced that if he can kill Klein, his full powers will be restored to him. Klein, on the other hand, believes that Gatwe is a literal demon, a symbol of the savagery hidden in humanity's heart, and that only by "civilizing" the Mwele will the nightmarish dream-visions cease.

Unusually for co-darklords, they can both close Nzari's borders; Gatwe surrounds the domain an impenetrable thicket of vegetation, whilst those trying to flee against Klein's wishes find themselves lost in thick fog and eventually attacked by an endless hail of arrows.

Both darklords also have their own unique forms of immortality. If Gatwe is killed, one of the leopards of Nzari will become his reincarnation a day later. Klein, on the other hand, is simply impervious to all attacks not dealt with an ivory weapon (a ''blessed'' ivory weapon deals double damage!) and will not return if slain.

===Geren Horstadt===
Darklord of Seradan. Born the favored son of a minor noble family, Geren was a bullying braggart in private, but a charming and idolized peer in public. All that changed when, at the age of 17, he was struck by a strange wasting disease that crippled him irreversibly; he lost use of his legs, his muscles withered, and all his senses faded. Though his family bankrupted themselves to try and cure him, nothing worked. He spent fifteen years in his own personal hell, watching and envying those with normal lives, and resenting his family despite the love and care they still showered him with.

His true descent into damnation came when one of his brothers brought down a trunk full of books from the attack, and Geren learned one of his great-grandfathers had been a powerful [[wizard]] - one with considerable experience in summoning beings from the [[Lower Planes]]. When his family refused to hire a wizard to tutor Geren in magic, he decided to try summoning a [[fiend]] on his own. He called forth a [[yugoloth]], who was so surprised by the venomous manner in which Geren pleaded his case that he offered Geren a trade: the souls of Geren's families in exchange for the ability to "help Geren feel what others feel".

It was a bargain Geren made without hesitation. He hired an [[assassin]] to kill every last member of his family, other than his mother. In exchange, the yugoloth gifted him with the ability to possess others, which allowed him to vicariously experience life as a normal person again. He slowly began to rebuild the family's fortunes by using possessed thralls to commit acts of murder and theft... then the townsfolk began to suspect his mother was involved, and she in turn wondered if Geren was responsible. When she confronted him, however, Geren petuantly seized control of her mind and made her kill herself. But some of the townsfolk had just arrived to question her again, and they discovered her slumping over the infamous and now-hated cripple. Realizing that Geren had been responsible, they beat him with clubs and then dragged him into the streets, where the mob lynched him; hanging him from a tree and beating him to death as they burned his family's home and himself.

Such was Geren's rage at this fate that he returned from the grave as a powerful haunt - a [[Ravenloft]] strain of [[ghost]]. With his possession abilities enhanced, he used them to massacre the entire population of the village... which was when the Mists rolled in and claimed him for Seradan.

Geren's darklord status brings with it a cocktail of curses. The standard Darklord curse of being unable to leave his domain chafes him particularly, being that he yearns to explore and experience the world. Making matters worse is that he is now trapped in a realm of dullards, so docile, unimaginative and unfeeling that possessing them is little better than staying a ghost. For further insult, Geren can now only possess hosts for short periods of time, or else they die of a supernaturally induced fever, forcing him to largely avoid using his possession abilities.

Geren always reforms one week after being destroyed. Only if he is allowed to kill Wilhelm Braugh, the only survivor of Geren's hometown and the inspector who gave him over to the mob, will he cease to exist, having decided that there is nothing left to live for. If he closes the borders, supernatural exhaustion claims any who try to leave the domain, sapping their strength until they are left helpless.

===Henry Arlington===
Darklord of Arlington Farm. Henry Arlington was a farmer who obsessed about success. Inheriting his farm after the tragic death of his parents in a house fire, he killed his own elder brothers in a duel to secure his inheritance. He proved to be a demanding, overbearing farmer, and obsessed with successful crops; when an unexpected New Year's late frost resulted in damage to a significant portion of the crops, Henry flew into a rage, even though he had more than enough funds to weather this less-than-perfect year. In his rage, he murdered one of his farmhands, concealing the crime by cutting up his body and hiding it amongst the scarecrows on the property. That year, the farm bloomed with a record-breaking bounty.

The next year saw a similar pattern: the crops failed early in the year, but when Henry killed (in this case a stray dog), they suddenly reversed fortune and flourished. Henry became convinced that his farm would reward him with bounty only in exchange for blood sacrifices, and he began a yearly ritual of murdering some human victim and stuffing their dismembered body into the scarecrows. Over a decade of this grisly work, he soon had no farmhands left to sacrifice, and so instead he slaughtered his entire family for the sake of his farm.

That was the last straw. The grisly, corpse-stuffed scarecrows came to life and burned down all his crops, then dragged Henry out into the field and mutilated him, turning him into a fleshy scarecrow like themselves. That was when the Mists swallowed the farm.

In the present, Henry still tends to his farm as an animate corpse [[scarecrow]], only to find his labors undone whatever he achieves. In addition, every harvest moon, he finds himself human once more - and subsequently butchered by his vengeful scarecrow "workers".

Henry can close the border for up to an hour at a time by summoning a vast murder of crows that attack whoever tries to leave. After an hour, however, Henry is exhausted and must rest for 3 rounds before he can resummon the swarm. If slain, Henry remains dead until the next full moon or blue moon, whereupon he will possess one of the scarecrows in his domain and return to life. Theoretically, he can be destroyed forever by destroying all of the scarecrows.

===Hercules===
Darklord of Olympus. Born the son of the High Priest of [[Zeus]] in a theocratic nation ruled over by a collective of seven temples to the Greek Gods - Zeus, [[Athena]], [[Aphrodite]], [[Hermes]], [[Ares]], [[Apollo]] and [[Hades]], the man now known only as Hercules earned great fame in his youth by speaking up against the brutal repression of the priest-lords and championing the rights of the oppressed commoners. Although originally he sought peace, the overwhelming corruption opposing him led him first to delving into the murky depths of politics, and finally into leading a full-blown revolution.

This angered the realm's rulers, the conclave of High Priests known as the Council of Seven, who came up with three plans to ruin Hercules. The High Priest of Zeus sent his son cursed gauntlets that would drive him into bloodthirsty rages under false pretence of truce. The High Priestess of Athena sought to summon a daemonic entity that would grant the Council magical powers that would allow them to crush the rebels and prove themselves the true "Voices of the Gods". Finally, the High Priestess of Aphrodite arranged for one of her serving girls to be sent to seduce Hercules, with the ultimate plan of disgracing him by tempting him into committing the blasphemous act of making love in the holy ground of the temple of Zeus.

They couldn't have expected that Dejanira, the girl chosen by the Voice of Aphrodite, would fall in love with Hercules and reveal the ploy to him. Any more than she could have expected for him to revile her as a traitorous seductress, but hide his loathing and use her to deliver a strike against the Council as they performed the summoning ritual. At the height of battle and ritual both, Hercules turned on Dejanira and stabbed her to death before throwing her into the center of the Council, then beating his father to death as he was paralyzed by the sudden influx of magical energies from the rite.

The Seven Voices of the Gods were transformed into quasi-daemons in their own right, and Hercules became the Darklord of the realm now called simply "Olympus".

Hercules is cursed both with the erratic and dangerous rages from his braces, and in that he is haunted by the terrifying spectre of Dejanira, who still loves him even in death. Worse still, his reputation continually sours due to his berserk rages.

The only way to kill Hercules for good is to force him, the six "Living Gods" of Olympus and the Forsaken One (the half-daemonic ghost of the High Priest of Zeus) to meet in the abandoned temple of Zeus and perform the fiend summoning ritual again. Only if Hercules allows himself to be sacrificed as part of the ritual will his curse be ended - which will also strip the Living Gods of their powers and make them mortal as well.

If Hercules wishes to seal the borders of Olympus, a titanic lightning storm envelops the domain, striking down any who attempt to escape.

===Heresa Heri, The Vulture King===
Darklord of Tsuu-Y-Teke. Long ago, Heresa Heri was one of the great animal lords, powerful spirits subordinate to the greater animal gods, but he betrayed his master's wishes after being named ruler over the skies: when given the ability to create permanent light from enchanted crystals, rather than sharing this light with the world, he selfishly kept them for himself, turning them into a shining feathered headdress. But his treachery was uncovered by a human hero-shaman named Kanaciwe, who captured Heresa Heri and tore out the golden and silver feathers, turning them into the sun, moon and stars. But the appearance of the sun dazed Kanaciwe, allowing Heresa Heri to break free of the shaman's grip and kill him.

This act enraged his rival, the newly empowered Haloe-Tsuu (Sun Puma), who cursed Heresa Heri; never again would he be allowed to face the sunlight, or else it would destroy him. Though the Vulture King fled into the deepest cave, he was mortally wounded, and summoned his underlings to ceremonially preserve his body and spirit. As he died, he cursed all those who had robbed him of "his" treasure, from the humans whose shaman had taken his headdress of shining light to the skies themselves for being home to the sun and moon. Thus was the domain of Tsuu-Y-Teke born.

In appearance, the Vulture King is a white-feathered giant vulture with a dark red bonnet of dried blood on his head, sickly yellow eyes that glow in the dark, and a jagged, uneven beak that gives him the appearance of fanged teeth. He is an [[undead]] creature with powers similar to those of a [[mummy]], althoug he looks like a living bird.

As Darklord, Heresa Heri is trapped in his cavern lair except during True Night, the one period of darkness that comes to Tsuu-Y-Teke once per month. He has become obsessed with the idea that if he can amass a sufficient number of gems, he can reimprison the light and restore the endless Night that the world once knew... but he knows that to do so, he needs the ''exact'' number of gems as there are stars in the sky, and he no longer remembers how many that is!

In combat, Heresa Heri is a powerhouse and all but impossible to destroy without the use of sunlight or powerful magical light. Even then, if destroyed, his spirit will possess any giant vulture within a 13 mile radius, which will transform into the Vulture King 1 week later.

When the Vulture King seeks to seal Tsuu-Y-Teke, then impenetrable magical darkness gathers on the borders; those who try to escape instead get lost in the utter blackness and stumble right back out into the domain.

===Jarl Gravstein Hansen===
Darklord of the Northlands. This male human was born to the Gand tribe, son of the man who had founded the trade guild known as the Key, which was bringing much-needed prosperity to the realm. He railed against the tradition by which the Gand and Kosti tribes alternated ownership of the capital city of Miklaheim every five years, and was determined to keep ownership of the city for himself.

To do so, he launched a brutal campaign against the Gand tribe, taxing his own people into famine and ruin to do so. When they were devastated, he turned his back on the traditional religion of the seidmen, secretly siphoning away funds from the church who thought he was supporting them. Finally, he began taxing the trade guild to borderline ruin itself. Through his short-sighted greed and selfishness, the realm was drawn into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Secretly, Gravstein yearns to be respected and loved, but he cannot attain it - only if he returns all the land of the Gand to them will this curse be broken, which mechanically manifests as an automatic failure on any Charisma check other than Intimidation. He doesn't have any magical powers to preserve his life, but whoever takes up the mantle of leadership should he die will be cursed in the same manner.

Closing the borders results in a vast army of warrior spirits descending from the heavens and physically blocking passage.

===Captain Jacobi Robertsonn===
Darklord of Whal. Born a fisherman's son on an unnamed world, Jacobi grew up in seas that were plentiful with a father who loved him and loved his life on the sea. Then, when Jacobi was young, he and his father were caught in a terrible storm whilst fishing, during which the youth spotted a giant whale - a ''leviathan'' - playing in the rough surf. Play that ended with the breaching whale crashing right on top of the small fishing boat; Jacobi awoke washed ashore, scarred, surrounded by debris, and with his father missing.

Years later, Jacobi was commanding a trading galleon called the Sailor's Blessing with his beloved only son Abram when the ship was caught in a tropical storm. On the fourth day, the ship hit something in the water and began to sink, and during the scramble to escape, Abram was swept over the side and vanished. Spotting a leviathan in the storm, Jacobi blamed his son's apparent death on the creature, and in fact convinced himself it was the same whale that had killed his father.

Returning to port, he purchased a new ship, the Retribution, and became a whaler, venting his wrath on whales indiscriminately for the next decade. He was beginning to lose all hope of ever attaining vengeance when he finally encountered the biggest whale he'd ever seen - what he was sure was the leviathan that had killed his father and son. He personally led the hunt and harpooned the beast, only for it turn and smash his boat to pieces. Driven by rage, the wounded Jacobi hauled himself onto the beast by climbing the rope of the embedded harpoon; even as the surviving crew fled, he stabbed the whale over and over again, all the while cursing it, himself and his crew with all his soul... until everything went black.

Then he awoke and found himself on a strange, yet vaguely familiar, island; the land of Whal. A place of whalers who, to his surprise, deferred to him with their problems. He has since figured out he rules Whal, but is cursed to never leave it.

As a Darklord, Jacobi's curse is that he has become a rare oceanic [[therianthrope]]: a [[wereorca]]. He has distinctly mixed feelings about this form; he acknowledges the appropriateness of it, but he loathes being associated with a whale. He's also been cursed to suffer from intense sea-sickness if he ever sets foot upon a water-borne vessel, so whilst he does enjoy the freedom offered by his alterante form, the fact he can only hunt as an orca means he misses the thrill of commanding his own ship. Whilst normally he has control over this changes, he is forced to assume orca form on the days of his father's and son's deaths, days that are also marked by intense storms.

Perhaps his true curse, however, is that despite his obsession with killing the leviathan he blames for ruining his life, the creature never appears in the waters off of Whal.

When Jacobi closes his borders, the sea parts down to the sea floor, creating a 300ft wide chasm between the two bodies of water. Flight is, of course, impossible. Nothing explicitly prevents you from walking across the chasm and then using water-breathing magic to escape through the water on the other side, though.

Jacobi has no life-preserving powers outside of his immunity to any weapon that isn't +1 or made from whalebone. He is a 16th level [[Avenger]], however, which combined with the aquatic capabilities of his form makes him more dangerous than you'd think.

===Jinx===
Darklord of the Lost Wizard's Tower. This male black cat was once the [[familiar]] of a [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale, a caring and heroic individual, but a slightly neglectful owner, and also too hubristic for her own good. Jinx's journey into damnation began when she decided to use the cat as the test subject for an experiment in increasing the intelligence of animals.

It worked... but it also made Jinx smart enough to realize just how much more there was to Margaret's life than him. He became convinced that she had chosen him as her test subject because she simply didn't ''care'' if he lived or died, developing a burning resentment for it. Worse, he became mentally human enough to become convinced that he was in love with Margaret, and to be consumed with jealousy that she had other interests in her life.

When the region where they lived was attacked by [[barbarian]]s, Jinx went out of his way to assist Margaret, hoping to prove his worth in the hopes that she would come to reciprocate his jealous, obsessive love. She did not. Instead, she fell in love with a young warrior under her command. When she announced their upcoming marriage, he devised and enacted a plan to lead the man Margaret had fallen for to his death in battle. With no spellcasters in the region powerful enough to revive the fallen, Jinx was sure that this would be the end of his "competition".

To Jinx's fury, the death of her betrothed only filled Margaret with rage and suicidal grief. She prepared a super-powerful alchemical explosive, and made a personal assault on the horde's camp. Blind with fury, she waded through the ranks of the enemy, surviving many attacks only because Jinx fought like a hellcat to save her - to the familiar's growing rage as he realized she didn't even notice her efforts. Finally, Margaret planted the explosive, only to be attacked by the horde's leader. Though she defeated him, she was badly hurt in the process, leaving her helpless in the face of the coming explosion.

Jinx tried to pull her to safety, but was too weak to do so. Margaret told him to flee to safety, and expressed her happiness that in dying, she would meet her beloved fiancee in the afterlife. At that, the cat flew into a rage and revealed how ''he'' had arranged the warrior's death, blaming his actions on Margaret's decision to give him the curse of reason. Finally, he vowed that Margaret would neither see Jinx's death nor her beloved, raking her eyes with his claws and then fleeing his master, whose screams of pain were swiftly cut off by the explosion.

Unrepentant, yet fearful, Jinx fled all the way back to the tower where he and Margaret once lived, only to find it mysteriously deserted. He has remained there ever since.

Jinx waits endlessly now for people to visit the lost tower, hoping to claim a new master. His first preference is a female [[wizard]], then a female [[sorcerer]], then a female [[bard]] or any other arcane spellcasting clas, and then finally a male arcanist. He will do whatever he can to first persuade them to accept his presence, and then separate his chosen master from their former companions. His curse, of course, is that he will always destroy any relationship he establishes - if nothing else, he will end up killing the would-be master when they fail to meet his standards for loving and doting upon him. He prefers to use his retained spells ability, which allows him to cast Flesh to Stone one per day, to "immortalize" failed masters by petrifying them.

Jinx has no specific powers keeping him alive, so if you can kill the little beast, he's done for. He can't even close the borders properly, but instead just summons the Mists; those who flee will find themselves emerging from the mist elsewhere in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

===Warden Jonar Tamh===
Darklord of Karss. This [[Harmonium]]-sworn male [[aasimar]] [[Fighter]] joined the Harmonium at a young age, and very quickly moved up the ranks, attaining the position of Mover One at the age of 25. When he was selected to lead the experimental Great Prison of Ortho, a reformation-focused alternative to the [[Mercykiller]]-run prison of [[Sigil]], he saw it as a great honor... until it became apparent that the majority of the cynical Sigil-originated prisoners were unwilling to cooperate with the project.

Fearful for his reputation, Jonar Tamh resorted to increasingly brutal and draconian punishments, covering up the ongoing breakdown from his superiors and replacing subordinates who dared to question him. Growing convinced that some force - the [[Mercykiller]]s, the [[Revolutionary League]], or the agents of evil - was sabotaging the Great Prison, he descended ever-deeper into brutality. Finally, his best friend, the deputy warden Zet Keffen, tried to convince Jonar to return to the Great Prison's original premise; when Jonar refused, he declared he would bring this matter to the Factol of the Harmonium.

Jonar panicked and killed Zet right then and there, covering it up by blaming the murder on two particularly troublesome prisoners and executing them for it.

But Jonar couldn't cover it up forever. Hearing that his superiors were on their way to investigate the prison, and also that there were plans for a mass uprisiong, Jonar gathered 28 of the most outspoken and problematic inmates and hanged them all, one by one. As the last expired, a great hurricane arose from nowhere, forcing the Harmonium guards indoors. When the storm ended, the Great Prison now sat on the barren island of Karss.

Jonar Tamh suffers two major curses. Firstly, although he now has the ability to mentally control large numbers of people at once, he experiences all of the pain and misery of those he is controlling. Secondly, the vengeful spirit of Zet has become bound to Jonar's sword; if Jonar inflicts 12 or more damage with it against a single foe, Zet gains the abilities of a rank 2 ghost for one hour, allowing him to attack his former best friend.

The aasimar darklord cannot close the borders of Karss.

===Kasselheim Blightlyng===
Darklord of Vulnara. This [[gnome]] [[vampire]] had the misfortune to be born a gnome with no sense of humor. Whilst other gnomes were happily running round, playing stupid pranks and making silly illusions, Kasselheim was stuck fuming over how non-gnomish races didn't treat them with the slightest respect, all whilst the other gnomes reacted to his pleas for them to just try and be a little more serious by pranking him worse than ever. Eventually, he became a [[Transmuter]], bitterly thumbing his nose at a centuries old family radition, and withdrew to the deepest depths of their underground home. Then a few years later, a great flood washed through the gnome community and drove them up onto the surface, and the survivors counted Kasselheim as one of the dead.

They didn't know that Kasselheim had severely blinded and deafened himself in an alchemical explosion during his period of isolation. Nor could they know that many of those presumed dead in the flood were actually kidnapped by Kasselheim, who began experimenting in dark magic to steal their senses for himself, ultimately transforming them into warped monsters called "tactyles". But when they finally began moving back into the tunnels years later, they found out.

They formed a great war party with the aid of [elf]], [[dwarf]] and [[human]] adventurers from communities who had also suffered Kasselheim's depredations, and tracked him down to his underground fortress... only to be all but wiped out. Even though former friends (well, ''they'' considered themselves to be his friends, at least) and family were amongst the party, Kasselheim killed or captured them all. The last survivor was one of his sisters, a [[cleric]] of the gnome gods who threw herself to her death over a cliff whilst cursing him. An earthquake, and Kasselheim was knocked unconscious, rising to discover he had become a unique form of gnomish [[vampire]].

Kasselheim's curse is that he must ''constantly'' feed; his stolen senses of sight, hearing, scent and taste dwindle rapidly after feeding, until all that he has left is enough of a sense of touch to register pain. However, because of how fast his senses fade, and the isolated nature of his lair, he is effectively confined to a small part of his domain, and thus must go long, terrible intervals between feedings.

Killing Kasselheim can be done in two ways. First, if he is exposed to sunlight, he becomes incorporeal; if he is kept from fleeing back to his lair for two hours whilst in this form, he dissipates into nothing. Secondly, one can complete a complicated ritual, slightly altered from the traditional gnomish vampire. To achieve his permanent destruction, Kasselheim must first be immobilized by staking him with a silver spike through the heart. Then his hands must be cut off and boiled in a volcanic hot spring for 24 hours, after which his eyes must be gouged out and replaced with precious gems (100gp value minimum for each eye). Finally, his inert body must be carried to some place where it can be exposed to direct sunlight for an hour - but this will revive him in his incorporeal form, so the would-be vampire killer will need to use some method to trap him in the light for the full hour.

===General Martin Jose Maconda===
Darklord of Maconda. This charismatic male human was, from his earliest days, both adept at manipulating others with his natural charm and good looks, prone to surprising moments of generosity, and feared for his grudge-holding, horrifying fits of temper, and trait for cold-blooded manipulation. It came a great surprise to him when he discovered that there were people he could not dominate at will - and worse still, his mixed heritage would forever prevent him from joining the upepr echelon of Manzanillan society.

Thus, out of a mixture of pride and genuine interest, he became involved in the growing revolutionary movement, and ultimately he became the leader of the guerilla forces fighting against the brutal suppressionist forces of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez. When Maconda's beloved wife Isabel died in her childbed as a result of of Don Santiago's cruelty, Maconda went in search of the fearsome Warlok of the Peak, determined to have the power to triumph over his enemies.

And he returned with that power. Only to find, to Maconda's fury, that Don Santiago had died of fever in his sickbed mere hours before the last Royalist troops were defeated. Enraged, he ordered the Royalists massacred, cutting down a priest who dared argue against this behavior, and once the bloodshed was over, he left Resistencia for the mainland of Libertad, vowing never to return - a vow the [[Dark Powers]] were happy to fulfill for him.

A year later, he became the president of the Republic, and he soon established himself as a brutal tyrant as bad as the royalists he had overthrown.

The Warlock of the Peak transformed Maconda into a powerful [[wereanaconda]], and despite the many powers his state gives him, Maconda loathes this form, in part because he believes Isabel would be disgusted by it, and also in part because he is compellede to transform into a giant anaconda and feed on human flesh on the night of the new moon. Unusually, he cannot create other wereanacondas with his biter, but those who drink or touch his blood, even if they are spattered with it in combat, risk being turn into either were-fer-de-lanes or were-bushmasters, species of [[weresnake]] (treat as Neutral Evil [[werecobra]]s) native to Libertad and compelled to be loyal to him.

Maconda's curse is that he desperately yearns to be loved and adored, but his insistence upon doing so by repressing and removing all opposition or dissent merely stokes the hatred and fear of those he rules over.

He can be wounded by weapons made of silver or the wood of the caobo tree, and is sickened by both the smell and taste of guavas. If defeated in battle, Maconda doesn't die but instead assumes anaconda form and slithers off into the jungle, unable to regain his human form until the next new moon. There is no known way to permanently destroy him.

Maconda can close the domain borders of his island by causing the jungles and seas to become engulfed in massive swarms of lethally poisonous snakes.

===Miles Havelocke===
Darklord of the Eternal Torture. Born in a coastal city, Miles was pressganged at the age of 15, which ruined his life; he suffered from incurable seasickness, for which his fellows tormented him mercilessly and the bullying captain only made it worse by assigning him to the worst tasks possible for somebody with his condition, ordering him severely beaten when, inevitably, he threw up. With no aptitude for mathematics, Miles couldn't master the art of navigation, and so couldn't hope to progress to the higher ranks of the navy.

Twenty years of this treatment turned Miles into a bitter, miserable bully who loathed the sea and used what little authority he could get to exact vengeance upon those few below him on the ship's pecking order. Why he never simply fled during his first shore leave, nobody knows.

Eventually, Miles' captain was chosen to make a voyage into the uncharted western ocean, to Miles' dismay. But when the captain continued in pressing on in pursuit of ever-richer islands to the west, it led to the ship becoming lost in the waters and supplies running low. Miles seized this opportunity for revenge and began spreading rumors about the ship's officers hoarding food for themselves, ultimately leading a successful mutiny. When his ineptitude at seamanship led to them being becalmed, he led his mutineers to cannibalize the captured officers, gleefully rubbing their faces in their past abuse of him and coming to relish human flesh.

And then, as this supply of food began to run low, they finally spotted land... but, as they rowed frantcially to reach it, the Mists arose and swallowed the ship. When they cleared, the mutineers found themselves in the middle of a sea in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Overwhelmed by misery, they sat down and waited for death... and then, a fortnight later, they arose as [[ghoul]]s under the command of Miles Havelock, a Ghoul Lord, and began searching for food and land.

Miles Havelock suffers multiple curses. Firstly, he can never reach land, no matter how desperately he tries - at best, he can get a brief glimpse of the coast before the Mists immediately rise and teleport his ship elsewhere. Secondly, his seasickness has not only survived undeath, but intensified; he is '''perpetually''' seasick and also starving hungry, and these twin pains are why he has rechristened his ship "The Eternal Torture". If destroyed, his essence will inhabit the body of a living prisoner in the ship's hold and consume them from the inside out; the only way to end his curse is to kill him, rescue all of the prisoners, and sink the Eternal Torture, then make for land at full speed.

===Rafe Ungard===
Darklord of Callista. This male [[Half-Vistani]] [[Bard]] used his natural charm (and a complexion that allowed him to hide his hated Vistani blood) to swindle innocent women into marriage scams, start feuds amongst noble families for his own amusement, and delve into increasingly cruel and lethal manipulation. The backstory of poor Susannah Joson from [[Children of the Night]]: [[Ghost]]s is but one example of his misdeeds. When a party of [[adventurer]]s tried to bring him to justice, he continually slipped away, leaving the bodies of victims in his wake to torment them, and ultimately murdered his pursuers by burning down the inn they were staying in as they slept, which is when the Mists took him.

Rafe now possesses a strange form of immortality; he will ''always'' die once per day, no matter what steps he takes to try and avoid it, only to spontaneously return to life the next day. There is no known method to stop him from returning.

When he closes the domain, Callista's borders become a ring of boiling geysers that will kill anyone who passes through them, and which extend as high into the sky as needed to reach anyone trying to fly through.

===Sean Mako & Alice/Alison Marjory===
Darklords of Carcharodon Isle. Sort of a combination of Ladyhawke and the Little Mermaid. Over a century ago, a male human fisherman named Sean Marko lived in the village of Mistlington. One day, he discovered an injured [[merfolk|mermaid]] washed up on the isle's northwest shore, unconscious and bleeding from several wounds, including a severed left hand. Unable to turn away from someone in need, he brought her to his home and nursed her back to health. The mermaid, whose name translated into Common as "Alice", explained that she was the only survivor of a tribe that had been slaughtered by [[sahuagin]].

The two fell in love, much to the displeasure of the locals; the fishermen thought Sean was foolish for pining over a mermaid, and their wives were jealous of Alice's beauty, leading to them slandering her and Sean's relationship as "unnatural". Ultimately, a bunch of the village's men took it upon themselves to "repatriate" Alice; they came to Sean's house in the night, bludgeoned him unconscious, and carried Alice away. When Sean regained consciousness, he rowed desperately to catch up to them, but by the time he did so, they'd thrown the still-bound mermaid overboard.

Enraged, Sean snatched up a boathook and attacked the men who had assaulted him and the woman he loved, butchering them. When the carnage was over, he dove into the water after Alice, and then begged the full moon above for a fins and a tail so he might never be separated from his love.

Naturally, the [[Dark Powers]] chose to be dicks about granting this wish...

Both Sean and the revived Alice, now a human calling herself Alison Marjory, have become maledictive [[therianthrope]]s.

Sean is a giant [[wereshark]] who spends most of the month as an intelligent megalodon, unaware that he ''can'' transform and remembering nothing of his human life; only during the nights of the full moon and those nights directly before and after it does he return to his human form... which remembers everything he did as a giant killer shark. Because of his curse-spawned ignorance, the only way that shark!Sean can transform is if he is magically compelled to do so, such as by an Amulet of the Beast. He spends his days asleep and his nights hunting for food.

In contrast, Alison is a [[seawolf]] who spends most of the month as a human, but assumes her seawolf form on the nights before, during and after the full moon - the same nights when Sean regains his humanity. Like Sean, as a seawolf, she is completely ignorant of her human life. She keeps to herself, for the people of the isle still distrust and dislike her, gladly telling the nastiest stories they can think of about her to anyone who'll listen.

Neither darklord can be slain permanently through violence; they fully heal and return to life 1 round after being defeated. They also can't close the domain's borders, although since the only local vessels are small fishing boats that are no match for a giant shark or a massive seafaring wolf, they don't need to do much more than patrol the borders themselves.

Curing them simply requires breaking the curse by getting them to touch as humans, but doing so is tough; aside from the fact that they alternate human and monster forms, neither is aware of the fact that the other survives. Whichever of them is in beast form also refuses to get within 10 feet of the other one. They also won't willingly get within 5 feet of an Amulet of the Beast. So players are going to have to get creative to break their curse.

===Serenissa D'Aubliet===
Darklord of Romagna. Serenissa (female human spectre) was born an orphan; her father, a miller's son, was killed soon after her conception, and her peasant girl mother died in birthing her. She was taken in the local lord to serve as companion to his two daughters, but their initial friendship soured as they came of age and Serenissa realized the social gap between them. At the age of twelve, she was sent to the family of a neighboring lord to become a nursemaid to that lord's newly born twin children; Serenissa doted upon the children, and happily threw herself into their care.

However, she also became increasingly obsessed with fanciful daydreams about her origins, fixating on the belief that she was actually of noble birth and that her parents were both alive and desperately seeking her. She loved to tell these stories to her two charges... until the eve of their fourth birthdays, when, at the top of the Eagle's Tower, the two young children scolded her for lying and corrected her that she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a simpleton and a millerboy, both of whom had died. Mad with rage, especially when the twins revealed that everyone in the castle claimed that this was so, she pushed them off of the tower to their deaths.

Her skill at lying allowed her to escape being blamed for what she described as a terrible accident. For two weeks she festered on the idea that people were "slandering her" behind her back, and finally, two months after the day she had murdered the twins, she set a fire in the Great Hall that night, killing everyone in the castle.

Slinking away from the carnage, she made her way to the barony of Romagna, where she seduced her way into both a respectable position as lady's maid to the younger sister of Baron Etain and into the arms of Baron Etain himself. After several months of dalliance, he gifted her with a gemstone brooch... and then announced his upcoming marriage to the Lady Fialle, daughter of a neighboring lord, the very next day.

This pushed Serenissa over the edge and soon thereafter, she drew Baron Etain to a high tower, where she grabbed him and leapt off the edge, intending that they die together so she would not live alone.

But this time, with the interference of the [[Dark Powers]], her scheme failed. Serenissa hit the ground and was killed on impact, but her body cushioned Etain's fall, and so he lived. The madwoman's spirit rose from its grave as a ghost, trapped in an endless time loop; Romagna experiences only a single year, constantly recycling itself. It starts one week before the equinox Spring Festival, when Fialle arrives in Romagna for her upcoming wedding to Baron Etain. That week is spent in feasts and celebrations, capped off by a three-day non-stop revelry for the weding proper. Then, six months later, Fialle conceives Etain's child. And then, one week before the first anniversary of the wedding, time looks back and it is the week before the Spring Festival again.

Furthering Serenissa's torment, she is completely incapable of physically interacting with the people of Romagna, although she can manipulate their emotions despite the fact they cannot see, hear or touch her. She uses her emotional control to turn them into her agents of retribution, although she can't turn them against Etain or Fialle. This ability is defined vaguely, because she herself hasn't really studied her full capabilities with it.

Only visitors to Romagna are in true danger from Serenissa, because she is fully visible and audible to them, although still intangible. She invariably attempts to seduce the handsome male visitors to the domain, luring them away if they prove receptive to try and embrace them - doing so, however, results in her draining 1 level per 2 rounds, causing them to disintegrate... but if they break free, she attacks.

Serenissa is vulnerable to holy water, +2 or stronger magic weapons, and functional weapons made of gold. She is impervious to holy symbols, but can be turned with symbols of true love and matrimony - for example, the wedding rings of people who are actually married. If destroyed, she can reform at Etain and Fialle's wedding. Exactly ho to destroy her permanently is left vague, with her entry in the Book of Sorrows concluding with this paragraph:
::''Weapons forged from symbols of love (such as rings, charms, wooden wands, or ceremonial ropes used to bind a man and woman together at their wedding) may have greater effect, rendering her helpless or immobile. Her final death is likely to involve elements of her first experience; rejection, a long fall, and/or a noble lover. Heroes should beware, though—the dark powers may look with interest upon anyone who willingly transforms a symbol of love into a weapon of war.''

===Urdogen "The Red"===
Darklord of The Raging Tears. Male Human Spectre. In life, Urdogen (who first appeared in the [[Forgotten Realms]] splat "Pirates of the Fallen Stars") was basically Faerun's version of Blackbeard - if Blackbeard was a redhead. He terrorized the Inner Sea so badly that the nations of that region united to defeat his fleet, whereupon Urdogen fled and found himself spirited away by the Mists into the Sea of Sorrows... where he promptly hit a hidden reef and sank his ship, drowning.

Ever since then, Urdogen's ghostly vessel has sailed all the seas of the Misty Realm, cursed to never be able to come within sight of land and only able to rise from his watery grave during the nocturnal hours. Further stymying his desperate desire to reclaim his former reputation as a fearsome pirate lord, any who encounter Urdogen and live to tell the tale are cursed to forget his name.

To put an end to Urdogen, the ruin of the Raging Tears must be hauled up from the seafloor and carried inland, where it must then be burned completely to ash in a funeral pyre.

Interestingly, Urdogen's ghostly ship is actually able to return to the Inner Sea of Faerun on moonless, foggy nights in his homeworld, although he must return to the Misty Realms upon dawn.

If Urdogen chooses to close the borders of his traveling domain, the waters around his ship become rough and infested with a feeding frenzy of sharks; those who try to fly away will instead find themselves sinking into the water.

==5e Darklords==
As part of its general overhaul of the [[Demiplane of Dread]], 5th edition added a significant number of new darklords - some to replace former darklords, others ruling over brand new domains. Darklords who simply got retconned backstories and other traits have those details added to their entries above. Quite a few of these characters don't have much info on them due to being only mentioned in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book, most of which only have a single paragraph dedicated to their domain and darklord.

One unique trait common to all 5e darklords is that the personalized domain border closures of the past are largely gone; there might be cosmetic tweaks, but in general most 5e Domains of Dread all function the same when a person tries to escape through a closed border.

===Chakuna===
The replacement Darklord of Valachan, and one of the few 5e darklords to explicitly continue on in some fashion from the setting as it existed before. A female [[werepanther]], Chakuna belongs to a tribe of [[werecat]]s (specifically panthers and ocelots) called the Oselo, whom were hunted to the brink of extinction by Baron Urik von Kharkov, as he had come to fixate upon them as the most intriguing and challenging quarry. (Nevermind that Urik was originally "Blacula Strahd" with no real interest in "hunting the most dangerous game".) To save her people, she went to the literal heart of the domain and performed an unholy rite, cutting out her own heart and offering it to the land as sacrifice in exchange for the power to defeat Urik. Long story short, it worked; she ripped out his heart, tore him to pieces, and buried his still-living and curse-spewing head in the ruins of his castle before building her own treetop hunting lodge atop the ruins. Which is actually kind of badass. But now the jungle has become hungrier than ever, and she must regularly sacrifice human hearts to the land to keep the plants and animals from slaughtering all the Valachani (shades of the Wildlands, there), which she obtains through the "Trials of the Heart" - ceremonially hunting down designated victims with the aid of trained [[Displacer Beast]]s. She won't touch a fellow Oselo, but everybody else is fair game.

Chakuna can only be killed if her heart is found in the secret grove where she performed her dark rite and destroyed, but unless somebody assumes her mantle in the process, then the jungle will be free to kill everyone.
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===Flimira Vhage===
Currently very little is known about Flimira Vhage other than that their domain is the office of a detective agency which is actually is an extension of their own broken mind.

===Jacqueline Renier===
While this character is really just a reimagining of Jaqueline Renier, her minimally different name means she's technically a new character and gets her own section here. Besides being a wererat she has almost nothing in common with the original Jaqueline anyway.

A century ago, the Richemulot was a prosperous nation with a growing middle class. As the commoners began to gain more wealth and power, it caused the influence of the nobility to wane, a fact that Jacqueline Renier did not like. As her family seemed oblivious to the threat this posed, she began to look allies and heard of the Trueblood Council, a secret society of Richemulot’s eldest and most esteemed families. She spent a fortune finding a way to attain membership to the council, but discovered they were not actually nobles, but wererats. That same night, she was inducted into their ranks.

Renier swiftly accepted her new life as a wererat, her scorn for commoners expanding to include all non-wererats. Her first major act consisted of conferring the gift of lycanthropy upon her family. Only her twin, Louise, resisted, for which Jacqueline disfigured her and cast her out. Within the sewers of Pont-a-Museau, the wererats concocted a roiling pestilence known as the Gnawing Plague, which swept through the population. The disease wiped out the nation's rulers and all other nobles save for the Reniers, and eventually Jacqueline stood as the highest-born noble in the land, and the nation’s de facto leader.

Though the people begged her to help them, she let them all die, deeming them unworthy due to their poverty and low birth. As the last human soul expired in Pont-a-Museau, the Mists rose, drawing Richemulot into the Domains of Dread.

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===The Inheritors of Darkon===
Similar to what happened during [[Grim Harvest]], Darkon currently has multiple Darklords while Azalin is missing. Specifically, there's only three of them this time.

'''"Baron" Alcio Metus''' is a female vampire, and the sister of Baron Metus - the vampire who got [[Van Richten]] started on his monster-killing path. Having risen to rule the criminal underworld of the Jagged Coast region, driving out her former Kargat masters in the process, Alcio burns with the desire for revenge against Van Richten for killing her brother. Not helping is that she's occupied Van Richten's ancestral home of Richten House and found that Van Richten's wife Ingrid still lingers as a [[ghost]] - but one who refuses to help Alcio in her quest for vengeance.

'''Cardinna Artazas''', the thrice-reincarnated leader of an elfin mystery cult in Nevuchar Springs, has damned her soul in the name of good: desperate to preserve Darkon, she has striven to revive the spirit of Darcalus Rex, the king who reigned over Darkon prior to the coming of Azalin. Unfortunately, all she has called forth is a necrichor, and she must constantly weigh her belief that what she is doing serves "the greater good" against the very real demands that the undead tyrant makes for ever-greater magical reagents and sacrifices.

Finally, '''Madame Talisveri Eris''' is an elderly but vibrant and intelligent aristocrat who accidentally made herself permanently invisible whilst seeking to make herself look younger. She uses her invisibility to her advantage, having created an array of different identities that she assumes through costumes and cosmetics. She's currently built up a cult amongst the younger members of Il Aluk's nobility, offering them an elixir on the night of the new moon that makes them invisible until dawn and then sending them out to commit crimes and mayhem that advance her cause.

Because none of them are true darklords yet, none of them have specific curses.

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===Isolde & Nepenthe===
Like the original Isolde, the 5e Isolde is an [[eladrin]] [[paladin]], though this one was an [[adventurer]] who battled [[dragon]]s and [[demon]]s that threatened the [[Feywild]]. This unknowingly led her into the machinations of Zybilna, an evil [[archfey]] who had lost a number of [[fiend]]ish allies to Isolde and her companions. Zybilna called upon her remaining pacts to arrange for a powerful [[incubus]] called "The Caller" (5e's retconned version of the Gentleman Caller) to corrupt and slaughter Isolde's companions; once that was done, the archfey stepped in and exploited Isolde's vulnerable state to become her "new best friend". She arranged for Isolde to become the guardian of a traveling fey carnival that also concealed a portal to Zybilna's realm... then, when Isolde began to tire of this role and their relationship grew strained, she secretly warped Isolde's mind with magic to ensure that Isolde would always prioritize the needs of the Carnival over her own wants. Even so, this wasn't enough to keep Isolde bound to Zybilna's reins. When Isolde encountered a traveling carnival from the [[Shadowfell]] managed by [[shadar-kai]], she made a pact with its twin managers to trade ownership of their carnivals, but only until next the two carnivals met. The shadar-kai agreed, and gave her the magical sword Nepenthe as symbol of her new status as owner and champion - but that wasn't enough for Zybilna. She used her magic to erase Isolde's memories of all things relating to Zybilna, and also sent fey creatures to forever follow and harass Isolde's new carnival.

To make things worse, Nepenthe was a cursed blade; an intelligent Holy Avenger used to execute thousands of criminals, not all of whom were actually guilty, the blade had developed a deep craving for bloodshed in the name of justice. In Isolde, it found an easily manipulated host; it awoke her memories of the Caller, and stoked her desire for retribution. In many ways, it could be considered the "true" darklord of the Carnival, especially given how Isolde constantly struggles to resist its naked, insatiable need to kill.

Isolde's curse, then, is to wrestle with both the imperatives of Zybilna and those of Nepenthe; she craves vengeance, but finds herself forever stymied by her need to tend to the ever-growing Carnival's need, as well as fearing that she may one day encounter the Carnival's true owners and be forced to relinquish it back to them. Explicitly, she could be saved if Nepenthe was taken from her, but its grip on her mind means she would refuse to abandon it.

===Klorr===
Darklord of Klorr. We know nothing about this darklord, but the name is taken from a character who appeared in the original Red Box; a clockwork-obsessed [[planeswalker]] [[mage]] who was infuriated that he couldn't synchronize and control his heart the way he could his clockwork creations. He made assorted dark bargains and ultimately came to rest in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], where he produced four cursed timepieces: the Water Clock of Klorr, the Moondial of Klorr, the Hourglass of Klorr, and his final work: the Timepiece of Klorr. This cursed pocketwatch gave Klorr extended life and increased arcane power, but required him to regularly charge it with murder, an impulse he succumbed to. It ultimately killed him when he failed to sacrifice a life to it on time.

The Timepiece of Klorr is given mechanical stats in the "Forbidden Lore" boxed set. Klorr's other works are statted in "Forged of Darknes":
* The Water Clock lets the user transform into a water [[elemental]], but might kill them in the process and also might leave them permanently trapped in elemental form.
* The Moondial grants powers based on the phase of the moon, but slowly transforms the user into a light-averse monster.
* The Hourglass can grant the user Improved Haste for 1 hour, but will age them 1d10 years and might also leave them under the effects of Slow for 24 hours after being used.

===The Last Passenger===
Darklord of The Mourning Rail. Nothing is known about this Darklord other than they were a VIP that delayed a train escaping from The Mourning, and threw out a bunch of passengers to make room for their self and their retinue, dooming the train, and they are now an undead being of some kind trapped on the train with the rest of the undead passengers.

===Myar Hiregaard===
Mentioned only in passing as the Darklord of the revised Nova Vaasa, She's basically a female Genghis Khan with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde; she was originally a female chieftain who united the nomadic plains-dwelling tribes of Nova Vaasa into a single culture, but she proved to be a terrible peacetime leader because she craved bloodshed and excitement. She tried to stave off her boredom with, quote, "brutal games" for a time, but ultimately she couldn't resist the thrill of war: she began fostering disputes amongst her vassal tribes so she had an excuse to lead her forces to crush both sides. This eventually got her claimed by the mists, and now she switches between two personas and possibly two bodies: as Mya Hiregaard, she rules with "strict fairness", but when she gets too bloodlusty, she transforms into her alter-ego of Malken and "sows discord across the plains".

...Whatever else you may think of it, at least it's more justified than Tristren "My dad got cursed and died, so I inherited his curse and became a Darklord without ever having to do anything to actually earn it" Hiregaard.

===Pietra van Riese===
A gender-swapped version of Pieter van Riese and the darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Not much is known about her due to being in the "Other Domains of Dread" section, and therefore only getting one paragraph to herself. She was a ruthless pirate with a fondness for keelhauling her victims, and now she's a ruthless ''zombie'' pirate who speaks through the mouths of her undead crew.

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===Ramya Vasavadan===
Darklord of Kalakeri. Ramya was hand-picked by her father, the last ruler of Kalkeri, to succeed him, but when he died, her brother Arijani contested her claim, leading to a brief civil war. Ramya would have killed Arijani then and there, but their sister Reeva counseled mercy, and Ramya conceded, not really wanting to kill her brother anyway. She enjoyed a brief period of unchallenged leadership, bringing a golden age to Kalakeri, but all the while Reeva was working behind her back to build up support for Arijani, culminating in her freeing Arijani and launching a second civil war. Enraged, Ramya suppressed the rebellion with brutal methods, executing captured rebel ranas and executing them in horrifically inventive methods that only made the people distrust her more and furthered the fighting. At the second war's climax, Arijani and Reeva sued for peace and Ramya agreed... only to be captured by her treacherous siblings and murdered. Before the court strangler garotted her in the central courtyard of her own palace, Ramya cursed her siblings as bloodthirsty beasts.

Once it was done, Arijani and Reeva further disrespected their sister by throwing her body into the ocean... an act that resulted in a terrible monsoon lashing Kalakeri for weeks. And then, when it was done, Ramya rose from her watery grave and marched on her former siblings, followed by an ever-swelling army of undead soldiers made up of all her loyal warriors who had fought and died for her. This time, Ramya showed no mercy, capturing her siblings and having them crushed to death by undead elephants.

...And then they came back as fiends - Arijani as a [[rakshasa]] and Reeva as an [[arcanoloth]] - and the civil war has raged ever since.

This civil war is the primary curse that Ramya experiences, with two secondary elements. Firstly, despite knowing better, Ramya ''always'' remains vulnerable to their lies and deceptions, which prevents her from truly ending the war. Secondly, Ramya's direct control over the domain is tied to her being seated in the Sapphire Throne, the symbol of Kalakeri's ruler; if the rebels oust her from the Cerulean Citadel, then her dominion diminishes until she can reclaim it. A second curse she labors under is the fact that, despite being shrouded in an illusion of life, Ramya ''knows'' that she's actually [[undead]], and this is apparent in her reflection, so she bans mirrors from her presence.
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===Saidra d'Honaire===
The future darklord Saidra grew up on a tiny farm, raised by her widower father, who filled her head with stories of her noble bloodline - he claimed to be a duke that had been ousted from his rightful throne by a vicious younger brother. Life was hard, especially as Saidra's sincere belief in her father's stories meant she alienated her peers, and only got worse when Saidra's father married a prosperous merchant woman with two daughters from her previous marriage, all of whom tormented Saidra and forced her to work as their personal servant, ala Cinderella. One day, a nearby duke perished, and when Saidra wondered if it had been her father's evil little brother, she was forced to confront the cruel truth: her father's stories had all been a pack of lies, and he was nothing more than a common-born servant who had fled to save his neck after trying to nick silverware from the duke's kitchen.

Saidra went to her mom's grave to beg her mother's spirit for help, which was when a "kind, grandmotherly figure" appeared and granted Saidra her wish, clothing her in a magnificent gown and fine jewelry before conjuring a stately carriage to carry her to the masquerade ball that was being held to celebrate the coronation of the new duke. We don't know who this figure was, but it's interesting to note that Saidra's version of Dementlieu contains a [[hag]] coven who basically love to pretend to be Fairy Godmother figures so they can mess with people. Anyway, off Saidra went to the ball, plotting to kill the new duke and claim his title. When she got there, she swiftly seduced the new duke, so successfully that she began contemplating if it mightn't be better to wed the duke instead. Things were going smashingly... until the clock chimed midnight and the whole party began dropping dead of a sudden, fast-acting plague, which rather put a downer on things. The kicker, for Saidra, was as she and the duke lay dying in each other's arms and he confessed that he ''wasn't'' noble-born, but instead a commoner who had been adopted by the previous duke. In fact, he was actually Saidra's long-lost brother.

Enraged at this second "betrayal", Saidra stabbed her brother in the heart with the last of her strength and then tried to stagger away from the corpse, only to collapse dead on the stairs leading into the palace.

And then she woke up as a [[wraith]], the new spectral queen of Dementlieu, a shabby and impoverished town whose populace struggle to fake the appearance of being more important than they truly are, all the while risking Saidra's deadly wrath: she '''hates''' pompous fools who pretend to be what they aren't, aspire to higher station than they deserve, and fail to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

...Well, yeah, she wouldn't be a ''darklord'' if she wasn't at least a little bit of a hypocrite, now would she?

Saidra is a wraith who has the ability to launch free Disintegrates at anyone who reveals themselves to be lying about who they are in her presence - we don't know much more than that, mechanically. She lives in constant terror of being exposed as a fraud herself, and in fact she can only be killed permanently if she is revealed to be a fraud first. Related to that, she lives in terror that her hated stepmother and stepsisters are still alive somewhere in Dementlieu. Finally, almost tangentially, her status as a wraith means her beloved masquerade balls are a complete waste of time, as she can't enjoy any of the physical pleasures associated with them.

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===Sarthak===
Darklord of the Ashram of Niranjan, Sarthak is an evil bronze dragon who poses as a mystic named Niranjan. He send agents into the Mists bearing his philosophical writings, which promise escape, peace, and enlightenment to any who adopt their teachings. Anyone who comes to his monastery is told that they must divest themselves of worldly goods, which are added to Sarthak’s hidden hoard. Sarthak then helps his victim enter a blissful trance that causes their soul to slip away from their body over the course of days. Sarthak consumes this soul and replaces it with a shadow, leaving the victim’s body under his control.

There's no indication of what his curse might be, since he's in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book and as such only gets a single paragraph to himself.

===Teresa Bleysmith===

===Viktra Mordenheim===
Basically, she's Victor Mordenheim but a woman... what, that's not good enough? Alright...

Viktra Mordenheim was born the daughter of a minor noble family, as well as a natural prodigy in medicine - she taught herself anatomy as a child, and by the time she was a teenager she held a doctorate ''and'' had been appointed as a preeminent researcher at a local university. For all her genius, however, Viktra was arrogant, not to mention completely lacking in empathy, compassion and moral qualms. To her, medicine was just a way to sate her burning curiosity about the secrets of life. Also, she hated magic, regarding it as as "stealing the powers of otherworldly beings and cheating the laws of nature", and thus inferior to '''SCIENCE!'''

In the best Frankenstein tradition, she grew obsessed with the idea that she could not merely mend the sick, but actively create and even improve upon life. So she began hiring the services of bodysnatchers to provide her with fresh human cadavers for her research. This is how she met Elise; amazingly, the cold, aloof methodical surgeon and the beautiful but reckless and spontaneous body snatcher became infatuated with each other, and the two women's relationship swiftly changed from professional to personal. When Elise contracted an incurable wasting disease, Mordenheim became obsessed with saving her, and her experiments increased in numbers - she also began having living victims actively kidnapped for her experiments. Through countless murders, resurrections and remurders, Viktra honed her knowledege. Finally, as Elise fell into the deep sleep that marked the final stages of the disease, Viktra poured everything she had learned from a thousand deaths into saving a single life, crafting and installing the Unbreakable Heart: an artificial super-organ.

But just as she was stitching the fabulous device into place, constables burst into her lab, accusing her of being behind the recent string of kidnappings and murders. In the struggle, the lab caught fire and flooded with acrid chemical smoke: Mordenheim's last vision was of Elise rising from her table, a golden light glowing in her chest where the Unbreakable Heart had been installed.

When Mordenheim came to, she was in a strange, icy realm called "Lamordia", where she was hailed as the greatest genius ever, but there was no sign of Elise.

Viktra's torments largely center around Elise and the Unbreakable Heart; she can neither recreate the Heart on her own, but nor can she find Elise to study it again. Secondary to this curse is that she is showered with the love, respect and attention of Lamordia, whose people view her as a luminary savior; to Mordenheim, they are incomprehensible, and she loathes their constant distractions from her work.
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===Vladeska Drakov===
In a nameless world, in a land torn between myriad bitterly feuding royal families, the woman named Vladeska Drakov was a skilled fighter and general, a mercenary who came to be known as the Crimson Falcon, the leader of a well-regarded mercenary army called the Falcon's Talons. Business was profitable, and Vladeska was raking in the loot, with dreams of retiring young, cashing in her wealth and reputation to buy land and a title. Then came the sacking of Veivere, where the Talons accidentally killed a very important figure. So important that the entirety of the aristocracy took up arms against the Talons, determined to kill them all for it. Well, Vladeska had no intention of just rolling over and dying, and she launched a bloody counter-attack that soon turned into a crushing campaign of conquest; her forces swept through the land, replenishing themselves with conscripted peasants and wiping out everyone stupid enough to stand against them. Vladeska made a point of impaling ''everybody'' with even the slightest drop of aristocratic blood that she caught alive. Through years of bloody effort, she became the ruler of an empire that stretched over the former patchwork nation, but as she crushed the last defiant village, the smoke engulfed Vladeska and her most elite warriors.

They found themselves in a new realm, and after swiftly conquering its capital city, Vladeska declared herself Empress of Falkovnia. Which was when she found the downside of her rule... namely, the armies of [[zombie]]s that would attack her new kingdom every month with the rising of the new moon.

Vladeska's curse, obviously, is the zombie attacks, which press her to her limit as she struggles to throw back the dead and preserve what she has, but it goes deeper than that. Firstly, she suffers a horrible sensation of recognition; every zombie, to her, seems to be the animate corpse of one of her victims or her fallen soldiers, filling her with the gnawing belief that the dead are coming for ''her'' specifically. Secondly, no matter what scheme or ploy she tries, the result is always Phyrric; her people haven't been wiped out yet, but there's a big difference between 'survival' and 'winning'. Finally, she '''knows''' that her efforts doomed - there is ''no way'' to hold Falkovnia against the dead, not with the forces that she has, and the only chance she has for survival is to take her people and flee during the peaceful period after the dead are repulsed for the month. But she's too stubborn to run, and so she keeps fighting her bloody, futile war.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Ravenloft]]

Darklord

2021-05-24T03:47:43Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* The Inheritors of Darkon */

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{{Topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

The '''Darklords''' are the rulers ''and'' prisoners of the plane of [[Ravenloft]], from the D&D setting of the same name.

You might be wondering "How are they both rulers and prisoners at the same time?" The reason for this is simple: each Darklord was pulled into the plane by the nebulous forces known only as the Dark Powers after an especially heinous deed (known in-universe as a "Act of Ultimate Darkness"), which reshapes a part of the plane into [[Demiplane of Dread|a realm tailored to each Darklord's defining crime]]. In its own realm a Darklord is a BBEG to rule over all other BBEGs, with absolute power over everything except whatever they desire most - whatever thing that might be, it is always dangled ever so slightly out of their reach by the Dark Powers to amplify their torment further. They have no mouth, and they must scream. (Thus the common description of the setting as "Hell, but not for you".)

=Common Characteristics of Darklords=
The exact abilities and backstories of Ravenloft's Darklords have varied from edition to edition, but almost all exert considerable control over their individual domains, and many Darklords also rule their domains (assuming the domain has a population to rule), either openly or behind the scenes. Many Darklords are also extremely dangerous to confront in open combat, or otherwise have hidden powers up their sleeves that can neutralize entire groups of player characters even without combat.

Keeping in line with the Gothic Horror theme of Ravenloft, the presence and persistence of insidious evil on this plane is the rule and not the exception. By contrast, lasting triumphs of good are vanishingly rare possibilities. As such, PCs aren't really supposed to go toe-to-toe with Darklords and expect to come out on top like your average group of [[murderhobos]] in other D&D settings. Trying to storm through Castle Ravenloft or Castle Avernus (not the Avernus of [[Baator]]) and expecting to put Strahd's or Azalin's skulls on a pike by the end of the play session will most likely either end in a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|total party kill]] or a fate worse than death, assuming the Dungeon Master is at all trying to run the game in a thematically appropriate way. At most, the PCs' efforts might preserve a bit of light in the ever-present mists and hope their activities stay beneath the local Darklord's notice. [[Grimdark|Heroes in this benighted plane are not guaranteed a peaceful death in bed surrounded by family and friends, or a life of glory and deeds well remembered.]] Openly going up against a Darklord is one of the surest ways of ending your character's life and career for good.

A few things about Darklords have remained constant throughout Ravenloft's editions, however. First, unless the Dark Powers will it, Darklords are completely unable to leave their own domains (note that certain "pocket domains" are in fact mobile and can travel between larger domains, but the Darklord within is still powerless to leave its own pocket domain as any other). If PCs manage to leave a Darklord's domain, that specific Darklord is usually powerless to personally come after them (but see "Closing the Borders" below). Second, almost every Darklord has a weakness, usually in the form of something or someone they desire above all else that they would risk anything and everything for, or a personal vulnerability tied to its curse that is usually well-hidden and hard to figure out. Discovering and exploiting these weaknesses are one of the only ways to accomplish some good in spite of a Darklord's efforts, but if it comes to that you've likely already attracted (or will very soon attract) a Darklord's attention and are in deep trouble. A couple other abilities common to Darklords are discussed below.

===Closing the Borders===
The vast majority of Darklords have the ability to force others to share in their imprisonment by supernaturally closing the borders of their domains, usually leaving no way out even with the aid of magic. Trying to leave a closed domain border will just result in a grisly death or automatic failure, and teleportation magic won't work past a closed domain border either. As Ravenloft was an early AD&D product, the designers gave this handy tool to DMs so as to stop players from just up and leaving without going through the DM's plot. Improperly used it can smack of railroading, but it fits well within the Gothic Horror genre convention of having characters get trapped in sinister and dangerous locales with no safe passage out, until a situation is resolved (or the Darklord opens the borders again, as in the case of Ravenloft).

The few Darklords who cannot supernaturally close their borders either lack that ability as part of their curse, or are unable to do so as part of their nature. Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia for instance disdains magic and the supernatural, and in line with this attitude gained no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders upon becoming a Darklord. However, even these Darklords have more mundane ways of barring escape from their domains, such as sending their numerous lackeys to patrol the borders, though thankfully this doesn't impede magical methods of escape. An even smaller number of Darklords are completely unable to close their domain borders in any way, such as Haki Shinpi of Rokushima Taiyoo who was cursed to become a powerless geist upon becoming Darklord (rather than becoming a Death Knight as he originally planned) and was doomed to watch everything he built in his life's conquest literally sink into ruin through the squabbling of his sons.

===Immortality===
Another reason to avoid going up against Darklords is that many of them have ways of returning from death, rendering all of your hard work moot. Even those who don't have explicitly mentioned methods of cheating death, like Strahd, generally have many contingency plans to avoid ever being at risk of getting truly destroyed. To make a bad situation worse, the Dark Powers appear to get occasionally "attached" to their playthings, and frown harshly upon attempts to take their toys away. In game terms, this means that certain Darklords are truly indestructible and can ever only be put out of commission temporarily, and even the attempt at doing so may end up drawing the Dark Powers' attention to whoever tries such a feat. Mercifully, these individuals are the exception, not the rule.

By contrast, some Darklords are fairly ordinary people with no significant combat skills and no more resistance to being killed off for real than their subjects. However, as mentioned above, even these seemingly vulnerable BBEGs often still have the means or minions to deal with a bunch of murderhobos, and most of these non-combat-focused Darklords are still savvy enough to be wary of any potential threats to their survival, and to nip those threats in the bud via underhanded means.

Outside of these extremes, permanently destroying most Darklords requires either killing one in a very specific manner and/or destroying a Darklord's means of cheating death (which in some cases might be nigh-impossible, such as killing every specimen of a very numerous type of creature in a domain before confronting the Darklord). Finding out this information is likely to require a good deal of questing and research to find out, but can make for a great campaign if properly handled. However, even accomplishing all this does nothing to stop the Dark Powers from "promoting" someone in the realm evil enough to assume the mantle of Darklord, possibly leaving the realm and its inhabitants in [[Not as planned|a worse situation than before]]. In fact, not a few of the "current" Darklords assumed their positions by killing the previous ones. In other cases, the title and sometimes even the personality of the Darklord is immediately passed down to another being on the moment of the Darklord's death, thus ensuring that their position is never lost.

===What happens if you permanently destroy a Darklord somehow?===
It's likely that some of you action-oriented elegan/tg/entleman reading this are just champing at the bit to claim a Darklord's skull for your trophy rooms, but as noted above, the odds and the themes of the setting itself are decidedly against you. Or maybe you're a DM who wants to run a Ravenloft campaign where good really can make a difference and want to know what happens when these Gothic Horror BBEGs finally bite the dust for real and no one takes their place.

Unfortunately, the rulebooks have historically been rather ambivalent and lacking in detail about the answer to this question and the resulting implications. Some Ravenloft rulebooks say that once a Darklord is permanently destroyed and no successor is forthcoming, the destroyed Darklord's associated domain might simply disappear, leaving open the question of what happens to all the people who were living there. If the people there simply disappear as well, were they never real in the first place, instead being undispellable illusions made up whole-cloth by the Dark Powers to torment the Darklord? That might work out just fine if your group stuck to playing [[Weekend in Hell]] style adventures in Ravenloft, but what would it say about PCs native to Ravenloft, or even native to the domain now without a Darklord? Or were the people in the Darklord-less domain no more real (and therefore no more morally troubling to harm in any way) than characters in a video game, making the whole "Powers Check" mechanic moot with regards to harming innocents? Is there now a gaping misty void where the previous domain used to be?

Canonically, the answer might be found in how two domains (Arkandale and Gundarak) where the Darklords lost their darklordship were absorbed by neighbouring ones, essentially meaning the people inside those domains just exchanged one insidious tyrant for another. This solution is probably the smoothest way to incorporate the plot element of Darklords being permanently destroyed in your campaign. On the other hand, geographically isolated domains (such as one of the numerous "Islands of Terror" that are completely surrounded by the Mists), or mobile pocket domains with no notable population of sentients can just disappear back into the mists with no larger consequences to other domains upon the permanent death of their Darklords. It still leaves open the question of what happens to the population of sentients in domains situated in the middle of nowhere that suffer a sudden lack of a Darklord, though.

Strahd himself is explicitly mentioned to be a special case with regards to permanent destruction, most probably due to his status as the posterboy of the entire Ravenloft setting (even in universe, it's noted that the Demi-Plane of Dread didn't seem to exist until Strahd's damnation). In 5e's Curse of Strahd module, it is said that in the absurdly unlikely event he is permanently killed with all of his failsafes destroyed or deactivated, the Dark Powers will intervene to resurrect him within a month [[Grimdark|because they refuse to allow the possibility of ending his torment]]. They're "possessive" about their favourite playthings like that.

Players crying foul about this should note that the Dark Powers are mighty enough to bar the gods themselves from coming to Ravenloft. In light of that, something like bringing a Darklord back to life looks like a trivial feat by comparison.

5e Overhall of some domains of Dreads gives some more definitive insight, either hinted at or explicit With some of the newer darklords stealing rulership from older ones. Darklordship Darkon is a prime example of a missing Darklord, as, without Azalin Rex, the domains is slowly dissolving.

Bottom line? Hash it out with your DM beforehand, or if you're a DM yourself, make sure you have a sensible plot thread lined up if you choose to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords, while keeping in mind how important Darklords are to the themes of Ravenloft.

=Notable Darklords=

==The "Hammer Horror" Darklords==
With the horror films by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions Hammer Film Productions] officially cited as a major source of inspiration for the setting of Ravenloft, the Darklords who are patterned after the horror monster archetypes featured in those films will be listed here.

===Strahd von Zarovich===
{{main|Strahd von Zarovich}}
Darklord of Barovia, and the first Darklord to be introduced to the setting--in fact, it's named after his own castle. He is the archetypal vampire darklord in the setting, though by no means the only one, and his appearance is clearly based off of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula in the 1958 ''Dracula'' film by Hammer Film Productions.

Originally the conqueror of a region called Barovia that he claims was the ancestral home of his family, Strahd came to lust after a woman called Tatyana who rejected him in favor of his younger brother Sergei. Strahd took this very badly; badly enough that at some point he made what he called "a pact with Death" that turned him into a [[vampire]] in a desperate attempt to restore his youth. This too failed to win her over, and on the day Tatyana was to be married to Sergei, Strahd killed him and drove her to suicide.

His realm is a copy of Barovia from the Prime Material plane (the original apparently still exists but nothing is said about its current condition or even which D&D setting it originated from), which he has absolute power over to the point where he can enter any private home uninvited in spite of the fact most vampires are unable to do so (since as he boasts, "I am the land"), and he can ignore the standard vampiric weaknesses to mirrors, garlic or holy symbols, none of which ordinary vampires can do. He isn't even "killed" when staked through the heart like ordinary vampires are (though he is effectively paralyzed while staked) and can resist up to ten rounds of sunlight exposure before being destroyed, though he has always a contingency spell cast on himself that will teleport him away to a hidden mountain sanctuary should he ever be exposed to sunlight or staked by a prepared party, much like Bram Stoker's own Dracula had many coffins to sleep in to make his final destruction more difficult. However, Strahd's curse is to have the events leading to his damnation repeat themselves forever--once every generation he will encounter a woman who he believes to be Tatyana's reincarnation, only to be rejected by her in spite of all his vampiric mind control powers, and become responsible for her death once more, all while being unable to simply give up on trying to win her love.

===Ankhtepot===
Darklord of Har'Akir, partially based on the monster from the 1959 film ''The Mummy'' by Hammer Film Productions. He is the archetypal Mummy-based Darklord in the setting, but he is not the only "Ancient Dead" (i.e., a preserved corpse animated into undeath) who happens to be a Darklord.

Ankhtepot in life was a hubristic ruler of a land also named Har'Akir, patterned after Ancient Egypt and sharing the same pantheon of gods. As the head priest of the sun god Ra, the chief god of his land, Ankhtepot was [[Nagash|obsessed with death and became consumed with the desire to live forever]]. Despite sparing no expense (nor quite a few lives, for that matter) his efforts were in vain, and in his rage he razed several temples, stormed into the greatest one and cursed the gods for withholding his heart's desire. For this blasphemy, Ra contacted Ankhtepot directly and said that Ankhtepot would indeed live after death, though he might wish otherwise. Anhktepot was confused about this, but later discovered that he had received a dire curse (making him one of the few outlander Darklords to have received the majority of his curse ''before'' being taken into Ravenloft); anyone he touched was dead by nightfall, and those he killed in this fashion rose from their tombs to serve him absolutely as undead mummies, because apparently Ra considers having mindless servants a punishment. Taking this in stride despite killing many of his relatives, he used his new undead servants to tighten his grip over Har'Akir, but his fellow priests rebelled, killed Ankhtepot in his sleep, and mummified him, little knowing he was still conscious and going insane inside his sarcophagus during his month-long funeral. After being entombed in a remote area with one small village named Mudar, the mists of Ravenloft claimed Ankhtepot, his tomb, and the nearby village, leaving no trace of them in Ankhtepot's home plane.

As Darklord, Ankhtepot spends most of his time in a deathless dream of better days in his tomb, but he can be roused from this state in a few ways, such as if his tomb is disturbed, or if the people of Mudar are anxious or otherwise distressed. His hubris and pride followed him into undeath, and similarly his greatest torment is his desire to be human again, as the god-king of a great empire he once was, while in reality he "rules" over a barren patch of desert with naught but a small mud-hut village. To frustrate him further, the Dark Powers granted Ankhtepot the ability to regain his human form and mortality by draining a human of moisture and life force in a dread sunrise ceremony, but this reversion to mortality lasts only from dawn to nightfall, and during those few daylight hours "under Ra's gaze" he loses all his supernatural powers, once again becoming a normal human with no appreciable abilities until nightfall, whereupon the transformation is undone. Knowing that he would face an eternity of solitude were he to sacrifice everyone in his domain to fleetingly experience mortality again, Ankhtepot generally prefers to wait and dream until he might rule a larger population, a time he seems unaware will never come.

With respect to his crunch, Ankhtepot can be an unholy terror in his Greater Mummy form. He retains much of the high-level spellcasting ability he had in life, his touch-delivered Mummy Rot is both more virulent and harder to cure than almost any other Ravenloft Mummy's, and those who become infected and are mummified alive become Greater Mummies under his total control. Other aces up his sleeve (or rather, his bandages) are the fact that he commands virtually every mummy in his domain, so if sufficiently provoked he can summon up an entire shambling army of mummies to do his bidding, and the fact that a certain item on his person allows him to heal lost hitpoints very quickly, even if reduced below zero, unless that item is removed from him or his downed "corpse." Ankhtepot can, however, easily be killed during his bouts of mortality (even though doing so might attract the attention of the Dark Powers since he poses no real threat during these times), but if he is killed while an ordinary human he can reanimate if he is mummified and entombed again. As a result of a possible oversight by the writers, no mention is made of how Ankhtepot might be able to return to unlife should he be defeated in his Greater Mummy form nor how he might be permanently destroyed, though he can simply reform in his tomb in the case of the former and the latter might simply require that both his tomb and his physical body be completely destroyed, resulting in the village of Mudar returning to its home plane and Ankhtepot's desert joining an adjacent domain.

Given the relative lack of sex appeal for mummies compared to the far more famous vampires and werewolves (unless you're a fan of the [[Tomb Kings]] or [[Mummy: The Curse]]), Ankhtepot and his domain more or less dropped off the face of Ravenloft canon after the AD&D version, and even in AD&D he was fairly passive. Even so, he did affect Ravenloft and D&D at large in one way by creating the first Greater Mummies (AKA "Children of Ankhtepot") to ever exist in a D&D system, though they have since significantly changed from their original incarnation. Ankhtepot has also been known to send his Mummy and Greater Mummy servants outside of his domain to track and kill grave robbers who defile his tomb and other unfortunates who incur his wrath.

Ankhtepot and his domain made his first appearance as the star villain of the classic ''Touch of Death'' Ravenloft module in 1991.

Despite not having shown up since AD&D, he was re-introduced to the setting in 5e, albeit with some significant retcons.

In an ancient country the inhabitants called the Land of Reeds and Lotuses, Ankhtepot served three generations of pharaohs as high priest. When the second pharaoh died, her unworthy son ascended to the throne. The new pharaoh quickly became unpopular among the people and priests, and Ankhtepot came to believe that the gods wanted himself to take the pharaoh's place. On the day of the pharaoh's coronation, Ankhtepot rallied his loyal priests and murdered their liege. Unfortunately he had misjudged both the people's loyalty and the gods' wills. The people rose up and killed him and his fellow priests, and when he died the gods forsook him and barred him from the afterlife. The gods returned him to the world, but stripped away a piece of his soul called the ka -- the vital essence that inspires all living beings.

He awoke immobilized and trapped in his sarcophagus, during which he felt the pain of every cut and every organ removed as if he were alive. One day, after untold years of this suffering, he a voice asking if he still felt he was worthy to rule. Still arrogant after all he had been through, he answered with certainty, and thus emerged from his crypt into the domain of Har’Akir. In this new land, Ankhtepot found a pious people devoted to the same gods he once served, and immediately set to wiping that religion out and replacing their gods with false idols of his own invention. Using blasphemous rites, Ankhtepot resurrected the priests once buried alongside him as powerful mummies, replacing their heads with those of beasts holy to his new faith. These Children of Ankhtepot served him as they did in life, and together the dead conquered the souls of Har’Akir.

Since then he has seen much, and known many things, but now he seeks one thing only: to be reconnected with his lost Ka, which he believes will allow him to finally die. Where and what his Ka is now is left up to the DM to decide, as is what happens when he is reunited with it. All of the suggested results are pretty grim, ranging from him being reborn as a living tyrant far more decadent and sadistic than he was as an undead, to discovering that he cannot be returned to mortality and deciding to wipe out all life in his domain out of spite.

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===Alfred Timothy===
Darklord of Verbrek, and the archetypal werewolf Darklord of the setting, though by no means the only lycanthrope Darklord in Ravenloft. Alfred Timothy was born to Nathan Timothy (former werewolf Darklord of Arkandale) and an unknown mother. Disdained by Nathan for being frail and sickly in his human form, Alfred in turn disdained his father for his "overly human" interest in ferrying cargo and passengers with his paddleboat (in truth, Nathan was cursed as Darklord of Arkandale to become cripplingly nauseous with "land sickness" anytime he tried to set foot on dry land, but instead of suffering from this curse, Nathan grew so accustomed to boating and the company of his human passengers that he unknowingly lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction, despite still being confined to river waters and remaining an unrepentant serial killer).

Leaving to find his own way and to escape the perpetual treatment as the runt of the litter, Alfred happened upon villagers in his father's domain who regularly made sacrifices to appease a savage being they called [[the Wolf God]] in the hopes of relief from continual attacks by bloodthirsty wolves. Taking inspiration from the sight of humans propitiating a lupine deity and perhaps indulging more than a little megalomania at the prospect of being an object of worship or leading a werewolf-centric religion, Alfred wandered the domains and interrogated clerics he met, sometimes lethally, on how he could become a cleric of this "Wolf God" and use its granted powers to inaugurate a werewolf-led reign of terror over humans. Unfortunately, his efforts and sacrifices were fruitless in provoking any response from this "deity," and he began to take out his frustrations on any clerics and religious buildings he could find whenever his latest interrogation target failed to provide the missing ingredient to contacting and receiving spells from the Wolf God. After [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=425913 one such iconoclastic rampage], Alfred incautiously fell asleep near the mutilated corpses and smouldering wreckage of his latest failure. Not content to "let sleeping dogs lie," Alfred was discovered, chained, and about to be burned at the stake by vengeful villagers, were it not for a mother-daughter pair of prescient Vistani who purchased his freedom and told Nathan that for this stay of execution, he must allow all Vistani safe passage in the future. Enraged at the possibility of being bound by a bargain struck with "mere" humans, Alfred promptly killed the Vistani mother, and the mists of Ravenloft claimed him for this betrayal, leaving him within his new domain of Verbrek, which eventually grew to encompass his father's former domain of Arkandale.

Now a Darklord, Alfred was initially delighted at having truly become a cleric of the Wolf God, receiving divine spells and being able to "converse" with it (assuming it exists, but if you decide to play with a nonexistent Wolf God, Ravenloft's Dark Powers have been known to grant divine spells and Alfred might just be hearing voices in his head). The price, as ever with Darklords, was an insidious curse. Alfred wants nothing more than to revel in the bestial fury and passion he once enjoyed as a werewolf, but as Darklord he is forced to transform back into his human form should he ever succumb to any kind of base passion: fear, rage, or lust. Having built a cult of savagery, wanton bloodshed, and debauchery among a large pack of werewolves as the chief priest of the Wolf God, his uncharacteristic unwillingness to practice what he preaches by frequently refraining from hunts and hesitance at finding a mate means his position is growing increasingly precarious. Realizing that widespread knowledge of his weakness would spell his doom (because [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=262657 "being an alpha means proving it every full moon"]), Alfred is trying to divest himself of his humanity by commanding and occasionally participating in ever-greater acts of slaughter, dedicating and offering them to his god who has remained silent on this one pressing issue, with the only exceptions to his wrath being the Vistani as he still remembers what happened the last time he killed one.

Crunch-wise, Alfred is rather conventional as lycanthrope BBEGs go, aside from his cleric levels and being forced to fight in a calculating and tactical manner unlike most werewolves lest he be forced to return to his much weaker human form. He doesn't cast a shadow (since his domain is effectively the shadow he casts on Ravenloft), and can even teleport from shadow to shadow within his domain whenever the moon is visible. As an ironic reminder from the Dark Powers of his fundamental weakness, Alfred cannot even supernaturally close the borders of his own domain, short of sending his dire wolf and werewolf minions to patrol them, though the true nature of this additional curse is likely lost on him, since he probably doesn't know about other Darklords and their ability to close their domain's borders supernaturally. Though not specifically mentioned, Alfred's fluff implies that even ''[https://youtu.be/ZxcljnLb95M?t=1m8s harsh language]'' might be one of the most potent weapons against him; if PCs can recognize him in either his wolf or hybrid forms and manage to enrage him through taunts, he will be forced to return to human form and at a minimum be robbed of the natural weapons of his alternate forms, or even be forced to kill any wolf or werewolf witnesses to his weakness with his clerical powers before turning his attentions to the PCs. However, even if Alfred is killed (and his crunch does not mention any method through which he could cheat death), it is likely the Darklordship (and possibly even Alfred's curse) will simply pass to whichever werewolf in his domain is evil enough for the Dark Powers' liking, preserving Verbrek as a separate domain unless every werewolf in the domain is killed or driven out before the current Darklord's death. Even then, the Dark Powers can always make more Darklordship candidates, though a more darkly ironic postmortem fate for Alfred's cult and domain might be for the Wolf God cult to scatter to the winds after Alfred's death, in essence metastasizing and spreading its cell members and evil elsewhere, while Alfred's father returns to Arkandale just in time to resume his old Darklordship and hear about his son's death, saying only ''"So that self-righteous runt finally bit off more than he could chew. No matter. Runts have always thought themselves to be bigger than they are."''

On a side note, players who want to play a Ravenloft campaign set in Verbrek, but who also want to use [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition|D&D 5e]] rules instead of relying on older books, might opt to use the official Magic-the-Gathering-to-D&D-5e conversion [[Innistrad|''Plane Shift: Innistrad'']] book, using its rules to play a campaign set in Innistrad's Kessig province. Kessig is thematically similar to Ravenloft's Verbrek as both are "werewolf country" locations, minus Darklords and other Ravenloft-exclusive mechanics. Until the Ravenloft setting is more fully adapted for D&D 5e, the Innistrad conversion is probably the best foundation for playing Verbrek in 5e.

===Dr. Victor Mordenheim/Adam===
Co-Darklords of Lamordia, of a sort. Like the character of Victor Frankenstein (best known for creating Frankenstein's monster) he was based on, Dr. Victor Mordenheim sought to create life and was certain that a soul was not necessary for it to exist. To show him the error of his ways, the gods saw fit to endow the doctor's creation with a soul--specifically, an irredeemably evil soul. The newly created dread flesh [[golem]] was dubbed Adam, and he soon grew jealous of the love that his maker's wife Elise and adopted daughter Eva had for him. Adam's plan to kidnap Elise failed, and instead he killed Eva and wounded Elise so badly she went into a vegetative state. It was at that time that the doctor and his creation were taken together into Ravenloft.

The doctor himself resides in his own mansion, Schloss Mordenheim, spending most of his time obsessively trying to revive his comatose-but-alive wife (who has herself long since gone mad due to her life support system causing her constant pain simply by being active), up to the point of continually constructing new bodies out of exhumed or painlessly-killed female corpses for her, but is cursed to never succeed and to never stop trying. Note that this is not out of love, though Mordenheim still believes that it is--it has become nothing more than a compulsion that has become his only reason for living. Meanwhile, Adam is now the "ruler" of an inhospitable island aptly dubbed the Isle of Agony in the middle of Lamordia inhabited solely by himself, forever cut off from the acceptance that he sought, cursed to feel the doctor's pain as his own, and rejected by the very land that he supposedly controls (as it is influenced by Mordenheim and not Adam). Adam's only form of solace comes from sabotaging Dr. Mordenheim's attempts at reviving Elise just to spite him. Player characters who meet Adam and treat him without pity or revulsion may be able to get some useful information out of him or even get him to open the borders of Lamordia, but he is very prone to anger and is virtually unstoppable once enraged.

So strong is Mordenheim's disbelief in magic that his own domain also (potentially) interferes with divine magic of any kind, making it unreliable, and may even block any magical attempts to heal Elise. Worse still, Mordenheim's attempts at training apprentices over the years in the vain hope that they might just achieve the necessary breakthrough to restoring Elise has unleashed quite a few mad scientist villains, or monsters born of mad science (such as the Living Brain, a disembodied brain in a life-support jar that uses its psionic powers to direct and dominate a major organized crime ring), onto Ravenloft at large.

In a curious twist, Adam is the Darklord and is the one with the power to close Lamordia's borders, but both Adam and his creator are effectively immortal and ageless, and Mordenheim even shares his creation's immunities and regenerative properties. If either is killed and their corpse completely destroyed by fire, acid, or even disintegration, either will simply reincarnate into the nearest most recently deceased male corpse (for Mordenheim) or flesh golem corpse (for Adam, and there are a quite a number of these running around Lamordia, made either by Mordenheim as failed bodies for Elise and futile attempts to recreate Adam's "success," or Adam's frustrated attempts at making sympathetic company for himself), and will shortly thereafter shape their new bodies into looking just like their previous selves. The only way to destroy Adam and Mordenheim for good is to destroy them together at the same time. If DMs decide to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords (see above), then the fate of Elise and Lamordia itself is up to them; one appropriate denouement could be that the permanent deaths of Adam and Mordenheim might just be the spark Mordenheim's machinery needs to briefly restore Elise long enough to rise up and forgive their long-suffering spirits before leading both to their afterlives, just before the land suddenly twists and shifts to reflect the curse and nature of its new Darklord.

Adam and Dr. Mordenheim first appeared in the one-shot adventure in a 1994 boxed set named "Adam's Wrath," intended for outlander PCs to undertake a [[Weekend in Hell]] adventure.

===Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken===
The "Jekyll & Hyde" Darklord of Nova Vaasa. Sir Hiregaard is a staunch, gruff but sincerely righteous man who is dedicated to his people and his land. However, he also plays host to Malken- an alternate personality that takes over Tristen's body, warping it into [[Caliban (Ravenloft)|a form so hideously ugly one can't recognize they're the same person]] and who delights in killing anyone who stands in the way of Hiregaard's repressed desires.

Strangely, Tristen did nothing at all to earn the position of Darklord; Malken is an entity born from a curse that was placed on Tristen's ''father'' by Tristen's mother Romir that compelled him to kill every woman he loved and any man who crossed him; Hiregaard Senior was an intensely jealous man and killed his wife and the man teaching her how to waltz in a fit of rage, thinking she was having an affair with him. When he killed himself to escape the curse, the curse passed to Tristen instead. Six years and nine killings after the curse first manifested itself in him, Tristen was taken into the mists and the secret jealousies and angers born from the curse coalesced into the being known as Malken. Tristen is only partially aware of Malken's existence, just enough to have his guards lock him into his personal chambers when he feels a fit of jealousy or anger coming on. For years he has assumed this has kept Malken in check, but as of late he is starting to suspect that Malken is too clever to be thwarted by mundane confinement despite the latter's attempts at keeping his influence a secret. Were he to discover the whole truth, he would be willing to do anything to end the curse.

This curse is the key to Malken's immortality; if Tristen is killed, then Tristen's eldest living male descendant will be possessed - and Malken will keep going down the chain each time his host dies, meaning that unless you find "the right way" to kill him, Malken can only be stopped by massacring Tristen's entire family line... which the players could potentially belong to. However, if Malken's host is killed by a woman genuinely in love with that man, then Malken will be dragged screaming into whatever hell-hole awaits him. And given that this would be a massive act of betrayal on that woman's part, she would likely end up becoming the new Darklord herself.

It should also be noted for DMs that "the struggle within his soul" prevents Malken from achieving the proper focus to Close the Borders of his domain, so if you want to run a session or campaign focussed around Nova Vaasa, you had better have a compelling in-universe reason to keep the PCs from simply up and leaving, since canonically DMs can't force the issue and simply lock the PCs into Nova Vaasa like they can with most other Darklords. It's possible that if Malken possesses a more evil host, he might just be able to Close the Borders then, but the form such a closed border would take has never been revealed in canon.

==Other Darklords==

===Addar===
{{main|Addar}}
The father of [[Shadow Unicorn]]s and a Darklord of questionable canon. More info on his page.

===Azalin Rex===
Darklord of Darkon. A powerful mage who inherited the rule of the city-state of Knurl, his draconian rule culminated in the execution of his son when he was caught freeing political prisoners. Soon afterward, Azalin became a [[lich]] and devoted himself to searching for a spell that could resurrect the dead; he believed that his son's sense of compassion was due to a mistake in his upbringing and assumed that if he could be revived that mistake could be fixed.

As soon as he was taken into Ravenloft he lost the ability to learn any new magic at all- a terrible thing for any magic user, and even worse for a lich like him who became undead for the sole purpose of gaining more knowledge. This power over memory affects anyone else who enters Darkon as well; staying there for more than three months at a time causes a visitor's memories to be erased and replaced with false ones of spending one's whole life in Darkon. Originally an ally of Strahd when he first entered the mists, their relationship soured quickly after a failed attempt at escaping the Demi-plane of Dread temporarily split the former into two separate beings and they've remained enemies ever since. Another ill-fated attempt at breaking free in which he planned to become a demilich backfired even more spectacularly. Instead of allowing his essence to be freed from Ravenloft, it dispersed his essence across Darkon and destroyed the domain's capital. It took five years for him to reassume a corporeal form and take control of his realm again.

In 5th edition, Azalin has mysteriously gone missing. Did he finally outsmart the Dark Powers and escape? The only clue about where he went is that when he vanished a strange golden star or starlike thing called The King's Tear appeared in the sky and hasn't moved since and the sun and moon pass ''behind'' it instead of in front of it every day.

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===Baron Urik von Kharkov===
Considered one of the goofier Darklords, albeit not as bad as Tristen ApBlanc, and with a much more usable domain in Valachan. Baron Kharkov is basically half-Blacula and half-Werepanther; he was a black panther that a Red Wizard of Thay turned into a human being to use as an assassin. The Red Wizard arranged for him to fall in love with his rival, and then undid the transfiguration spell on him while they were together so he would tear her apart as a panther. When he was turned back into a human, he freaked out and ran off into the Mists. He found himself in Darkon, where he spent 20 years as a member of Azalin's secret police (turning into a Nosferatu in the process). He later escaped and subsequently became the Darklord of Valachan after entering the Mists again. We don't know what he did that turned him into a Darklord, in part due to his own fuzzy memories of what happened during that time, but he claims he killed many people while in the mists, including the Red Wizard that transformed him the first time.

Anyway, he's a blood-drinking black vampire cursed with yellow eyes (that turn into cat's eyes when he's pissed off) and with hands that resemble paws, being covered in fur and bearing retractile claws. He can still turn into a panther, in which state his bite turns people into werepanthers, and controls panthers instead of the normal wolves. His curse is to basically relive his most traumatizing event over and over again; he's constantly seeking a human bride, but once he has one, he can never trust her not to find out that he's not human, and inevitably murders her in a fit of paranoid fury. (He should try dating a [[Furry]] fan or Jaqueline Reiner, that would solve it.)

In 5th edition he has been killed and succeeded by Chakuna.

===Bluebeard===
A rare darklord actually ''liked'' by his subjects, Bluebeard rules over Blaustein (German: "Blue Stone"), a small nation from an unknown world. His rule was considered just and fair, and as a ruler he was considered to be quite generous. Unfortunately for him, he was an incredibly ugly man -- a blue-tinted beard and all -- which to his credit, he overcame with his own charms... and being incredibly wealthy didn't hurt either. Despite all of his good qualities, however, Bluebeard could not achieve a lasting marriage.

He would find a woman to marry, and soon after the wedding he would leave the castle for a time, handing its care over to his new wife. He would give her a set of keys to every door in the castle, and pointing out the one special golden key which opened a room at the very top floor. His instruction was to never open that particular door, with vague consequences. So far none of his wives have been able to overcome this temptation; and when they did open the door they found his grisly collection of former wives, hung up by meat-hooks with their throats slit. By opening the door, the key -- which was magical in nature -- would have a bloody mark that would appear that could not be removed except by Bluebeard himself. He would return to the castle soon after, and demand to see the keys. If the woman had given into temptation (which each invariably did), she would then share the fate as the other women in the room. Marcella was his fourth wife and victim. Her death was not the final, but eventually Bluebeard's repeated murders brought Blaustein into Ravenloft.

After becoming a darklord, Bluebeard was gifted by the Dark Powers with a minor charisma increase, which does not make him handsome by any means but does not leave him as ugly as he once was. He is also able to perfectly detect any lie. Even after the Mists took hold, Bluebeard is still the de facto leader of Blaustein, although his rule was twisted to be even more sadistic. Simply displeasing him is a death sentence, yet the populace still holds him in incredibly high regard. This is because he also has complete control over their memories, and freely erases or rewrites their recollections of his atrocities.

He is unable to marry any woman native to Blaustein, as their visages always twist to the posthumous appearance of one of his dead wives. This curse does not affect women who were born foreign of Blaustein, and Bluebeard along with his subjects are always on the constant lookout for any attractive women who fit this criteria. Lorel, an outlander he grabbed through the Mists, was his latest wife (and victim).

Bluebeard is also haunted by the ghosts of the wives he killed. Every third night must be spent in his castle in order to sleep, and he always awakes to the frightening caress of the specters of his murdered wives. Like his subjects, they are utterly devoted to him, yet in the most twisted way possible. While he considers this distressing, it has not stopped him from sending another wife to the same fate.

It is currently unknown if he has any dealings with any other nation or darklord, at least beyond welcoming in his harbour ships including those engaged in piracy.

He's mentioned in a single sentence in 5e, which states that apparently his spectral wives overthrew him and now endlessly torment him. Exactly how this happened or what this entails is not elaborated upon.

===Captain Alain Monette===

Darklord of L'ile de la Tempete. A violent and cruel privateer and captain of the ''Ouragan''. Eventually his crew snapped from his vicious temper and regular abuse and mutinied against him, keelhauling him thrice before throwing him into the sea. This was meant to be an execution- keelhauling, or dragging a sailor around the keel of a ship to be cut by the barnacles growing on it and hit against the ship's hull, is traumatic even when it's only done once and the victim is taken on board the ship afterward. But Alain survived, and washed up on the shores of a small island in the mists. Vampire bats came to drink the blood from his wounds, and Alain survived in turn by eating them- which turned him into a werebat.

Alain thus recovered from his keelhauling, but physical health was a cold comfort as he soon found that even with the flight he gained as a werebat, he could not leave his lonesome island. Driven mad by the isolation and cut off from the sea, he now vents his frustrations on those who sail as he no longer can. His island contains a lighthouse, but as with many things in Ravenloft, it's a trap in the guise of something helpful. Anyone, even outside the Mists, who investigates the light is drawn to the hazardous waters near his lighthouse, where most are shipwrecked. If any survivors somehow make it to shore, Alain will greet them. He'll be quite friendly, at first- he's starved for company and news of the outside world. But he's even more starved for flesh, and within a few days at most he will attack and kill them.

===Captain Pieter van Riese===
Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Originally from Gothic Earth's version of the Netherlands, Pieter was a ship's captain obsessed with finding the legendary Northwest Passage. When his ship was sunk in an encounter with an iceberg, he offered his own life along with the lives of his crew to any being who could help them forward, and the Dark Powers answered him. Naturally, they didn't actually give him what he wanted.

Pieter is now a ghost, and the captain of the ghost ship ''The Relentless''. He has the power to summon the ghosts of those who killed others and then were killed in the Sea of Sorrows to crew his ship, and can sail anywhere in his domain. However, he can no longer explore as he wishes, since the island domains in the Sea of Sorrows move around and he can only sail to land that he's chartered to go to.

Pieter is Ravenloft's answer to the legends of the ''Flying Dutchman'', a ghost ship that is unable to make port and sails the seas forever. Most versions say that the curse is because of her captain, Hendrick van der Decken, refusing to go to port while crossing the Cape of Good Hope, declaring that he would not make port "though I should beat about here till the day of judgment". He got shipwrecked in a storm, and the ghost of his ship is now bound by his curse to never be able to rest at port.

===Councilor Dominic d'Honaire===
The darklord of Dementlieu. Originally born in Mordentshire, Dominic led his nanny to suicide at age 7 and then manipulated his family to move away to avoid the Mordentshire police, with the mists giving him the domain of Dementlieu. Dominic is not the domain's temporal leader but does serve as an adviser for Marcel Guignol, Dementlieu's head of state. However, Dominic has much more power than his official position would suggest. The darklord's power is domination over the minds of other people on a prodigious scale. A great many in the land, including its recognized head, are his obedients and through this network he knows whatever goes on in his land.

His personal curse is that any woman he woos sees him as more repulsive the more he is attracted to her. Also, for some time his rule is challenged by an entity who is called (and virtually is) the Living Brain (re: ''Sherlock Holmes''' Moriarty), the last remains of Rudolph von Aubrecker, the youngest son of Lamordia's political ruler.

in 5e, the domain was revamped and the Darklord is now Saidra d’Honaire, though there is a plot hook that hints he's still around and trying to get his position back (then again Dementlieu is now a place where everyone pretends).

==="Death"===
Darklord of Necropolis (formerly Il-Aluk, the capital of Darkon). He is one of several minor Darklords that took over pieces of Darkon in Azalin's absence during the [[Grim Harvest]] and the only one of them to become a full Darklord after Azalin came back. Originally a clone of Azalin made by him as part of a convoluted scheme to bypass his curse, he was transformed into a negative energy elemental by the prototype version of the "Doomsday Device" Azalin thought would make him into a demilich. When it backfired, the massive surge of negative energy it released killed the whole of Il-Aluk's population. "Death" then claimed the ruined capital and its remaining undead inhabitants as its own, and after Azalin reconstituted himself Necropolis became its own domain. A shroud of negative energy still remains over Necropolis, which instantly kills all non-undead which attempt to enter its borders.

===Draga Salt-Biter===

Darklord of Saragoss, a watery domain where the only analogue to 'land' is 'places where the seaweed is clumped particularly tight'. Draga is a [[Therianthrope|wereshark]] pirate [[Cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] with a deep-rooted fear of sharks. Yes, it's ironic that he hates sharks while being able to turn into one. He knows. He got both his wereshark infection and his fear of sharks in the same incident; as a child, he was captured by a crew of pirates, who stuck a hook into one of his calves and dangled him into shark-infested waters, understandably traumatizing the kid. And after his own piracy and terrorism of the seas in Umberlee's name caught the Dark Powers' attention, they saw no reason to mess with a perfectly good case of irony and gave him a neat selection of new powers... all of which were shark-themed. He controls sharks, can only breathe underwater (though he also has a ring of air-breathing that allows him to surface for a few hours at a time), and his resurrection method involves his spirit being reborn via sharks. He's also becoming increasingly shark-like in mentality as time passes, a prospect which terrifies him.

===Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth===

Darklord of Dominia. Reknowned throughout the Demiplane of Dread as an expert on mental illness, few know the dark secret behind his knowledge. Terrified of falling victim to the heredity madness that plagued his family, Heinfroth conducted horrific experiments on his mental patients to deepen his understanding of insanity. One of these experiments turned him into the first cerebral vampire, a vampire subspecies that feeds on cerebral fluid instead of blood.

===Dr. Frantisek Markov===
Darklord of Markovia. Originally a pig farmer from Barovia, he grew increasingly obsessed with the anatomy of the pigs he butchered and began to perform bizarre experiments on them that wouldn't be out of place in a [[Haemonculus]]' laboratory. When his "subjects" inevitably died, he simply sold the meat without telling anyone what he had done to it first. Eventually his wife discovered his gruesome hobby and threatened to expose him, at which time she ended up becoming one of his experiments as well. After three days of vivisection, she finally expired- her corpse was so horrifically mangled that when it was first discovered it was mistaken for the remains of a monster. When Markov's involvement in her death became clear, the mists claimed him and made him a Darklord.

Fittingly, Markov's curse allows him to shapeshift into any animal form he wishes (save for his head, which remains human), but is incapable of assuming his original human form. As a result, he normally takes the shape of a gorilla in order to continue his increasingly deranged experiments without being impeded by a lack of thumbs. Said experiments culminated in the creation of the "[[Broken One]]s"- animals (and the occasional unlucky human) that have been surgically mutilated into a human-animal hybrid form and given a semblance of intellect, similar to the Beast Folk of ''The Island of Dr. Moreau''. Like said Beast Folk, they too are highly prone to reverting to their primal instincts and bestial appearance after only a few days.

===Easan the Mad===
Darklord and ruler of Vechor. Easan has the power to reshape the land, and even reality itself, within his domain. Combined with his capricious whims, his power makes the realm a place of constant change.

Easan is a short wood elf and former agitator for a war against Iuz the Evil. For his efforts, he was seemingly driven mad by the possession of a fiend. Now Easan only looks for a cure to his madness, but he is willing to tear many innocent lives apart, and maybe even reality itself, to find a cure. His vile research has focused on souls and soul transference. Among other monstrosities, his research created the dread mechanical golem from fellow outlander Ahmi Vanjuko.

It all started on the outlander world of Oerth. Easan argued the cause for war to his colleagues among the rulers of a tiny elf kingdom bordering Iuz's empire. To make an example of the upstart elf, Iuz ordered his agents to kidnap Easan. With Easan rendered helpless before him, Iuz bound a fiend to Easan.

The presence of the fiend within Easan began eating away at his mind. Many magical means of expulsion failed, including the divine magic of [[St. Cuthbert]]'s followers. In an effort to find a way to free himself from the fiend, Easan visited a far-off island of mystics. They managed to suppress the fiend for a time, but eventually the monks and their island were rent asunder by a disaster of mysterious circumstances. Only Easan came out of it alive. The cause of the incident was Iuz's visit to the island and his ensuing frustration at Easan's seeming mastery over the fiendish spirit within. Iuz brought about the magical destruction that wiped out the entire island.

Whereas Easan emerged from the disaster with his body intact, his mind had only deteriorated further. The fiend had returned, but Easan did not give up hope. Where religion had failed, Easan resolved to find a way to banish the fiend with perverse experiments. Easan sacrificed many lives in his pursuit for a cure before he was taken in by the Mists.

Eventually, Easan noticed he was in a foreign, if familiar, land where he was viewed as a god. Indeed, he now had the power to warp reality (albeit slowly) within his own domain. Although he enjoys this from time to time, for the most part he remains obsessed with finding secrets of the soul. For all his power, he cannot seem to best his own inner demons, for he has all but forgotten the reasons why he began his foul research.

In truth, Easan never had a fiend implanted in him at all. It was all merely a deception to throw him off balance. Still, Easan's mind locked onto it, and when others couldn't detect the nonexistent affliction, Easan turned to his own methods for finding a cure.

===Ebonbane===
First introduced in the Darklords sourcebook, Ebonbane is a villainous character strongly associated with the mythos surrounding the Shadowborn Family and the Shadowlands cluster. In universe, Ebonbane is a source of horrific evil that has been opposed by Lady Kateri Shadowborn and her kin for almost two centuries, going back to the Heretical Wars on the Prime Material Plane. Once a powerful fiend known as Lussimar, Ebonbane was conjured and trapped inside a sword by mortal spellcasters. Ebonbane struck back at its summoners and enslaved them. After Ebonbane killed Kateri Shadowborn, it became darklord of Shadowborn Manor, the former residence of its nemesis.

===Elena Faith-Hold===
Darklord of Nidala. Elena was a [[Paladin]] of the god [[Belenus]] that acted as a guardian of a land also called Nidala, but her devotion to Belenus was tainted by her fondness for the adoration of the masses. Following a great crusade against the forces of evil, the people began to scorn those who did not worship Belenus. The more zealous members of the clergy appealed to her vanity and drive to please Belenus, and soon she grew so fanatical that after the "non-believers" were wiped out, she turned on followers that she deemed unworthy, always finding some new target for her purges. For this, Belenus withdrew his support, but Elena never realized that she fell because her formerly [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies had blossomed into full-fledged self-righteousness- thus leaving her incapable of even considering that she might have gone astray from her god's teachings.

Believing her fall to be only a test of faith, she grew ever more ruthless in purging those who she deemed unclean, until she was eventually drawn by the Mists into the Demiplane of Dread. She didn't actually become a Darklord until later, when she started slaughtering entire villages because she saw more evil than good in them (not knowing that she was only looking at the worst parts of each town). At that point, she was given the domain of Nidala, which she runs as a dour police state, forbidding all practices she sees as evil while allowing her cult of personality to reach new heights. When she considers a town to be too corrupted, she and her followers destroy it, blaming the deed on the fictional [[dragon]] Banemaw. Ironically enough, in her domain the true dogma of Belenus is considered [[Heresy]], and her servant/"spiritual guide" Theokos (a fiend-like entity masquerading as a [[Cleric]] of Belenus) strives to wipe it out entirely.

As a Darklord, Elena has her paladin powers back, except they're from the Dark Powers, so they're warped in ways that Elena is in severe denial about (to the point where she's a straight [[Blackguard]] in some writeups). Her unicorn steed is now fiendish, she commands undead instead of turning them, her Aura of Courage is an Aura of Despair, she can only heal herself or her steed, and most notably her Detect Evil power instead detects strong emotions that others feel towards her (any emotion works, so someone who genuinely loves her will still be detected as "evil" with predictable results), leaving them vulnerable to her version of Smite Evil. Naturally, Elana refuses to believe that her Detect Evil power doesn't actually work as it's supposed to and insists that the inability of anyone else to use Detect Evil in the Demiplane of Dread is proof of their spiritual impurity. She is also able to "convert" foes to her side as loyal servants who will gladly die for her, which functions like an enhanced humanoid-only version of Charm Monster.

She is cursed with bouts of self-doubt, and once every week she must take a midnight ride as a chorus of voices denounce her for becoming one of the forces of evil she once fought against.

===Eli Van Hassen===

Darklord of the Endless Road, and a creation of the 4th edition to replace the infamously-dubious Headless Horseman and his Winding Road domain. Eli, unlike the Horseman, has an actual known reason to be Darklord, with the Horseman being downgraded to part of Eli's curse.

Eli was once a minor nobleman who ruled over a hamlet called Tranquility, despite having much grander ambitions. When his lands were ravaged by a hydra, a wandering horseman came by and slew the beast, being lauded as a hero. Eli was filled with envy as the huntsman received praise and admiration that he didn't, and his daughter falling in love with the man was the last straw. He forced the girl to claim that the Horseman had raped her, whipped the denizens of Tranquility into a frenzied mob, and executed the innocent man. Drawn to the Demiplane of Dread for this crime, Eli is now trapped on his estate, for the Headless Horseman, the spectre of the hero he murdered, wanders the road outside and will kill Eli if he ever steps beyond his estate's boundaries.

===Gabrielle Aderre===
Darklord of Invidia. A [[half-Vistani]] whose mother was raped by Drakov and was rejected by her fellow Vistani, she had always fantasized about her father's identity and resented her mother's unwillingness to speak of him, as well as her warning that if she bore a child it would end in disaster for everyone around her. When her mother was attacked by a werewolf, Gabrielle refused to aid her until she revealed the truth about her father. But when her mother did so, Gabrielle refused to believe it and left her to die. The mists took her after that, and she came to be cursed with an inability to cause direct harm to the [[Vistani]], either physically or magically. Soon afterward she came to become the temporal leader of Invidia as well as its darklord, an opportunity that allowed her to begin persecuting the Vistani in spite of her curse.

She took many lovers as Invidia's ruler, though she only truly loved one of them, a wolfwere called Matton Blanchard. However, she was later seduced by the incubus calling himself "The Gentleman Caller" and left pregnant by him. Her son Malocchio soon proved to be one of the Dukkar- one of the rare males of Vistani blood with The Sight. On its own this would be a cause for concern among the Vistani, as the Dukkar is effectively the Vistani equivalent of the Antichrist; however, Gabrielle went even further and taught him to hate the Vistani as much as she did. Ultimately she taught him too well, as Malocchio betrayed Gabrielle and took the position of Invidia's temporal ruler for himself. She survived due to the intervention of Blanchard, but since then Malocchio has been the ruler of Invidia, persecuting the Vistani far more effectively than Gabrielle ever could have done. The only reason he has yet to kill her is because he knows that if she dies, he will inevitably inherit her title of Darklord, which he has no interest in gaining.

===Gregor Zolnik===

Darklord of Vorostokov. The only known Darklord from [[Birthright]], Gregor is descended from Azrai, and lives down to the bloodline's negative reputation. Gregor was an excellent hunter, and back in Cerilia, his skills saved his village during an exceptionally harsh winter. Gregor loved being a hero to the people, but his talent for hunting couldn't work so well every winter. And so, to keep bringing back meat, he started hunting humans. This drew Vorostokov into Ravenloft, where the winter has continued ever since (though recently it has shown some signs of abatement). Gregor still "hunts" for his people, although they've started to cotton on to Gregor's lies and resent their dependence on him, they have no other choice, for Gregor forbids anyone else from hunting.

Gregor is a [[Loup du Noir]], and the boyarsky who support him are the same, as he infected them. His two sons are also nascent Loup du Noir, but the younger, Mikhail, wishes to escape him.

===Gwydion the Sorceror-Fiend===
Darklord of the Shadow Rift, and such an asshole that even the ''Shadow Fey'' think he's a monster. He is also responsible for their current state, as prior to Ravenloft, he was a powerful warlord on the Plane of Shadow, and to sate his ambitions, he kidnapped a bunch of normal fey, turned them into the Shadow Fey, and told them to create an interdimensional portal so he could use them as an army to conquer other planes. This worked as well as could be expected [[Derp|considering he had no mental domination of his creations]]. The Shadow Fey made a portal, alright... but it wasn't to the Prime Material and the armies that marched through it were actually a mass exodus of the Shadow Fey, hidden by illusions.

Gwydion eventually discovered the Shadow Fey's treachery, but it was too late, and by the time he got to the portal to stop them, the exodus was almost complete. The Shadow Fey king, Arak, held Gwydion back long enough for the Shadow Fey to all escape and seal the portal while Gwydion was going through it, trapping the Sorceror-Fiend. The other side of the portal led to the Demiplane of Dread, where the Dark Powers created the Shadow Rift to contain Gwydion further.

And that's pretty much how it remains. Aside from a failed escape attempt during the Grand Conjunction, Gwydion has remained stuck in that portal, unable to do anything but watch and send Shadow Fey an occasional bad dream.

===Haki Shinpi===
Darklord of Rokushima Táiyoo. He's a powerless [[Geist]] that, in life, was a powerful [[samurai]] and clan leader that forged a big and powerful empire. He felt pride in the fact that his clan and lands held together while others fell to discord, despair, and war, which he helped to instigate via manipulation and betrayal. Haki Shinpi somewhat lived by the code of Bushido but abused and exploited it to manipulate his nemeses, play them against each other, and run their hopes into the ground.

Shortly prior to Haki's death, he made it known that each of his six sons would inherit part of his conquered lands evenly. As expected, this went swimmingly for everyone involved. After his death, his children turned to bickering and then all out war against each other. Two of his children met their doom, and their islands were leveled by earthquakes before Rokushima Taiyoo was brought into the Demiplane of Dread.

Far from the influential and powerful man he was in life, Haki Shinpi can now do little to keep his sons from tearing his land apart in civil war.

===Harkon Lukas===
Darklord of Kartakass. A [[wolfwere]] bard from the [[Forgotten Realms]] unusual among his kind for his highly social nature, as most wolfweres are lone predators who only come together temporarily to breed. Seeing as how he couldn't get other wolfweres to agree to hang around together, he started focusing more on integrating into human society. He still hunted and ate humans, but he also gained a genuine love of human culture and of the idea of being somebody important. One day, for no reason since he'd basically been doing the same stuff any wolfwere does, just spending a bit more time in town in between kills, the Dark Powers grabbed his ass and yanked him into Barovia. At which point he went on an anti-wolf killing spree for, again, no particular reason. This attracted Strahd's attention, and he nearly killed Lukas, forcing the wolfwere to flee into the Mists, which gave him his own domain of Kartakass. Which, much to his frustration, is a tiny, rustic place where the most power he'll ever have is being mayor of a small town, so he's got the letter of what he wanted but not the spirit, making for a hollow victory.

The 5th edition version of Harkon Lukas is a [[Loup-garou]] instead of a wolfwere, and it changes some of the other details about him. As in the original, he had dreams of a [[werewolf]] society - an empire of werewolves, in fact - but that dream was dashed by the werewolf indifference to gathering in large numbers. So he tried to forge an empire amongst [[human]]s, this time actually directly getting involved; ultimately, he led a revolution against a king by faking his own death as a martyr to stir up riots, then using these to get him close enough to the king that he could burst out of the coffin his followers were carrying him around in, rip the king to shreds, and take the king's crown for himself... which was when the mists swallowed him and he found himself in Kartakass. His curse is also tweaked slightly as well; rather than being doomed to never rise above the position of mayor, he's doomed to never rise above the even less prestigious position of nearly-forgotten, washed-up performer.
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===Hazlik===
Darklord of Hazlan. A gay [[Forgotten Realms|Red Wizard of Thay]] who was publicly humiliated and stripped of his status by his female rival and her boyfriend, the latter of which he lusted after. As revenge, he murdered the guy, made his girlfriend eat his corpse, then tortured her to death as well, at which time he was then swept up by the mists. His curse is to suffer from nightmares of his now-inaccessible rivals defeating him with impunity and generally humiliating him every night, which has made him even more fixated on getting revenge against the Red Wizards. So he's crafting plans to cast a spell that will genocide all members of his race, the Mulan, throughout the multiverse. To escape being killed by said genocide spell himself, he's prepared to bodysnatch his female Rashemani apprentice when he's ready to use it.

The 5e version retcons him quite a bit. Once an ambitious Red Wizard with a habit of horribly scarring his rivals, Hazlik came to believe that his lover/rival, a man named Indreficus, was planning to betray him. In retribution, he captured Indreficus and subjected him to a nightmarish experiment that left him permanently transformed into a pain-wracked living portal. Hazlik presented what had become of his former lover as to the zulkirs with hopes to impress them, only to be told Indreficus did not betray him and he had merely been manipulated by the zulkirs into thinking so as a way to halt the ambitious pair's ascent. They then declared Hazlik’s transformation of Indreficus an abomination, and that as punishment, every rival Hazlik had defeated could exact a penance of their choosing upon him. In desperation, Hazlik fled through the twisted portal that had been Indreficus and found himself in the demiplane of dread, where he eventually found his way to a realm that knew nothing of magic.

As well as his old nightmares (which are now of Indreficus taunting him for his failures), he also has a new curse borrowed from the now-absent Azalin Rex, making him unable to learn any new magic. On top of no longer being able to advance the magical research that used to drive his life, he's also absolutely terrified that anyone will learn of his limitations.

===Hive Queen===
Darklord of the sewer domain of Timor that lies beneath Paridon, and a half-Marikith because somebody thought it was time to rip off the Aliens franchise. She wasn't always a monster, though. She was originally a spoiled princess who decided one day to scare her mother to death. To do this, she seduced a wizard into casting an illusion of her transforming into a half-Marikith, but when said wizard saw her with her real lover, he decided to spice up the spell a bit by removing the 'illusion' bit and ''actually'' transforming her. She now lurks in the sewers as the Queen of the Marikiths, regularly laying more Marikith eggs. But she fears being usurped even from what little power she has, so if any of those eggs hatches another Marikith Queen, the Hive Queen kills the hatchling.

===Illithid God-Brain===
The darklord of Bluetspur is an [[illithid]] [[Elder Brain]], a massive conglomeration of the brain of every dead illithid, merged together into a new, living, entirely alien entity. It's the reason using psionic powers in Ravenloft is a dicey proposition, as the God-Brain might notice and attempt to integrate you into itself. It's notable for having '''no''' attempt to justify its position in Ravenloft whatsoever, with the original writeup in the Red Box, the original Ravenloft campaign setting collection, literally saying that nobody knows why it's in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], what crime it committed to end up here, or even how it's actually being tormented by its stay here!

The ''Book of Sacrifices'' gives it a backstory and reason for its Darklordship. Its core persona was once a human psion named Seldrid, whose people were at war with the Illithids. Eventually, they began to win for good once the Illithid Elder Brain started to die, but unfortunately for them, Seldrid had come to admire the Illithids' power and discipline, and merged with the Elder Brain to revive it. This act of betraying his people to such a great evil caught the Dark Powers' attention, and as the Illithids sacked his home city, they drew the country into the Demiplane of Dread as Bluetspur, with the Seldrid-brain as Darklord. Seldrid's curse is an inability to transfer his consciousness as he once did or to integrate any new consciousnesses into himself. Now trapped as a giant brain in a pool with nothing but Illithid tadpoles for company, unable to make himself more mobile or gain any outside experiences, Seldrid has gone quite insane.

5th edition has its own take on the idea. In a nutshell, the God-Brain hails from the era when the Illithid empire was at its peak, performing whatever blasphemous experiments took its fancy until it literally thought something that was unthinkable. That is, it had a thought so blasphemous, so utterly inimical to reality itself, that even an Elder Brain couldn't actually think it. Becoming obsessed with this ineffable thought, the God-Brain began cannibalizing other Elder Brains to try and upgrade itself to the point where it could finally contemplate this mysterious thought-form. Instead, it just gave itself a kind of aggressive psychic cancer, which began fatally necrotizing the God-Brain's neural tissues. Aghast at its behavior and terrified of catching the disease themselves, the other Elder Brains pooled their powers and tried to erase the God-Brain from existence; thanks to the meddling of the [[Dark Powers]], they only succeeded in banishing the God-Brain to the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Now the God-Brain struggles endlessly to both find a cure for its disease and to manifest the alien thought-form still gestating inside of it, all the while subconsciously aware that there is '''nothing''' it can do to achieve either goal, but desperate to fight for every last moment of life.

===Inza Magdova Kulchevitch===

The current Darklord of Sithicus, replacing Lord Soth. She was born in Gundarak, on the night Duke Gundar was assassinated, and two years later, her caravan wandered into Sithicus, where they were trapped, although her mother Magda managed to bargain for protection with Soth.

Inza's dark mindset showed from a very early age. Even as a child she loved thieving and manipulating the giorgio of Sithicus, and for the most part stood aside from her tribe. Her only friend was Piotr, a boy 1 year her senior, and this wasn't such a good thing as Inza pushed him to join her in both emnity to the giorgios and bullying a boy named Nikolas for his kindness towards non-Vistani. Their friendship eventually came to an end when Inza allowed Nikolas to be brutally beaten and pinned the blame on Piotr. Inza also hated animals, since they were not fooled by her facade of innocence, and would torture and kill them on the sly. None of this disturbing behavior ever reached Magda, who doted on her daughter, but by adulthood her rampant kleptomania and unlikeable personality had alienated most of the other Vistani.

Inza became Darklord of Sithicus after betraying her mother and caravan to Malocchio Aderre, breaking the caravan's oath to Lord Soth in the process. She attempted to usurp Soth's power, but was foiled and as the surviving members of her caravan hunted her down, she leapt into a chasm to escape. The darkness within the chasm surrounded and embraced her, turning her into the new Darklord.

As Darklord, Inza exists as a force of corruption. Her curse is twofold- first, her form has become a mass of shadow, and she has to concentrate to look human. Second, she stole, manipulated, and was a general bitch because of her philosophy that everyone was as evil as her at heart. The presence of true heroes in her domain (to say nothing of the redeemed spirit of Lord Soth himself) has shaken her to the core, and despite all her efforts to stomp out the forces of good in her domain, they still exist as thorns in her side.

===Ivana Bortisi===

Darklord of Borca, and a reference to the titular character of ''Rappaccini's Daughter''. Ivana inherited the domain by poisoning her lover for cheating with her mother Camille (who she also poisoned). Thus, Ivana inherited Camille's domain, along with immunity and power over poison. This, of course, came with a curse- Ivana cannot turn her lethally poisonous touch ''off'', and thus will never be able to take a lover.

Ivana is best known for the creation of Ermordenung, humans infused with poison to make them super-assassins. The first of these was Nostalia Romaine, Ivana's childhood friend and the one to actually do the dirty work of killing Camille.

5e retcons her a bit, though not nearly as much as Borca's other Darklord. While the whole thing with her mother seducing her lover did still happen, there's no mention of her poisoning her lover and it's not the only reason she kills her mother. Rather, she murdered her brothers and mother in an attempt to force her father to name her his heir. When he still refused to do so, insisting that her cousin Ivan Dilisnya would be his sole inheritor instead, she murdered him and all of their servants with poison gas. She's still terrified of the possibility of her father's will being found, as that would mean that the business she's worked so hard to grow would go to her childish and depraved cousin.

Her poisonous touch is gone, with her curse now being the more mundane and psychological torments of boredom due to feeling like no one around her is her intellectual peer, and the fact that she is never given the respect she feels she is owed, always being doubted, second-guessed, and looked down upon just like her father did.

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===Ivan Dilisnya===

Co-Darklord of Borca, and former darklord of Dorvinia. He's a cousin to Ivana Bortisi, and shares many similarities with her, most notably his love of poisoning people who draw his ire. After he poisoned his sister (who he lusted after) and her husband, he became a Darklord. His curse is simple but effective; his greatest pleasure aside from killing was fine food and drink, so he lost his sense of taste, rendering all the luxury around him hollow and unenjoyable.

His similar nature and modus operandi to his cousin caused their domains to fuse together under the name of Borca during the Grand Conjunction. Both he and Ivana are immune to poison and can create any toxin they can imagine, but Ivana has one more gift- agelessness. Ivan is desperate to learn the secret to her immortality, and refuses to believe she has no idea how she came by the gift (the Dark Powers granted it). Unlike Ivana, Ivan doesn't create Ermordenung, but he does have one nasty trick up his sleeve: Borrowed Time, a poison that only he can create. It stays in one's bloodstream for life and causes lethal convulsions every sunset unless you've ingested the antidote, 'Mercy', which is also something only Ivan can create, that day. Most of his minions are thus held hostage, knowing that Ivan holds the key to each day of their lives.

5e retcons him heavily. While he's still the cousin of Ivana and co-darklord of Borca who envies his cousin's immortality, that's pretty much all that stays the same. Ivan was groomed from a young age to be the head of a noble family, but despite all the opportunity in the world he instead took to wallowing in childish depravity, his family ignoring and enabling his worst and strangest impulses as they hoped he would grow out of it. He of course did not grow out of it, only becoming more violent and immature as he aged. On the same night that Ivana Boritsi poisoned her family, Ivan learned of his parents’ intention to send his beloved sister Kristina to a prestigious boarding school, and murdered his entire family for it.

He now resides in the Dilisnya family estate, a twisted funhouse that he lures people to to torment. Those unable to escape are eventually forced to don the colorful uniforms of the Dilisnya household staff and become Ivan’s new servants. He rarely leaves the estate, instead communicating through letters and acting through his "toys," animate creatures of clockwork or cloth provided to him by the Dark Powers.

===Jaqueline Reiner===

Darklord of Richemulot. Appropriately to the name, she's a natural wererat, born to a wererat branch of the Reiner family. The Reiners followed their patriarch Claude into the mists, where he reigned as Richemulot's original Darklord, but eventually Jaqueline had enough of his abuse and killed him, taking on his title of Darklord in the process. And while that title came with neat perks like control over Richemulot, it also came with a pair of curses.

First, Jaqueline suffers from intense monophobia. She hates nothing worse than being alone, but her entire family is made up of evil wererats whom she ''also'' really hates, so being in their company is not that much better. Second, while Jaqueline falls in love easily, she will involuntarily shift into rat form whenever she's alone with someone she truly loves. And while that love is as genuine as anything Jaqueline has experienced, she can never muster up the trust that her lover will accept her as a wererat, and she almost invariably then kills him. She might make a good pair with Urik von Kharkov, but Darklords can never leave their domains and it's uncertain if she knows about him.

5e replaced her with the very-slightly-differently-named Jacqueline Reiner, details about which can be found in her own section below.

===King Crocodile===
Yes, Ravenloft even has Darklords that are talking animals! No, you cannot [[Furry|play as one yourself]].

King Crocodile is the savage and bestial Darklord of the equally savage and bestial Wildlands, which is based on Rudyard Kipling's ''Just-So Stories'' and ''The Jungle Book''. This talking crocodile was so bloodthirsty and ferocious to his fellow talking animals in the jungle, they begged the hairless apes (i.e. humans) to come and kill him, but instead of holding up their end of the bargain, the hairless apes just started destroying the jungle for resources and colonizing it. This drove the other talking animals into pleading for King Crocodile to kill the hairless apes, and he agreed on the condition that the other animals all loan him their powers, which they did with the exception of the Python (the "wisest of the animals") and the Fly (whom King Crocodile thought was too insignificant to matter).

King Crocodile did slake his bloodthirsty appetite on the hairless apes and drove them out, but instead of returning the other animals' powers when he was finished as he had promised, he instead returned to his old ways of gorging himself on the animal population even more wantonly and gluttonously than before. It was at this point that the Python told King Crocodile a prophecy, which was that King Crocodile would either be killed by one of the hairless apes or by something he thought was pathetic and beneath him. With this done, the Python and his fellow snakes left King Crocodile's jungle to its fate at the hands of Ravenloft's Dark Powers, who quickly claimed the land as their own.

True to the Python's words, King Crocodile is slowly dying of the sleeping sickness spread by the flies, and the only thing that might help him are the hairless apes. But he is unable to keep himself from attacking any who might cure his affliction, and might attack them even if they do help him. The other talking animals still live in fear of King Crocodile and will implore any player characters they meet to dispose of him, but the cycle of betrayal in this land is only doomed to repeat itself. As a result, even if the player characters succeed in killing King Crocodile none of the talking animals will honour their words and the other crocodiles will fight to the death to assume King Crocodile's crown (and his cursed fate), as "''gratitude is not a quality well-known in the jungle.''"

===Kas===
Darklord of Tovag. The infamous vampire who betrayed [[Vecna]] and cut off his hand and eye. Was drawn into the mists at the same time as Vecna and the two of them were at constant war with each other until Vecna escaped. It is confirmed in 5th edition that Kas is still in the Demiplane of Dread and also is unaware that Vecna is gone. He repeatedly sends out armies to attack Vecna which never return, leaving him increasingly frustrated.

In the [[World Axis]] cosmology from 4th edition, he's not a Darklord, but he ''does'' hang out in the Domain of Dread called Monadhan; because he's figured out how to freely leave the domain whenever he wishes, he's turned it into his own personal base under the nose of its [[dracolich]] Darklord.

===Lemot Sediam Juste===
Darklord of Scaena, one of the few Domains capable of traveling through the mists. Scaena is a theater house, and one that Juste worked at as a playwright prior to his becoming a Darklord. Juste was a well-known and talented writer of comedies and dramas, but this never satisfied him, as he wished to write tragedies. Unfortunately for him, his [[Grimdark]] always came out as grimderp, and the actors invariably played his tragic works as farces, since they weren't good for much else. Driven to a deep bitterness by his failure to fulfill his obsession with tragedy, he wrote one last play- this one designed to be a real-life tragedy that killed all of his actors, and when the audience booed this one too, he locked up the house and burned it down with them inside.

Now, as a Darklord, Lemot has ultimate control of his theater, allowing him to trap people in his plays and alter reality for these press-ganged performers, but all this is undercut because he can't believe any of it; for his Darklord curse, the Dark Powers have taken away his suspension of disbelief, forcing him to always see actors, props, and scenery for what they truly are instead of what he wants them to be.

===Lord Wilfred Godefroy===
Darklord of Mordent (the same place from the old Ravenloft II module). A nobleman who murdered his wife when she was unable to produce a son for him as an heir and then murdered his daughter for trying to stop him, and then framed their deaths as an accident. Their ghosts came back to haunt him for a year until he killed himself to make it stop, and when Azalin and Strahd inadvertently drew Mordent into the mists Godefroy (now a ghost himself) became its darklord. His curse is to be continually tormented by the ghosts of his wife and daughter just as he was in life, who tear him apart every night as they curse him for murdering them.

While he was formerly known to be rather passive as a Darklord, in recent times he has taken to enslaving other ghosts to do his bidding. In particular, he's had the mayor of Mordentshire under his thumb for years by holding the ghost of his wife hostage.
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===Maharaja Arijani===
[[Rakshasa]] darklord of Sri Raji, Arijani attained his position after betraying both his kind and his father, Ravana (or rather, the Avatar of Ravana), having received the scorn of the rakshasa for most of his life. Although Ravana is a deity venerated by the rakshasa, Arijani's mother was Mahiji, then high priest of the hated goddess Kali and a leader of the Dark Sisters. To compound things, the Avatar of Kali delivered Arijanni to a home of low caste rank. He lived as a pariah shunned by his fellow rakshasa and languished in a position of low social importance. This alienated Arijani from his own kind, such that he arranged the death of many rakshasa in the conflict with humans. Gradually, Arijani's manipulations became so great that the people of Bahru began hunting their former hunters.

Arijani's depredations climaxed with rakshasa retaliatory siege against Bahru. Although the city fell, the cost was massive casualties on both sides and the city left in ruins. Angered and disgusted by Arijani's actions, Ravana sent his avatar to dispatch his prodigal son. However, Arijani conspired with Mahiji and lured the avatar into a trap. Thus rendered helpless, Ravana offered Arijani a wish in return for his release. Ravana accepted the offer, wishing to become immune to the attacks of rakshasas. The wish was granted, but Arijani slew the avatar anyway. Such was the level of his treachery that the Mists brought Sri Raji into the Demiplane of Dread.

The Maharaja's curse is that, although he is a talented illusionist, Arijani cannot disguise himself in a pleasing form, as most rakshasa do. Instead, he can only assume despicable aspects, such as that of the viewer's worst enemy. Maharaja Arijani resides in Mahakala, in Bahru. There, he is served by the Dark Sisters, whom through him, must provide to Kali daily human sacrifice.

Beyond the threat of an all weretiger cult called "The Stalkers" that were huge fans of his dad trying to kill him, Arijani's greatest fear is the very weapon he used to kill the avatar with, knowing full well it's somewhere in the jungle and very likely to be used on him just like Ravana.

===Maligno===
Darklord of Odiare, and originally from Gothic Earth's version of Italy. In the same vein as Pinocchio, he was originally a marionette brought to life through his toymaker "father" Giuseppe's wishes for a son. Though beloved by the children of Odiare, the adults of the village did not consider him to be a "real" boy. He soon grew bitter over the discovery that he wasn't truly alive, and after terrorizing Guiseppe into making more [[carrionette]]s like himself he had them kill every adult at one of his performances. It was this act that drew Odiare into the Mists as an Island of Terror.

Later on, he planned to have the carrionettes steal the bodies of every surviving adult there so they would be forced to love him, but due to the intervention of the PCs in the module "The Created" he was forced to simply kill the adults off instead. The children now adore him only out of fear, and as they grow older they wonder when Maligno will come for them as well.

Maligno's curse is that he can never be human as he craves, as he alone among the carrionettes is unable to steal the bodies of others. Furthermore, he cannot kill Guiseppe because any injury he suffers is inflicted on Maligno himself. Instead, the old toymaker was driven insane and now exists solely to create more toys for his "son" to command. Should Maligno's body be totally destroyed, Guiseppe is compelled to rebuild it, with the foul puppet's spirit claiming the new body as its own.

In 5e, Maligno was originally called ''Figlio'', which at least is an actual Italian name and not literally calling him "Evil" from the start.

===Marquis Stezen d'Polarno===
Darklord of Ghastria. As Strahd is for Dracula, Dr. Mordenheim for Dr. Frankenstein, and Tristren/Malken for Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so is Stezen to Dorian Grey, of ''The Picture of Dorian Grey''. But unlike Dorian, Stezen was a piece of work before his cursed painting came into play. As a noble in an unknown land, he enjoyed sowing chaos and rebellion and assassinated many people, but his charismatic nature meant that he hung on to a good reputation. But after one particular attempted coup went too far, his king had enough. Consulting with his mistress, a master of dark arts, he laid a curse upon d'Polarno that would do the Dark Powers proud; trapping a good chunk of Stezen's soul in a painting, he robbed him of all his charisma, vibrance, and capacity for enjoyment.

In retaliation, Stezen poisoned the king and his family, which drew the land into the mists. But he wasn't yet its Darklord. That happened when he realized that, once per season, he could temporarily reclaim his soul from the painting- at the cost of up to 50 other souls, each granting him one hour of rejuvenation. Now, once per season, he'll invite every stranger in Ghastria to a party (he'll grab some peasants if not enough foreigners answer). The party is for him, and him alone. With the exception of a few guests that he debauches himself with/upon, all guests are exposed to the painting, giving him up to 50 hours of being able to enjoy himself again before he returns to his normal drab state. While this is when he's at his most dangerous, it's also when he's most vulnerable- when his soul is still in the painting, he's essentially immortal, but when he's whole, he is as vulnerable as any other (And ''unlike'' the original Dorian, killing the painting won't work until Stezen is dead).

===Prince Ladislav Mircea===
Darklord of Sanguinia. Ladislav's story is a ripoff of the Edgar Allan Poe classic ''The Masque of the Red Death'', with the prince abandoning his people to a lethal plague, and retreating to a closed castle with his friends. And like in the original story, the plague entered the castle anyway. When Ladislav caught the plague, he turned to alchemy in a desperate attempt to cure himself. This failed and he died, only to rise as a Vrykolaka (usually mindless plague-carrier vampires that feed on bodily humors) and become Darklord of Sanguinia. He still experiments with alchemy to cure himself of his undeath, but this is unlikely to ever succeed.

===Sisters Mindefisk===
The three [[Hag]] co-Darklords of Tepest, and based the "the three wicked witches" from folkloric stories. Three sisters who were left as babies for a humble farm wife who wished for daughters, but from their birth displayed mysterious traits. Most notably, after their mother died from the strain of caring for the three sickly girls (or possibly because they drained her life), their father (who had often voiced his dislike of "weakling daughters") tried to leave the three 2-year olds for dead repeatedly, but they always came back. Eventually he let them stay as long as they cooked for him and his sons. Growing up dissatisfied with their surroundings, they took to seducing, murdering, and eating travelers to build up a stockpile of money so they could ultimately leave the farm. This worked until one final traveler tried to turn them against each other, only to be murdered so none of the sisters could claim him as theirs. This was what ultimately led to their being taken into the Mists and stuck in the depths of a forest full of [[goblin]]s and witch-burning, faerie-chasing bumpkins. They still lure in any unwary travelers to their cottage, taking advantage of the locals' blaming the goblins for their victims' deaths, but otherwise have little influence on their domain.

The sisters consist of Laveeda, an Annis Hag, Leticia, a Sea Hag, and Lorinda, a Green Hag. Though they can shapeshift, they are cursed to always see themselves and each other as their true forms no matter which shape they take.

====Mother Lorina====
In the 5e version of Tepest, only Lorinda is the darklord, having imprisoned her sisters when they refused to let her make and rear a child despite how badly she wanted to be a mom. Which ignores the complete and utter lack of maternal feelings they had in past editions, but whatever. She desperately yearns to have a family, but is thwarted by both her own inherently controlling, murderous nature, her inability to trust that her offspring genuinely love her (and the subsequent smothering, demanding, overbearing way that this makes her act), and the curse that any child she magics up for herself is a short-lived, ravenous monster; she can only make [[hexblood]]s for other people.
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===Sodo===
Darklord of Paridon. A low-ranked dread [[Doppelganger]] who resented being born into a lowly clan and thus being prevented from rising through the ranks by merit. After acquiring a magical Hat of Disguise, he fulfilled this previously-thwarted ambition by killing the elders who ruled over the clans and impersonating them, while also offing anyone else who questioned him. For managing the impressive feat of committing a betrayal egregious even by doppelganger standards, he was claimed by the Mists and given Darklordship of Paridon, and nailed with three separate curses: inability to control his shapeshifting, a healing touch (which wouldn't be much of a curse to anyone else, [[Dark Eldar|but Sodo's a sadist]] and this along with the previous curse renders him unable to effectively torture people), and an extra dose of paranoia for flavor.

===Thakok-An===
Darklord of Kalidnay, formerly from Athas. She was a templar of Kalidnay's sorceror-king, Kalid-Ma. To help him ascend to dragonhood, she sacrificed her family for the ascension ritual- an act which, ironically, would ruin it, as the Dark Powers took notice and drew Kalidnay into Ravenloft, in one of the few occasions in which being in the Demiplane of Dread was an improvement for most people. But not for Thakok-An nor Kalid-Ma, as the failed ritual put Kalid-Ma into a coma. Thakok-An remains active, ruling the realm as a theocracy of Kalid-Ma, despite said lord being comatose and all her efforts being for naught.

===Tsien Chiang===
Originally from the continent of Kara-Tur on the world of Toril, Tsien Chiang was beautiful and powerful wizard, who hated all men due to her father's dismissal of her abilities. After killing him and disabling her relatives, she seized control of her family lands. She used her charm and position to marry a total of four men, each of whom fathered a child with her before she killed him and moved on to the next. Three of the daughters so produced were evil, with the fourth, Nightingale, being truly good-hearted and adored by the gods. Tsien Chang would go on to commit various evil acts, including the desecration of four sacred bells and four sacred trees, but her mistreatment of Nightingale is what ultimately led to her being taken by the mists. On the fourth time that Nightingale objected to her family's atrocities, Tsien Chang decided to do far worse than merely beat her as they had the last three times, and she and her evil daughters were taken by the mists as the torture began. Tsien Chiang imprisoned the living remains of Nightingale in the Tower of Broken Promises as the Mists tore I'Cath from Kara-Tur forever.

If you're wondering why the number four is mentioned so much, it's because it's homophonous with "death" in most Chinese languages and is considered bad luck in many east-Asian cultures.

Her 5e incarnation gives her such a radically different backstory that pretty much the only things that remain are the four daughters and a magic bell.

When Tsien Chiang was a child, her home was destroyed by invaders, forcing her to flee into frozen mountains where she expected to die. Luckily for her, she was found and taken in by a gold dragon who took pity on her, and she served him as an attendant in thanks for saving her life. While serving the dragon, she learned much of magic and medicine, growing to become an accomplished wizard. The dragon refused to teach her any truly dangerous or powerful magic though, knowing that she would only use it for revenge. In her studies, she learned of the Nightingale bell, an artifact that could make its ringer’s dreams come true -- but creating the bell required the scale of a gold dragon. Knowing her mentor would never provide a scale she attempted to drug him so she could steal a scale while he slept, but got the mixture wrong and not only killed him, but caused his entire hoard to be destroyed, with all that remained being a single scale. Chiang crafted the bell and took it to her home, where she used it to wish away the invaders, which instantly vanished. In awe and gratitude, the people elevated her to royalty and she became their queen.

She ruled well for years, enacting vast reforms and strict but sensible laws in pursuit of creating the perfect empire. She had a family, taking particular pride in her four beloved daughters. Though her kingdom was prosperous, her people eventually began to chafe under her strict laws and demanding orders and revolted. Chiang was swift and merciless in her attempts to quell the rebellion, but her ruthlessness only caused the resistance against her to grow. When she ordered her armies to kill the families of all insurrectionists, assassins struck Tsien Chiang’s palace and killed her family. Distraught, Chiang climbed to the highest tower of her palace, looked out over her burning dreams, and struck the Nightingale Bell. Rather than granting her vengeful wish, the bell cracked and spilled a golden mist across the land. When the mist cleared, Tsien Chiang’s perfect city was gone, replaced by the unreal prison-city of I’Cath.

I'Cath is a city divided in two: The true I'Cath of the waking world, and Tsien Chiang's impossible, perfect dream. In the waking world the city is a silent and chaotic labyrinth composed of surreal, knotted streets and citizens trapped in eternal slumber. In the dream the city is vibrant and living, a place of ultimate beauty and efficiency where all things move according to Tsien Chiang's design, and a nightmare of constant drudgery for her people. Every twilight, Tsien Chiang climbs the spirit-infested Ping’On Tower and tolls the Nightingale Bell. This renews the magic of her dream world and keeps her citizens asleep, but it also calls forth a legion of jiangshi, which emerge from their tombs to reshape the waking city’s mazelike streets in a fruitless attempt to match Tsien Chiang’s perfectionist vision.

Her curse is that while the dream is near-perfection in her eyes, that only makes the imperfections of the waking world all the more obvious and inescapable. No matter how many times she tries to bring the same order and beauty she sees in her dream to the waking world, I'Cath's streets grow only more twisted and labyrinthine. She spends as much time as she can with the dream-versions of her daughters though she knows they aren't real, and in the waking world she actively avoids the twisted reflections of her daughters that wander the true I'Cath's streets.

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===Tristen ApBlanc===
Darklord of Forlorn. A Vampyre (living vampire) born when his dad was turned into a vampire but refused to leave his wife, which resulted in their son being born a vampyre. Tristen's parents were killed by fearful peasantfolk, but not before his mom gave him to the druid Rual to be raised. By all accounts, Rual was a pretty good foster mom, but when he was fifteen years old, Rual caught him drinking the blood of a deer. Believing she had betrayed him when he saw her talking to other druids, he attacked her- only to get his ass impaled by a blessed deer antler she was carrying, and when he drank her blood, he was both poisoned and partially cured of his vampyrism by the holy water she'd just drank. As she died, Rual cursed Tristen to be trapped in the sacred grove where he killed her, and to (agonizingly) die and become a ghost each night, and rise as a vampyre each morning. This makes him one of the few Darklords to receive most of his curse prior to Darklordship, as Forlorn was only pulled into Ravenloft centuries later, when Tristen engineered a bloody civil war to take control of the land.

As it is now, Forlorn really lives down to its name; there's little there except savage goblyns, a few beleagured Druids, and Castle Tristenoira, where Tristen is stuck, along with the ghosts of his family. The castle is split between three separate time periods that adventurers can shift between, thought to be because of all the ghostly shenanigans. Because there's really not much to do in Forlorn besides exploring Castle Tristenoira and trying not to get eaten by goblyns, it has no real political importance and is ignored by basically everyone, despite being most likely the second-oldest domain after Barovia.

He gets some very minor retcons in 5e, but since he only gets a single paragraph there's not much in the way of details. Seemingly the only changes are that he's now a dhampir (which is really more-or-less the same thing as a vampyre) and that he was taken by the mists almost immediately after killing the druids.

===Vlad Drakov===
Darklord of Falkovnia. He was originally the leader of a mercenary band called the Talons of the Hawk in [[Dragonlance|Krynn]]. For their wanton brutality and bloodlust, they were taken into Ravenloft and claimed Falkovia for themselves (after a failed invasion of Darkon that was repulsed by Azalin's undead).[[Berserk|If this seems familiar]] then good, you're paying attention.

This rivalry with Azalin has since become part of Drakov's curse, though he seems unaware of it. While four other countries (that have themselves agreed to an alliance should Falkovnia ever attack one of them) surround him, Drakov considers them "women and fops" not worth the effort of invasion, obsesses over an enemy he has no way of defeating, and is forever unable to gain the approval and respect of the great military leaders that he has sought all his life. And even if he did somehow conquer Darkon, [[fail|no Darklord can ever leave his own realm]] so he would never actually get to conquer it himself. Another factor in his defeats is that his way of doing war is distinctly and doggedly medieval (no gunpowder, no magic), so on the rare occasions he decides to try his luck at conquering other neighbouring domains than Darkon (all of which are at a higher technological level than Falkovnia) his forces almost always get shot to pieces by firearms or, more rarely, blown to pieces with magic. Oddly enough, his realm may in fact be, on the whole, a net ''benefit'' to the other domains of the Core, as his penchant for overworking his peasantry/slaves (when he's not busy having them impaled for his entertainment, of course) means that his realm produces large amounts of grain and foodstuffs which he sells for funds to equip and train his forces, unintentionally making Falkovnia "the breadbasket of the Core."

In addition, Drakov may be unique as the one of the most "conventional" Darklords in Ravenloft in the sense that he is statted like a run-of-the-mill fighter-class BBEG, and much like this archetype he has no magical abilities aside from a few magical weapons and armour at his disposal, coupled with no ability to cheat death, and no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders (all of which are in line with his disdain for magic and the supernatural), except for a good amount of inherent magic resistance that will also work against beneficial spells (so if he's ever in a tight enough bind to require magical healing, he's screwed). However, PCs and DMs shouldn't mistake his one-dimensional combat abilities as a sign that Falkovnia would be easy to liberate from his iron-fisted rule via a [[Raven Guard|simple decapitation raid]]; the totalitarian and thoroughly abusive nature of his rule means that those he trusts enough to carry out his orders are all likely evil enough and think enough like him to instantly assume his mantle of Darklord should Drakov ever be killed, just like similar totalitarian regimes in real life can survive the deaths of multiple successive leaders. Truly liberating Falkovnia in a thematically appropriate way would require the PCs to either engineer a full-scale revolution, or otherwise ensure the complete destruction of his regime, much like truly destroying a cancerous tumour in real life requires removing or destroying every last cancer cell. And all of this says nothing about which neighbouring realm would end up absorbing Falkovnia on the off-chance it ever gets truly liberated, though at this point even Azalin would be a better ruler than Drakov given that the lich dispenses harsh but fair justice and otherwise leaves his subjects alone to continue his arcane pursuits.

5th edition got rid of him, since the developers found him redundant. He's replaced by Ledeska Drakov, and Falkovnia was reskinned with a zombie apocalypse vibe.

===Yagno Petrovna===
Darklord of G'Henna. The Petrovna family was one of those taken by the Mists when Barovia was absorbed into Ravenloft, and although they avoided Strahd's attention by hiding away in the mountains this in turn led to inbreeding. As Yagno grew up, it became clear to all that he was insane- he conversed with imaginary people and cowered from beasts that weren't there. One day, he was locked out of his family's home and had to take shelter in a cave for the night. When he woke up, he saw the name "[[Zhakata]]" scrawled on a wall.

Yagno concluded that Zhakata was the name of the god that had protected him when he slept that night and created a shrine to his savior. (In reality, the name was written by his brother as a prank and meant absolutely nothing.) At first he merely sacrificed animals to Zhakata, but then he moved on to sacrificing people. When he was caught trying to offer his sister's newborn baby to Zhakata, he was chased out of Barovia by his family. The Mists welcomed him to the domain of G'henna, where he became the Darklord.

Yagno is cursed to constantly suffer doubts about whether or not Zhakata is real. No matter how many sacrifices he makes or how many people he commands to starve themselves in the name of Zhakata, he can never quite get rid of his nagging disbelief and the worry that all his devotion has been directed towards a lie. This eventually led Yagno to call upon a wizard who claimed he could summon Zhakata; as he could not summon a nonexistent god, a nalfeshnee by the name of Malistroi answered the summons instead and told Yagno that Zhakata was just a figment of his imagination. The Darklord immediately flew into a rage and killed the wizard, while Malistroi later escaped to ravage G'Henna. Since then, he has merely redoubled his fanaticism in a futile attempt to dispel his doubts.

==Former Darklords==
You remember that section where the permanent death of Darklords is discussed? Well, it's actually happened in the past, though never yet to a band of plucky adventurers, and the results usually haven't been good. These Darklords for whatever reason no longer rule their domain, usually because some asshole killed them and was promptly saddled with their domain as the new Darklord.

===Bakholis===
Former Darklord of Invidia, and formerly a tyrannical king whose kingdom was claimed by the mists when he was spurned by a woman named Marta, and in return had her lover killed and eaten in front of her and Marta herself raped to death by his soldiers. As she died, Marta cursed him to be the beast he was inside and never be free of the blood of loved ones on his hands, which manifested as turning him into a werewolf. Unlike most Darklords, Bakholis said 'fuck this' to angst and [[Dark Eldar|embraced his curse]], descending to ever-greater depths of savagery until, to everyone's relief, the half-Vistani Gabrielle Aderre showed up and promptly murdered his ass, succeeding him as Darklord of Invidia.

===Camille Boritsi===
The mother of Ivana Boritsi and the first Darklord of Borca, who earned her position by poisoning her husband and his lover. She was cursed to be betrayed by any man she trusted, which left her with serious issues relating to men and a blindspot towards scheming women, which ultimately proved her downfall when her daughter Ivana turned the poison tables by killing ''her'' for sleeping with Ivana's lover. She was succeeded as Darklord by her daughter and murderer, Ivana Boritsi.

===Claude Reiner===
The first darklord of Richemulot. The patriarch of a family of wererats who lead his family into the mists to escape hunters, gaining his domain when his monstrous cruelty caught the attention of the Dark Powers. He was eventually killed when his granddaughter Jaqueline had enough of his abuse, making her the new Darklord of Richemulot.

===Duke Nharov Gundar===
Former Darklord of Gundarak, prior to being betrayed and usurped by Daclaud Heinfroth, who would later gain his own, separate domain. As Darklord of Gundarak, he enforced the worship of the malevolent trickster-god [[Erlin]] and taxed basically everything he could think of (with a special emphasis on the birth of girls), but little else is known of his rule. During the Grand Conjunction, Gundarak was absorbed by Barovia and Invidia.

But that wasn't the end of Nharov Gundar. He was a vampire, and though Heinfroth had staked him, he remained alive, but dormant. His skeletal remains somehow found their way to the traveling curio show of Professor Arcanus, where some complete berk went and yanked the stake out. This brought him back to life, though his time spent as a skeleton has reduced him to a near-bestial state, only vaguely remembering Heinfroth's betrayal.

===Lord Soth===
{{main|Lord Soth}}
The infamous Death Knight of Krynn was for a time the Darklord of Sithicus. More details can be found on his page, but suffice to say that the Dark Powers grew tired of him, and he was succeeded as Darklord by the [[Vistani]] Inza Kulchevitch.

===Nathan Timothy===
Darklord of Arkendale. There are more details on him in the section for his more important son Alfred, but suffice to say that Nathan was possessed of a deep-seated wanderlust, which the Dark Powers curtailed by cursing him such that he couldn't leave the river Musarde, lest he be crippled by land sickness. Nathan rolled with the curse and adapted so well to being a boatman that he outright lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction. He's still confined to river waters, but Arkendale has been absorbed into Alfred's domain of Verbrek.

===Vecna===
{{main|Vecna}}
Yes, THAT Vecna, the Maimed God; the guy whose eye and hand are still around for PCs to mess (and ''be'' messed) with.

The whole tale of Vecna's ascension to godhood is complicated, but at one point where he was 'merely' a demigod, he and Kas were pulled into the Mists after a bunch of meddlesome adventurers thwarted one of his plans. Not one to be contained for long, Vecna has the dubious honor of being the only Darklord to force his way out of the Demi-Plane of Dread after being drawn in by the Mists. On top of that, he managed to get himself 'promoted' to full-fledged minor God in the process, which is how he got the Dark Powers to kick him out due to their ban on allowing gods to influence Ravenloft. (The full story is recounted in the modules ''Vecna Lives!'', ''Vecna Reborn'' and ''Die Vecna Die!''.)

==Netbook Darklords==
These darklords represent the rulers of fan-made domains from [[netbook]]s such as the [[Books of S]], the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]], [[Quoth the Raven]], and other projects from the [[Fraternity of Shadows]].

===Ahasveros===
Darklord of Incitatus. Once, Ahasveros (male human) was the greatest scientist of his civilization, until the day his homeland was drawn into a great war against a rival nation. He invented the Adamas theory, a device that could be used to generate a mighty tidal wave to devaste the enemy's fleets and harbors.

But that wasn't enough for Ahasveros; he became obsessed with improving the device, banishing his assistants when they protested the potential dangers of doing so, cutting off all contact with those who might challenge his beliefs, and reducing the time he spent running his calculations.

The result was, when the device was used, Ahasveros lost control of it and the tidal wave annihilated ''his'' homeland as well, drowning him in the tower from whence he'd launched it.

Ever since then, the bussengeist he became has lingered in his tower, unable to decide whose fault the mess was, alternating between blaming his associates and himself. Honestly, he's not much of a darklord, and this is reflected by how empty and meaningless Incitatus is. He currently occupies a limbo; too dull to be truly absorbed into the [[Demiplane of Dread]], but still too evil and in denial of what he did to be released, either.

Ahasveros' existence is completely tied to the remnants of the Adamas machine. Only by destroying it, which will unshackle his spirit, and performing a brief rite to the long-forgotten sea god of ruined Misenos, which requires lighting the lanterns in the temple and praying for both Misenos and Ahasveros, will his torment end.

If Ahasveros wishes to seal his domain's borders, those attempting to cross it are overwhelmed by misery and the urge to seek comfort, which only those outside of the border can give them.

===The Barons Gustav===
Darklords of Gustavstan.

Baron Gustav the Elder is a male human ghost who once ruled a small kingdom in his homeland. Though he had intended to pass his holdings on to his younger brother Klaus, the younger sibling had no interest in ruling, so the elderly Gustav took a wife and fathered a son, Gustav the Younger. Then, when his son was fifteen, Gustav the Elder stepped on a snake in his garden and was fatally bitten.

Gustav the Younger (male human [[Fighter]]) was inconsolable, his mind fracturing under the sudden death of his beloved father. In his grief, he refused to take up the throne, forcing his uncle Klaus to become Baron in his place - as well as to wed Ingrid, Gustav the Elder's widow and Gustav the Younger's mother, to secure the Younger's inheritance. Unfortunately, this gesture was misunderstood by ''both'' Gustavs; the Younger began to despise his uncle and mother for their apparent disloyalty, whilst the Elder's restless spirit also became incensed at Klaus's apparent betrayal. He seized upon the idea of exploiting his son's fractured mind to both weaponize him against Klaus and to make him vulnerable, so the Elder could live again by stealing his son's body.

This domain is basically [[grimdark]] Hamlet, in case it's not obvious already.

So Gustav the Elder manifests to his son, lies that he was murdered by Klaus, and convinces his half-crazed son that Klaus wants to steal the throne for himself. Klaus the Younger swallows this bullshit hook, line and sinker, and pretending to be even madder than he actually was, he began preparing to kill his uncle and his mother both - ignoring that Gustav the Elder wanted Ingrid spared, having figured that once he stole his son's body, [[/d/|he could reclaim her as his wife]].

This led to Gustav the Younger murdering the father of Elaine, the woman he loved, and driving her so insane that she ended up committing suicide by throwing herself off the battlements of the castle - which didn't do Gustav Junior's sanity any great shakes. Instead, it provoked him into finally battling his uncle, killing Klaus and his mother in the process. Which was when Gustav the Eldler showed up and, horrified at his wife's death, he revealed the truth about how he'd played his son for a fool. Enraged, the son attacked his father's ghost, and that was when Gustavstan was snatched up by the mists.

Gustav the Younger now burns with the urge to hunt his father's spirit down and destroy him, a task not helped by his paranoia. Every night, he is haunted by the angry ghosts of Elaine and Klaus, who spend the night cursing him out for their murders.

Gustav the Elder now spends his days haunting the local insane asylum, where Ingrid - who actually survived her son's attack, but was left a raving madwoman - is now kept. At night, he strives to manipulate others into killing his son.

Neither darklord can be permanently destroyed by violence; they regenerate and revive from destruction. Only by killing Ingrid will their resurrective regeneration cease... but doing this will cause the killer to immediately suffer a failed [[Powers Check]], whilst those who watch get to roll one.

===Benada Nameless===
Darklord of Vin'Ejal. Conceived when the Eye of Toldun, the fake prophet of a phony goddess called Appissa (actually a powerful half-breed [[yuan-ti]] [[psion]] magically held in stasis), used a potion given to him by his goddess to drug and rape a woman named Dillura Ogfenhauer, Benada's mother despised her daughter from the moment she was born. Only Benada's uncle, Dillura's 12-year-old brother Ekkim, cared for her, and he raised her throughout her life, even taking her off with him to be his squire when he went to war after discovering her nature as a [[psion]]icist [[weresnake]]. Even when they returned, however, Dillura wanted nothing to do with her bastard daughter.

Finally, the enraged Benada sought to confront her mother one evening, only to track her to the Shrine of the Eye. When she saw Dillura embracing the Eye, she realized that this man was her father. Filled with hatred, she grabbed a bone knife and fatally stabbed her mother, before psionically torturing her father to death. As she turned to leave, she found herself confronted by her uncle Ekkim, who had seen everything. Realizing she couldn't let him live now, a weeping Benada killed the only person to ever show her love, transporting Vin'Ejal to the Misty Realm.

Benada's curse seems to be an insatiable hunger that only human flesh can sate; she only gives in to its demands once per month, however, as she fears depleting her domain's population. If she wishes to close the domain, the waters around Vin'Ejal decrease in temperature to the point that would-be swimmers will freeze solid, whilst hail begins savagely pelting down from above.

===Baroness Ilsabet Obour===
Darklord of Kislova. This female human [[alchemist]] was born the youngest daughter and favored child of Baron Janosk Obour of Kislova, and remained loyal and obedient to him even as he descended into brutal tyranny and made a failed attempt to conquer a neighboring barony, only to be crushed, captured and executed. Before he died, Janosk commanded each of his three children to take steps to both preserve their family and avenge the loss of their power.

Of the three, Ilsabet was the most loyal to her father, honing her alchemical skills and delving into dark alchemical practices, focusing on hideous poisons and the creation of alchemical undead. She crippled and maimed many prisoners who had dared to rebel against her father's rule before his conquest by Baron Peto, created a unique strain of alchemical vampires, fatally poisoned her elder siblings for perceived disloyalty to their father's dying wishes, and finally married Baron Peto herself and bore him a son in order to gain the opportunity to poison him with a paralytic venom. It was only as she administered what she intended to be the final, fatal dose, killing her mentor (and true love) to do so, that the Mists finally claimed her.

Ilsabet currently suffers two curses. Her most direct darklord-related curse is that her desire for power and revenge are thwarted; though her husband, Baron Peto, remains incurably paralyzed, he also remains unkillable - no matter what she does, he always returns to life. As a result, she remains forever his regent, rather than the true Baroness of Kislova, which she regards as unacceptable; she yearns to resume the interrupted reign of her own family. Secondly, Ilsabet has become a vampire-like creature that feeds on pain, and must have one person killed every day in order to survive.

Unlike many Darklords, Ilsabet has no particular powers of supernatural survival. If you can beat an 11th level [[wizard]] protected by her guard of alchemical vampires, you can kill her.

When Ilsabet closes the borders, a poisonous green mist surrounds Kislova, inflicting irresistable damage per round until the would-be escapee returns to Kislova.

===Bethany Stone===
Darklord of Stonewall. A sad, broken, bitter woman, Bethany was born the daughter of a family of puritans, self-righteous and obsessed with sin. When her father discovered the child Bethany, a cheerful, whimsical young girl, had dreams of leaving the family home to become a dollmaker, he destroyed the dolls she had painstakingly constructed over years of work and beat her within an inch of her life. Later, when she came of age, he arranged her marriage to a man of high standing.

After long years of often-lonely marriage, pregnant with her sixth child, Bethany's father and husband were caught in a terrible accident, with the former dying and the latter being left in a coma. That was hardship enough, but as she cared for her husband, Bethany discovered his diary, in which he revealed he had only wed her to cover up his "sinful" nature as a homosexual. Enraged, Bethany began tampering with her husband's medicine to ensure he remained comatose, and then launched her own moral crusade, something aided by the fact she established her charismatic but broken-willed son Clarence as the town's minister.

When the Salem Witch trials broke out, Bethany eagerly spread their madness to Stonewall. But the tenth victim was the friend of Bethany's youngest daughter, Katherine, who unearthed evidence that this was really a way for Bethany to resolve a land-dispute between their families in the Stone's favor. When Katherine tried to intervene, she called out her mother for the cold, twisted monster that she was. Bethany promptly stabbed Katherine in the heart, and that was when the Mists took the town.

Bethany Stone is now a [[harpy]], although she has limited shapeshifting abilities that let her masquerade as a human. Her curse is that she will be forever doomed to lose her children before they are fully ready, whether by death, betrayal or abandonment. Though she doesn't know it yet, as part of this curse, she will become spontaneously pregnant and give birth to a human child every 5 years. Both of her arms are permanently blood-red from the elbow down, although she considers it a sign of her righteousness and so doesn't hide it.

The borders of Stonewall are permanently closed; unless the departee has the approval of either Bethany or Clarence to leave, they will be struck by lightning bolts until they turn back. It's unknown if lightning immunity will nullify this border, but it's not explicitly countered.

Nothing explicitly says that Bethany cannot just be killed in a fight (and, frankly, Stonewall is described as the kind of place where wiping out everybody is actually the heroic thing to do), but she ''does'' have an explicit method of redemption. If the party can find one of the dolls she made as a child, as one survived her father's wrath, and present it to her, she will break down in tears. If consoled and successfully reminded of her long-lost dreams, the rest of the town will break down weeping with her, and then Stonewall will slide out of the Mists and back to the prime material. On the other hand, if they fail, then she'll destroy the doll herself and become even more fanatical.

===Caleb Wicks===
Darklord of Wayward on the Bone Sands. Even at the age of 10, Caleb was a fearless, stubborn, trouble-making brat. The only thing able to scare him into obedience were stories of a local boogeyman: Black Hat the Swordslinger.

Caleb's transformation from mere brat to full-blown Darklord came when his family were hired by the lord of the distant Hangingshire, which required a long trek that passed through a desert region known as the Bone Sands. During this leg of the journey, Caleb's family were seperated from the caravan and veered their wagon over a tall, steep dune as a result of a sudden sandstorm. The wagon was destroyed, their horses killed, and Caleb's elder brother Horatio was severely injured. Though they initially settled in to wait for the caravan to send a rescue party after them, their food swiftly ran out and they realized they would have to try and walk out of the desert on foot... a journey that Horatio couldn't make.

The senior Wicks came to a grim realization: Horatio wasn't going to live much longer anyway, so when he died, the family would eat his body for sustenane before making their trek towards safety. They were content to wait... but Caleb found out about their plans, and taunted his brother with this fact; when Horatio began to scream and cry, Caleb panicked and stabbed him to death with a cooking knife. Caleb's parents were horrified, but ultimately decided there was nothing left to do. They ate their dead son, and then broke camp the next morning.

As they were traveling, Caleb found himself separated from his family by another sandstorm, wandering on his own for days before he stumbled across a small town called "Wayward". Mad with hunger, he murdered the first townsman who tried to offer him help, devouring as much of the man's flesh as he could before fleeing into the night. The next morning, he revealed himself to the horrified townsfolk and claimed that he had witnessed Black Hat kill and eat the man. Unable to believe a youngster like Caleb could be responsible for so monstrous a crime, the townsfolk believed him, and opened their homes to the young cannibal.

Caleb became a beloved fixture of the community... and then, the neighboring [[gnome]] community of Rumbleton was destroyed in an earthquake that crushed the subterranean village like an egg. They begged Wayward for shelter whilst they tried to rebuild, and the humans took them in. But rebuilding a new gnomish settlement wasn't easy, as Rumbleton had already been built in what was considered the most stable, accessible ground for miles around. With little choice, the gnomes began to put down roots in Wayward.

Which was a problem: Wayward already had troubles supporting its own population before the gnomes came in, and now things were worse than ever. The population increase led to a famine, known as "The Lean Times" by the locals, and tensions began to grow between humans and gnomes... tensions only fanned by Caleb, who began advocating the humans of Wayward should eat the baby gnomes born after the refugees settled in their village. Whilst initially this proposal was rejected, the gnomes took affront when they learned of its proposal at all, and relations only continued to deteriorate... especially because Caleb was continuing to egg things on, pushing his cannibalistic plan in secret.

Finally, it all came to a head; on the first night of the full moon, the Waywarders, driven mad with hunger, descended on the gnome shantytown and abducted as many gnomish children as they could, cannibalizing them in a disgusting, bloody orgy. Over the next two days they massacred the surviving gnomes and ate them as well, then they ate the few Waywarders who had protested "The Feast", as it was dubbed. And on that final full moon night, as the cannibal villagers slept off their full bellies, Wayward on the Bone Sands was pulled into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Caleb and the other villagers are now [[quevari]]. They spend most of their time in an enchanted slumber, only waking when visitors come to town. Like all quevari, they are peaceful and innocent-seeming during the day, but revert to bloodthirsty cannibals at night, as the first three nights after outsiders arrive are all full moons - after those three nights, they fall back into slumber until disturbed again. It's unclear what happens if a survivor somehow avoids being killed on that third night.

Wayward itself has a couple of curses. Firstly, there are no children here; all of their youths were left behind when the village was pulled into the Misty Realms, and none of the women ever fall pregnant, save when Caleb is killed (we'll get to that). Secondly, all food and drink in the domain is inherently inedible - even foods brought in from outside instantly spoil, although the look and smell perfectly fine. Finally, none of the villagers will ever age beyond the day they were when they committed their sins.

Caleb himself is a 5th level [[quevari]] [[thief]] who wields an enchanted knife +3 of bleeding. He can Charm Person 1/day by speaking to them, and still carries the Triangle of the Feast - the triangular dinner bell he played before the cannibalism of the gnomes. This can function as a Chime of Hunger that only affects non-Waywarders 3/day, and can also summon 2d6 Waywarders to his aid at will. The other quevari only openly recognize him as their lord and master during the night, but still are fiercely protective of him during the day. He can potentially be driven away in fear by forcefully invoking Black Hat - this requires something like disguising yourself ''as'' the boogeyman or telling a Black Hat story, simply saying the name won't scare him.

If killed, one of the Wayward women will find herself pregnant within a week, and give birth to Caleb's reincarnation a month later. Caleb will resume his true form as an elven year old a month after being born. The only way to kill Caleb for good is to wipe out the entire town of Wayward, which frankly you should be wanting to do anyway.

Caleb can close the borders by summoning tornadoes that lash all around the domain's periphery, kicking up lethal sandstorms and making it impossible to flee.

===Cassandre Desesprits===
Darklord of Miseria. Born to a humble farmer's family, Cassandre was gifted with the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, which also made her a very effective seer. When this was revealed to her village, she became an immediate celebrity, and this situation - never permitted time to herself or any true friends, but also showered in displays of good will and thanks - twisted her heart. She became completely self-centered, egotistical and immoral, regarding all others as nothing more than things to use for her own amusement and gratification.

When a war broke out amongst the local villages over the ability to use her seer powers, Cassandre exploited this to become a veritable queen, feeding just the right predictions to all factions to keep the war dragging on perpetually for over two years, wallowing in opulence whilst others bled, died and starved over her. Inevitably, the war drew to its climax, with both factions preparing to launch a decisive blow with a super-spell; Cassandre manipulated them into both acting at the exact same time, figuring that this would cause the spells to negate each other and stalemate, thus preserving the war and her power. Instead, they magnified each other, resulting in the annihilation of the warring armies and Cassandre being literally blown into Miseria.

Cassandre's curse is, fundamentally, that she will never again enjoy the lifestyle she once enjoyed. Although surrounded by people who genuinely like and care for her rather than her gifts, she pines for the days when people doted upon her every wish and resents being forced to work for a living as a barmaid. Her [[diviner]] powers have dwindled and become almost useless, but her spiritual powers have expanded; she now commands incorporeal [[undead]] with the proficiency of a master [[necromancer]], and her life is supplement with the years drained by her [[ghost]]ly minions. None of her schemes to regain her "royal" status will ever work, and so she seems doomed to an eternity as a beloved but otherwise unremarkable barmaid.

When she closes the borders, Miseria is surrounded by thick red fog that causes those who try to leave to age and eventually crumble to dust, whereupon they become ghosts under her command.

If slain, Cassandre becomes a ghost herself, but then resurrects 2d4 days later. Only if she is confronted in ghost form by an exorcist of the local deity Saint-Ambroise who can denounce her for her crimes in life will she be banished from the world of the living forever.

===Coyote===
Darklord of Yatehcaa. Once, this animal god aided the First Man in protecting his American Aboriginal-flavored world from powerful monsters. But his greed, malice and cruelty led to him committing many dark acts, and so the gods declared him unfit to remain amongst their ranks. First Man took back Coyote's cloak of stars, condemning him to stay forever on the world and be vulnerable to the monsters he had once battled. But Coyote showed no regret, no compassion, no willingness to learn from his mistakes or to try and make amends, and so he found himself trapped in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Ever since, he has continued his old ways, playing cruel, malicious tricks on the people of Yatehcaa, all the while trying to distract himself from how afraid he is that some day, he might be caught and killed by "The Dark Watchers", the antediluvian monsters whom he once battled alongside First Man.

Technically, nothing protects Coyote from death, but between his lack of shame and utter cowardice combined with his powerful magical abilities, actually killing him in a fight is easier said than done.

===Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez===
Darklord of Resistencia. Born the son of a once-great noble family in the Holy Republic of Aragona, Santiago's family had fallen in stature to such a degree that the impoverished patricians had mortaged their lands to the hilt and lived a life barely above that of their peasant tenats. They scrimped and saved to send Santiago to court, but the Don of Quijada found himself a laughing stock, regarded as little better than a jumped up hayseed peasant. This only fueled a lifelong hatred for those lacking in noble blood.

Desperate to try and reclaim the respect he had been taught from birth his family name deserved, Santiago bought a commission in the army. He proved little better here than he had in the court; poor of health, average at best with the sword, and no genius in the command of men or the intricacies of tactics and strategy. His only saving grace was his thoroughness and dedication... but even this went sour, breeding in him an obsession with discipline, cleanliness and presentation, and a love of punishment so extreme that even the Aragonan army considered him a draconian tyrant.

Though Santiago managed to win a few fairly creditable actions early in his career, his faults quickly stole away what his successes had won him, sending him into a self-inflicted downward spiral of ever-worsening behavior and failures as a result. He was appointed as the governor a rebellious backwater province, and only made things worse as he extended the same tyrannical, brutal law he held over his military forces to the population.

Then he was offered the chance to take up governship in a minor overseas colony called Neuva Aragona, which was also currently rebelling. Despite recognizing that this was intended to be a sentence of exile, Santiago accepted, dreaming of reversing his fortunes. Instead, he proved the absolute ''worst'' choice for the role; a born-and-bred monarchist with no sympathy for the lot of the peasants, he ignored the legitimate grievances of the rebels and remained fundamentally convinced that the isle of Manzanilla - renamed "Resistencia" by the rebels - was home to a silent majority of good, loyal followers of the kings. Ignoring all opportunities efor a diplomatic solution, he launched into his trademark brutality, which only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the natives.

Among his many atrocities, he took captive the pregnant wife of the rebel leader Martin Jose Maconda, one Isabel de Maconda. Simultaneously smitten with her and repulsed by her loyalty to the rebel's cause, he alternatively cajoled her and brutalized her, culminating in his ordering that she would be permitted no midwife when she went into labor. The birth went bad, and both mother and child died.

All his atrocities were for nothing, ineptitude and his habit of overworking his never-great health led to him dying in his sickbed, on the very day the last of his depleted forced were overwhelmed and Neuva Aragona formally seceded independence. But even as he died, he cursed that the rebels must be defeated at any cost.

Santiago now exists as a ghost, cursed to forever mentally relieve every battle he lost on Resistencia and see with perfect clarity how he could have won. And, of course, he's also cursed that no matter how he schemes and plots, on those rare moments he tears himself away from his biter memories and dreams of glory to actually try and do something, his plans to re-conquer Manzanilla are doomed to fail.

If defeated in battle, Santiago reforms in his burial chamber below Castillo Ascension, although he remains trapped there until the next full moon. The only way he can be destroyed is if his personal sword is stolen from this chamber and used to deliver the death blow in combat.

When he closes the borders, the sea surrounding Resistencia takes on an eerie, unnatural calm; sailing ships cannot move, and rowers will find that they simply can't get more than a half-mile away from the coast.

===Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll===
Darklord of Immerabt. This female human alchemist could in many ways be considered a mirror to Dr. Mordenheim of Lamordia. Like him, she was born a scientific prodigy who had neither time nor patience for religions and matters of faith. When she was twelve, Dorothy's mother died in childbirth giving birth to a son, something Dorothy blamed upon both the local priest - for he had both refused to allow Dorothy to be present at the birth, despite her knowledge of herbs and medicines, for her lack of faith, and proven unable to save Lady Hemphyll's life with his limited divine magic - and her father, for he had listened to the priest.

This became the cornerstone of Dorothy's growing loathing for religion, something that grew ever stronger as she aged. She went abroad to study medical sciencies, [[transmuter|transmutation magic]] and [[alchemist|philosophical alchemy]], always seeking to refine her medical skills. She also visited the dark, seedy corners of society: brothels, dog-fighting arenas, drug-fueled parties and other such realms that further convinced her of the absence of divine intervention.

The kicker was when she met and fell in love with another medical student of noble ancestry; Hermann Leawly. Despite her feelings, she refused to marry him, for that would require submitting to a religious ceremony she wanted nothing to do with. But he bent under the pressure from his traditional family and returned to their home, something that enraged Dorothy, who now derided him as a weakling.

After a long, bloody war, a terrible plague gripped her homeland, and Dorothy came up with an idea for a new method to care for the terminally ill. She purchased an abandoned penitentiary on a small rocky island and converted it into a sickbay, hiring the best healers she could find (so long as they weren't divine spellcasters). One of those she hired was Hermann. She became ever-more obsessive, pushing her followers brutally, and gaining the first attention of the [[Dark Powers]]. When she perfected her prototype life support mechanisms and began abducting the terminally ill from her hospice to install them in the devices, trapping them at the brink of life and death in a state of constant, unrelenting pain, they grew anticipatory. But it wasn't until she got drunk at a party celebrating her newly produced plague vaccine, and revealed to Hermann her monstrous experiments, injecting him with concentrated plague serum and deliberately waiting for him to reach the still-incurable terminal stage of the disease before strapping him into one of her hideous living death machines that they seized her and transformed goal island into Immerabt.

Dorothy's curse is three-fold, and could be a considered a blend of Mordenheim's and Azalin's. Though she is well-aware of the fact that the local industries of Immerabt are poisoning the population, her attempts to plan and execute social projects to counter the pollution invariably fail due to being rejected or ignored. Secondly, she is kept so busy working her daily job that she cannot devote the time to furthering her understandings of magic and alchemy, preventing her from attaining the greater power she needs to pursue her goal of the ultimate curatives. Finally, she is unable to invent a vaccine to cure those suffering from the terminal effects of the plague, which means she cannot cure Hermann, who remains bound and suffering in his life-support in the depths of her sanitarium.

Unlike many darklords, Dorothy has no inherent abilities that make her unkillable, although her disease-bearing touch and biomechanical golem guards make her a force to be reckoned with in combat. She can regenerate, but she's vulnerable to fire.

If she wishes to close the borders of Immerabt, violent storms with strong winds and heavy rain surround the archipelago, whilst the waters boil with mutated [[shark]]s and other aquatic predators.

===Elizabeth Michelle Cole III===
Darklord of Hibernate. This female human [[vampire]] was born to the noble family of the Coles in the land of Hybernaya on Boram'ith. Despite her aristocratic lineage, she did not believe in the inherent superiority of her bloodline, and fell in love with a peasant boy, whom her parents had executed on trumped-up charges. This engendered a deep hatred for her parents in Elizabeth's heart, and at the age of 28, she left home to "think about things".

In her wanderings, she met and fell in love with a man named Alexander Berzinski, a [[vampire]] who converted her into one as well. They traveled together for seven years before parting, whereupon Elizaeth returned home, murdered her parents, and ruled their lands with an iron first for a decade.

During this time, she became a high priestess of [[Thanatos]], and attempted to lure a prophesied warrior known as "The Son of the Black Moon" into Thanatos' service. A task she delighted in, for she fell in love with him when she met him - a one-sided love, for he was devoted to his [[half-elf]] girlfriend. When he died escaping from his contract with the dark god, Elizabeth had him resurrected and attempted to lure him through a portal to the [[Lower Planes]], only to find herself alone in Darkon. Here, she fell afoul of the Kargat and fled to the Sea of Sorrows, only to find herself bound to the newly formed isle of Hibernate when she set foot there.

She has risen to power as the madame of the most well-respected brothel in Hibernate, leading a force of twenty eight call girls, all of whom she has turned into [[vampire]]s. Her curse is that she yearns to find the Son of the Black Moon and claim him for herself, but he has never materialized in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Elizabeth is unaffected by Hibernatian holy symbols, due to the combined facts that they represent a non-existant god and the lack of true faith endemic in Hibernate's people, but can be slain by a pine wood stake, or paralyzed with any other kind of stake. If Elizabeth is killed, one of her vampire prostitutes will fall into a month-long coma, during which she will physically and mentally be subsumed and transformed into a new incarnation of Elizabeth. It's unclear how this can be prevented.

When she wishes to close the domain, Hibernate's borders are choked by a thick fog that is impossible to navigate; those who try only find themselves circling back to Hibernate, no matter how hard they try.

The [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002 version of Elizabeth emphasizes her fundamental selfishness and cruelty, and also notes that her Undying Soul will allow her to possess any woman in Hibernate should all of her prostitutes be killed.

===Gatwe and Mr. Klein===
The domain of Nzari is home to two darklords, struggling for dominance.

'''Gatwe''' is the original Darklord; an Mwele man who was forever questioning the traditions of his people even from a youth and who burned to hold power. He apprenticed himself to the tribal shaman, whom he perceived held the true power, but his ambitions remained unchecked. When the most beautiful woman in the village chose to marry a respected hunter, that was the last straw; he forsook all the traditional limits on the shaman and began practicing sorcery. He used curses to sicken and kill those he hated, and goad the tribe into war, slowly building an empire from the scattered tribes of the Mwele. When suspicion began to fall upon him, he murdered his own family to try and throw it off, assuming the form of a leopard to plant a curse-bundle that would kill them all slowly and painfully. When he began to resume his human form, that was when the [[Dark Powers]] struck, trapping him in a twisted [[Broken One|nightmarish conglomerate form]], incapable of wielding his former magic, and launching Nzari into the Misty Realm.

'''Mr. Klein''' came to Nzari after its appearance in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. A fanatical devotee of [[Ezra]], he yearned to be a missionary, but found that goal stymied during the initial rush to explore the Sea of Sorrows; the merchants who controlled the expedition wanted profits, not proselytizing. Only when Nzari was discovered, with its savage cannibal tribes and vast wealth of ivory, did Mr. Klein finally find his desire within his grasp. He founded the Dementlieur Exploration Company, and led its first expedition to Nzari. The Mwele naturally resisted this foreign invasion, but Klein had the zeal of a fanatic and pressed on, resorting to ever-more brutal tactics as months of battle and disease took its toll on his followers. Eventually, he caught the attention of Gatwe, but managed to fight the feared "leopard-devil" off - an act that won him inroads amongst the Mwele. His followers swelled in numbers, and he seemed to make real progress in "civilizing" Nzari... until he realized that his followers were not worshipping Ezra, but Klein himself, and that those he conquered were merely paying lip service to his commands. Furious, he resorted to to ever-more draconian methods to "stamp out the heathenism", but succeeded only in pushing the Mwele to rebel. Klein counter-attacked viciously with his own forces, and responded by flaying every last one of them alive before he had them beheaded, their bodies cast into the river, and their heads impaled on stakes around his house.

In the face of such brutality, the Dark Powers aren't sure ''which'' of the two better deserves the title of Darklord.

Gatwe's curse is simple: he is forever cut off from the adoration and power he changes. No Mwele will have anything to do with one so obviously marked as a sorcerer, and he cannot change or disguise his form regardless of what artifice he tries. Mr. Klein, on the other hand, is cursed that when he sleeps, he sees the world through Gatwe's eyes, experiencing the broken one's life as he lives it. Both, ironically, share the curse of wanting to change the Mwele culture, but being completely incapable of doing so.

The two Darklords ''despise'' each other. Gatwe has become convinced that if he can kill Klein, his full powers will be restored to him. Klein, on the other hand, believes that Gatwe is a literal demon, a symbol of the savagery hidden in humanity's heart, and that only by "civilizing" the Mwele will the nightmarish dream-visions cease.

Unusually for co-darklords, they can both close Nzari's borders; Gatwe surrounds the domain an impenetrable thicket of vegetation, whilst those trying to flee against Klein's wishes find themselves lost in thick fog and eventually attacked by an endless hail of arrows.

Both darklords also have their own unique forms of immortality. If Gatwe is killed, one of the leopards of Nzari will become his reincarnation a day later. Klein, on the other hand, is simply impervious to all attacks not dealt with an ivory weapon (a ''blessed'' ivory weapon deals double damage!) and will not return if slain.

===Geren Horstadt===
Darklord of Seradan. Born the favored son of a minor noble family, Geren was a bullying braggart in private, but a charming and idolized peer in public. All that changed when, at the age of 17, he was struck by a strange wasting disease that crippled him irreversibly; he lost use of his legs, his muscles withered, and all his senses faded. Though his family bankrupted themselves to try and cure him, nothing worked. He spent fifteen years in his own personal hell, watching and envying those with normal lives, and resenting his family despite the love and care they still showered him with.

His true descent into damnation came when one of his brothers brought down a trunk full of books from the attack, and Geren learned one of his great-grandfathers had been a powerful [[wizard]] - one with considerable experience in summoning beings from the [[Lower Planes]]. When his family refused to hire a wizard to tutor Geren in magic, he decided to try summoning a [[fiend]] on his own. He called forth a [[yugoloth]], who was so surprised by the venomous manner in which Geren pleaded his case that he offered Geren a trade: the souls of Geren's families in exchange for the ability to "help Geren feel what others feel".

It was a bargain Geren made without hesitation. He hired an [[assassin]] to kill every last member of his family, other than his mother. In exchange, the yugoloth gifted him with the ability to possess others, which allowed him to vicariously experience life as a normal person again. He slowly began to rebuild the family's fortunes by using possessed thralls to commit acts of murder and theft... then the townsfolk began to suspect his mother was involved, and she in turn wondered if Geren was responsible. When she confronted him, however, Geren petuantly seized control of her mind and made her kill herself. But some of the townsfolk had just arrived to question her again, and they discovered her slumping over the infamous and now-hated cripple. Realizing that Geren had been responsible, they beat him with clubs and then dragged him into the streets, where the mob lynched him; hanging him from a tree and beating him to death as they burned his family's home and himself.

Such was Geren's rage at this fate that he returned from the grave as a powerful haunt - a [[Ravenloft]] strain of [[ghost]]. With his possession abilities enhanced, he used them to massacre the entire population of the village... which was when the Mists rolled in and claimed him for Seradan.

Geren's darklord status brings with it a cocktail of curses. The standard Darklord curse of being unable to leave his domain chafes him particularly, being that he yearns to explore and experience the world. Making matters worse is that he is now trapped in a realm of dullards, so docile, unimaginative and unfeeling that possessing them is little better than staying a ghost. For further insult, Geren can now only possess hosts for short periods of time, or else they die of a supernaturally induced fever, forcing him to largely avoid using his possession abilities.

Geren always reforms one week after being destroyed. Only if he is allowed to kill Wilhelm Braugh, the only survivor of Geren's hometown and the inspector who gave him over to the mob, will he cease to exist, having decided that there is nothing left to live for. If he closes the borders, supernatural exhaustion claims any who try to leave the domain, sapping their strength until they are left helpless.

===Henry Arlington===
Darklord of Arlington Farm. Henry Arlington was a farmer who obsessed about success. Inheriting his farm after the tragic death of his parents in a house fire, he killed his own elder brothers in a duel to secure his inheritance. He proved to be a demanding, overbearing farmer, and obsessed with successful crops; when an unexpected New Year's late frost resulted in damage to a significant portion of the crops, Henry flew into a rage, even though he had more than enough funds to weather this less-than-perfect year. In his rage, he murdered one of his farmhands, concealing the crime by cutting up his body and hiding it amongst the scarecrows on the property. That year, the farm bloomed with a record-breaking bounty.

The next year saw a similar pattern: the crops failed early in the year, but when Henry killed (in this case a stray dog), they suddenly reversed fortune and flourished. Henry became convinced that his farm would reward him with bounty only in exchange for blood sacrifices, and he began a yearly ritual of murdering some human victim and stuffing their dismembered body into the scarecrows. Over a decade of this grisly work, he soon had no farmhands left to sacrifice, and so instead he slaughtered his entire family for the sake of his farm.

That was the last straw. The grisly, corpse-stuffed scarecrows came to life and burned down all his crops, then dragged Henry out into the field and mutilated him, turning him into a fleshy scarecrow like themselves. That was when the Mists swallowed the farm.

In the present, Henry still tends to his farm as an animate corpse [[scarecrow]], only to find his labors undone whatever he achieves. In addition, every harvest moon, he finds himself human once more - and subsequently butchered by his vengeful scarecrow "workers".

Henry can close the border for up to an hour at a time by summoning a vast murder of crows that attack whoever tries to leave. After an hour, however, Henry is exhausted and must rest for 3 rounds before he can resummon the swarm. If slain, Henry remains dead until the next full moon or blue moon, whereupon he will possess one of the scarecrows in his domain and return to life. Theoretically, he can be destroyed forever by destroying all of the scarecrows.

===Hercules===
Darklord of Olympus. Born the son of the High Priest of [[Zeus]] in a theocratic nation ruled over by a collective of seven temples to the Greek Gods - Zeus, [[Athena]], [[Aphrodite]], [[Hermes]], [[Ares]], [[Apollo]] and [[Hades]], the man now known only as Hercules earned great fame in his youth by speaking up against the brutal repression of the priest-lords and championing the rights of the oppressed commoners. Although originally he sought peace, the overwhelming corruption opposing him led him first to delving into the murky depths of politics, and finally into leading a full-blown revolution.

This angered the realm's rulers, the conclave of High Priests known as the Council of Seven, who came up with three plans to ruin Hercules. The High Priest of Zeus sent his son cursed gauntlets that would drive him into bloodthirsty rages under false pretence of truce. The High Priestess of Athena sought to summon a daemonic entity that would grant the Council magical powers that would allow them to crush the rebels and prove themselves the true "Voices of the Gods". Finally, the High Priestess of Aphrodite arranged for one of her serving girls to be sent to seduce Hercules, with the ultimate plan of disgracing him by tempting him into committing the blasphemous act of making love in the holy ground of the temple of Zeus.

They couldn't have expected that Dejanira, the girl chosen by the Voice of Aphrodite, would fall in love with Hercules and reveal the ploy to him. Any more than she could have expected for him to revile her as a traitorous seductress, but hide his loathing and use her to deliver a strike against the Council as they performed the summoning ritual. At the height of battle and ritual both, Hercules turned on Dejanira and stabbed her to death before throwing her into the center of the Council, then beating his father to death as he was paralyzed by the sudden influx of magical energies from the rite.

The Seven Voices of the Gods were transformed into quasi-daemons in their own right, and Hercules became the Darklord of the realm now called simply "Olympus".

Hercules is cursed both with the erratic and dangerous rages from his braces, and in that he is haunted by the terrifying spectre of Dejanira, who still loves him even in death. Worse still, his reputation continually sours due to his berserk rages.

The only way to kill Hercules for good is to force him, the six "Living Gods" of Olympus and the Forsaken One (the half-daemonic ghost of the High Priest of Zeus) to meet in the abandoned temple of Zeus and perform the fiend summoning ritual again. Only if Hercules allows himself to be sacrificed as part of the ritual will his curse be ended - which will also strip the Living Gods of their powers and make them mortal as well.

If Hercules wishes to seal the borders of Olympus, a titanic lightning storm envelops the domain, striking down any who attempt to escape.

===Heresa Heri, The Vulture King===
Darklord of Tsuu-Y-Teke. Long ago, Heresa Heri was one of the great animal lords, powerful spirits subordinate to the greater animal gods, but he betrayed his master's wishes after being named ruler over the skies: when given the ability to create permanent light from enchanted crystals, rather than sharing this light with the world, he selfishly kept them for himself, turning them into a shining feathered headdress. But his treachery was uncovered by a human hero-shaman named Kanaciwe, who captured Heresa Heri and tore out the golden and silver feathers, turning them into the sun, moon and stars. But the appearance of the sun dazed Kanaciwe, allowing Heresa Heri to break free of the shaman's grip and kill him.

This act enraged his rival, the newly empowered Haloe-Tsuu (Sun Puma), who cursed Heresa Heri; never again would he be allowed to face the sunlight, or else it would destroy him. Though the Vulture King fled into the deepest cave, he was mortally wounded, and summoned his underlings to ceremonially preserve his body and spirit. As he died, he cursed all those who had robbed him of "his" treasure, from the humans whose shaman had taken his headdress of shining light to the skies themselves for being home to the sun and moon. Thus was the domain of Tsuu-Y-Teke born.

In appearance, the Vulture King is a white-feathered giant vulture with a dark red bonnet of dried blood on his head, sickly yellow eyes that glow in the dark, and a jagged, uneven beak that gives him the appearance of fanged teeth. He is an [[undead]] creature with powers similar to those of a [[mummy]], althoug he looks like a living bird.

As Darklord, Heresa Heri is trapped in his cavern lair except during True Night, the one period of darkness that comes to Tsuu-Y-Teke once per month. He has become obsessed with the idea that if he can amass a sufficient number of gems, he can reimprison the light and restore the endless Night that the world once knew... but he knows that to do so, he needs the ''exact'' number of gems as there are stars in the sky, and he no longer remembers how many that is!

In combat, Heresa Heri is a powerhouse and all but impossible to destroy without the use of sunlight or powerful magical light. Even then, if destroyed, his spirit will possess any giant vulture within a 13 mile radius, which will transform into the Vulture King 1 week later.

When the Vulture King seeks to seal Tsuu-Y-Teke, then impenetrable magical darkness gathers on the borders; those who try to escape instead get lost in the utter blackness and stumble right back out into the domain.

===Jarl Gravstein Hansen===
Darklord of the Northlands. This male human was born to the Gand tribe, son of the man who had founded the trade guild known as the Key, which was bringing much-needed prosperity to the realm. He railed against the tradition by which the Gand and Kosti tribes alternated ownership of the capital city of Miklaheim every five years, and was determined to keep ownership of the city for himself.

To do so, he launched a brutal campaign against the Gand tribe, taxing his own people into famine and ruin to do so. When they were devastated, he turned his back on the traditional religion of the seidmen, secretly siphoning away funds from the church who thought he was supporting them. Finally, he began taxing the trade guild to borderline ruin itself. Through his short-sighted greed and selfishness, the realm was drawn into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Secretly, Gravstein yearns to be respected and loved, but he cannot attain it - only if he returns all the land of the Gand to them will this curse be broken, which mechanically manifests as an automatic failure on any Charisma check other than Intimidation. He doesn't have any magical powers to preserve his life, but whoever takes up the mantle of leadership should he die will be cursed in the same manner.

Closing the borders results in a vast army of warrior spirits descending from the heavens and physically blocking passage.

===Captain Jacobi Robertsonn===
Darklord of Whal. Born a fisherman's son on an unnamed world, Jacobi grew up in seas that were plentiful with a father who loved him and loved his life on the sea. Then, when Jacobi was young, he and his father were caught in a terrible storm whilst fishing, during which the youth spotted a giant whale - a ''leviathan'' - playing in the rough surf. Play that ended with the breaching whale crashing right on top of the small fishing boat; Jacobi awoke washed ashore, scarred, surrounded by debris, and with his father missing.

Years later, Jacobi was commanding a trading galleon called the Sailor's Blessing with his beloved only son Abram when the ship was caught in a tropical storm. On the fourth day, the ship hit something in the water and began to sink, and during the scramble to escape, Abram was swept over the side and vanished. Spotting a leviathan in the storm, Jacobi blamed his son's apparent death on the creature, and in fact convinced himself it was the same whale that had killed his father.

Returning to port, he purchased a new ship, the Retribution, and became a whaler, venting his wrath on whales indiscriminately for the next decade. He was beginning to lose all hope of ever attaining vengeance when he finally encountered the biggest whale he'd ever seen - what he was sure was the leviathan that had killed his father and son. He personally led the hunt and harpooned the beast, only for it turn and smash his boat to pieces. Driven by rage, the wounded Jacobi hauled himself onto the beast by climbing the rope of the embedded harpoon; even as the surviving crew fled, he stabbed the whale over and over again, all the while cursing it, himself and his crew with all his soul... until everything went black.

Then he awoke and found himself on a strange, yet vaguely familiar, island; the land of Whal. A place of whalers who, to his surprise, deferred to him with their problems. He has since figured out he rules Whal, but is cursed to never leave it.

As a Darklord, Jacobi's curse is that he has become a rare oceanic [[therianthrope]]: a [[wereorca]]. He has distinctly mixed feelings about this form; he acknowledges the appropriateness of it, but he loathes being associated with a whale. He's also been cursed to suffer from intense sea-sickness if he ever sets foot upon a water-borne vessel, so whilst he does enjoy the freedom offered by his alterante form, the fact he can only hunt as an orca means he misses the thrill of commanding his own ship. Whilst normally he has control over this changes, he is forced to assume orca form on the days of his father's and son's deaths, days that are also marked by intense storms.

Perhaps his true curse, however, is that despite his obsession with killing the leviathan he blames for ruining his life, the creature never appears in the waters off of Whal.

When Jacobi closes his borders, the sea parts down to the sea floor, creating a 300ft wide chasm between the two bodies of water. Flight is, of course, impossible. Nothing explicitly prevents you from walking across the chasm and then using water-breathing magic to escape through the water on the other side, though.

Jacobi has no life-preserving powers outside of his immunity to any weapon that isn't +1 or made from whalebone. He is a 16th level [[Avenger]], however, which combined with the aquatic capabilities of his form makes him more dangerous than you'd think.

===Jinx===
Darklord of the Lost Wizard's Tower. This male black cat was once the [[familiar]] of a [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale, a caring and heroic individual, but a slightly neglectful owner, and also too hubristic for her own good. Jinx's journey into damnation began when she decided to use the cat as the test subject for an experiment in increasing the intelligence of animals.

It worked... but it also made Jinx smart enough to realize just how much more there was to Margaret's life than him. He became convinced that she had chosen him as her test subject because she simply didn't ''care'' if he lived or died, developing a burning resentment for it. Worse, he became mentally human enough to become convinced that he was in love with Margaret, and to be consumed with jealousy that she had other interests in her life.

When the region where they lived was attacked by [[barbarian]]s, Jinx went out of his way to assist Margaret, hoping to prove his worth in the hopes that she would come to reciprocate his jealous, obsessive love. She did not. Instead, she fell in love with a young warrior under her command. When she announced their upcoming marriage, he devised and enacted a plan to lead the man Margaret had fallen for to his death in battle. With no spellcasters in the region powerful enough to revive the fallen, Jinx was sure that this would be the end of his "competition".

To Jinx's fury, the death of her betrothed only filled Margaret with rage and suicidal grief. She prepared a super-powerful alchemical explosive, and made a personal assault on the horde's camp. Blind with fury, she waded through the ranks of the enemy, surviving many attacks only because Jinx fought like a hellcat to save her - to the familiar's growing rage as he realized she didn't even notice her efforts. Finally, Margaret planted the explosive, only to be attacked by the horde's leader. Though she defeated him, she was badly hurt in the process, leaving her helpless in the face of the coming explosion.

Jinx tried to pull her to safety, but was too weak to do so. Margaret told him to flee to safety, and expressed her happiness that in dying, she would meet her beloved fiancee in the afterlife. At that, the cat flew into a rage and revealed how ''he'' had arranged the warrior's death, blaming his actions on Margaret's decision to give him the curse of reason. Finally, he vowed that Margaret would neither see Jinx's death nor her beloved, raking her eyes with his claws and then fleeing his master, whose screams of pain were swiftly cut off by the explosion.

Unrepentant, yet fearful, Jinx fled all the way back to the tower where he and Margaret once lived, only to find it mysteriously deserted. He has remained there ever since.

Jinx waits endlessly now for people to visit the lost tower, hoping to claim a new master. His first preference is a female [[wizard]], then a female [[sorcerer]], then a female [[bard]] or any other arcane spellcasting clas, and then finally a male arcanist. He will do whatever he can to first persuade them to accept his presence, and then separate his chosen master from their former companions. His curse, of course, is that he will always destroy any relationship he establishes - if nothing else, he will end up killing the would-be master when they fail to meet his standards for loving and doting upon him. He prefers to use his retained spells ability, which allows him to cast Flesh to Stone one per day, to "immortalize" failed masters by petrifying them.

Jinx has no specific powers keeping him alive, so if you can kill the little beast, he's done for. He can't even close the borders properly, but instead just summons the Mists; those who flee will find themselves emerging from the mist elsewhere in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

===Warden Jonar Tamh===
Darklord of Karss. This [[Harmonium]]-sworn male [[aasimar]] [[Fighter]] joined the Harmonium at a young age, and very quickly moved up the ranks, attaining the position of Mover One at the age of 25. When he was selected to lead the experimental Great Prison of Ortho, a reformation-focused alternative to the [[Mercykiller]]-run prison of [[Sigil]], he saw it as a great honor... until it became apparent that the majority of the cynical Sigil-originated prisoners were unwilling to cooperate with the project.

Fearful for his reputation, Jonar Tamh resorted to increasingly brutal and draconian punishments, covering up the ongoing breakdown from his superiors and replacing subordinates who dared to question him. Growing convinced that some force - the [[Mercykiller]]s, the [[Revolutionary League]], or the agents of evil - was sabotaging the Great Prison, he descended ever-deeper into brutality. Finally, his best friend, the deputy warden Zet Keffen, tried to convince Jonar to return to the Great Prison's original premise; when Jonar refused, he declared he would bring this matter to the Factol of the Harmonium.

Jonar panicked and killed Zet right then and there, covering it up by blaming the murder on two particularly troublesome prisoners and executing them for it.

But Jonar couldn't cover it up forever. Hearing that his superiors were on their way to investigate the prison, and also that there were plans for a mass uprisiong, Jonar gathered 28 of the most outspoken and problematic inmates and hanged them all, one by one. As the last expired, a great hurricane arose from nowhere, forcing the Harmonium guards indoors. When the storm ended, the Great Prison now sat on the barren island of Karss.

Jonar Tamh suffers two major curses. Firstly, although he now has the ability to mentally control large numbers of people at once, he experiences all of the pain and misery of those he is controlling. Secondly, the vengeful spirit of Zet has become bound to Jonar's sword; if Jonar inflicts 12 or more damage with it against a single foe, Zet gains the abilities of a rank 2 ghost for one hour, allowing him to attack his former best friend.

The aasimar darklord cannot close the borders of Karss.

===Kasselheim Blightlyng===
Darklord of Vulnara. This [[gnome]] [[vampire]] had the misfortune to be born a gnome with no sense of humor. Whilst other gnomes were happily running round, playing stupid pranks and making silly illusions, Kasselheim was stuck fuming over how non-gnomish races didn't treat them with the slightest respect, all whilst the other gnomes reacted to his pleas for them to just try and be a little more serious by pranking him worse than ever. Eventually, he became a [[Transmuter]], bitterly thumbing his nose at a centuries old family radition, and withdrew to the deepest depths of their underground home. Then a few years later, a great flood washed through the gnome community and drove them up onto the surface, and the survivors counted Kasselheim as one of the dead.

They didn't know that Kasselheim had severely blinded and deafened himself in an alchemical explosion during his period of isolation. Nor could they know that many of those presumed dead in the flood were actually kidnapped by Kasselheim, who began experimenting in dark magic to steal their senses for himself, ultimately transforming them into warped monsters called "tactyles". But when they finally began moving back into the tunnels years later, they found out.

They formed a great war party with the aid of [elf]], [[dwarf]] and [[human]] adventurers from communities who had also suffered Kasselheim's depredations, and tracked him down to his underground fortress... only to be all but wiped out. Even though former friends (well, ''they'' considered themselves to be his friends, at least) and family were amongst the party, Kasselheim killed or captured them all. The last survivor was one of his sisters, a [[cleric]] of the gnome gods who threw herself to her death over a cliff whilst cursing him. An earthquake, and Kasselheim was knocked unconscious, rising to discover he had become a unique form of gnomish [[vampire]].

Kasselheim's curse is that he must ''constantly'' feed; his stolen senses of sight, hearing, scent and taste dwindle rapidly after feeding, until all that he has left is enough of a sense of touch to register pain. However, because of how fast his senses fade, and the isolated nature of his lair, he is effectively confined to a small part of his domain, and thus must go long, terrible intervals between feedings.

Killing Kasselheim can be done in two ways. First, if he is exposed to sunlight, he becomes incorporeal; if he is kept from fleeing back to his lair for two hours whilst in this form, he dissipates into nothing. Secondly, one can complete a complicated ritual, slightly altered from the traditional gnomish vampire. To achieve his permanent destruction, Kasselheim must first be immobilized by staking him with a silver spike through the heart. Then his hands must be cut off and boiled in a volcanic hot spring for 24 hours, after which his eyes must be gouged out and replaced with precious gems (100gp value minimum for each eye). Finally, his inert body must be carried to some place where it can be exposed to direct sunlight for an hour - but this will revive him in his incorporeal form, so the would-be vampire killer will need to use some method to trap him in the light for the full hour.

===General Martin Jose Maconda===
Darklord of Maconda. This charismatic male human was, from his earliest days, both adept at manipulating others with his natural charm and good looks, prone to surprising moments of generosity, and feared for his grudge-holding, horrifying fits of temper, and trait for cold-blooded manipulation. It came a great surprise to him when he discovered that there were people he could not dominate at will - and worse still, his mixed heritage would forever prevent him from joining the upepr echelon of Manzanillan society.

Thus, out of a mixture of pride and genuine interest, he became involved in the growing revolutionary movement, and ultimately he became the leader of the guerilla forces fighting against the brutal suppressionist forces of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez. When Maconda's beloved wife Isabel died in her childbed as a result of of Don Santiago's cruelty, Maconda went in search of the fearsome Warlok of the Peak, determined to have the power to triumph over his enemies.

And he returned with that power. Only to find, to Maconda's fury, that Don Santiago had died of fever in his sickbed mere hours before the last Royalist troops were defeated. Enraged, he ordered the Royalists massacred, cutting down a priest who dared argue against this behavior, and once the bloodshed was over, he left Resistencia for the mainland of Libertad, vowing never to return - a vow the [[Dark Powers]] were happy to fulfill for him.

A year later, he became the president of the Republic, and he soon established himself as a brutal tyrant as bad as the royalists he had overthrown.

The Warlock of the Peak transformed Maconda into a powerful [[wereanaconda]], and despite the many powers his state gives him, Maconda loathes this form, in part because he believes Isabel would be disgusted by it, and also in part because he is compellede to transform into a giant anaconda and feed on human flesh on the night of the new moon. Unusually, he cannot create other wereanacondas with his biter, but those who drink or touch his blood, even if they are spattered with it in combat, risk being turn into either were-fer-de-lanes or were-bushmasters, species of [[weresnake]] (treat as Neutral Evil [[werecobra]]s) native to Libertad and compelled to be loyal to him.

Maconda's curse is that he desperately yearns to be loved and adored, but his insistence upon doing so by repressing and removing all opposition or dissent merely stokes the hatred and fear of those he rules over.

He can be wounded by weapons made of silver or the wood of the caobo tree, and is sickened by both the smell and taste of guavas. If defeated in battle, Maconda doesn't die but instead assumes anaconda form and slithers off into the jungle, unable to regain his human form until the next new moon. There is no known way to permanently destroy him.

Maconda can close the domain borders of his island by causing the jungles and seas to become engulfed in massive swarms of lethally poisonous snakes.

===Miles Havelocke===
Darklord of the Eternal Torture. Born in a coastal city, Miles was pressganged at the age of 15, which ruined his life; he suffered from incurable seasickness, for which his fellows tormented him mercilessly and the bullying captain only made it worse by assigning him to the worst tasks possible for somebody with his condition, ordering him severely beaten when, inevitably, he threw up. With no aptitude for mathematics, Miles couldn't master the art of navigation, and so couldn't hope to progress to the higher ranks of the navy.

Twenty years of this treatment turned Miles into a bitter, miserable bully who loathed the sea and used what little authority he could get to exact vengeance upon those few below him on the ship's pecking order. Why he never simply fled during his first shore leave, nobody knows.

Eventually, Miles' captain was chosen to make a voyage into the uncharted western ocean, to Miles' dismay. But when the captain continued in pressing on in pursuit of ever-richer islands to the west, it led to the ship becoming lost in the waters and supplies running low. Miles seized this opportunity for revenge and began spreading rumors about the ship's officers hoarding food for themselves, ultimately leading a successful mutiny. When his ineptitude at seamanship led to them being becalmed, he led his mutineers to cannibalize the captured officers, gleefully rubbing their faces in their past abuse of him and coming to relish human flesh.

And then, as this supply of food began to run low, they finally spotted land... but, as they rowed frantcially to reach it, the Mists arose and swallowed the ship. When they cleared, the mutineers found themselves in the middle of a sea in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Overwhelmed by misery, they sat down and waited for death... and then, a fortnight later, they arose as [[ghoul]]s under the command of Miles Havelock, a Ghoul Lord, and began searching for food and land.

Miles Havelock suffers multiple curses. Firstly, he can never reach land, no matter how desperately he tries - at best, he can get a brief glimpse of the coast before the Mists immediately rise and teleport his ship elsewhere. Secondly, his seasickness has not only survived undeath, but intensified; he is '''perpetually''' seasick and also starving hungry, and these twin pains are why he has rechristened his ship "The Eternal Torture". If destroyed, his essence will inhabit the body of a living prisoner in the ship's hold and consume them from the inside out; the only way to end his curse is to kill him, rescue all of the prisoners, and sink the Eternal Torture, then make for land at full speed.

===Rafe Ungard===
Darklord of Callista. This male [[Half-Vistani]] [[Bard]] used his natural charm (and a complexion that allowed him to hide his hated Vistani blood) to swindle innocent women into marriage scams, start feuds amongst noble families for his own amusement, and delve into increasingly cruel and lethal manipulation. The backstory of poor Susannah Joson from [[Children of the Night]]: [[Ghost]]s is but one example of his misdeeds. When a party of [[adventurer]]s tried to bring him to justice, he continually slipped away, leaving the bodies of victims in his wake to torment them, and ultimately murdered his pursuers by burning down the inn they were staying in as they slept, which is when the Mists took him.

Rafe now possesses a strange form of immortality; he will ''always'' die once per day, no matter what steps he takes to try and avoid it, only to spontaneously return to life the next day. There is no known method to stop him from returning.

When he closes the domain, Callista's borders become a ring of boiling geysers that will kill anyone who passes through them, and which extend as high into the sky as needed to reach anyone trying to fly through.

===Sean Mako & Alice/Alison Marjory===
Darklords of Carcharodon Isle. Sort of a combination of Ladyhawke and the Little Mermaid. Over a century ago, a male human fisherman named Sean Marko lived in the village of Mistlington. One day, he discovered an injured [[merfolk|mermaid]] washed up on the isle's northwest shore, unconscious and bleeding from several wounds, including a severed left hand. Unable to turn away from someone in need, he brought her to his home and nursed her back to health. The mermaid, whose name translated into Common as "Alice", explained that she was the only survivor of a tribe that had been slaughtered by [[sahuagin]].

The two fell in love, much to the displeasure of the locals; the fishermen thought Sean was foolish for pining over a mermaid, and their wives were jealous of Alice's beauty, leading to them slandering her and Sean's relationship as "unnatural". Ultimately, a bunch of the village's men took it upon themselves to "repatriate" Alice; they came to Sean's house in the night, bludgeoned him unconscious, and carried Alice away. When Sean regained consciousness, he rowed desperately to catch up to them, but by the time he did so, they'd thrown the still-bound mermaid overboard.

Enraged, Sean snatched up a boathook and attacked the men who had assaulted him and the woman he loved, butchering them. When the carnage was over, he dove into the water after Alice, and then begged the full moon above for a fins and a tail so he might never be separated from his love.

Naturally, the [[Dark Powers]] chose to be dicks about granting this wish...

Both Sean and the revived Alice, now a human calling herself Alison Marjory, have become maledictive [[therianthrope]]s.

Sean is a giant [[wereshark]] who spends most of the month as an intelligent megalodon, unaware that he ''can'' transform and remembering nothing of his human life; only during the nights of the full moon and those nights directly before and after it does he return to his human form... which remembers everything he did as a giant killer shark. Because of his curse-spawned ignorance, the only way that shark!Sean can transform is if he is magically compelled to do so, such as by an Amulet of the Beast. He spends his days asleep and his nights hunting for food.

In contrast, Alison is a [[seawolf]] who spends most of the month as a human, but assumes her seawolf form on the nights before, during and after the full moon - the same nights when Sean regains his humanity. Like Sean, as a seawolf, she is completely ignorant of her human life. She keeps to herself, for the people of the isle still distrust and dislike her, gladly telling the nastiest stories they can think of about her to anyone who'll listen.

Neither darklord can be slain permanently through violence; they fully heal and return to life 1 round after being defeated. They also can't close the domain's borders, although since the only local vessels are small fishing boats that are no match for a giant shark or a massive seafaring wolf, they don't need to do much more than patrol the borders themselves.

Curing them simply requires breaking the curse by getting them to touch as humans, but doing so is tough; aside from the fact that they alternate human and monster forms, neither is aware of the fact that the other survives. Whichever of them is in beast form also refuses to get within 10 feet of the other one. They also won't willingly get within 5 feet of an Amulet of the Beast. So players are going to have to get creative to break their curse.

===Serenissa D'Aubliet===
Darklord of Romagna. Serenissa (female human spectre) was born an orphan; her father, a miller's son, was killed soon after her conception, and her peasant girl mother died in birthing her. She was taken in the local lord to serve as companion to his two daughters, but their initial friendship soured as they came of age and Serenissa realized the social gap between them. At the age of twelve, she was sent to the family of a neighboring lord to become a nursemaid to that lord's newly born twin children; Serenissa doted upon the children, and happily threw herself into their care.

However, she also became increasingly obsessed with fanciful daydreams about her origins, fixating on the belief that she was actually of noble birth and that her parents were both alive and desperately seeking her. She loved to tell these stories to her two charges... until the eve of their fourth birthdays, when, at the top of the Eagle's Tower, the two young children scolded her for lying and corrected her that she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a simpleton and a millerboy, both of whom had died. Mad with rage, especially when the twins revealed that everyone in the castle claimed that this was so, she pushed them off of the tower to their deaths.

Her skill at lying allowed her to escape being blamed for what she described as a terrible accident. For two weeks she festered on the idea that people were "slandering her" behind her back, and finally, two months after the day she had murdered the twins, she set a fire in the Great Hall that night, killing everyone in the castle.

Slinking away from the carnage, she made her way to the barony of Romagna, where she seduced her way into both a respectable position as lady's maid to the younger sister of Baron Etain and into the arms of Baron Etain himself. After several months of dalliance, he gifted her with a gemstone brooch... and then announced his upcoming marriage to the Lady Fialle, daughter of a neighboring lord, the very next day.

This pushed Serenissa over the edge and soon thereafter, she drew Baron Etain to a high tower, where she grabbed him and leapt off the edge, intending that they die together so she would not live alone.

But this time, with the interference of the [[Dark Powers]], her scheme failed. Serenissa hit the ground and was killed on impact, but her body cushioned Etain's fall, and so he lived. The madwoman's spirit rose from its grave as a ghost, trapped in an endless time loop; Romagna experiences only a single year, constantly recycling itself. It starts one week before the equinox Spring Festival, when Fialle arrives in Romagna for her upcoming wedding to Baron Etain. That week is spent in feasts and celebrations, capped off by a three-day non-stop revelry for the weding proper. Then, six months later, Fialle conceives Etain's child. And then, one week before the first anniversary of the wedding, time looks back and it is the week before the Spring Festival again.

Furthering Serenissa's torment, she is completely incapable of physically interacting with the people of Romagna, although she can manipulate their emotions despite the fact they cannot see, hear or touch her. She uses her emotional control to turn them into her agents of retribution, although she can't turn them against Etain or Fialle. This ability is defined vaguely, because she herself hasn't really studied her full capabilities with it.

Only visitors to Romagna are in true danger from Serenissa, because she is fully visible and audible to them, although still intangible. She invariably attempts to seduce the handsome male visitors to the domain, luring them away if they prove receptive to try and embrace them - doing so, however, results in her draining 1 level per 2 rounds, causing them to disintegrate... but if they break free, she attacks.

Serenissa is vulnerable to holy water, +2 or stronger magic weapons, and functional weapons made of gold. She is impervious to holy symbols, but can be turned with symbols of true love and matrimony - for example, the wedding rings of people who are actually married. If destroyed, she can reform at Etain and Fialle's wedding. Exactly ho to destroy her permanently is left vague, with her entry in the Book of Sorrows concluding with this paragraph:
::''Weapons forged from symbols of love (such as rings, charms, wooden wands, or ceremonial ropes used to bind a man and woman together at their wedding) may have greater effect, rendering her helpless or immobile. Her final death is likely to involve elements of her first experience; rejection, a long fall, and/or a noble lover. Heroes should beware, though—the dark powers may look with interest upon anyone who willingly transforms a symbol of love into a weapon of war.''

===Urdogen "The Red"===
Darklord of The Raging Tears. Male Human Spectre. In life, Urdogen (who first appeared in the [[Forgotten Realms]] splat "Pirates of the Fallen Stars") was basically Faerun's version of Blackbeard - if Blackbeard was a redhead. He terrorized the Inner Sea so badly that the nations of that region united to defeat his fleet, whereupon Urdogen fled and found himself spirited away by the Mists into the Sea of Sorrows... where he promptly hit a hidden reef and sank his ship, drowning.

Ever since then, Urdogen's ghostly vessel has sailed all the seas of the Misty Realm, cursed to never be able to come within sight of land and only able to rise from his watery grave during the nocturnal hours. Further stymying his desperate desire to reclaim his former reputation as a fearsome pirate lord, any who encounter Urdogen and live to tell the tale are cursed to forget his name.

To put an end to Urdogen, the ruin of the Raging Tears must be hauled up from the seafloor and carried inland, where it must then be burned completely to ash in a funeral pyre.

Interestingly, Urdogen's ghostly ship is actually able to return to the Inner Sea of Faerun on moonless, foggy nights in his homeworld, although he must return to the Misty Realms upon dawn.

If Urdogen chooses to close the borders of his traveling domain, the waters around his ship become rough and infested with a feeding frenzy of sharks; those who try to fly away will instead find themselves sinking into the water.

==5e Darklords==
As part of its general overhaul of the [[Demiplane of Dread]], 5th edition added a significant number of new darklords - some to replace former darklords, others ruling over brand new domains. Darklords who simply got retconned backstories and other traits have those details added to their entries above. Quite a few of these characters don't have much info on them due to being only mentioned in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book, most of which only have a single paragraph dedicated to their domain and darklord.

One unique trait common to all 5e darklords is that the personalized domain border closures of the past are largely gone; there might be cosmetic tweaks, but in general most 5e Domains of Dread all function the same when a person tries to escape through a closed border.

===Chakuna===
The replacement Darklord of Valachan, and one of the few 5e darklords to explicitly continue on in some fashion from the setting as it existed before. A female [[werepanther]], Chakuna belongs to a tribe of [[werecat]]s (specifically panthers and ocelots) called the Oselo, whom were hunted to the brink of extinction by Baron Urik von Kharkov, as he had come to fixate upon them as the most intriguing and challenging quarry. (Nevermind that Urik was originally "Blacula Strahd" with no real interest in "hunting the most dangerous game".) To save her people, she went to the literal heart of the domain and performed an unholy rite, cutting out her own heart and offering it to the land as sacrifice in exchange for the power to defeat Urik. Long story short, it worked; she ripped out his heart, tore him to pieces, and buried his still-living and curse-spewing head in the ruins of his castle before building her own treetop hunting lodge atop the ruins. Which is actually kind of badass. But now the jungle has become hungrier than ever, and she must regularly sacrifice human hearts to the land to keep the plants and animals from slaughtering all the Valachani (shades of the Wildlands, there), which she obtains through the "Trials of the Heart" - ceremonially hunting down designated victims with the aid of trained [[Displacer Beast]]s. She won't touch a fellow Oselo, but everybody else is fair game.

Chakuna can only be killed if her heart is found in the secret grove where she performed her dark rite and destroyed, but unless somebody assumes her mantle in the process, then the jungle will be free to kill everyone.
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===Flimira Vhage===
Currently very little is known about Flimira Vhage other than that their domain is the office of a detective agency which is actually is an extension of their own broken mind.

===Jacqueline Renier===
While this character is really just a reimagining of Jaqueline Renier, her minimally different name means she's technically a new character and gets her own section here. Besides being a wererat she has almost nothing in common with the original Jaqueline anyway.

A century ago, the Richemulot was a prosperous nation with a growing middle class. As the commoners began to gain more wealth and power, it caused the influence of the nobility to wane, a fact that Jacqueline Renier did not like. As her family seemed oblivious to the threat this posed, she began to look allies and heard of the Trueblood Council, a secret society of Richemulot’s eldest and most esteemed families. She spent a fortune finding a way to attain membership to the council, but discovered they were not actually nobles, but wererats. That same night, she was inducted into their ranks.

Renier swiftly accepted her new life as a wererat, her scorn for commoners expanding to include all non-wererats. Her first major act consisted of conferring the gift of lycanthropy upon her family. Only her twin, Louise, resisted, for which Jacqueline disfigured her and cast her out. Within the sewers of Pont-a-Museau, the wererats concocted a roiling pestilence known as the Gnawing Plague, which swept through the population. The disease wiped out the nation's rulers and all other nobles save for the Reniers, and eventually Jacqueline stood as the highest-born noble in the land, and the nation’s de facto leader.

Though the people begged her to help them, she let them all die, deeming them unworthy due to their poverty and low birth. As the last human soul expired in Pont-a-Museau, the Mists rose, drawing Richemulot into the Domains of Dread.

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===The Inheritors of Darkon===
Similar to what happened during [[Grim Harvest]], Darkon currently has multiple Darklords while Azalin is missing. Specifically, there's only three of them this time.

'''"Baron" Alcio Metus''' is a female vampire, and the sister of Baron Metus - the vampire who got [[Van Richten]] started on his monster-killing path. Having risen to rule the criminal underworld of the Jagged Coast region, driving out her former Kargat masters in the process, Alcio burns with the desire for revenge against Van Richten for killing her brother. Not helping is that she's occupied Van Richten's ancestral home of Richten House and found that Van Richten's wife Ingrid still lingers as a [[ghost]] - but one who refuses to help Alcio in her quest for vengeance.

'''Cardinna Artazas''', the thrice-reincarnated leader of an elfin mystery cult in Nevuchar Springs, has damned her soul in the name of good: desperate to preserve Darkon, she has striven to revive the spirit of Darcalus Rex, the king who reigned over Darkon prior to the coming of Azalin. Unfortunately, all she has called forth is a necrichor, and she must constantly weigh her belief that what she is doing serves "the greater good" against the very real demands that the undead tyrant makes for ever-greater magical reagents and sacrifices.

Finally, '''Madame Talisveri Eris''' is an elderly but vibrant and intelligent aristocrat who accidentally made herself permanently invisible whilst seeking to make herself look younger. She uses her invisibility to her advantage, having created an array of different identities that she assumes through costumes and cosmetics. She's currently built up a cult amongst the younger members of Il Aluk's nobility, offering them an elixir on the night of the new moon that makes them invisible until dawn and then sending them out to commit crimes and mayhem that advance her cause.

Because none of them are true darklords yet, none of them have specific curses.

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===Isolde & Nepenthe===
Like the original Isolde, the 5e Isolde is an [[eladrin]] [[paladin]], though this one was an [[adventurer]] who battled [[dragon]]s and [[demon]]s that threatened the [[Feywild]]. This unknowingly led her into the machinations of Zybilna, an evil [[archfey]] who had lost a number of [[fiend]]ish allies to Isolde and her companions. Zybilna called upon her remaining pacts to arrange for a powerful [[incubus]] called "The Caller" (5e's retconned version of the Gentleman Caller) to corrupt and slaughter Isolde's companions; once that was done, the archfey stepped in and exploited Isolde's vulnerable state to become her "new best friend". She arranged for Isolde to become the guardian of a traveling fey carnival that also concealed a portal to Zybilna's realm... then, when Isolde began to tire of this role and their relationship grew strained, she secretly warped Isolde's mind with magic to ensure that Isolde would always prioritize the needs of the Carnival over her own wants. Even so, this wasn't enough to keep Isolde bound to Zybilna's reins. When Isolde encountered a traveling carnival from the [[Shadowfell]] managed by [[shadar-kai]], she made a pact with its twin managers to trade ownership of their carnivals, but only until next the two carnivals met. The shadar-kai agreed, and gave her the magical sword Nepenthe as symbol of her new status as owner and champion - but that wasn't enough for Zybilna. She used her magic to erase Isolde's memories of all things relating to Zybilna, and also sent fey creatures to forever follow and harass Isolde's new carnival.

To make things worse, Nepenthe was a cursed blade; an intelligent Holy Avenger used to executed thousands of criminals, not all of whom were actually guilty, the blade had developed a deep craving for bloodshed in the name of justice. In Isolde, it found an easily manipulated host; it awoke her memories of the Caller, and stoked her desire for retribution. In many ways, it could be considered the "true" darklord of the Carnival, especially given how Isolde constantly struggles to resist its naked, insatiable need to kill.

Isolde's curse, then, is to wrestle with both the imperatives of Zybilna and those of Nepenthe; she craves vengeance, but finds herself forever stymied by her need to tend to the ever-growing Carnival's need, as well as fearing that she may one day encounter the Carnival's true owners and be forced to relinquish it back to them. Explicitly, she could be saved if Nepenthe was taken from her, but its grip on her mind means she would refuse to abandon it.

===Klorr===
Darklord of Klorr. We know nothing about this darklord, but the name is taken from a character who appeared in the original Red Box; a clockwork-obsessed [[planeswalker]] [[mage]] who was infuriated that he couldn't synchronize and control his heart the way he could his clockwork creations. He made assorted dark bargains and ultimately came to rest in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], where he produced four cursed timepieces: the Water Clock of Klorr, the Moondial of Klorr, the Hourglass of Klorr, and his final work: the Timepiece of Klorr. This cursed pocketwatch gave Klorr extended life and increased arcane power, but required him to regularly charge it with murder, an impulse he succumbed to. It ultimately killed him when he failed to sacrifice a life to it on time.

The Timepiece of Klorr is given mechanical stats in the "Forbidden Lore" boxed set. Klorr's other works are statted in "Forged of Darknes":
* The Water Clock lets the user transform into a water [[elemental]], but might kill them in the process and also might leave them permanently trapped in elemental form.
* The Moondial grants powers based on the phase of the moon, but slowly transforms the user into a light-averse monster.
* The Hourglass can grant the user Improved Haste for 1 hour, but will age them 1d10 years and might also leave them under the effects of Slow for 24 hours after being used.

===The Last Passenger===
Darklord of The Mourning Rail. Nothing is known about this Darklord other than they were a VIP that delayed a train escaping from The Mourning, and threw out a bunch of passengers to make room for their self and their retinue, dooming the train, and they are now an undead being of some kind trapped on the train with the rest of the undead passengers.

===Myar Hiregaard===
Mentioned only in passing as the Darklord of the revised Nova Vaasa, She's basically a female Genghis Khan with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde; she was originally a female chieftain who united the nomadic plains-dwelling tribes of Nova Vaasa into a single culture, but she proved to be a terrible peacetime leader because she craved bloodshed and excitement. She tried to stave off her boredom with, quote, "brutal games" for a time, but ultimately she couldn't resist the thrill of war: she began fostering disputes amongst her vassal tribes so she had an excuse to lead her forces to crush both sides. This eventually got her claimed by the mists, and now she switches between two personas and possibly two bodies: as Mya Hiregaard, she rules with "strict fairness", but when she gets too bloodlusty, she transforms into her alter-ego of Malken and "sows discord across the plains".

...Whatever else you may think of it, at least it's more justified than Tristren "My dad got cursed and died, so I inherited his curse and became a Darklord without ever having to do anything to actually earn it" Hiregaard.

===Pietra van Riese===
A gender-swapped version of Pieter van Riese and the darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Not much is known about her due to being in the "Other Domains of Dread" section, and therefore only getting one paragraph to herself. She was a ruthless pirate with a fondness for keelhauling her victims, and now she's a ruthless ''zombie'' pirate who speaks through the mouths of her undead crew.

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===Ramya Vasavadan===
Darklord of Kalakeri. Ramya was hand-picked by her father, the last ruler of Kalkeri, to succeed him, but when he died, her brother Arijani contested her claim, leading to a brief civil war. Ramya would have killed Arijani then and there, but their sister Reeva counseled mercy, and Ramya conceded, not really wanting to kill her brother anyway. She enjoyed a brief period of unchallenged leadership, bringing a golden age to Kalakeri, but all the while Reeva was working behind her back to build up support for Arijani, culminating in her freeing Arijani and launching a second civil war. Enraged, Ramya suppressed the rebellion with brutal methods, executing captured rebel ranas and executing them in horrifically inventive methods that only made the people distrust her more and furthered the fighting. At the second war's climax, Arijani and Reeva sued for peace and Ramya agreed... only to be captured by her treacherous siblings and murdered. Before the court strangler garotted her in the central courtyard of her own palace, Ramya cursed her siblings as bloodthirsty beasts.

Once it was done, Arijani and Reeva further disrespected their sister by throwing her body into the ocean... an act that resulted in a terrible monsoon lashing Kalakeri for weeks. And then, when it was done, Ramya rose from her watery grave and marched on her former siblings, followed by an ever-swelling army of undead soldiers made up of all her loyal warriors who had fought and died for her. This time, Ramya showed no mercy, capturing her siblings and having them crushed to death by undead elephants.

...And then they came back as fiends - Arijani as a [[rakshasa]] and Reeva as an [[arcanoloth]] - and the civil war has raged ever since.

This civil war is the primary curse that Ramya experiences, with two secondary elements. Firstly, despite knowing better, Ramya ''always'' remains vulnerable to their lies and deceptions, which prevents her from truly ending the war. Secondly, Ramya's direct control over the domain is tied to her being seated in the Sapphire Throne, the symbol of Kalakeri's ruler; if the rebels oust her from the Cerulean Citadel, then her dominion diminishes until she can reclaim it. A second curse she labors under is the fact that, despite being shrouded in an illusion of life, Ramya ''knows'' that she's actually [[undead]], and this is apparent in her reflection, so she bans mirrors from her presence.
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===Saidra d'Honaire===
The future darklord Saidra grew up on a tiny farm, raised by her widower father, who filled her head with stories of her noble bloodline - he claimed to be a duke that had been ousted from his rightful throne by a vicious younger brother. Life was hard, especially as Saidra's sincere belief in her father's stories meant she alienated her peers, and only got worse when Saidra's father married a prosperous merchant woman with two daughters from her previous marriage, all of whom tormented Saidra and forced her to work as their personal servant, ala Cinderella. One day, a nearby duke perished, and when Saidra wondered if it had been her father's evil little brother, she was forced to confront the cruel truth: her father's stories had all been a pack of lies, and he was nothing more than a common-born servant who had fled to save his neck after trying to nick silverware from the duke's kitchen.

Saidra went to her mom's grave to beg her mother's spirit for help, which was when a "kind, grandmotherly figure" appeared and granted Saidra her wish, clothing her in a magnificent gown and fine jewelry before conjuring a stately carriage to carry her to the masquerade ball that was being held to celebrate the coronation of the new duke. We don't know who this figure was, but it's interesting to note that Saidra's version of Dementlieu contains a [[hag]] coven who basically love to pretend to be Fairy Godmother figures so they can mess with people. Anyway, off Saidra went to the ball, plotting to kill the new duke and claim his title. When she got there, she swiftly seduced the new duke, so successfully that she began contemplating if it mightn't be better to wed the duke instead. Things were going smashingly... until the clock chimed midnight and the whole party began dropping dead of a sudden, fast-acting plague, which rather put a downer on things. The kicker, for Saidra, was as she and the duke lay dying in each other's arms and he confessed that he ''wasn't'' noble-born, but instead a commoner who had been adopted by the previous duke. In fact, he was actually Saidra's long-lost brother.

Enraged at this second "betrayal", Saidra stabbed her brother in the heart with the last of her strength and then tried to stagger away from the corpse, only to collapse dead on the stairs leading into the palace.

And then she woke up as a [[wraith]], the new spectral queen of Dementlieu, a shabby and impoverished town whose populace struggle to fake the appearance of being more important than they truly are, all the while risking Saidra's deadly wrath: she '''hates''' pompous fools who pretend to be what they aren't, aspire to higher station than they deserve, and fail to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

...Well, yeah, she wouldn't be a ''darklord'' if she wasn't at least a little bit of a hypocrite, now would she?

Saidra is a wraith who has the ability to launch free Disintegrates at anyone who reveals themselves to be lying about who they are in her presence - we don't know much more than that, mechanically. She lives in constant terror of being exposed as a fraud herself, and in fact she can only be killed permanently if she is revealed to be a fraud first. Related to that, she lives in terror that her hated stepmother and stepsisters are still alive somewhere in Dementlieu. Finally, almost tangentially, her status as a wraith means her beloved masquerade balls are a complete waste of time, as she can't enjoy any of the physical pleasures associated with them.

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===Sarthak===
Darklord of the Ashram of Niranjan, Sarthak is an evil bronze dragon who poses as a mystic named Niranjan. He send agents into the Mists bearing his philosophical writings, which promise escape, peace, and enlightenment to any who adopt their teachings. Anyone who comes to his monastery is told that they must divest themselves of worldly goods, which are added to Sarthak’s hidden hoard. Sarthak then helps his victim enter a blissful trance that causes their soul to slip away from their body over the course of days. Sarthak consumes this soul and replaces it with a shadow, leaving the victim’s body under his control.

There's no indication of what his curse might be, since he's in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book and as such only gets a single paragraph to himself.

===Teresa Bleysmith===

===Viktra Mordenheim===
Basically, she's Victor Mordenheim but a woman... what, that's not good enough? Alright...

Viktra Mordenheim was born the daughter of a minor noble family, as well as a natural prodigy in medicine - she taught herself anatomy as a child, and by the time she was a teenager she held a doctorate ''and'' had been appointed as a preeminent researcher at a local university. For all her genius, however, Viktra was arrogant, not to mention completely lacking in empathy, compassion and moral qualms. To her, medicine was just a way to sate her burning curiosity about the secrets of life. Also, she hated magic, regarding it as as "stealing the powers of otherworldly beings and cheating the laws of nature", and thus inferior to '''SCIENCE!'''

In the best Frankenstein tradition, she grew obsessed with the idea that she could not merely mend the sick, but actively create and even improve upon life. So she began hiring the services of bodysnatchers to provide her with fresh human cadavers for her research. This is how she met Elise; amazingly, the cold, aloof methodical surgeon and the beautiful but reckless and spontaneous body snatcher became infatuated with each other, and the two women's relationship swiftly changed from professional to personal. When Elise contracted an incurable wasting disease, Mordenheim became obsessed with saving her, and her experiments increased in numbers - she also began having living victims actively kidnapped for her experiments. Through countless murders, resurrections and remurders, Viktra honed her knowledege. Finally, as Elise fell into the deep sleep that marked the final stages of the disease, Viktra poured everything she had learned from a thousand deaths into saving a single life, crafting and installing the Unbreakable Heart: an artificial super-organ.

But just as she was stitching the fabulous device into place, constables burst into her lab, accusing her of being behind the recent string of kidnappings and murders. In the struggle, the lab caught fire and flooded with acrid chemical smoke: Mordenheim's last vision was of Elise rising from her table, a golden light glowing in her chest where the Unbreakable Heart had been installed.

When Mordenheim came to, she was in a strange, icy realm called "Lamordia", where she was hailed as the greatest genius ever, but there was no sign of Elise.

Viktra's torments largely center around Elise and the Unbreakable Heart; she can neither recreate the Heart on her own, but nor can she find Elise to study it again. Secondary to this curse is that she is showered with the love, respect and attention of Lamordia, whose people view her as a luminary savior; to Mordenheim, they are incomprehensible, and she loathes their constant distractions from her work.
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===Vladeska Drakov===
In a nameless world, in a land torn between myriad bitterly feuding royal families, the woman named Vladeska Drakov was a skilled fighter and general, a mercenary who came to be known as the Crimson Falcon, the leader of a well-regarded mercenary army called the Falcon's Talons. Business was profitable, and Vladeska was raking in the loot, with dreams of retiring young, cashing in her wealth and reputation to buy land and a title. Then came the sacking of Veivere, where the Talons accidentally killed a very important figure. So important that the entirety of the aristocracy took up arms against the Talons, determined to kill them all for it. Well, Vladeska had no intention of just rolling over and dying, and she launched a bloody counter-attack that soon turned into a crushing campaign of conquest; her forces swept through the land, replenishing themselves with conscripted peasants and wiping out everyone stupid enough to stand against them. Vladeska made a point of impaling ''everybody'' with even the slightest drop of aristocratic blood that she caught alive. Through years of bloody effort, she became the ruler of an empire that stretched over the former patchwork nation, but as she crushed the last defiant village, the smoke engulfed Vladeska and her most elite warriors.

They found themselves in a new realm, and after swiftly conquering its capital city, Vladeska declared herself Empress of Falkovnia. Which was when she found the downside of her rule... namely, the armies of [[zombie]]s that would attack her new kingdom every month with the rising of the new moon.

Vladeska's curse, obviously, is the zombie attacks, which press her to her limit as she struggles to throw back the dead and preserve what she has, but it goes deeper than that. Firstly, she suffers a horrible sensation of recognition; every zombie, to her, seems to be the animate corpse of one of her victims or her fallen soldiers, filling her with the gnawing belief that the dead are coming for ''her'' specifically. Secondly, no matter what scheme or ploy she tries, the result is always Phyrric; her people haven't been wiped out yet, but there's a big difference between 'survival' and 'winning'. Finally, she '''knows''' that her efforts doomed - there is ''no way'' to hold Falkovnia against the dead, not with the forces that she has, and the only chance she has for survival is to take her people and flee during the peaceful period after the dead are repulsed for the month. But she's too stubborn to run, and so she keeps fighting her bloody, futile war.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Ravenloft]]

Darklord

2021-05-24T03:44:34Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* Jacqueline Renier */

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{{Topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

The '''Darklords''' are the rulers ''and'' prisoners of the plane of [[Ravenloft]], from the D&D setting of the same name.

You might be wondering "How are they both rulers and prisoners at the same time?" The reason for this is simple: each Darklord was pulled into the plane by the nebulous forces known only as the Dark Powers after an especially heinous deed (known in-universe as a "Act of Ultimate Darkness"), which reshapes a part of the plane into [[Demiplane of Dread|a realm tailored to each Darklord's defining crime]]. In its own realm a Darklord is a BBEG to rule over all other BBEGs, with absolute power over everything except whatever they desire most - whatever thing that might be, it is always dangled ever so slightly out of their reach by the Dark Powers to amplify their torment further. They have no mouth, and they must scream. (Thus the common description of the setting as "Hell, but not for you".)

=Common Characteristics of Darklords=
The exact abilities and backstories of Ravenloft's Darklords have varied from edition to edition, but almost all exert considerable control over their individual domains, and many Darklords also rule their domains (assuming the domain has a population to rule), either openly or behind the scenes. Many Darklords are also extremely dangerous to confront in open combat, or otherwise have hidden powers up their sleeves that can neutralize entire groups of player characters even without combat.

Keeping in line with the Gothic Horror theme of Ravenloft, the presence and persistence of insidious evil on this plane is the rule and not the exception. By contrast, lasting triumphs of good are vanishingly rare possibilities. As such, PCs aren't really supposed to go toe-to-toe with Darklords and expect to come out on top like your average group of [[murderhobos]] in other D&D settings. Trying to storm through Castle Ravenloft or Castle Avernus (not the Avernus of [[Baator]]) and expecting to put Strahd's or Azalin's skulls on a pike by the end of the play session will most likely either end in a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|total party kill]] or a fate worse than death, assuming the Dungeon Master is at all trying to run the game in a thematically appropriate way. At most, the PCs' efforts might preserve a bit of light in the ever-present mists and hope their activities stay beneath the local Darklord's notice. [[Grimdark|Heroes in this benighted plane are not guaranteed a peaceful death in bed surrounded by family and friends, or a life of glory and deeds well remembered.]] Openly going up against a Darklord is one of the surest ways of ending your character's life and career for good.

A few things about Darklords have remained constant throughout Ravenloft's editions, however. First, unless the Dark Powers will it, Darklords are completely unable to leave their own domains (note that certain "pocket domains" are in fact mobile and can travel between larger domains, but the Darklord within is still powerless to leave its own pocket domain as any other). If PCs manage to leave a Darklord's domain, that specific Darklord is usually powerless to personally come after them (but see "Closing the Borders" below). Second, almost every Darklord has a weakness, usually in the form of something or someone they desire above all else that they would risk anything and everything for, or a personal vulnerability tied to its curse that is usually well-hidden and hard to figure out. Discovering and exploiting these weaknesses are one of the only ways to accomplish some good in spite of a Darklord's efforts, but if it comes to that you've likely already attracted (or will very soon attract) a Darklord's attention and are in deep trouble. A couple other abilities common to Darklords are discussed below.

===Closing the Borders===
The vast majority of Darklords have the ability to force others to share in their imprisonment by supernaturally closing the borders of their domains, usually leaving no way out even with the aid of magic. Trying to leave a closed domain border will just result in a grisly death or automatic failure, and teleportation magic won't work past a closed domain border either. As Ravenloft was an early AD&D product, the designers gave this handy tool to DMs so as to stop players from just up and leaving without going through the DM's plot. Improperly used it can smack of railroading, but it fits well within the Gothic Horror genre convention of having characters get trapped in sinister and dangerous locales with no safe passage out, until a situation is resolved (or the Darklord opens the borders again, as in the case of Ravenloft).

The few Darklords who cannot supernaturally close their borders either lack that ability as part of their curse, or are unable to do so as part of their nature. Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia for instance disdains magic and the supernatural, and in line with this attitude gained no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders upon becoming a Darklord. However, even these Darklords have more mundane ways of barring escape from their domains, such as sending their numerous lackeys to patrol the borders, though thankfully this doesn't impede magical methods of escape. An even smaller number of Darklords are completely unable to close their domain borders in any way, such as Haki Shinpi of Rokushima Taiyoo who was cursed to become a powerless geist upon becoming Darklord (rather than becoming a Death Knight as he originally planned) and was doomed to watch everything he built in his life's conquest literally sink into ruin through the squabbling of his sons.

===Immortality===
Another reason to avoid going up against Darklords is that many of them have ways of returning from death, rendering all of your hard work moot. Even those who don't have explicitly mentioned methods of cheating death, like Strahd, generally have many contingency plans to avoid ever being at risk of getting truly destroyed. To make a bad situation worse, the Dark Powers appear to get occasionally "attached" to their playthings, and frown harshly upon attempts to take their toys away. In game terms, this means that certain Darklords are truly indestructible and can ever only be put out of commission temporarily, and even the attempt at doing so may end up drawing the Dark Powers' attention to whoever tries such a feat. Mercifully, these individuals are the exception, not the rule.

By contrast, some Darklords are fairly ordinary people with no significant combat skills and no more resistance to being killed off for real than their subjects. However, as mentioned above, even these seemingly vulnerable BBEGs often still have the means or minions to deal with a bunch of murderhobos, and most of these non-combat-focused Darklords are still savvy enough to be wary of any potential threats to their survival, and to nip those threats in the bud via underhanded means.

Outside of these extremes, permanently destroying most Darklords requires either killing one in a very specific manner and/or destroying a Darklord's means of cheating death (which in some cases might be nigh-impossible, such as killing every specimen of a very numerous type of creature in a domain before confronting the Darklord). Finding out this information is likely to require a good deal of questing and research to find out, but can make for a great campaign if properly handled. However, even accomplishing all this does nothing to stop the Dark Powers from "promoting" someone in the realm evil enough to assume the mantle of Darklord, possibly leaving the realm and its inhabitants in [[Not as planned|a worse situation than before]]. In fact, not a few of the "current" Darklords assumed their positions by killing the previous ones. In other cases, the title and sometimes even the personality of the Darklord is immediately passed down to another being on the moment of the Darklord's death, thus ensuring that their position is never lost.

===What happens if you permanently destroy a Darklord somehow?===
It's likely that some of you action-oriented elegan/tg/entleman reading this are just champing at the bit to claim a Darklord's skull for your trophy rooms, but as noted above, the odds and the themes of the setting itself are decidedly against you. Or maybe you're a DM who wants to run a Ravenloft campaign where good really can make a difference and want to know what happens when these Gothic Horror BBEGs finally bite the dust for real and no one takes their place.

Unfortunately, the rulebooks have historically been rather ambivalent and lacking in detail about the answer to this question and the resulting implications. Some Ravenloft rulebooks say that once a Darklord is permanently destroyed and no successor is forthcoming, the destroyed Darklord's associated domain might simply disappear, leaving open the question of what happens to all the people who were living there. If the people there simply disappear as well, were they never real in the first place, instead being undispellable illusions made up whole-cloth by the Dark Powers to torment the Darklord? That might work out just fine if your group stuck to playing [[Weekend in Hell]] style adventures in Ravenloft, but what would it say about PCs native to Ravenloft, or even native to the domain now without a Darklord? Or were the people in the Darklord-less domain no more real (and therefore no more morally troubling to harm in any way) than characters in a video game, making the whole "Powers Check" mechanic moot with regards to harming innocents? Is there now a gaping misty void where the previous domain used to be?

Canonically, the answer might be found in how two domains (Arkandale and Gundarak) where the Darklords lost their darklordship were absorbed by neighbouring ones, essentially meaning the people inside those domains just exchanged one insidious tyrant for another. This solution is probably the smoothest way to incorporate the plot element of Darklords being permanently destroyed in your campaign. On the other hand, geographically isolated domains (such as one of the numerous "Islands of Terror" that are completely surrounded by the Mists), or mobile pocket domains with no notable population of sentients can just disappear back into the mists with no larger consequences to other domains upon the permanent death of their Darklords. It still leaves open the question of what happens to the population of sentients in domains situated in the middle of nowhere that suffer a sudden lack of a Darklord, though.

Strahd himself is explicitly mentioned to be a special case with regards to permanent destruction, most probably due to his status as the posterboy of the entire Ravenloft setting (even in universe, it's noted that the Demi-Plane of Dread didn't seem to exist until Strahd's damnation). In 5e's Curse of Strahd module, it is said that in the absurdly unlikely event he is permanently killed with all of his failsafes destroyed or deactivated, the Dark Powers will intervene to resurrect him within a month [[Grimdark|because they refuse to allow the possibility of ending his torment]]. They're "possessive" about their favourite playthings like that.

Players crying foul about this should note that the Dark Powers are mighty enough to bar the gods themselves from coming to Ravenloft. In light of that, something like bringing a Darklord back to life looks like a trivial feat by comparison.

5e Overhall of some domains of Dreads gives some more definitive insight, either hinted at or explicit With some of the newer darklords stealing rulership from older ones. Darklordship Darkon is a prime example of a missing Darklord, as, without Azalin Rex, the domains is slowly dissolving.

Bottom line? Hash it out with your DM beforehand, or if you're a DM yourself, make sure you have a sensible plot thread lined up if you choose to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords, while keeping in mind how important Darklords are to the themes of Ravenloft.

=Notable Darklords=

==The "Hammer Horror" Darklords==
With the horror films by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions Hammer Film Productions] officially cited as a major source of inspiration for the setting of Ravenloft, the Darklords who are patterned after the horror monster archetypes featured in those films will be listed here.

===Strahd von Zarovich===
{{main|Strahd von Zarovich}}
Darklord of Barovia, and the first Darklord to be introduced to the setting--in fact, it's named after his own castle. He is the archetypal vampire darklord in the setting, though by no means the only one, and his appearance is clearly based off of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula in the 1958 ''Dracula'' film by Hammer Film Productions.

Originally the conqueror of a region called Barovia that he claims was the ancestral home of his family, Strahd came to lust after a woman called Tatyana who rejected him in favor of his younger brother Sergei. Strahd took this very badly; badly enough that at some point he made what he called "a pact with Death" that turned him into a [[vampire]] in a desperate attempt to restore his youth. This too failed to win her over, and on the day Tatyana was to be married to Sergei, Strahd killed him and drove her to suicide.

His realm is a copy of Barovia from the Prime Material plane (the original apparently still exists but nothing is said about its current condition or even which D&D setting it originated from), which he has absolute power over to the point where he can enter any private home uninvited in spite of the fact most vampires are unable to do so (since as he boasts, "I am the land"), and he can ignore the standard vampiric weaknesses to mirrors, garlic or holy symbols, none of which ordinary vampires can do. He isn't even "killed" when staked through the heart like ordinary vampires are (though he is effectively paralyzed while staked) and can resist up to ten rounds of sunlight exposure before being destroyed, though he has always a contingency spell cast on himself that will teleport him away to a hidden mountain sanctuary should he ever be exposed to sunlight or staked by a prepared party, much like Bram Stoker's own Dracula had many coffins to sleep in to make his final destruction more difficult. However, Strahd's curse is to have the events leading to his damnation repeat themselves forever--once every generation he will encounter a woman who he believes to be Tatyana's reincarnation, only to be rejected by her in spite of all his vampiric mind control powers, and become responsible for her death once more, all while being unable to simply give up on trying to win her love.

===Ankhtepot===
Darklord of Har'Akir, partially based on the monster from the 1959 film ''The Mummy'' by Hammer Film Productions. He is the archetypal Mummy-based Darklord in the setting, but he is not the only "Ancient Dead" (i.e., a preserved corpse animated into undeath) who happens to be a Darklord.

Ankhtepot in life was a hubristic ruler of a land also named Har'Akir, patterned after Ancient Egypt and sharing the same pantheon of gods. As the head priest of the sun god Ra, the chief god of his land, Ankhtepot was [[Nagash|obsessed with death and became consumed with the desire to live forever]]. Despite sparing no expense (nor quite a few lives, for that matter) his efforts were in vain, and in his rage he razed several temples, stormed into the greatest one and cursed the gods for withholding his heart's desire. For this blasphemy, Ra contacted Ankhtepot directly and said that Ankhtepot would indeed live after death, though he might wish otherwise. Anhktepot was confused about this, but later discovered that he had received a dire curse (making him one of the few outlander Darklords to have received the majority of his curse ''before'' being taken into Ravenloft); anyone he touched was dead by nightfall, and those he killed in this fashion rose from their tombs to serve him absolutely as undead mummies, because apparently Ra considers having mindless servants a punishment. Taking this in stride despite killing many of his relatives, he used his new undead servants to tighten his grip over Har'Akir, but his fellow priests rebelled, killed Ankhtepot in his sleep, and mummified him, little knowing he was still conscious and going insane inside his sarcophagus during his month-long funeral. After being entombed in a remote area with one small village named Mudar, the mists of Ravenloft claimed Ankhtepot, his tomb, and the nearby village, leaving no trace of them in Ankhtepot's home plane.

As Darklord, Ankhtepot spends most of his time in a deathless dream of better days in his tomb, but he can be roused from this state in a few ways, such as if his tomb is disturbed, or if the people of Mudar are anxious or otherwise distressed. His hubris and pride followed him into undeath, and similarly his greatest torment is his desire to be human again, as the god-king of a great empire he once was, while in reality he "rules" over a barren patch of desert with naught but a small mud-hut village. To frustrate him further, the Dark Powers granted Ankhtepot the ability to regain his human form and mortality by draining a human of moisture and life force in a dread sunrise ceremony, but this reversion to mortality lasts only from dawn to nightfall, and during those few daylight hours "under Ra's gaze" he loses all his supernatural powers, once again becoming a normal human with no appreciable abilities until nightfall, whereupon the transformation is undone. Knowing that he would face an eternity of solitude were he to sacrifice everyone in his domain to fleetingly experience mortality again, Ankhtepot generally prefers to wait and dream until he might rule a larger population, a time he seems unaware will never come.

With respect to his crunch, Ankhtepot can be an unholy terror in his Greater Mummy form. He retains much of the high-level spellcasting ability he had in life, his touch-delivered Mummy Rot is both more virulent and harder to cure than almost any other Ravenloft Mummy's, and those who become infected and are mummified alive become Greater Mummies under his total control. Other aces up his sleeve (or rather, his bandages) are the fact that he commands virtually every mummy in his domain, so if sufficiently provoked he can summon up an entire shambling army of mummies to do his bidding, and the fact that a certain item on his person allows him to heal lost hitpoints very quickly, even if reduced below zero, unless that item is removed from him or his downed "corpse." Ankhtepot can, however, easily be killed during his bouts of mortality (even though doing so might attract the attention of the Dark Powers since he poses no real threat during these times), but if he is killed while an ordinary human he can reanimate if he is mummified and entombed again. As a result of a possible oversight by the writers, no mention is made of how Ankhtepot might be able to return to unlife should he be defeated in his Greater Mummy form nor how he might be permanently destroyed, though he can simply reform in his tomb in the case of the former and the latter might simply require that both his tomb and his physical body be completely destroyed, resulting in the village of Mudar returning to its home plane and Ankhtepot's desert joining an adjacent domain.

Given the relative lack of sex appeal for mummies compared to the far more famous vampires and werewolves (unless you're a fan of the [[Tomb Kings]] or [[Mummy: The Curse]]), Ankhtepot and his domain more or less dropped off the face of Ravenloft canon after the AD&D version, and even in AD&D he was fairly passive. Even so, he did affect Ravenloft and D&D at large in one way by creating the first Greater Mummies (AKA "Children of Ankhtepot") to ever exist in a D&D system, though they have since significantly changed from their original incarnation. Ankhtepot has also been known to send his Mummy and Greater Mummy servants outside of his domain to track and kill grave robbers who defile his tomb and other unfortunates who incur his wrath.

Ankhtepot and his domain made his first appearance as the star villain of the classic ''Touch of Death'' Ravenloft module in 1991.

Despite not having shown up since AD&D, he was re-introduced to the setting in 5e, albeit with some significant retcons.

In an ancient country the inhabitants called the Land of Reeds and Lotuses, Ankhtepot served three generations of pharaohs as high priest. When the second pharaoh died, her unworthy son ascended to the throne. The new pharaoh quickly became unpopular among the people and priests, and Ankhtepot came to believe that the gods wanted himself to take the pharaoh's place. On the day of the pharaoh's coronation, Ankhtepot rallied his loyal priests and murdered their liege. Unfortunately he had misjudged both the people's loyalty and the gods' wills. The people rose up and killed him and his fellow priests, and when he died the gods forsook him and barred him from the afterlife. The gods returned him to the world, but stripped away a piece of his soul called the ka -- the vital essence that inspires all living beings.

He awoke immobilized and trapped in his sarcophagus, during which he felt the pain of every cut and every organ removed as if he were alive. One day, after untold years of this suffering, he a voice asking if he still felt he was worthy to rule. Still arrogant after all he had been through, he answered with certainty, and thus emerged from his crypt into the domain of Har’Akir. In this new land, Ankhtepot found a pious people devoted to the same gods he once served, and immediately set to wiping that religion out and replacing their gods with false idols of his own invention. Using blasphemous rites, Ankhtepot resurrected the priests once buried alongside him as powerful mummies, replacing their heads with those of beasts holy to his new faith. These Children of Ankhtepot served him as they did in life, and together the dead conquered the souls of Har’Akir.

Since then he has seen much, and known many things, but now he seeks one thing only: to be reconnected with his lost Ka, which he believes will allow him to finally die. Where and what his Ka is now is left up to the DM to decide, as is what happens when he is reunited with it. All of the suggested results are pretty grim, ranging from him being reborn as a living tyrant far more decadent and sadistic than he was as an undead, to discovering that he cannot be returned to mortality and deciding to wipe out all life in his domain out of spite.

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===Alfred Timothy===
Darklord of Verbrek, and the archetypal werewolf Darklord of the setting, though by no means the only lycanthrope Darklord in Ravenloft. Alfred Timothy was born to Nathan Timothy (former werewolf Darklord of Arkandale) and an unknown mother. Disdained by Nathan for being frail and sickly in his human form, Alfred in turn disdained his father for his "overly human" interest in ferrying cargo and passengers with his paddleboat (in truth, Nathan was cursed as Darklord of Arkandale to become cripplingly nauseous with "land sickness" anytime he tried to set foot on dry land, but instead of suffering from this curse, Nathan grew so accustomed to boating and the company of his human passengers that he unknowingly lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction, despite still being confined to river waters and remaining an unrepentant serial killer).

Leaving to find his own way and to escape the perpetual treatment as the runt of the litter, Alfred happened upon villagers in his father's domain who regularly made sacrifices to appease a savage being they called [[the Wolf God]] in the hopes of relief from continual attacks by bloodthirsty wolves. Taking inspiration from the sight of humans propitiating a lupine deity and perhaps indulging more than a little megalomania at the prospect of being an object of worship or leading a werewolf-centric religion, Alfred wandered the domains and interrogated clerics he met, sometimes lethally, on how he could become a cleric of this "Wolf God" and use its granted powers to inaugurate a werewolf-led reign of terror over humans. Unfortunately, his efforts and sacrifices were fruitless in provoking any response from this "deity," and he began to take out his frustrations on any clerics and religious buildings he could find whenever his latest interrogation target failed to provide the missing ingredient to contacting and receiving spells from the Wolf God. After [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=425913 one such iconoclastic rampage], Alfred incautiously fell asleep near the mutilated corpses and smouldering wreckage of his latest failure. Not content to "let sleeping dogs lie," Alfred was discovered, chained, and about to be burned at the stake by vengeful villagers, were it not for a mother-daughter pair of prescient Vistani who purchased his freedom and told Nathan that for this stay of execution, he must allow all Vistani safe passage in the future. Enraged at the possibility of being bound by a bargain struck with "mere" humans, Alfred promptly killed the Vistani mother, and the mists of Ravenloft claimed him for this betrayal, leaving him within his new domain of Verbrek, which eventually grew to encompass his father's former domain of Arkandale.

Now a Darklord, Alfred was initially delighted at having truly become a cleric of the Wolf God, receiving divine spells and being able to "converse" with it (assuming it exists, but if you decide to play with a nonexistent Wolf God, Ravenloft's Dark Powers have been known to grant divine spells and Alfred might just be hearing voices in his head). The price, as ever with Darklords, was an insidious curse. Alfred wants nothing more than to revel in the bestial fury and passion he once enjoyed as a werewolf, but as Darklord he is forced to transform back into his human form should he ever succumb to any kind of base passion: fear, rage, or lust. Having built a cult of savagery, wanton bloodshed, and debauchery among a large pack of werewolves as the chief priest of the Wolf God, his uncharacteristic unwillingness to practice what he preaches by frequently refraining from hunts and hesitance at finding a mate means his position is growing increasingly precarious. Realizing that widespread knowledge of his weakness would spell his doom (because [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=262657 "being an alpha means proving it every full moon"]), Alfred is trying to divest himself of his humanity by commanding and occasionally participating in ever-greater acts of slaughter, dedicating and offering them to his god who has remained silent on this one pressing issue, with the only exceptions to his wrath being the Vistani as he still remembers what happened the last time he killed one.

Crunch-wise, Alfred is rather conventional as lycanthrope BBEGs go, aside from his cleric levels and being forced to fight in a calculating and tactical manner unlike most werewolves lest he be forced to return to his much weaker human form. He doesn't cast a shadow (since his domain is effectively the shadow he casts on Ravenloft), and can even teleport from shadow to shadow within his domain whenever the moon is visible. As an ironic reminder from the Dark Powers of his fundamental weakness, Alfred cannot even supernaturally close the borders of his own domain, short of sending his dire wolf and werewolf minions to patrol them, though the true nature of this additional curse is likely lost on him, since he probably doesn't know about other Darklords and their ability to close their domain's borders supernaturally. Though not specifically mentioned, Alfred's fluff implies that even ''[https://youtu.be/ZxcljnLb95M?t=1m8s harsh language]'' might be one of the most potent weapons against him; if PCs can recognize him in either his wolf or hybrid forms and manage to enrage him through taunts, he will be forced to return to human form and at a minimum be robbed of the natural weapons of his alternate forms, or even be forced to kill any wolf or werewolf witnesses to his weakness with his clerical powers before turning his attentions to the PCs. However, even if Alfred is killed (and his crunch does not mention any method through which he could cheat death), it is likely the Darklordship (and possibly even Alfred's curse) will simply pass to whichever werewolf in his domain is evil enough for the Dark Powers' liking, preserving Verbrek as a separate domain unless every werewolf in the domain is killed or driven out before the current Darklord's death. Even then, the Dark Powers can always make more Darklordship candidates, though a more darkly ironic postmortem fate for Alfred's cult and domain might be for the Wolf God cult to scatter to the winds after Alfred's death, in essence metastasizing and spreading its cell members and evil elsewhere, while Alfred's father returns to Arkandale just in time to resume his old Darklordship and hear about his son's death, saying only ''"So that self-righteous runt finally bit off more than he could chew. No matter. Runts have always thought themselves to be bigger than they are."''

On a side note, players who want to play a Ravenloft campaign set in Verbrek, but who also want to use [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition|D&D 5e]] rules instead of relying on older books, might opt to use the official Magic-the-Gathering-to-D&D-5e conversion [[Innistrad|''Plane Shift: Innistrad'']] book, using its rules to play a campaign set in Innistrad's Kessig province. Kessig is thematically similar to Ravenloft's Verbrek as both are "werewolf country" locations, minus Darklords and other Ravenloft-exclusive mechanics. Until the Ravenloft setting is more fully adapted for D&D 5e, the Innistrad conversion is probably the best foundation for playing Verbrek in 5e.

===Dr. Victor Mordenheim/Adam===
Co-Darklords of Lamordia, of a sort. Like the character of Victor Frankenstein (best known for creating Frankenstein's monster) he was based on, Dr. Victor Mordenheim sought to create life and was certain that a soul was not necessary for it to exist. To show him the error of his ways, the gods saw fit to endow the doctor's creation with a soul--specifically, an irredeemably evil soul. The newly created dread flesh [[golem]] was dubbed Adam, and he soon grew jealous of the love that his maker's wife Elise and adopted daughter Eva had for him. Adam's plan to kidnap Elise failed, and instead he killed Eva and wounded Elise so badly she went into a vegetative state. It was at that time that the doctor and his creation were taken together into Ravenloft.

The doctor himself resides in his own mansion, Schloss Mordenheim, spending most of his time obsessively trying to revive his comatose-but-alive wife (who has herself long since gone mad due to her life support system causing her constant pain simply by being active), up to the point of continually constructing new bodies out of exhumed or painlessly-killed female corpses for her, but is cursed to never succeed and to never stop trying. Note that this is not out of love, though Mordenheim still believes that it is--it has become nothing more than a compulsion that has become his only reason for living. Meanwhile, Adam is now the "ruler" of an inhospitable island aptly dubbed the Isle of Agony in the middle of Lamordia inhabited solely by himself, forever cut off from the acceptance that he sought, cursed to feel the doctor's pain as his own, and rejected by the very land that he supposedly controls (as it is influenced by Mordenheim and not Adam). Adam's only form of solace comes from sabotaging Dr. Mordenheim's attempts at reviving Elise just to spite him. Player characters who meet Adam and treat him without pity or revulsion may be able to get some useful information out of him or even get him to open the borders of Lamordia, but he is very prone to anger and is virtually unstoppable once enraged.

So strong is Mordenheim's disbelief in magic that his own domain also (potentially) interferes with divine magic of any kind, making it unreliable, and may even block any magical attempts to heal Elise. Worse still, Mordenheim's attempts at training apprentices over the years in the vain hope that they might just achieve the necessary breakthrough to restoring Elise has unleashed quite a few mad scientist villains, or monsters born of mad science (such as the Living Brain, a disembodied brain in a life-support jar that uses its psionic powers to direct and dominate a major organized crime ring), onto Ravenloft at large.

In a curious twist, Adam is the Darklord and is the one with the power to close Lamordia's borders, but both Adam and his creator are effectively immortal and ageless, and Mordenheim even shares his creation's immunities and regenerative properties. If either is killed and their corpse completely destroyed by fire, acid, or even disintegration, either will simply reincarnate into the nearest most recently deceased male corpse (for Mordenheim) or flesh golem corpse (for Adam, and there are a quite a number of these running around Lamordia, made either by Mordenheim as failed bodies for Elise and futile attempts to recreate Adam's "success," or Adam's frustrated attempts at making sympathetic company for himself), and will shortly thereafter shape their new bodies into looking just like their previous selves. The only way to destroy Adam and Mordenheim for good is to destroy them together at the same time. If DMs decide to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords (see above), then the fate of Elise and Lamordia itself is up to them; one appropriate denouement could be that the permanent deaths of Adam and Mordenheim might just be the spark Mordenheim's machinery needs to briefly restore Elise long enough to rise up and forgive their long-suffering spirits before leading both to their afterlives, just before the land suddenly twists and shifts to reflect the curse and nature of its new Darklord.

Adam and Dr. Mordenheim first appeared in the one-shot adventure in a 1994 boxed set named "Adam's Wrath," intended for outlander PCs to undertake a [[Weekend in Hell]] adventure.

===Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken===
The "Jekyll & Hyde" Darklord of Nova Vaasa. Sir Hiregaard is a staunch, gruff but sincerely righteous man who is dedicated to his people and his land. However, he also plays host to Malken- an alternate personality that takes over Tristen's body, warping it into [[Caliban (Ravenloft)|a form so hideously ugly one can't recognize they're the same person]] and who delights in killing anyone who stands in the way of Hiregaard's repressed desires.

Strangely, Tristen did nothing at all to earn the position of Darklord; Malken is an entity born from a curse that was placed on Tristen's ''father'' by Tristen's mother Romir that compelled him to kill every woman he loved and any man who crossed him; Hiregaard Senior was an intensely jealous man and killed his wife and the man teaching her how to waltz in a fit of rage, thinking she was having an affair with him. When he killed himself to escape the curse, the curse passed to Tristen instead. Six years and nine killings after the curse first manifested itself in him, Tristen was taken into the mists and the secret jealousies and angers born from the curse coalesced into the being known as Malken. Tristen is only partially aware of Malken's existence, just enough to have his guards lock him into his personal chambers when he feels a fit of jealousy or anger coming on. For years he has assumed this has kept Malken in check, but as of late he is starting to suspect that Malken is too clever to be thwarted by mundane confinement despite the latter's attempts at keeping his influence a secret. Were he to discover the whole truth, he would be willing to do anything to end the curse.

This curse is the key to Malken's immortality; if Tristen is killed, then Tristen's eldest living male descendant will be possessed - and Malken will keep going down the chain each time his host dies, meaning that unless you find "the right way" to kill him, Malken can only be stopped by massacring Tristen's entire family line... which the players could potentially belong to. However, if Malken's host is killed by a woman genuinely in love with that man, then Malken will be dragged screaming into whatever hell-hole awaits him. And given that this would be a massive act of betrayal on that woman's part, she would likely end up becoming the new Darklord herself.

It should also be noted for DMs that "the struggle within his soul" prevents Malken from achieving the proper focus to Close the Borders of his domain, so if you want to run a session or campaign focussed around Nova Vaasa, you had better have a compelling in-universe reason to keep the PCs from simply up and leaving, since canonically DMs can't force the issue and simply lock the PCs into Nova Vaasa like they can with most other Darklords. It's possible that if Malken possesses a more evil host, he might just be able to Close the Borders then, but the form such a closed border would take has never been revealed in canon.

==Other Darklords==

===Addar===
{{main|Addar}}
The father of [[Shadow Unicorn]]s and a Darklord of questionable canon. More info on his page.

===Azalin Rex===
Darklord of Darkon. A powerful mage who inherited the rule of the city-state of Knurl, his draconian rule culminated in the execution of his son when he was caught freeing political prisoners. Soon afterward, Azalin became a [[lich]] and devoted himself to searching for a spell that could resurrect the dead; he believed that his son's sense of compassion was due to a mistake in his upbringing and assumed that if he could be revived that mistake could be fixed.

As soon as he was taken into Ravenloft he lost the ability to learn any new magic at all- a terrible thing for any magic user, and even worse for a lich like him who became undead for the sole purpose of gaining more knowledge. This power over memory affects anyone else who enters Darkon as well; staying there for more than three months at a time causes a visitor's memories to be erased and replaced with false ones of spending one's whole life in Darkon. Originally an ally of Strahd when he first entered the mists, their relationship soured quickly after a failed attempt at escaping the Demi-plane of Dread temporarily split the former into two separate beings and they've remained enemies ever since. Another ill-fated attempt at breaking free in which he planned to become a demilich backfired even more spectacularly. Instead of allowing his essence to be freed from Ravenloft, it dispersed his essence across Darkon and destroyed the domain's capital. It took five years for him to reassume a corporeal form and take control of his realm again.

In 5th edition, Azalin has mysteriously gone missing. Did he finally outsmart the Dark Powers and escape? The only clue about where he went is that when he vanished a strange golden star or starlike thing called The King's Tear appeared in the sky and hasn't moved since and the sun and moon pass ''behind'' it instead of in front of it every day.

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===Baron Urik von Kharkov===
Considered one of the goofier Darklords, albeit not as bad as Tristen ApBlanc, and with a much more usable domain in Valachan. Baron Kharkov is basically half-Blacula and half-Werepanther; he was a black panther that a Red Wizard of Thay turned into a human being to use as an assassin. The Red Wizard arranged for him to fall in love with his rival, and then undid the transfiguration spell on him while they were together so he would tear her apart as a panther. When he was turned back into a human, he freaked out and ran off into the Mists. He found himself in Darkon, where he spent 20 years as a member of Azalin's secret police (turning into a Nosferatu in the process). He later escaped and subsequently became the Darklord of Valachan after entering the Mists again. We don't know what he did that turned him into a Darklord, in part due to his own fuzzy memories of what happened during that time, but he claims he killed many people while in the mists, including the Red Wizard that transformed him the first time.

Anyway, he's a blood-drinking black vampire cursed with yellow eyes (that turn into cat's eyes when he's pissed off) and with hands that resemble paws, being covered in fur and bearing retractile claws. He can still turn into a panther, in which state his bite turns people into werepanthers, and controls panthers instead of the normal wolves. His curse is to basically relive his most traumatizing event over and over again; he's constantly seeking a human bride, but once he has one, he can never trust her not to find out that he's not human, and inevitably murders her in a fit of paranoid fury. (He should try dating a [[Furry]] fan or Jaqueline Reiner, that would solve it.)

In 5th edition he has been killed and succeeded by Chakuna.

===Bluebeard===
A rare darklord actually ''liked'' by his subjects, Bluebeard rules over Blaustein (German: "Blue Stone"), a small nation from an unknown world. His rule was considered just and fair, and as a ruler he was considered to be quite generous. Unfortunately for him, he was an incredibly ugly man -- a blue-tinted beard and all -- which to his credit, he overcame with his own charms... and being incredibly wealthy didn't hurt either. Despite all of his good qualities, however, Bluebeard could not achieve a lasting marriage.

He would find a woman to marry, and soon after the wedding he would leave the castle for a time, handing its care over to his new wife. He would give her a set of keys to every door in the castle, and pointing out the one special golden key which opened a room at the very top floor. His instruction was to never open that particular door, with vague consequences. So far none of his wives have been able to overcome this temptation; and when they did open the door they found his grisly collection of former wives, hung up by meat-hooks with their throats slit. By opening the door, the key -- which was magical in nature -- would have a bloody mark that would appear that could not be removed except by Bluebeard himself. He would return to the castle soon after, and demand to see the keys. If the woman had given into temptation (which each invariably did), she would then share the fate as the other women in the room. Marcella was his fourth wife and victim. Her death was not the final, but eventually Bluebeard's repeated murders brought Blaustein into Ravenloft.

After becoming a darklord, Bluebeard was gifted by the Dark Powers with a minor charisma increase, which does not make him handsome by any means but does not leave him as ugly as he once was. He is also able to perfectly detect any lie. Even after the Mists took hold, Bluebeard is still the de facto leader of Blaustein, although his rule was twisted to be even more sadistic. Simply displeasing him is a death sentence, yet the populace still holds him in incredibly high regard. This is because he also has complete control over their memories, and freely erases or rewrites their recollections of his atrocities.

He is unable to marry any woman native to Blaustein, as their visages always twist to the posthumous appearance of one of his dead wives. This curse does not affect women who were born foreign of Blaustein, and Bluebeard along with his subjects are always on the constant lookout for any attractive women who fit this criteria. Lorel, an outlander he grabbed through the Mists, was his latest wife (and victim).

Bluebeard is also haunted by the ghosts of the wives he killed. Every third night must be spent in his castle in order to sleep, and he always awakes to the frightening caress of the specters of his murdered wives. Like his subjects, they are utterly devoted to him, yet in the most twisted way possible. While he considers this distressing, it has not stopped him from sending another wife to the same fate.

It is currently unknown if he has any dealings with any other nation or darklord, at least beyond welcoming in his harbour ships including those engaged in piracy.

He's mentioned in a single sentence in 5e, which states that apparently his spectral wives overthrew him and now endlessly torment him. Exactly how this happened or what this entails is not elaborated upon.

===Captain Alain Monette===

Darklord of L'ile de la Tempete. A violent and cruel privateer and captain of the ''Ouragan''. Eventually his crew snapped from his vicious temper and regular abuse and mutinied against him, keelhauling him thrice before throwing him into the sea. This was meant to be an execution- keelhauling, or dragging a sailor around the keel of a ship to be cut by the barnacles growing on it and hit against the ship's hull, is traumatic even when it's only done once and the victim is taken on board the ship afterward. But Alain survived, and washed up on the shores of a small island in the mists. Vampire bats came to drink the blood from his wounds, and Alain survived in turn by eating them- which turned him into a werebat.

Alain thus recovered from his keelhauling, but physical health was a cold comfort as he soon found that even with the flight he gained as a werebat, he could not leave his lonesome island. Driven mad by the isolation and cut off from the sea, he now vents his frustrations on those who sail as he no longer can. His island contains a lighthouse, but as with many things in Ravenloft, it's a trap in the guise of something helpful. Anyone, even outside the Mists, who investigates the light is drawn to the hazardous waters near his lighthouse, where most are shipwrecked. If any survivors somehow make it to shore, Alain will greet them. He'll be quite friendly, at first- he's starved for company and news of the outside world. But he's even more starved for flesh, and within a few days at most he will attack and kill them.

===Captain Pieter van Riese===
Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Originally from Gothic Earth's version of the Netherlands, Pieter was a ship's captain obsessed with finding the legendary Northwest Passage. When his ship was sunk in an encounter with an iceberg, he offered his own life along with the lives of his crew to any being who could help them forward, and the Dark Powers answered him. Naturally, they didn't actually give him what he wanted.

Pieter is now a ghost, and the captain of the ghost ship ''The Relentless''. He has the power to summon the ghosts of those who killed others and then were killed in the Sea of Sorrows to crew his ship, and can sail anywhere in his domain. However, he can no longer explore as he wishes, since the island domains in the Sea of Sorrows move around and he can only sail to land that he's chartered to go to.

Pieter is Ravenloft's answer to the legends of the ''Flying Dutchman'', a ghost ship that is unable to make port and sails the seas forever. Most versions say that the curse is because of her captain, Hendrick van der Decken, refusing to go to port while crossing the Cape of Good Hope, declaring that he would not make port "though I should beat about here till the day of judgment". He got shipwrecked in a storm, and the ghost of his ship is now bound by his curse to never be able to rest at port.

===Councilor Dominic d'Honaire===
The darklord of Dementlieu. Originally born in Mordentshire, Dominic led his nanny to suicide at age 7 and then manipulated his family to move away to avoid the Mordentshire police, with the mists giving him the domain of Dementlieu. Dominic is not the domain's temporal leader but does serve as an adviser for Marcel Guignol, Dementlieu's head of state. However, Dominic has much more power than his official position would suggest. The darklord's power is domination over the minds of other people on a prodigious scale. A great many in the land, including its recognized head, are his obedients and through this network he knows whatever goes on in his land.

His personal curse is that any woman he woos sees him as more repulsive the more he is attracted to her. Also, for some time his rule is challenged by an entity who is called (and virtually is) the Living Brain (re: ''Sherlock Holmes''' Moriarty), the last remains of Rudolph von Aubrecker, the youngest son of Lamordia's political ruler.

in 5e, the domain was revamped and the Darklord is now Saidra d’Honaire, though there is a plot hook that hints he's still around and trying to get his position back (then again Dementlieu is now a place where everyone pretends).

==="Death"===
Darklord of Necropolis (formerly Il-Aluk, the capital of Darkon). He is one of several minor Darklords that took over pieces of Darkon in Azalin's absence during the [[Grim Harvest]] and the only one of them to become a full Darklord after Azalin came back. Originally a clone of Azalin made by him as part of a convoluted scheme to bypass his curse, he was transformed into a negative energy elemental by the prototype version of the "Doomsday Device" Azalin thought would make him into a demilich. When it backfired, the massive surge of negative energy it released killed the whole of Il-Aluk's population. "Death" then claimed the ruined capital and its remaining undead inhabitants as its own, and after Azalin reconstituted himself Necropolis became its own domain. A shroud of negative energy still remains over Necropolis, which instantly kills all non-undead which attempt to enter its borders.

===Draga Salt-Biter===

Darklord of Saragoss, a watery domain where the only analogue to 'land' is 'places where the seaweed is clumped particularly tight'. Draga is a [[Therianthrope|wereshark]] pirate [[Cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] with a deep-rooted fear of sharks. Yes, it's ironic that he hates sharks while being able to turn into one. He knows. He got both his wereshark infection and his fear of sharks in the same incident; as a child, he was captured by a crew of pirates, who stuck a hook into one of his calves and dangled him into shark-infested waters, understandably traumatizing the kid. And after his own piracy and terrorism of the seas in Umberlee's name caught the Dark Powers' attention, they saw no reason to mess with a perfectly good case of irony and gave him a neat selection of new powers... all of which were shark-themed. He controls sharks, can only breathe underwater (though he also has a ring of air-breathing that allows him to surface for a few hours at a time), and his resurrection method involves his spirit being reborn via sharks. He's also becoming increasingly shark-like in mentality as time passes, a prospect which terrifies him.

===Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth===

Darklord of Dominia. Reknowned throughout the Demiplane of Dread as an expert on mental illness, few know the dark secret behind his knowledge. Terrified of falling victim to the heredity madness that plagued his family, Heinfroth conducted horrific experiments on his mental patients to deepen his understanding of insanity. One of these experiments turned him into the first cerebral vampire, a vampire subspecies that feeds on cerebral fluid instead of blood.

===Dr. Frantisek Markov===
Darklord of Markovia. Originally a pig farmer from Barovia, he grew increasingly obsessed with the anatomy of the pigs he butchered and began to perform bizarre experiments on them that wouldn't be out of place in a [[Haemonculus]]' laboratory. When his "subjects" inevitably died, he simply sold the meat without telling anyone what he had done to it first. Eventually his wife discovered his gruesome hobby and threatened to expose him, at which time she ended up becoming one of his experiments as well. After three days of vivisection, she finally expired- her corpse was so horrifically mangled that when it was first discovered it was mistaken for the remains of a monster. When Markov's involvement in her death became clear, the mists claimed him and made him a Darklord.

Fittingly, Markov's curse allows him to shapeshift into any animal form he wishes (save for his head, which remains human), but is incapable of assuming his original human form. As a result, he normally takes the shape of a gorilla in order to continue his increasingly deranged experiments without being impeded by a lack of thumbs. Said experiments culminated in the creation of the "[[Broken One]]s"- animals (and the occasional unlucky human) that have been surgically mutilated into a human-animal hybrid form and given a semblance of intellect, similar to the Beast Folk of ''The Island of Dr. Moreau''. Like said Beast Folk, they too are highly prone to reverting to their primal instincts and bestial appearance after only a few days.

===Easan the Mad===
Darklord and ruler of Vechor. Easan has the power to reshape the land, and even reality itself, within his domain. Combined with his capricious whims, his power makes the realm a place of constant change.

Easan is a short wood elf and former agitator for a war against Iuz the Evil. For his efforts, he was seemingly driven mad by the possession of a fiend. Now Easan only looks for a cure to his madness, but he is willing to tear many innocent lives apart, and maybe even reality itself, to find a cure. His vile research has focused on souls and soul transference. Among other monstrosities, his research created the dread mechanical golem from fellow outlander Ahmi Vanjuko.

It all started on the outlander world of Oerth. Easan argued the cause for war to his colleagues among the rulers of a tiny elf kingdom bordering Iuz's empire. To make an example of the upstart elf, Iuz ordered his agents to kidnap Easan. With Easan rendered helpless before him, Iuz bound a fiend to Easan.

The presence of the fiend within Easan began eating away at his mind. Many magical means of expulsion failed, including the divine magic of [[St. Cuthbert]]'s followers. In an effort to find a way to free himself from the fiend, Easan visited a far-off island of mystics. They managed to suppress the fiend for a time, but eventually the monks and their island were rent asunder by a disaster of mysterious circumstances. Only Easan came out of it alive. The cause of the incident was Iuz's visit to the island and his ensuing frustration at Easan's seeming mastery over the fiendish spirit within. Iuz brought about the magical destruction that wiped out the entire island.

Whereas Easan emerged from the disaster with his body intact, his mind had only deteriorated further. The fiend had returned, but Easan did not give up hope. Where religion had failed, Easan resolved to find a way to banish the fiend with perverse experiments. Easan sacrificed many lives in his pursuit for a cure before he was taken in by the Mists.

Eventually, Easan noticed he was in a foreign, if familiar, land where he was viewed as a god. Indeed, he now had the power to warp reality (albeit slowly) within his own domain. Although he enjoys this from time to time, for the most part he remains obsessed with finding secrets of the soul. For all his power, he cannot seem to best his own inner demons, for he has all but forgotten the reasons why he began his foul research.

In truth, Easan never had a fiend implanted in him at all. It was all merely a deception to throw him off balance. Still, Easan's mind locked onto it, and when others couldn't detect the nonexistent affliction, Easan turned to his own methods for finding a cure.

===Ebonbane===
First introduced in the Darklords sourcebook, Ebonbane is a villainous character strongly associated with the mythos surrounding the Shadowborn Family and the Shadowlands cluster. In universe, Ebonbane is a source of horrific evil that has been opposed by Lady Kateri Shadowborn and her kin for almost two centuries, going back to the Heretical Wars on the Prime Material Plane. Once a powerful fiend known as Lussimar, Ebonbane was conjured and trapped inside a sword by mortal spellcasters. Ebonbane struck back at its summoners and enslaved them. After Ebonbane killed Kateri Shadowborn, it became darklord of Shadowborn Manor, the former residence of its nemesis.

===Elena Faith-Hold===
Darklord of Nidala. Elena was a [[Paladin]] of the god [[Belenus]] that acted as a guardian of a land also called Nidala, but her devotion to Belenus was tainted by her fondness for the adoration of the masses. Following a great crusade against the forces of evil, the people began to scorn those who did not worship Belenus. The more zealous members of the clergy appealed to her vanity and drive to please Belenus, and soon she grew so fanatical that after the "non-believers" were wiped out, she turned on followers that she deemed unworthy, always finding some new target for her purges. For this, Belenus withdrew his support, but Elena never realized that she fell because her formerly [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies had blossomed into full-fledged self-righteousness- thus leaving her incapable of even considering that she might have gone astray from her god's teachings.

Believing her fall to be only a test of faith, she grew ever more ruthless in purging those who she deemed unclean, until she was eventually drawn by the Mists into the Demiplane of Dread. She didn't actually become a Darklord until later, when she started slaughtering entire villages because she saw more evil than good in them (not knowing that she was only looking at the worst parts of each town). At that point, she was given the domain of Nidala, which she runs as a dour police state, forbidding all practices she sees as evil while allowing her cult of personality to reach new heights. When she considers a town to be too corrupted, she and her followers destroy it, blaming the deed on the fictional [[dragon]] Banemaw. Ironically enough, in her domain the true dogma of Belenus is considered [[Heresy]], and her servant/"spiritual guide" Theokos (a fiend-like entity masquerading as a [[Cleric]] of Belenus) strives to wipe it out entirely.

As a Darklord, Elena has her paladin powers back, except they're from the Dark Powers, so they're warped in ways that Elena is in severe denial about (to the point where she's a straight [[Blackguard]] in some writeups). Her unicorn steed is now fiendish, she commands undead instead of turning them, her Aura of Courage is an Aura of Despair, she can only heal herself or her steed, and most notably her Detect Evil power instead detects strong emotions that others feel towards her (any emotion works, so someone who genuinely loves her will still be detected as "evil" with predictable results), leaving them vulnerable to her version of Smite Evil. Naturally, Elana refuses to believe that her Detect Evil power doesn't actually work as it's supposed to and insists that the inability of anyone else to use Detect Evil in the Demiplane of Dread is proof of their spiritual impurity. She is also able to "convert" foes to her side as loyal servants who will gladly die for her, which functions like an enhanced humanoid-only version of Charm Monster.

She is cursed with bouts of self-doubt, and once every week she must take a midnight ride as a chorus of voices denounce her for becoming one of the forces of evil she once fought against.

===Eli Van Hassen===

Darklord of the Endless Road, and a creation of the 4th edition to replace the infamously-dubious Headless Horseman and his Winding Road domain. Eli, unlike the Horseman, has an actual known reason to be Darklord, with the Horseman being downgraded to part of Eli's curse.

Eli was once a minor nobleman who ruled over a hamlet called Tranquility, despite having much grander ambitions. When his lands were ravaged by a hydra, a wandering horseman came by and slew the beast, being lauded as a hero. Eli was filled with envy as the huntsman received praise and admiration that he didn't, and his daughter falling in love with the man was the last straw. He forced the girl to claim that the Horseman had raped her, whipped the denizens of Tranquility into a frenzied mob, and executed the innocent man. Drawn to the Demiplane of Dread for this crime, Eli is now trapped on his estate, for the Headless Horseman, the spectre of the hero he murdered, wanders the road outside and will kill Eli if he ever steps beyond his estate's boundaries.

===Gabrielle Aderre===
Darklord of Invidia. A [[half-Vistani]] whose mother was raped by Drakov and was rejected by her fellow Vistani, she had always fantasized about her father's identity and resented her mother's unwillingness to speak of him, as well as her warning that if she bore a child it would end in disaster for everyone around her. When her mother was attacked by a werewolf, Gabrielle refused to aid her until she revealed the truth about her father. But when her mother did so, Gabrielle refused to believe it and left her to die. The mists took her after that, and she came to be cursed with an inability to cause direct harm to the [[Vistani]], either physically or magically. Soon afterward she came to become the temporal leader of Invidia as well as its darklord, an opportunity that allowed her to begin persecuting the Vistani in spite of her curse.

She took many lovers as Invidia's ruler, though she only truly loved one of them, a wolfwere called Matton Blanchard. However, she was later seduced by the incubus calling himself "The Gentleman Caller" and left pregnant by him. Her son Malocchio soon proved to be one of the Dukkar- one of the rare males of Vistani blood with The Sight. On its own this would be a cause for concern among the Vistani, as the Dukkar is effectively the Vistani equivalent of the Antichrist; however, Gabrielle went even further and taught him to hate the Vistani as much as she did. Ultimately she taught him too well, as Malocchio betrayed Gabrielle and took the position of Invidia's temporal ruler for himself. She survived due to the intervention of Blanchard, but since then Malocchio has been the ruler of Invidia, persecuting the Vistani far more effectively than Gabrielle ever could have done. The only reason he has yet to kill her is because he knows that if she dies, he will inevitably inherit her title of Darklord, which he has no interest in gaining.

===Gregor Zolnik===

Darklord of Vorostokov. The only known Darklord from [[Birthright]], Gregor is descended from Azrai, and lives down to the bloodline's negative reputation. Gregor was an excellent hunter, and back in Cerilia, his skills saved his village during an exceptionally harsh winter. Gregor loved being a hero to the people, but his talent for hunting couldn't work so well every winter. And so, to keep bringing back meat, he started hunting humans. This drew Vorostokov into Ravenloft, where the winter has continued ever since (though recently it has shown some signs of abatement). Gregor still "hunts" for his people, although they've started to cotton on to Gregor's lies and resent their dependence on him, they have no other choice, for Gregor forbids anyone else from hunting.

Gregor is a [[Loup du Noir]], and the boyarsky who support him are the same, as he infected them. His two sons are also nascent Loup du Noir, but the younger, Mikhail, wishes to escape him.

===Gwydion the Sorceror-Fiend===
Darklord of the Shadow Rift, and such an asshole that even the ''Shadow Fey'' think he's a monster. He is also responsible for their current state, as prior to Ravenloft, he was a powerful warlord on the Plane of Shadow, and to sate his ambitions, he kidnapped a bunch of normal fey, turned them into the Shadow Fey, and told them to create an interdimensional portal so he could use them as an army to conquer other planes. This worked as well as could be expected [[Derp|considering he had no mental domination of his creations]]. The Shadow Fey made a portal, alright... but it wasn't to the Prime Material and the armies that marched through it were actually a mass exodus of the Shadow Fey, hidden by illusions.

Gwydion eventually discovered the Shadow Fey's treachery, but it was too late, and by the time he got to the portal to stop them, the exodus was almost complete. The Shadow Fey king, Arak, held Gwydion back long enough for the Shadow Fey to all escape and seal the portal while Gwydion was going through it, trapping the Sorceror-Fiend. The other side of the portal led to the Demiplane of Dread, where the Dark Powers created the Shadow Rift to contain Gwydion further.

And that's pretty much how it remains. Aside from a failed escape attempt during the Grand Conjunction, Gwydion has remained stuck in that portal, unable to do anything but watch and send Shadow Fey an occasional bad dream.

===Haki Shinpi===
Darklord of Rokushima Táiyoo. He's a powerless [[Geist]] that, in life, was a powerful [[samurai]] and clan leader that forged a big and powerful empire. He felt pride in the fact that his clan and lands held together while others fell to discord, despair, and war, which he helped to instigate via manipulation and betrayal. Haki Shinpi somewhat lived by the code of Bushido but abused and exploited it to manipulate his nemeses, play them against each other, and run their hopes into the ground.

Shortly prior to Haki's death, he made it known that each of his six sons would inherit part of his conquered lands evenly. As expected, this went swimmingly for everyone involved. After his death, his children turned to bickering and then all out war against each other. Two of his children met their doom, and their islands were leveled by earthquakes before Rokushima Taiyoo was brought into the Demiplane of Dread.

Far from the influential and powerful man he was in life, Haki Shinpi can now do little to keep his sons from tearing his land apart in civil war.

===Harkon Lukas===
Darklord of Kartakass. A [[wolfwere]] bard from the [[Forgotten Realms]] unusual among his kind for his highly social nature, as most wolfweres are lone predators who only come together temporarily to breed. Seeing as how he couldn't get other wolfweres to agree to hang around together, he started focusing more on integrating into human society. He still hunted and ate humans, but he also gained a genuine love of human culture and of the idea of being somebody important. One day, for no reason since he'd basically been doing the same stuff any wolfwere does, just spending a bit more time in town in between kills, the Dark Powers grabbed his ass and yanked him into Barovia. At which point he went on an anti-wolf killing spree for, again, no particular reason. This attracted Strahd's attention, and he nearly killed Lukas, forcing the wolfwere to flee into the Mists, which gave him his own domain of Kartakass. Which, much to his frustration, is a tiny, rustic place where the most power he'll ever have is being mayor of a small town, so he's got the letter of what he wanted but not the spirit, making for a hollow victory.

The 5th edition version of Harkon Lukas is a [[Loup-garou]] instead of a wolfwere, and it changes some of the other details about him. As in the original, he had dreams of a [[werewolf]] society - an empire of werewolves, in fact - but that dream was dashed by the werewolf indifference to gathering in large numbers. So he tried to forge an empire amongst [[human]]s, this time actually directly getting involved; ultimately, he led a revolution against a king by faking his own death as a martyr to stir up riots, then using these to get him close enough to the king that he could burst out of the coffin his followers were carrying him around in, rip the king to shreds, and take the king's crown for himself... which was when the mists swallowed him and he found himself in Kartakass. His curse is also tweaked slightly as well; rather than being doomed to never rise above the position of mayor, he's doomed to never rise above the even less prestigious position of nearly-forgotten, washed-up performer.
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===Hazlik===
Darklord of Hazlan. A gay [[Forgotten Realms|Red Wizard of Thay]] who was publicly humiliated and stripped of his status by his female rival and her boyfriend, the latter of which he lusted after. As revenge, he murdered the guy, made his girlfriend eat his corpse, then tortured her to death as well, at which time he was then swept up by the mists. His curse is to suffer from nightmares of his now-inaccessible rivals defeating him with impunity and generally humiliating him every night, which has made him even more fixated on getting revenge against the Red Wizards. So he's crafting plans to cast a spell that will genocide all members of his race, the Mulan, throughout the multiverse. To escape being killed by said genocide spell himself, he's prepared to bodysnatch his female Rashemani apprentice when he's ready to use it.

The 5e version retcons him quite a bit. Once an ambitious Red Wizard with a habit of horribly scarring his rivals, Hazlik came to believe that his lover/rival, a man named Indreficus, was planning to betray him. In retribution, he captured Indreficus and subjected him to a nightmarish experiment that left him permanently transformed into a pain-wracked living portal. Hazlik presented what had become of his former lover as to the zulkirs with hopes to impress them, only to be told Indreficus did not betray him and he had merely been manipulated by the zulkirs into thinking so as a way to halt the ambitious pair's ascent. They then declared Hazlik’s transformation of Indreficus an abomination, and that as punishment, every rival Hazlik had defeated could exact a penance of their choosing upon him. In desperation, Hazlik fled through the twisted portal that had been Indreficus and found himself in the demiplane of dread, where he eventually found his way to a realm that knew nothing of magic.

As well as his old nightmares (which are now of Indreficus taunting him for his failures), he also has a new curse borrowed from the now-absent Azalin Rex, making him unable to learn any new magic. On top of no longer being able to advance the magical research that used to drive his life, he's also absolutely terrified that anyone will learn of his limitations.

===Hive Queen===
Darklord of the sewer domain of Timor that lies beneath Paridon, and a half-Marikith because somebody thought it was time to rip off the Aliens franchise. She wasn't always a monster, though. She was originally a spoiled princess who decided one day to scare her mother to death. To do this, she seduced a wizard into casting an illusion of her transforming into a half-Marikith, but when said wizard saw her with her real lover, he decided to spice up the spell a bit by removing the 'illusion' bit and ''actually'' transforming her. She now lurks in the sewers as the Queen of the Marikiths, regularly laying more Marikith eggs. But she fears being usurped even from what little power she has, so if any of those eggs hatches another Marikith Queen, the Hive Queen kills the hatchling.

===Illithid God-Brain===
The darklord of Bluetspur is an [[illithid]] [[Elder Brain]], a massive conglomeration of the brain of every dead illithid, merged together into a new, living, entirely alien entity. It's the reason using psionic powers in Ravenloft is a dicey proposition, as the God-Brain might notice and attempt to integrate you into itself. It's notable for having '''no''' attempt to justify its position in Ravenloft whatsoever, with the original writeup in the Red Box, the original Ravenloft campaign setting collection, literally saying that nobody knows why it's in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], what crime it committed to end up here, or even how it's actually being tormented by its stay here!

The ''Book of Sacrifices'' gives it a backstory and reason for its Darklordship. Its core persona was once a human psion named Seldrid, whose people were at war with the Illithids. Eventually, they began to win for good once the Illithid Elder Brain started to die, but unfortunately for them, Seldrid had come to admire the Illithids' power and discipline, and merged with the Elder Brain to revive it. This act of betraying his people to such a great evil caught the Dark Powers' attention, and as the Illithids sacked his home city, they drew the country into the Demiplane of Dread as Bluetspur, with the Seldrid-brain as Darklord. Seldrid's curse is an inability to transfer his consciousness as he once did or to integrate any new consciousnesses into himself. Now trapped as a giant brain in a pool with nothing but Illithid tadpoles for company, unable to make himself more mobile or gain any outside experiences, Seldrid has gone quite insane.

5th edition has its own take on the idea. In a nutshell, the God-Brain hails from the era when the Illithid empire was at its peak, performing whatever blasphemous experiments took its fancy until it literally thought something that was unthinkable. That is, it had a thought so blasphemous, so utterly inimical to reality itself, that even an Elder Brain couldn't actually think it. Becoming obsessed with this ineffable thought, the God-Brain began cannibalizing other Elder Brains to try and upgrade itself to the point where it could finally contemplate this mysterious thought-form. Instead, it just gave itself a kind of aggressive psychic cancer, which began fatally necrotizing the God-Brain's neural tissues. Aghast at its behavior and terrified of catching the disease themselves, the other Elder Brains pooled their powers and tried to erase the God-Brain from existence; thanks to the meddling of the [[Dark Powers]], they only succeeded in banishing the God-Brain to the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Now the God-Brain struggles endlessly to both find a cure for its disease and to manifest the alien thought-form still gestating inside of it, all the while subconsciously aware that there is '''nothing''' it can do to achieve either goal, but desperate to fight for every last moment of life.

===Inza Magdova Kulchevitch===

The current Darklord of Sithicus, replacing Lord Soth. She was born in Gundarak, on the night Duke Gundar was assassinated, and two years later, her caravan wandered into Sithicus, where they were trapped, although her mother Magda managed to bargain for protection with Soth.

Inza's dark mindset showed from a very early age. Even as a child she loved thieving and manipulating the giorgio of Sithicus, and for the most part stood aside from her tribe. Her only friend was Piotr, a boy 1 year her senior, and this wasn't such a good thing as Inza pushed him to join her in both emnity to the giorgios and bullying a boy named Nikolas for his kindness towards non-Vistani. Their friendship eventually came to an end when Inza allowed Nikolas to be brutally beaten and pinned the blame on Piotr. Inza also hated animals, since they were not fooled by her facade of innocence, and would torture and kill them on the sly. None of this disturbing behavior ever reached Magda, who doted on her daughter, but by adulthood her rampant kleptomania and unlikeable personality had alienated most of the other Vistani.

Inza became Darklord of Sithicus after betraying her mother and caravan to Malocchio Aderre, breaking the caravan's oath to Lord Soth in the process. She attempted to usurp Soth's power, but was foiled and as the surviving members of her caravan hunted her down, she leapt into a chasm to escape. The darkness within the chasm surrounded and embraced her, turning her into the new Darklord.

As Darklord, Inza exists as a force of corruption. Her curse is twofold- first, her form has become a mass of shadow, and she has to concentrate to look human. Second, she stole, manipulated, and was a general bitch because of her philosophy that everyone was as evil as her at heart. The presence of true heroes in her domain (to say nothing of the redeemed spirit of Lord Soth himself) has shaken her to the core, and despite all her efforts to stomp out the forces of good in her domain, they still exist as thorns in her side.

===Ivana Bortisi===

Darklord of Borca, and a reference to the titular character of ''Rappaccini's Daughter''. Ivana inherited the domain by poisoning her lover for cheating with her mother Camille (who she also poisoned). Thus, Ivana inherited Camille's domain, along with immunity and power over poison. This, of course, came with a curse- Ivana cannot turn her lethally poisonous touch ''off'', and thus will never be able to take a lover.

Ivana is best known for the creation of Ermordenung, humans infused with poison to make them super-assassins. The first of these was Nostalia Romaine, Ivana's childhood friend and the one to actually do the dirty work of killing Camille.

5e retcons her a bit, though not nearly as much as Borca's other Darklord. While the whole thing with her mother seducing her lover did still happen, there's no mention of her poisoning her lover and it's not the only reason she kills her mother. Rather, she murdered her brothers and mother in an attempt to force her father to name her his heir. When he still refused to do so, insisting that her cousin Ivan Dilisnya would be his sole inheritor instead, she murdered him and all of their servants with poison gas. She's still terrified of the possibility of her father's will being found, as that would mean that the business she's worked so hard to grow would go to her childish and depraved cousin.

Her poisonous touch is gone, with her curse now being the more mundane and psychological torments of boredom due to feeling like no one around her is her intellectual peer, and the fact that she is never given the respect she feels she is owed, always being doubted, second-guessed, and looked down upon just like her father did.

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===Ivan Dilisnya===

Co-Darklord of Borca, and former darklord of Dorvinia. He's a cousin to Ivana Bortisi, and shares many similarities with her, most notably his love of poisoning people who draw his ire. After he poisoned his sister (who he lusted after) and her husband, he became a Darklord. His curse is simple but effective; his greatest pleasure aside from killing was fine food and drink, so he lost his sense of taste, rendering all the luxury around him hollow and unenjoyable.

His similar nature and modus operandi to his cousin caused their domains to fuse together under the name of Borca during the Grand Conjunction. Both he and Ivana are immune to poison and can create any toxin they can imagine, but Ivana has one more gift- agelessness. Ivan is desperate to learn the secret to her immortality, and refuses to believe she has no idea how she came by the gift (the Dark Powers granted it). Unlike Ivana, Ivan doesn't create Ermordenung, but he does have one nasty trick up his sleeve: Borrowed Time, a poison that only he can create. It stays in one's bloodstream for life and causes lethal convulsions every sunset unless you've ingested the antidote, 'Mercy', which is also something only Ivan can create, that day. Most of his minions are thus held hostage, knowing that Ivan holds the key to each day of their lives.

5e retcons him heavily. While he's still the cousin of Ivana and co-darklord of Borca who envies his cousin's immortality, that's pretty much all that stays the same. Ivan was groomed from a young age to be the head of a noble family, but despite all the opportunity in the world he instead took to wallowing in childish depravity, his family ignoring and enabling his worst and strangest impulses as they hoped he would grow out of it. He of course did not grow out of it, only becoming more violent and immature as he aged. On the same night that Ivana Boritsi poisoned her family, Ivan learned of his parents’ intention to send his beloved sister Kristina to a prestigious boarding school, and murdered his entire family for it.

He now resides in the Dilisnya family estate, a twisted funhouse that he lures people to to torment. Those unable to escape are eventually forced to don the colorful uniforms of the Dilisnya household staff and become Ivan’s new servants. He rarely leaves the estate, instead communicating through letters and acting through his "toys," animate creatures of clockwork or cloth provided to him by the Dark Powers.

===Jaqueline Reiner===

Darklord of Richemulot. Appropriately to the name, she's a natural wererat, born to a wererat branch of the Reiner family. The Reiners followed their patriarch Claude into the mists, where he reigned as Richemulot's original Darklord, but eventually Jaqueline had enough of his abuse and killed him, taking on his title of Darklord in the process. And while that title came with neat perks like control over Richemulot, it also came with a pair of curses.

First, Jaqueline suffers from intense monophobia. She hates nothing worse than being alone, but her entire family is made up of evil wererats whom she ''also'' really hates, so being in their company is not that much better. Second, while Jaqueline falls in love easily, she will involuntarily shift into rat form whenever she's alone with someone she truly loves. And while that love is as genuine as anything Jaqueline has experienced, she can never muster up the trust that her lover will accept her as a wererat, and she almost invariably then kills him. She might make a good pair with Urik von Kharkov, but Darklords can never leave their domains and it's uncertain if she knows about him.

5e replaced her with the very-slightly-differently-named Jacqueline Reiner, details about which can be found in her own section below.

===King Crocodile===
Yes, Ravenloft even has Darklords that are talking animals! No, you cannot [[Furry|play as one yourself]].

King Crocodile is the savage and bestial Darklord of the equally savage and bestial Wildlands, which is based on Rudyard Kipling's ''Just-So Stories'' and ''The Jungle Book''. This talking crocodile was so bloodthirsty and ferocious to his fellow talking animals in the jungle, they begged the hairless apes (i.e. humans) to come and kill him, but instead of holding up their end of the bargain, the hairless apes just started destroying the jungle for resources and colonizing it. This drove the other talking animals into pleading for King Crocodile to kill the hairless apes, and he agreed on the condition that the other animals all loan him their powers, which they did with the exception of the Python (the "wisest of the animals") and the Fly (whom King Crocodile thought was too insignificant to matter).

King Crocodile did slake his bloodthirsty appetite on the hairless apes and drove them out, but instead of returning the other animals' powers when he was finished as he had promised, he instead returned to his old ways of gorging himself on the animal population even more wantonly and gluttonously than before. It was at this point that the Python told King Crocodile a prophecy, which was that King Crocodile would either be killed by one of the hairless apes or by something he thought was pathetic and beneath him. With this done, the Python and his fellow snakes left King Crocodile's jungle to its fate at the hands of Ravenloft's Dark Powers, who quickly claimed the land as their own.

True to the Python's words, King Crocodile is slowly dying of the sleeping sickness spread by the flies, and the only thing that might help him are the hairless apes. But he is unable to keep himself from attacking any who might cure his affliction, and might attack them even if they do help him. The other talking animals still live in fear of King Crocodile and will implore any player characters they meet to dispose of him, but the cycle of betrayal in this land is only doomed to repeat itself. As a result, even if the player characters succeed in killing King Crocodile none of the talking animals will honour their words and the other crocodiles will fight to the death to assume King Crocodile's crown (and his cursed fate), as "''gratitude is not a quality well-known in the jungle.''"

===Kas===
Darklord of Tovag. The infamous vampire who betrayed [[Vecna]] and cut off his hand and eye. Was drawn into the mists at the same time as Vecna and the two of them were at constant war with each other until Vecna escaped. It is confirmed in 5th edition that Kas is still in the Demiplane of Dread and also is unaware that Vecna is gone. He repeatedly sends out armies to attack Vecna which never return, leaving him increasingly frustrated.

In the [[World Axis]] cosmology from 4th edition, he's not a Darklord, but he ''does'' hang out in the Domain of Dread called Monadhan; because he's figured out how to freely leave the domain whenever he wishes, he's turned it into his own personal base under the nose of its [[dracolich]] Darklord.

===Lemot Sediam Juste===
Darklord of Scaena, one of the few Domains capable of traveling through the mists. Scaena is a theater house, and one that Juste worked at as a playwright prior to his becoming a Darklord. Juste was a well-known and talented writer of comedies and dramas, but this never satisfied him, as he wished to write tragedies. Unfortunately for him, his [[Grimdark]] always came out as grimderp, and the actors invariably played his tragic works as farces, since they weren't good for much else. Driven to a deep bitterness by his failure to fulfill his obsession with tragedy, he wrote one last play- this one designed to be a real-life tragedy that killed all of his actors, and when the audience booed this one too, he locked up the house and burned it down with them inside.

Now, as a Darklord, Lemot has ultimate control of his theater, allowing him to trap people in his plays and alter reality for these press-ganged performers, but all this is undercut because he can't believe any of it; for his Darklord curse, the Dark Powers have taken away his suspension of disbelief, forcing him to always see actors, props, and scenery for what they truly are instead of what he wants them to be.

===Lord Wilfred Godefroy===
Darklord of Mordent (the same place from the old Ravenloft II module). A nobleman who murdered his wife when she was unable to produce a son for him as an heir and then murdered his daughter for trying to stop him, and then framed their deaths as an accident. Their ghosts came back to haunt him for a year until he killed himself to make it stop, and when Azalin and Strahd inadvertently drew Mordent into the mists Godefroy (now a ghost himself) became its darklord. His curse is to be continually tormented by the ghosts of his wife and daughter just as he was in life, who tear him apart every night as they curse him for murdering them.

While he was formerly known to be rather passive as a Darklord, in recent times he has taken to enslaving other ghosts to do his bidding. In particular, he's had the mayor of Mordentshire under his thumb for years by holding the ghost of his wife hostage.
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===Maharaja Arijani===
[[Rakshasa]] darklord of Sri Raji, Arijani attained his position after betraying both his kind and his father, Ravana (or rather, the Avatar of Ravana), having received the scorn of the rakshasa for most of his life. Although Ravana is a deity venerated by the rakshasa, Arijani's mother was Mahiji, then high priest of the hated goddess Kali and a leader of the Dark Sisters. To compound things, the Avatar of Kali delivered Arijanni to a home of low caste rank. He lived as a pariah shunned by his fellow rakshasa and languished in a position of low social importance. This alienated Arijani from his own kind, such that he arranged the death of many rakshasa in the conflict with humans. Gradually, Arijani's manipulations became so great that the people of Bahru began hunting their former hunters.

Arijani's depredations climaxed with rakshasa retaliatory siege against Bahru. Although the city fell, the cost was massive casualties on both sides and the city left in ruins. Angered and disgusted by Arijani's actions, Ravana sent his avatar to dispatch his prodigal son. However, Arijani conspired with Mahiji and lured the avatar into a trap. Thus rendered helpless, Ravana offered Arijani a wish in return for his release. Ravana accepted the offer, wishing to become immune to the attacks of rakshasas. The wish was granted, but Arijani slew the avatar anyway. Such was the level of his treachery that the Mists brought Sri Raji into the Demiplane of Dread.

The Maharaja's curse is that, although he is a talented illusionist, Arijani cannot disguise himself in a pleasing form, as most rakshasa do. Instead, he can only assume despicable aspects, such as that of the viewer's worst enemy. Maharaja Arijani resides in Mahakala, in Bahru. There, he is served by the Dark Sisters, whom through him, must provide to Kali daily human sacrifice.

Beyond the threat of an all weretiger cult called "The Stalkers" that were huge fans of his dad trying to kill him, Arijani's greatest fear is the very weapon he used to kill the avatar with, knowing full well it's somewhere in the jungle and very likely to be used on him just like Ravana.

===Maligno===
Darklord of Odiare, and originally from Gothic Earth's version of Italy. In the same vein as Pinocchio, he was originally a marionette brought to life through his toymaker "father" Giuseppe's wishes for a son. Though beloved by the children of Odiare, the adults of the village did not consider him to be a "real" boy. He soon grew bitter over the discovery that he wasn't truly alive, and after terrorizing Guiseppe into making more [[carrionette]]s like himself he had them kill every adult at one of his performances. It was this act that drew Odiare into the Mists as an Island of Terror.

Later on, he planned to have the carrionettes steal the bodies of every surviving adult there so they would be forced to love him, but due to the intervention of the PCs in the module "The Created" he was forced to simply kill the adults off instead. The children now adore him only out of fear, and as they grow older they wonder when Maligno will come for them as well.

Maligno's curse is that he can never be human as he craves, as he alone among the carrionettes is unable to steal the bodies of others. Furthermore, he cannot kill Guiseppe because any injury he suffers is inflicted on Maligno himself. Instead, the old toymaker was driven insane and now exists solely to create more toys for his "son" to command. Should Maligno's body be totally destroyed, Guiseppe is compelled to rebuild it, with the foul puppet's spirit claiming the new body as its own.

In 5e, Maligno was originally called ''Figlio'', which at least is an actual Italian name and not literally calling him "Evil" from the start.

===Marquis Stezen d'Polarno===
Darklord of Ghastria. As Strahd is for Dracula, Dr. Mordenheim for Dr. Frankenstein, and Tristren/Malken for Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so is Stezen to Dorian Grey, of ''The Picture of Dorian Grey''. But unlike Dorian, Stezen was a piece of work before his cursed painting came into play. As a noble in an unknown land, he enjoyed sowing chaos and rebellion and assassinated many people, but his charismatic nature meant that he hung on to a good reputation. But after one particular attempted coup went too far, his king had enough. Consulting with his mistress, a master of dark arts, he laid a curse upon d'Polarno that would do the Dark Powers proud; trapping a good chunk of Stezen's soul in a painting, he robbed him of all his charisma, vibrance, and capacity for enjoyment.

In retaliation, Stezen poisoned the king and his family, which drew the land into the mists. But he wasn't yet its Darklord. That happened when he realized that, once per season, he could temporarily reclaim his soul from the painting- at the cost of up to 50 other souls, each granting him one hour of rejuvenation. Now, once per season, he'll invite every stranger in Ghastria to a party (he'll grab some peasants if not enough foreigners answer). The party is for him, and him alone. With the exception of a few guests that he debauches himself with/upon, all guests are exposed to the painting, giving him up to 50 hours of being able to enjoy himself again before he returns to his normal drab state. While this is when he's at his most dangerous, it's also when he's most vulnerable- when his soul is still in the painting, he's essentially immortal, but when he's whole, he is as vulnerable as any other (And ''unlike'' the original Dorian, killing the painting won't work until Stezen is dead).

===Prince Ladislav Mircea===
Darklord of Sanguinia. Ladislav's story is a ripoff of the Edgar Allan Poe classic ''The Masque of the Red Death'', with the prince abandoning his people to a lethal plague, and retreating to a closed castle with his friends. And like in the original story, the plague entered the castle anyway. When Ladislav caught the plague, he turned to alchemy in a desperate attempt to cure himself. This failed and he died, only to rise as a Vrykolaka (usually mindless plague-carrier vampires that feed on bodily humors) and become Darklord of Sanguinia. He still experiments with alchemy to cure himself of his undeath, but this is unlikely to ever succeed.

===Sisters Mindefisk===
The three [[Hag]] co-Darklords of Tepest, and based the "the three wicked witches" from folkloric stories. Three sisters who were left as babies for a humble farm wife who wished for daughters, but from their birth displayed mysterious traits. Most notably, after their mother died from the strain of caring for the three sickly girls (or possibly because they drained her life), their father (who had often voiced his dislike of "weakling daughters") tried to leave the three 2-year olds for dead repeatedly, but they always came back. Eventually he let them stay as long as they cooked for him and his sons. Growing up dissatisfied with their surroundings, they took to seducing, murdering, and eating travelers to build up a stockpile of money so they could ultimately leave the farm. This worked until one final traveler tried to turn them against each other, only to be murdered so none of the sisters could claim him as theirs. This was what ultimately led to their being taken into the Mists and stuck in the depths of a forest full of [[goblin]]s and witch-burning, faerie-chasing bumpkins. They still lure in any unwary travelers to their cottage, taking advantage of the locals' blaming the goblins for their victims' deaths, but otherwise have little influence on their domain.

The sisters consist of Laveeda, an Annis Hag, Leticia, a Sea Hag, and Lorinda, a Green Hag. Though they can shapeshift, they are cursed to always see themselves and each other as their true forms no matter which shape they take.

====Mother Lorina====
In the 5e version of Tepest, only Lorinda is the darklord, having imprisoned her sisters when they refused to let her make and rear a child despite how badly she wanted to be a mom. Which ignores the complete and utter lack of maternal feelings they had in past editions, but whatever. She desperately yearns to have a family, but is thwarted by both her own inherently controlling, murderous nature, her inability to trust that her offspring genuinely love her (and the subsequent smothering, demanding, overbearing way that this makes her act), and the curse that any child she magics up for herself is a short-lived, ravenous monster; she can only make [[hexblood]]s for other people.
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===Sodo===
Darklord of Paridon. A low-ranked dread [[Doppelganger]] who resented being born into a lowly clan and thus being prevented from rising through the ranks by merit. After acquiring a magical Hat of Disguise, he fulfilled this previously-thwarted ambition by killing the elders who ruled over the clans and impersonating them, while also offing anyone else who questioned him. For managing the impressive feat of committing a betrayal egregious even by doppelganger standards, he was claimed by the Mists and given Darklordship of Paridon, and nailed with three separate curses: inability to control his shapeshifting, a healing touch (which wouldn't be much of a curse to anyone else, [[Dark Eldar|but Sodo's a sadist]] and this along with the previous curse renders him unable to effectively torture people), and an extra dose of paranoia for flavor.

===Thakok-An===
Darklord of Kalidnay, formerly from Athas. She was a templar of Kalidnay's sorceror-king, Kalid-Ma. To help him ascend to dragonhood, she sacrificed her family for the ascension ritual- an act which, ironically, would ruin it, as the Dark Powers took notice and drew Kalidnay into Ravenloft, in one of the few occasions in which being in the Demiplane of Dread was an improvement for most people. But not for Thakok-An nor Kalid-Ma, as the failed ritual put Kalid-Ma into a coma. Thakok-An remains active, ruling the realm as a theocracy of Kalid-Ma, despite said lord being comatose and all her efforts being for naught.

===Tsien Chiang===
Originally from the continent of Kara-Tur on the world of Toril, Tsien Chiang was beautiful and powerful wizard, who hated all men due to her father's dismissal of her abilities. After killing him and disabling her relatives, she seized control of her family lands. She used her charm and position to marry a total of four men, each of whom fathered a child with her before she killed him and moved on to the next. Three of the daughters so produced were evil, with the fourth, Nightingale, being truly good-hearted and adored by the gods. Tsien Chang would go on to commit various evil acts, including the desecration of four sacred bells and four sacred trees, but her mistreatment of Nightingale is what ultimately led to her being taken by the mists. On the fourth time that Nightingale objected to her family's atrocities, Tsien Chang decided to do far worse than merely beat her as they had the last three times, and she and her evil daughters were taken by the mists as the torture began. Tsien Chiang imprisoned the living remains of Nightingale in the Tower of Broken Promises as the Mists tore I'Cath from Kara-Tur forever.

If you're wondering why the number four is mentioned so much, it's because it's homophonous with "death" in most Chinese languages and is considered bad luck in many east-Asian cultures.

Her 5e incarnation gives her such a radically different backstory that pretty much the only things that remain are the four daughters and a magic bell.

When Tsien Chiang was a child, her home was destroyed by invaders, forcing her to flee into frozen mountains where she expected to die. Luckily for her, she was found and taken in by a gold dragon who took pity on her, and she served him as an attendant in thanks for saving her life. While serving the dragon, she learned much of magic and medicine, growing to become an accomplished wizard. The dragon refused to teach her any truly dangerous or powerful magic though, knowing that she would only use it for revenge. In her studies, she learned of the Nightingale bell, an artifact that could make its ringer’s dreams come true -- but creating the bell required the scale of a gold dragon. Knowing her mentor would never provide a scale she attempted to drug him so she could steal a scale while he slept, but got the mixture wrong and not only killed him, but caused his entire hoard to be destroyed, with all that remained being a single scale. Chiang crafted the bell and took it to her home, where she used it to wish away the invaders, which instantly vanished. In awe and gratitude, the people elevated her to royalty and she became their queen.

She ruled well for years, enacting vast reforms and strict but sensible laws in pursuit of creating the perfect empire. She had a family, taking particular pride in her four beloved daughters. Though her kingdom was prosperous, her people eventually began to chafe under her strict laws and demanding orders and revolted. Chiang was swift and merciless in her attempts to quell the rebellion, but her ruthlessness only caused the resistance against her to grow. When she ordered her armies to kill the families of all insurrectionists, assassins struck Tsien Chiang’s palace and killed her family. Distraught, Chiang climbed to the highest tower of her palace, looked out over her burning dreams, and struck the Nightingale Bell. Rather than granting her vengeful wish, the bell cracked and spilled a golden mist across the land. When the mist cleared, Tsien Chiang’s perfect city was gone, replaced by the unreal prison-city of I’Cath.

I'Cath is a city divided in two: The true I'Cath of the waking world, and Tsien Chiang's impossible, perfect dream. In the waking world the city is a silent and chaotic labyrinth composed of surreal, knotted streets and citizens trapped in eternal slumber. In the dream the city is vibrant and living, a place of ultimate beauty and efficiency where all things move according to Tsien Chiang's design, and a nightmare of constant drudgery for her people. Every twilight, Tsien Chiang climbs the spirit-infested Ping’On Tower and tolls the Nightingale Bell. This renews the magic of her dream world and keeps her citizens asleep, but it also calls forth a legion of jiangshi, which emerge from their tombs to reshape the waking city’s mazelike streets in a fruitless attempt to match Tsien Chiang’s perfectionist vision.

Her curse is that while the dream is near-perfection in her eyes, that only makes the imperfections of the waking world all the more obvious and inescapable. No matter how many times she tries to bring the same order and beauty she sees in her dream to the waking world, I'Cath's streets grow only more twisted and labyrinthine. She spends as much time as she can with the dream-versions of her daughters though she knows they aren't real, and in the waking world she actively avoids the twisted reflections of her daughters that wander the true I'Cath's streets.

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===Tristen ApBlanc===
Darklord of Forlorn. A Vampyre (living vampire) born when his dad was turned into a vampire but refused to leave his wife, which resulted in their son being born a vampyre. Tristen's parents were killed by fearful peasantfolk, but not before his mom gave him to the druid Rual to be raised. By all accounts, Rual was a pretty good foster mom, but when he was fifteen years old, Rual caught him drinking the blood of a deer. Believing she had betrayed him when he saw her talking to other druids, he attacked her- only to get his ass impaled by a blessed deer antler she was carrying, and when he drank her blood, he was both poisoned and partially cured of his vampyrism by the holy water she'd just drank. As she died, Rual cursed Tristen to be trapped in the sacred grove where he killed her, and to (agonizingly) die and become a ghost each night, and rise as a vampyre each morning. This makes him one of the few Darklords to receive most of his curse prior to Darklordship, as Forlorn was only pulled into Ravenloft centuries later, when Tristen engineered a bloody civil war to take control of the land.

As it is now, Forlorn really lives down to its name; there's little there except savage goblyns, a few beleagured Druids, and Castle Tristenoira, where Tristen is stuck, along with the ghosts of his family. The castle is split between three separate time periods that adventurers can shift between, thought to be because of all the ghostly shenanigans. Because there's really not much to do in Forlorn besides exploring Castle Tristenoira and trying not to get eaten by goblyns, it has no real political importance and is ignored by basically everyone, despite being most likely the second-oldest domain after Barovia.

He gets some very minor retcons in 5e, but since he only gets a single paragraph there's not much in the way of details. Seemingly the only changes are that he's now a dhampir (which is really more-or-less the same thing as a vampyre) and that he was taken by the mists almost immediately after killing the druids.

===Vlad Drakov===
Darklord of Falkovnia. He was originally the leader of a mercenary band called the Talons of the Hawk in [[Dragonlance|Krynn]]. For their wanton brutality and bloodlust, they were taken into Ravenloft and claimed Falkovia for themselves (after a failed invasion of Darkon that was repulsed by Azalin's undead).[[Berserk|If this seems familiar]] then good, you're paying attention.

This rivalry with Azalin has since become part of Drakov's curse, though he seems unaware of it. While four other countries (that have themselves agreed to an alliance should Falkovnia ever attack one of them) surround him, Drakov considers them "women and fops" not worth the effort of invasion, obsesses over an enemy he has no way of defeating, and is forever unable to gain the approval and respect of the great military leaders that he has sought all his life. And even if he did somehow conquer Darkon, [[fail|no Darklord can ever leave his own realm]] so he would never actually get to conquer it himself. Another factor in his defeats is that his way of doing war is distinctly and doggedly medieval (no gunpowder, no magic), so on the rare occasions he decides to try his luck at conquering other neighbouring domains than Darkon (all of which are at a higher technological level than Falkovnia) his forces almost always get shot to pieces by firearms or, more rarely, blown to pieces with magic. Oddly enough, his realm may in fact be, on the whole, a net ''benefit'' to the other domains of the Core, as his penchant for overworking his peasantry/slaves (when he's not busy having them impaled for his entertainment, of course) means that his realm produces large amounts of grain and foodstuffs which he sells for funds to equip and train his forces, unintentionally making Falkovnia "the breadbasket of the Core."

In addition, Drakov may be unique as the one of the most "conventional" Darklords in Ravenloft in the sense that he is statted like a run-of-the-mill fighter-class BBEG, and much like this archetype he has no magical abilities aside from a few magical weapons and armour at his disposal, coupled with no ability to cheat death, and no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders (all of which are in line with his disdain for magic and the supernatural), except for a good amount of inherent magic resistance that will also work against beneficial spells (so if he's ever in a tight enough bind to require magical healing, he's screwed). However, PCs and DMs shouldn't mistake his one-dimensional combat abilities as a sign that Falkovnia would be easy to liberate from his iron-fisted rule via a [[Raven Guard|simple decapitation raid]]; the totalitarian and thoroughly abusive nature of his rule means that those he trusts enough to carry out his orders are all likely evil enough and think enough like him to instantly assume his mantle of Darklord should Drakov ever be killed, just like similar totalitarian regimes in real life can survive the deaths of multiple successive leaders. Truly liberating Falkovnia in a thematically appropriate way would require the PCs to either engineer a full-scale revolution, or otherwise ensure the complete destruction of his regime, much like truly destroying a cancerous tumour in real life requires removing or destroying every last cancer cell. And all of this says nothing about which neighbouring realm would end up absorbing Falkovnia on the off-chance it ever gets truly liberated, though at this point even Azalin would be a better ruler than Drakov given that the lich dispenses harsh but fair justice and otherwise leaves his subjects alone to continue his arcane pursuits.

5th edition got rid of him, since the developers found him redundant. He's replaced by Ledeska Drakov, and Falkovnia was reskinned with a zombie apocalypse vibe.

===Yagno Petrovna===
Darklord of G'Henna. The Petrovna family was one of those taken by the Mists when Barovia was absorbed into Ravenloft, and although they avoided Strahd's attention by hiding away in the mountains this in turn led to inbreeding. As Yagno grew up, it became clear to all that he was insane- he conversed with imaginary people and cowered from beasts that weren't there. One day, he was locked out of his family's home and had to take shelter in a cave for the night. When he woke up, he saw the name "[[Zhakata]]" scrawled on a wall.

Yagno concluded that Zhakata was the name of the god that had protected him when he slept that night and created a shrine to his savior. (In reality, the name was written by his brother as a prank and meant absolutely nothing.) At first he merely sacrificed animals to Zhakata, but then he moved on to sacrificing people. When he was caught trying to offer his sister's newborn baby to Zhakata, he was chased out of Barovia by his family. The Mists welcomed him to the domain of G'henna, where he became the Darklord.

Yagno is cursed to constantly suffer doubts about whether or not Zhakata is real. No matter how many sacrifices he makes or how many people he commands to starve themselves in the name of Zhakata, he can never quite get rid of his nagging disbelief and the worry that all his devotion has been directed towards a lie. This eventually led Yagno to call upon a wizard who claimed he could summon Zhakata; as he could not summon a nonexistent god, a nalfeshnee by the name of Malistroi answered the summons instead and told Yagno that Zhakata was just a figment of his imagination. The Darklord immediately flew into a rage and killed the wizard, while Malistroi later escaped to ravage G'Henna. Since then, he has merely redoubled his fanaticism in a futile attempt to dispel his doubts.

==Former Darklords==
You remember that section where the permanent death of Darklords is discussed? Well, it's actually happened in the past, though never yet to a band of plucky adventurers, and the results usually haven't been good. These Darklords for whatever reason no longer rule their domain, usually because some asshole killed them and was promptly saddled with their domain as the new Darklord.

===Bakholis===
Former Darklord of Invidia, and formerly a tyrannical king whose kingdom was claimed by the mists when he was spurned by a woman named Marta, and in return had her lover killed and eaten in front of her and Marta herself raped to death by his soldiers. As she died, Marta cursed him to be the beast he was inside and never be free of the blood of loved ones on his hands, which manifested as turning him into a werewolf. Unlike most Darklords, Bakholis said 'fuck this' to angst and [[Dark Eldar|embraced his curse]], descending to ever-greater depths of savagery until, to everyone's relief, the half-Vistani Gabrielle Aderre showed up and promptly murdered his ass, succeeding him as Darklord of Invidia.

===Camille Boritsi===
The mother of Ivana Boritsi and the first Darklord of Borca, who earned her position by poisoning her husband and his lover. She was cursed to be betrayed by any man she trusted, which left her with serious issues relating to men and a blindspot towards scheming women, which ultimately proved her downfall when her daughter Ivana turned the poison tables by killing ''her'' for sleeping with Ivana's lover. She was succeeded as Darklord by her daughter and murderer, Ivana Boritsi.

===Claude Reiner===
The first darklord of Richemulot. The patriarch of a family of wererats who lead his family into the mists to escape hunters, gaining his domain when his monstrous cruelty caught the attention of the Dark Powers. He was eventually killed when his granddaughter Jaqueline had enough of his abuse, making her the new Darklord of Richemulot.

===Duke Nharov Gundar===
Former Darklord of Gundarak, prior to being betrayed and usurped by Daclaud Heinfroth, who would later gain his own, separate domain. As Darklord of Gundarak, he enforced the worship of the malevolent trickster-god [[Erlin]] and taxed basically everything he could think of (with a special emphasis on the birth of girls), but little else is known of his rule. During the Grand Conjunction, Gundarak was absorbed by Barovia and Invidia.

But that wasn't the end of Nharov Gundar. He was a vampire, and though Heinfroth had staked him, he remained alive, but dormant. His skeletal remains somehow found their way to the traveling curio show of Professor Arcanus, where some complete berk went and yanked the stake out. This brought him back to life, though his time spent as a skeleton has reduced him to a near-bestial state, only vaguely remembering Heinfroth's betrayal.

===Lord Soth===
{{main|Lord Soth}}
The infamous Death Knight of Krynn was for a time the Darklord of Sithicus. More details can be found on his page, but suffice to say that the Dark Powers grew tired of him, and he was succeeded as Darklord by the [[Vistani]] Inza Kulchevitch.

===Nathan Timothy===
Darklord of Arkendale. There are more details on him in the section for his more important son Alfred, but suffice to say that Nathan was possessed of a deep-seated wanderlust, which the Dark Powers curtailed by cursing him such that he couldn't leave the river Musarde, lest he be crippled by land sickness. Nathan rolled with the curse and adapted so well to being a boatman that he outright lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction. He's still confined to river waters, but Arkendale has been absorbed into Alfred's domain of Verbrek.

===Vecna===
{{main|Vecna}}
Yes, THAT Vecna, the Maimed God; the guy whose eye and hand are still around for PCs to mess (and ''be'' messed) with.

The whole tale of Vecna's ascension to godhood is complicated, but at one point where he was 'merely' a demigod, he and Kas were pulled into the Mists after a bunch of meddlesome adventurers thwarted one of his plans. Not one to be contained for long, Vecna has the dubious honor of being the only Darklord to force his way out of the Demi-Plane of Dread after being drawn in by the Mists. On top of that, he managed to get himself 'promoted' to full-fledged minor God in the process, which is how he got the Dark Powers to kick him out due to their ban on allowing gods to influence Ravenloft. (The full story is recounted in the modules ''Vecna Lives!'', ''Vecna Reborn'' and ''Die Vecna Die!''.)

==Netbook Darklords==
These darklords represent the rulers of fan-made domains from [[netbook]]s such as the [[Books of S]], the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]], [[Quoth the Raven]], and other projects from the [[Fraternity of Shadows]].

===Ahasveros===
Darklord of Incitatus. Once, Ahasveros (male human) was the greatest scientist of his civilization, until the day his homeland was drawn into a great war against a rival nation. He invented the Adamas theory, a device that could be used to generate a mighty tidal wave to devaste the enemy's fleets and harbors.

But that wasn't enough for Ahasveros; he became obsessed with improving the device, banishing his assistants when they protested the potential dangers of doing so, cutting off all contact with those who might challenge his beliefs, and reducing the time he spent running his calculations.

The result was, when the device was used, Ahasveros lost control of it and the tidal wave annihilated ''his'' homeland as well, drowning him in the tower from whence he'd launched it.

Ever since then, the bussengeist he became has lingered in his tower, unable to decide whose fault the mess was, alternating between blaming his associates and himself. Honestly, he's not much of a darklord, and this is reflected by how empty and meaningless Incitatus is. He currently occupies a limbo; too dull to be truly absorbed into the [[Demiplane of Dread]], but still too evil and in denial of what he did to be released, either.

Ahasveros' existence is completely tied to the remnants of the Adamas machine. Only by destroying it, which will unshackle his spirit, and performing a brief rite to the long-forgotten sea god of ruined Misenos, which requires lighting the lanterns in the temple and praying for both Misenos and Ahasveros, will his torment end.

If Ahasveros wishes to seal his domain's borders, those attempting to cross it are overwhelmed by misery and the urge to seek comfort, which only those outside of the border can give them.

===The Barons Gustav===
Darklords of Gustavstan.

Baron Gustav the Elder is a male human ghost who once ruled a small kingdom in his homeland. Though he had intended to pass his holdings on to his younger brother Klaus, the younger sibling had no interest in ruling, so the elderly Gustav took a wife and fathered a son, Gustav the Younger. Then, when his son was fifteen, Gustav the Elder stepped on a snake in his garden and was fatally bitten.

Gustav the Younger (male human [[Fighter]]) was inconsolable, his mind fracturing under the sudden death of his beloved father. In his grief, he refused to take up the throne, forcing his uncle Klaus to become Baron in his place - as well as to wed Ingrid, Gustav the Elder's widow and Gustav the Younger's mother, to secure the Younger's inheritance. Unfortunately, this gesture was misunderstood by ''both'' Gustavs; the Younger began to despise his uncle and mother for their apparent disloyalty, whilst the Elder's restless spirit also became incensed at Klaus's apparent betrayal. He seized upon the idea of exploiting his son's fractured mind to both weaponize him against Klaus and to make him vulnerable, so the Elder could live again by stealing his son's body.

This domain is basically [[grimdark]] Hamlet, in case it's not obvious already.

So Gustav the Elder manifests to his son, lies that he was murdered by Klaus, and convinces his half-crazed son that Klaus wants to steal the throne for himself. Klaus the Younger swallows this bullshit hook, line and sinker, and pretending to be even madder than he actually was, he began preparing to kill his uncle and his mother both - ignoring that Gustav the Elder wanted Ingrid spared, having figured that once he stole his son's body, [[/d/|he could reclaim her as his wife]].

This led to Gustav the Younger murdering the father of Elaine, the woman he loved, and driving her so insane that she ended up committing suicide by throwing herself off the battlements of the castle - which didn't do Gustav Junior's sanity any great shakes. Instead, it provoked him into finally battling his uncle, killing Klaus and his mother in the process. Which was when Gustav the Eldler showed up and, horrified at his wife's death, he revealed the truth about how he'd played his son for a fool. Enraged, the son attacked his father's ghost, and that was when Gustavstan was snatched up by the mists.

Gustav the Younger now burns with the urge to hunt his father's spirit down and destroy him, a task not helped by his paranoia. Every night, he is haunted by the angry ghosts of Elaine and Klaus, who spend the night cursing him out for their murders.

Gustav the Elder now spends his days haunting the local insane asylum, where Ingrid - who actually survived her son's attack, but was left a raving madwoman - is now kept. At night, he strives to manipulate others into killing his son.

Neither darklord can be permanently destroyed by violence; they regenerate and revive from destruction. Only by killing Ingrid will their resurrective regeneration cease... but doing this will cause the killer to immediately suffer a failed [[Powers Check]], whilst those who watch get to roll one.

===Benada Nameless===
Darklord of Vin'Ejal. Conceived when the Eye of Toldun, the fake prophet of a phony goddess called Appissa (actually a powerful half-breed [[yuan-ti]] [[psion]] magically held in stasis), used a potion given to him by his goddess to drug and rape a woman named Dillura Ogfenhauer, Benada's mother despised her daughter from the moment she was born. Only Benada's uncle, Dillura's 12-year-old brother Ekkim, cared for her, and he raised her throughout her life, even taking her off with him to be his squire when he went to war after discovering her nature as a [[psion]]icist [[weresnake]]. Even when they returned, however, Dillura wanted nothing to do with her bastard daughter.

Finally, the enraged Benada sought to confront her mother one evening, only to track her to the Shrine of the Eye. When she saw Dillura embracing the Eye, she realized that this man was her father. Filled with hatred, she grabbed a bone knife and fatally stabbed her mother, before psionically torturing her father to death. As she turned to leave, she found herself confronted by her uncle Ekkim, who had seen everything. Realizing she couldn't let him live now, a weeping Benada killed the only person to ever show her love, transporting Vin'Ejal to the Misty Realm.

Benada's curse seems to be an insatiable hunger that only human flesh can sate; she only gives in to its demands once per month, however, as she fears depleting her domain's population. If she wishes to close the domain, the waters around Vin'Ejal decrease in temperature to the point that would-be swimmers will freeze solid, whilst hail begins savagely pelting down from above.

===Baroness Ilsabet Obour===
Darklord of Kislova. This female human [[alchemist]] was born the youngest daughter and favored child of Baron Janosk Obour of Kislova, and remained loyal and obedient to him even as he descended into brutal tyranny and made a failed attempt to conquer a neighboring barony, only to be crushed, captured and executed. Before he died, Janosk commanded each of his three children to take steps to both preserve their family and avenge the loss of their power.

Of the three, Ilsabet was the most loyal to her father, honing her alchemical skills and delving into dark alchemical practices, focusing on hideous poisons and the creation of alchemical undead. She crippled and maimed many prisoners who had dared to rebel against her father's rule before his conquest by Baron Peto, created a unique strain of alchemical vampires, fatally poisoned her elder siblings for perceived disloyalty to their father's dying wishes, and finally married Baron Peto herself and bore him a son in order to gain the opportunity to poison him with a paralytic venom. It was only as she administered what she intended to be the final, fatal dose, killing her mentor (and true love) to do so, that the Mists finally claimed her.

Ilsabet currently suffers two curses. Her most direct darklord-related curse is that her desire for power and revenge are thwarted; though her husband, Baron Peto, remains incurably paralyzed, he also remains unkillable - no matter what she does, he always returns to life. As a result, she remains forever his regent, rather than the true Baroness of Kislova, which she regards as unacceptable; she yearns to resume the interrupted reign of her own family. Secondly, Ilsabet has become a vampire-like creature that feeds on pain, and must have one person killed every day in order to survive.

Unlike many Darklords, Ilsabet has no particular powers of supernatural survival. If you can beat an 11th level [[wizard]] protected by her guard of alchemical vampires, you can kill her.

When Ilsabet closes the borders, a poisonous green mist surrounds Kislova, inflicting irresistable damage per round until the would-be escapee returns to Kislova.

===Bethany Stone===
Darklord of Stonewall. A sad, broken, bitter woman, Bethany was born the daughter of a family of puritans, self-righteous and obsessed with sin. When her father discovered the child Bethany, a cheerful, whimsical young girl, had dreams of leaving the family home to become a dollmaker, he destroyed the dolls she had painstakingly constructed over years of work and beat her within an inch of her life. Later, when she came of age, he arranged her marriage to a man of high standing.

After long years of often-lonely marriage, pregnant with her sixth child, Bethany's father and husband were caught in a terrible accident, with the former dying and the latter being left in a coma. That was hardship enough, but as she cared for her husband, Bethany discovered his diary, in which he revealed he had only wed her to cover up his "sinful" nature as a homosexual. Enraged, Bethany began tampering with her husband's medicine to ensure he remained comatose, and then launched her own moral crusade, something aided by the fact she established her charismatic but broken-willed son Clarence as the town's minister.

When the Salem Witch trials broke out, Bethany eagerly spread their madness to Stonewall. But the tenth victim was the friend of Bethany's youngest daughter, Katherine, who unearthed evidence that this was really a way for Bethany to resolve a land-dispute between their families in the Stone's favor. When Katherine tried to intervene, she called out her mother for the cold, twisted monster that she was. Bethany promptly stabbed Katherine in the heart, and that was when the Mists took the town.

Bethany Stone is now a [[harpy]], although she has limited shapeshifting abilities that let her masquerade as a human. Her curse is that she will be forever doomed to lose her children before they are fully ready, whether by death, betrayal or abandonment. Though she doesn't know it yet, as part of this curse, she will become spontaneously pregnant and give birth to a human child every 5 years. Both of her arms are permanently blood-red from the elbow down, although she considers it a sign of her righteousness and so doesn't hide it.

The borders of Stonewall are permanently closed; unless the departee has the approval of either Bethany or Clarence to leave, they will be struck by lightning bolts until they turn back. It's unknown if lightning immunity will nullify this border, but it's not explicitly countered.

Nothing explicitly says that Bethany cannot just be killed in a fight (and, frankly, Stonewall is described as the kind of place where wiping out everybody is actually the heroic thing to do), but she ''does'' have an explicit method of redemption. If the party can find one of the dolls she made as a child, as one survived her father's wrath, and present it to her, she will break down in tears. If consoled and successfully reminded of her long-lost dreams, the rest of the town will break down weeping with her, and then Stonewall will slide out of the Mists and back to the prime material. On the other hand, if they fail, then she'll destroy the doll herself and become even more fanatical.

===Caleb Wicks===
Darklord of Wayward on the Bone Sands. Even at the age of 10, Caleb was a fearless, stubborn, trouble-making brat. The only thing able to scare him into obedience were stories of a local boogeyman: Black Hat the Swordslinger.

Caleb's transformation from mere brat to full-blown Darklord came when his family were hired by the lord of the distant Hangingshire, which required a long trek that passed through a desert region known as the Bone Sands. During this leg of the journey, Caleb's family were seperated from the caravan and veered their wagon over a tall, steep dune as a result of a sudden sandstorm. The wagon was destroyed, their horses killed, and Caleb's elder brother Horatio was severely injured. Though they initially settled in to wait for the caravan to send a rescue party after them, their food swiftly ran out and they realized they would have to try and walk out of the desert on foot... a journey that Horatio couldn't make.

The senior Wicks came to a grim realization: Horatio wasn't going to live much longer anyway, so when he died, the family would eat his body for sustenane before making their trek towards safety. They were content to wait... but Caleb found out about their plans, and taunted his brother with this fact; when Horatio began to scream and cry, Caleb panicked and stabbed him to death with a cooking knife. Caleb's parents were horrified, but ultimately decided there was nothing left to do. They ate their dead son, and then broke camp the next morning.

As they were traveling, Caleb found himself separated from his family by another sandstorm, wandering on his own for days before he stumbled across a small town called "Wayward". Mad with hunger, he murdered the first townsman who tried to offer him help, devouring as much of the man's flesh as he could before fleeing into the night. The next morning, he revealed himself to the horrified townsfolk and claimed that he had witnessed Black Hat kill and eat the man. Unable to believe a youngster like Caleb could be responsible for so monstrous a crime, the townsfolk believed him, and opened their homes to the young cannibal.

Caleb became a beloved fixture of the community... and then, the neighboring [[gnome]] community of Rumbleton was destroyed in an earthquake that crushed the subterranean village like an egg. They begged Wayward for shelter whilst they tried to rebuild, and the humans took them in. But rebuilding a new gnomish settlement wasn't easy, as Rumbleton had already been built in what was considered the most stable, accessible ground for miles around. With little choice, the gnomes began to put down roots in Wayward.

Which was a problem: Wayward already had troubles supporting its own population before the gnomes came in, and now things were worse than ever. The population increase led to a famine, known as "The Lean Times" by the locals, and tensions began to grow between humans and gnomes... tensions only fanned by Caleb, who began advocating the humans of Wayward should eat the baby gnomes born after the refugees settled in their village. Whilst initially this proposal was rejected, the gnomes took affront when they learned of its proposal at all, and relations only continued to deteriorate... especially because Caleb was continuing to egg things on, pushing his cannibalistic plan in secret.

Finally, it all came to a head; on the first night of the full moon, the Waywarders, driven mad with hunger, descended on the gnome shantytown and abducted as many gnomish children as they could, cannibalizing them in a disgusting, bloody orgy. Over the next two days they massacred the surviving gnomes and ate them as well, then they ate the few Waywarders who had protested "The Feast", as it was dubbed. And on that final full moon night, as the cannibal villagers slept off their full bellies, Wayward on the Bone Sands was pulled into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Caleb and the other villagers are now [[quevari]]. They spend most of their time in an enchanted slumber, only waking when visitors come to town. Like all quevari, they are peaceful and innocent-seeming during the day, but revert to bloodthirsty cannibals at night, as the first three nights after outsiders arrive are all full moons - after those three nights, they fall back into slumber until disturbed again. It's unclear what happens if a survivor somehow avoids being killed on that third night.

Wayward itself has a couple of curses. Firstly, there are no children here; all of their youths were left behind when the village was pulled into the Misty Realms, and none of the women ever fall pregnant, save when Caleb is killed (we'll get to that). Secondly, all food and drink in the domain is inherently inedible - even foods brought in from outside instantly spoil, although the look and smell perfectly fine. Finally, none of the villagers will ever age beyond the day they were when they committed their sins.

Caleb himself is a 5th level [[quevari]] [[thief]] who wields an enchanted knife +3 of bleeding. He can Charm Person 1/day by speaking to them, and still carries the Triangle of the Feast - the triangular dinner bell he played before the cannibalism of the gnomes. This can function as a Chime of Hunger that only affects non-Waywarders 3/day, and can also summon 2d6 Waywarders to his aid at will. The other quevari only openly recognize him as their lord and master during the night, but still are fiercely protective of him during the day. He can potentially be driven away in fear by forcefully invoking Black Hat - this requires something like disguising yourself ''as'' the boogeyman or telling a Black Hat story, simply saying the name won't scare him.

If killed, one of the Wayward women will find herself pregnant within a week, and give birth to Caleb's reincarnation a month later. Caleb will resume his true form as an elven year old a month after being born. The only way to kill Caleb for good is to wipe out the entire town of Wayward, which frankly you should be wanting to do anyway.

Caleb can close the borders by summoning tornadoes that lash all around the domain's periphery, kicking up lethal sandstorms and making it impossible to flee.

===Cassandre Desesprits===
Darklord of Miseria. Born to a humble farmer's family, Cassandre was gifted with the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, which also made her a very effective seer. When this was revealed to her village, she became an immediate celebrity, and this situation - never permitted time to herself or any true friends, but also showered in displays of good will and thanks - twisted her heart. She became completely self-centered, egotistical and immoral, regarding all others as nothing more than things to use for her own amusement and gratification.

When a war broke out amongst the local villages over the ability to use her seer powers, Cassandre exploited this to become a veritable queen, feeding just the right predictions to all factions to keep the war dragging on perpetually for over two years, wallowing in opulence whilst others bled, died and starved over her. Inevitably, the war drew to its climax, with both factions preparing to launch a decisive blow with a super-spell; Cassandre manipulated them into both acting at the exact same time, figuring that this would cause the spells to negate each other and stalemate, thus preserving the war and her power. Instead, they magnified each other, resulting in the annihilation of the warring armies and Cassandre being literally blown into Miseria.

Cassandre's curse is, fundamentally, that she will never again enjoy the lifestyle she once enjoyed. Although surrounded by people who genuinely like and care for her rather than her gifts, she pines for the days when people doted upon her every wish and resents being forced to work for a living as a barmaid. Her [[diviner]] powers have dwindled and become almost useless, but her spiritual powers have expanded; she now commands incorporeal [[undead]] with the proficiency of a master [[necromancer]], and her life is supplement with the years drained by her [[ghost]]ly minions. None of her schemes to regain her "royal" status will ever work, and so she seems doomed to an eternity as a beloved but otherwise unremarkable barmaid.

When she closes the borders, Miseria is surrounded by thick red fog that causes those who try to leave to age and eventually crumble to dust, whereupon they become ghosts under her command.

If slain, Cassandre becomes a ghost herself, but then resurrects 2d4 days later. Only if she is confronted in ghost form by an exorcist of the local deity Saint-Ambroise who can denounce her for her crimes in life will she be banished from the world of the living forever.

===Coyote===
Darklord of Yatehcaa. Once, this animal god aided the First Man in protecting his American Aboriginal-flavored world from powerful monsters. But his greed, malice and cruelty led to him committing many dark acts, and so the gods declared him unfit to remain amongst their ranks. First Man took back Coyote's cloak of stars, condemning him to stay forever on the world and be vulnerable to the monsters he had once battled. But Coyote showed no regret, no compassion, no willingness to learn from his mistakes or to try and make amends, and so he found himself trapped in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Ever since, he has continued his old ways, playing cruel, malicious tricks on the people of Yatehcaa, all the while trying to distract himself from how afraid he is that some day, he might be caught and killed by "The Dark Watchers", the antediluvian monsters whom he once battled alongside First Man.

Technically, nothing protects Coyote from death, but between his lack of shame and utter cowardice combined with his powerful magical abilities, actually killing him in a fight is easier said than done.

===Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez===
Darklord of Resistencia. Born the son of a once-great noble family in the Holy Republic of Aragona, Santiago's family had fallen in stature to such a degree that the impoverished patricians had mortaged their lands to the hilt and lived a life barely above that of their peasant tenats. They scrimped and saved to send Santiago to court, but the Don of Quijada found himself a laughing stock, regarded as little better than a jumped up hayseed peasant. This only fueled a lifelong hatred for those lacking in noble blood.

Desperate to try and reclaim the respect he had been taught from birth his family name deserved, Santiago bought a commission in the army. He proved little better here than he had in the court; poor of health, average at best with the sword, and no genius in the command of men or the intricacies of tactics and strategy. His only saving grace was his thoroughness and dedication... but even this went sour, breeding in him an obsession with discipline, cleanliness and presentation, and a love of punishment so extreme that even the Aragonan army considered him a draconian tyrant.

Though Santiago managed to win a few fairly creditable actions early in his career, his faults quickly stole away what his successes had won him, sending him into a self-inflicted downward spiral of ever-worsening behavior and failures as a result. He was appointed as the governor a rebellious backwater province, and only made things worse as he extended the same tyrannical, brutal law he held over his military forces to the population.

Then he was offered the chance to take up governship in a minor overseas colony called Neuva Aragona, which was also currently rebelling. Despite recognizing that this was intended to be a sentence of exile, Santiago accepted, dreaming of reversing his fortunes. Instead, he proved the absolute ''worst'' choice for the role; a born-and-bred monarchist with no sympathy for the lot of the peasants, he ignored the legitimate grievances of the rebels and remained fundamentally convinced that the isle of Manzanilla - renamed "Resistencia" by the rebels - was home to a silent majority of good, loyal followers of the kings. Ignoring all opportunities efor a diplomatic solution, he launched into his trademark brutality, which only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the natives.

Among his many atrocities, he took captive the pregnant wife of the rebel leader Martin Jose Maconda, one Isabel de Maconda. Simultaneously smitten with her and repulsed by her loyalty to the rebel's cause, he alternatively cajoled her and brutalized her, culminating in his ordering that she would be permitted no midwife when she went into labor. The birth went bad, and both mother and child died.

All his atrocities were for nothing, ineptitude and his habit of overworking his never-great health led to him dying in his sickbed, on the very day the last of his depleted forced were overwhelmed and Neuva Aragona formally seceded independence. But even as he died, he cursed that the rebels must be defeated at any cost.

Santiago now exists as a ghost, cursed to forever mentally relieve every battle he lost on Resistencia and see with perfect clarity how he could have won. And, of course, he's also cursed that no matter how he schemes and plots, on those rare moments he tears himself away from his biter memories and dreams of glory to actually try and do something, his plans to re-conquer Manzanilla are doomed to fail.

If defeated in battle, Santiago reforms in his burial chamber below Castillo Ascension, although he remains trapped there until the next full moon. The only way he can be destroyed is if his personal sword is stolen from this chamber and used to deliver the death blow in combat.

When he closes the borders, the sea surrounding Resistencia takes on an eerie, unnatural calm; sailing ships cannot move, and rowers will find that they simply can't get more than a half-mile away from the coast.

===Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll===
Darklord of Immerabt. This female human alchemist could in many ways be considered a mirror to Dr. Mordenheim of Lamordia. Like him, she was born a scientific prodigy who had neither time nor patience for religions and matters of faith. When she was twelve, Dorothy's mother died in childbirth giving birth to a son, something Dorothy blamed upon both the local priest - for he had both refused to allow Dorothy to be present at the birth, despite her knowledge of herbs and medicines, for her lack of faith, and proven unable to save Lady Hemphyll's life with his limited divine magic - and her father, for he had listened to the priest.

This became the cornerstone of Dorothy's growing loathing for religion, something that grew ever stronger as she aged. She went abroad to study medical sciencies, [[transmuter|transmutation magic]] and [[alchemist|philosophical alchemy]], always seeking to refine her medical skills. She also visited the dark, seedy corners of society: brothels, dog-fighting arenas, drug-fueled parties and other such realms that further convinced her of the absence of divine intervention.

The kicker was when she met and fell in love with another medical student of noble ancestry; Hermann Leawly. Despite her feelings, she refused to marry him, for that would require submitting to a religious ceremony she wanted nothing to do with. But he bent under the pressure from his traditional family and returned to their home, something that enraged Dorothy, who now derided him as a weakling.

After a long, bloody war, a terrible plague gripped her homeland, and Dorothy came up with an idea for a new method to care for the terminally ill. She purchased an abandoned penitentiary on a small rocky island and converted it into a sickbay, hiring the best healers she could find (so long as they weren't divine spellcasters). One of those she hired was Hermann. She became ever-more obsessive, pushing her followers brutally, and gaining the first attention of the [[Dark Powers]]. When she perfected her prototype life support mechanisms and began abducting the terminally ill from her hospice to install them in the devices, trapping them at the brink of life and death in a state of constant, unrelenting pain, they grew anticipatory. But it wasn't until she got drunk at a party celebrating her newly produced plague vaccine, and revealed to Hermann her monstrous experiments, injecting him with concentrated plague serum and deliberately waiting for him to reach the still-incurable terminal stage of the disease before strapping him into one of her hideous living death machines that they seized her and transformed goal island into Immerabt.

Dorothy's curse is three-fold, and could be a considered a blend of Mordenheim's and Azalin's. Though she is well-aware of the fact that the local industries of Immerabt are poisoning the population, her attempts to plan and execute social projects to counter the pollution invariably fail due to being rejected or ignored. Secondly, she is kept so busy working her daily job that she cannot devote the time to furthering her understandings of magic and alchemy, preventing her from attaining the greater power she needs to pursue her goal of the ultimate curatives. Finally, she is unable to invent a vaccine to cure those suffering from the terminal effects of the plague, which means she cannot cure Hermann, who remains bound and suffering in his life-support in the depths of her sanitarium.

Unlike many darklords, Dorothy has no inherent abilities that make her unkillable, although her disease-bearing touch and biomechanical golem guards make her a force to be reckoned with in combat. She can regenerate, but she's vulnerable to fire.

If she wishes to close the borders of Immerabt, violent storms with strong winds and heavy rain surround the archipelago, whilst the waters boil with mutated [[shark]]s and other aquatic predators.

===Elizabeth Michelle Cole III===
Darklord of Hibernate. This female human [[vampire]] was born to the noble family of the Coles in the land of Hybernaya on Boram'ith. Despite her aristocratic lineage, she did not believe in the inherent superiority of her bloodline, and fell in love with a peasant boy, whom her parents had executed on trumped-up charges. This engendered a deep hatred for her parents in Elizabeth's heart, and at the age of 28, she left home to "think about things".

In her wanderings, she met and fell in love with a man named Alexander Berzinski, a [[vampire]] who converted her into one as well. They traveled together for seven years before parting, whereupon Elizaeth returned home, murdered her parents, and ruled their lands with an iron first for a decade.

During this time, she became a high priestess of [[Thanatos]], and attempted to lure a prophesied warrior known as "The Son of the Black Moon" into Thanatos' service. A task she delighted in, for she fell in love with him when she met him - a one-sided love, for he was devoted to his [[half-elf]] girlfriend. When he died escaping from his contract with the dark god, Elizabeth had him resurrected and attempted to lure him through a portal to the [[Lower Planes]], only to find herself alone in Darkon. Here, she fell afoul of the Kargat and fled to the Sea of Sorrows, only to find herself bound to the newly formed isle of Hibernate when she set foot there.

She has risen to power as the madame of the most well-respected brothel in Hibernate, leading a force of twenty eight call girls, all of whom she has turned into [[vampire]]s. Her curse is that she yearns to find the Son of the Black Moon and claim him for herself, but he has never materialized in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Elizabeth is unaffected by Hibernatian holy symbols, due to the combined facts that they represent a non-existant god and the lack of true faith endemic in Hibernate's people, but can be slain by a pine wood stake, or paralyzed with any other kind of stake. If Elizabeth is killed, one of her vampire prostitutes will fall into a month-long coma, during which she will physically and mentally be subsumed and transformed into a new incarnation of Elizabeth. It's unclear how this can be prevented.

When she wishes to close the domain, Hibernate's borders are choked by a thick fog that is impossible to navigate; those who try only find themselves circling back to Hibernate, no matter how hard they try.

The [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002 version of Elizabeth emphasizes her fundamental selfishness and cruelty, and also notes that her Undying Soul will allow her to possess any woman in Hibernate should all of her prostitutes be killed.

===Gatwe and Mr. Klein===
The domain of Nzari is home to two darklords, struggling for dominance.

'''Gatwe''' is the original Darklord; an Mwele man who was forever questioning the traditions of his people even from a youth and who burned to hold power. He apprenticed himself to the tribal shaman, whom he perceived held the true power, but his ambitions remained unchecked. When the most beautiful woman in the village chose to marry a respected hunter, that was the last straw; he forsook all the traditional limits on the shaman and began practicing sorcery. He used curses to sicken and kill those he hated, and goad the tribe into war, slowly building an empire from the scattered tribes of the Mwele. When suspicion began to fall upon him, he murdered his own family to try and throw it off, assuming the form of a leopard to plant a curse-bundle that would kill them all slowly and painfully. When he began to resume his human form, that was when the [[Dark Powers]] struck, trapping him in a twisted [[Broken One|nightmarish conglomerate form]], incapable of wielding his former magic, and launching Nzari into the Misty Realm.

'''Mr. Klein''' came to Nzari after its appearance in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. A fanatical devotee of [[Ezra]], he yearned to be a missionary, but found that goal stymied during the initial rush to explore the Sea of Sorrows; the merchants who controlled the expedition wanted profits, not proselytizing. Only when Nzari was discovered, with its savage cannibal tribes and vast wealth of ivory, did Mr. Klein finally find his desire within his grasp. He founded the Dementlieur Exploration Company, and led its first expedition to Nzari. The Mwele naturally resisted this foreign invasion, but Klein had the zeal of a fanatic and pressed on, resorting to ever-more brutal tactics as months of battle and disease took its toll on his followers. Eventually, he caught the attention of Gatwe, but managed to fight the feared "leopard-devil" off - an act that won him inroads amongst the Mwele. His followers swelled in numbers, and he seemed to make real progress in "civilizing" Nzari... until he realized that his followers were not worshipping Ezra, but Klein himself, and that those he conquered were merely paying lip service to his commands. Furious, he resorted to to ever-more draconian methods to "stamp out the heathenism", but succeeded only in pushing the Mwele to rebel. Klein counter-attacked viciously with his own forces, and responded by flaying every last one of them alive before he had them beheaded, their bodies cast into the river, and their heads impaled on stakes around his house.

In the face of such brutality, the Dark Powers aren't sure ''which'' of the two better deserves the title of Darklord.

Gatwe's curse is simple: he is forever cut off from the adoration and power he changes. No Mwele will have anything to do with one so obviously marked as a sorcerer, and he cannot change or disguise his form regardless of what artifice he tries. Mr. Klein, on the other hand, is cursed that when he sleeps, he sees the world through Gatwe's eyes, experiencing the broken one's life as he lives it. Both, ironically, share the curse of wanting to change the Mwele culture, but being completely incapable of doing so.

The two Darklords ''despise'' each other. Gatwe has become convinced that if he can kill Klein, his full powers will be restored to him. Klein, on the other hand, believes that Gatwe is a literal demon, a symbol of the savagery hidden in humanity's heart, and that only by "civilizing" the Mwele will the nightmarish dream-visions cease.

Unusually for co-darklords, they can both close Nzari's borders; Gatwe surrounds the domain an impenetrable thicket of vegetation, whilst those trying to flee against Klein's wishes find themselves lost in thick fog and eventually attacked by an endless hail of arrows.

Both darklords also have their own unique forms of immortality. If Gatwe is killed, one of the leopards of Nzari will become his reincarnation a day later. Klein, on the other hand, is simply impervious to all attacks not dealt with an ivory weapon (a ''blessed'' ivory weapon deals double damage!) and will not return if slain.

===Geren Horstadt===
Darklord of Seradan. Born the favored son of a minor noble family, Geren was a bullying braggart in private, but a charming and idolized peer in public. All that changed when, at the age of 17, he was struck by a strange wasting disease that crippled him irreversibly; he lost use of his legs, his muscles withered, and all his senses faded. Though his family bankrupted themselves to try and cure him, nothing worked. He spent fifteen years in his own personal hell, watching and envying those with normal lives, and resenting his family despite the love and care they still showered him with.

His true descent into damnation came when one of his brothers brought down a trunk full of books from the attack, and Geren learned one of his great-grandfathers had been a powerful [[wizard]] - one with considerable experience in summoning beings from the [[Lower Planes]]. When his family refused to hire a wizard to tutor Geren in magic, he decided to try summoning a [[fiend]] on his own. He called forth a [[yugoloth]], who was so surprised by the venomous manner in which Geren pleaded his case that he offered Geren a trade: the souls of Geren's families in exchange for the ability to "help Geren feel what others feel".

It was a bargain Geren made without hesitation. He hired an [[assassin]] to kill every last member of his family, other than his mother. In exchange, the yugoloth gifted him with the ability to possess others, which allowed him to vicariously experience life as a normal person again. He slowly began to rebuild the family's fortunes by using possessed thralls to commit acts of murder and theft... then the townsfolk began to suspect his mother was involved, and she in turn wondered if Geren was responsible. When she confronted him, however, Geren petuantly seized control of her mind and made her kill herself. But some of the townsfolk had just arrived to question her again, and they discovered her slumping over the infamous and now-hated cripple. Realizing that Geren had been responsible, they beat him with clubs and then dragged him into the streets, where the mob lynched him; hanging him from a tree and beating him to death as they burned his family's home and himself.

Such was Geren's rage at this fate that he returned from the grave as a powerful haunt - a [[Ravenloft]] strain of [[ghost]]. With his possession abilities enhanced, he used them to massacre the entire population of the village... which was when the Mists rolled in and claimed him for Seradan.

Geren's darklord status brings with it a cocktail of curses. The standard Darklord curse of being unable to leave his domain chafes him particularly, being that he yearns to explore and experience the world. Making matters worse is that he is now trapped in a realm of dullards, so docile, unimaginative and unfeeling that possessing them is little better than staying a ghost. For further insult, Geren can now only possess hosts for short periods of time, or else they die of a supernaturally induced fever, forcing him to largely avoid using his possession abilities.

Geren always reforms one week after being destroyed. Only if he is allowed to kill Wilhelm Braugh, the only survivor of Geren's hometown and the inspector who gave him over to the mob, will he cease to exist, having decided that there is nothing left to live for. If he closes the borders, supernatural exhaustion claims any who try to leave the domain, sapping their strength until they are left helpless.

===Henry Arlington===
Darklord of Arlington Farm. Henry Arlington was a farmer who obsessed about success. Inheriting his farm after the tragic death of his parents in a house fire, he killed his own elder brothers in a duel to secure his inheritance. He proved to be a demanding, overbearing farmer, and obsessed with successful crops; when an unexpected New Year's late frost resulted in damage to a significant portion of the crops, Henry flew into a rage, even though he had more than enough funds to weather this less-than-perfect year. In his rage, he murdered one of his farmhands, concealing the crime by cutting up his body and hiding it amongst the scarecrows on the property. That year, the farm bloomed with a record-breaking bounty.

The next year saw a similar pattern: the crops failed early in the year, but when Henry killed (in this case a stray dog), they suddenly reversed fortune and flourished. Henry became convinced that his farm would reward him with bounty only in exchange for blood sacrifices, and he began a yearly ritual of murdering some human victim and stuffing their dismembered body into the scarecrows. Over a decade of this grisly work, he soon had no farmhands left to sacrifice, and so instead he slaughtered his entire family for the sake of his farm.

That was the last straw. The grisly, corpse-stuffed scarecrows came to life and burned down all his crops, then dragged Henry out into the field and mutilated him, turning him into a fleshy scarecrow like themselves. That was when the Mists swallowed the farm.

In the present, Henry still tends to his farm as an animate corpse [[scarecrow]], only to find his labors undone whatever he achieves. In addition, every harvest moon, he finds himself human once more - and subsequently butchered by his vengeful scarecrow "workers".

Henry can close the border for up to an hour at a time by summoning a vast murder of crows that attack whoever tries to leave. After an hour, however, Henry is exhausted and must rest for 3 rounds before he can resummon the swarm. If slain, Henry remains dead until the next full moon or blue moon, whereupon he will possess one of the scarecrows in his domain and return to life. Theoretically, he can be destroyed forever by destroying all of the scarecrows.

===Hercules===
Darklord of Olympus. Born the son of the High Priest of [[Zeus]] in a theocratic nation ruled over by a collective of seven temples to the Greek Gods - Zeus, [[Athena]], [[Aphrodite]], [[Hermes]], [[Ares]], [[Apollo]] and [[Hades]], the man now known only as Hercules earned great fame in his youth by speaking up against the brutal repression of the priest-lords and championing the rights of the oppressed commoners. Although originally he sought peace, the overwhelming corruption opposing him led him first to delving into the murky depths of politics, and finally into leading a full-blown revolution.

This angered the realm's rulers, the conclave of High Priests known as the Council of Seven, who came up with three plans to ruin Hercules. The High Priest of Zeus sent his son cursed gauntlets that would drive him into bloodthirsty rages under false pretence of truce. The High Priestess of Athena sought to summon a daemonic entity that would grant the Council magical powers that would allow them to crush the rebels and prove themselves the true "Voices of the Gods". Finally, the High Priestess of Aphrodite arranged for one of her serving girls to be sent to seduce Hercules, with the ultimate plan of disgracing him by tempting him into committing the blasphemous act of making love in the holy ground of the temple of Zeus.

They couldn't have expected that Dejanira, the girl chosen by the Voice of Aphrodite, would fall in love with Hercules and reveal the ploy to him. Any more than she could have expected for him to revile her as a traitorous seductress, but hide his loathing and use her to deliver a strike against the Council as they performed the summoning ritual. At the height of battle and ritual both, Hercules turned on Dejanira and stabbed her to death before throwing her into the center of the Council, then beating his father to death as he was paralyzed by the sudden influx of magical energies from the rite.

The Seven Voices of the Gods were transformed into quasi-daemons in their own right, and Hercules became the Darklord of the realm now called simply "Olympus".

Hercules is cursed both with the erratic and dangerous rages from his braces, and in that he is haunted by the terrifying spectre of Dejanira, who still loves him even in death. Worse still, his reputation continually sours due to his berserk rages.

The only way to kill Hercules for good is to force him, the six "Living Gods" of Olympus and the Forsaken One (the half-daemonic ghost of the High Priest of Zeus) to meet in the abandoned temple of Zeus and perform the fiend summoning ritual again. Only if Hercules allows himself to be sacrificed as part of the ritual will his curse be ended - which will also strip the Living Gods of their powers and make them mortal as well.

If Hercules wishes to seal the borders of Olympus, a titanic lightning storm envelops the domain, striking down any who attempt to escape.

===Heresa Heri, The Vulture King===
Darklord of Tsuu-Y-Teke. Long ago, Heresa Heri was one of the great animal lords, powerful spirits subordinate to the greater animal gods, but he betrayed his master's wishes after being named ruler over the skies: when given the ability to create permanent light from enchanted crystals, rather than sharing this light with the world, he selfishly kept them for himself, turning them into a shining feathered headdress. But his treachery was uncovered by a human hero-shaman named Kanaciwe, who captured Heresa Heri and tore out the golden and silver feathers, turning them into the sun, moon and stars. But the appearance of the sun dazed Kanaciwe, allowing Heresa Heri to break free of the shaman's grip and kill him.

This act enraged his rival, the newly empowered Haloe-Tsuu (Sun Puma), who cursed Heresa Heri; never again would he be allowed to face the sunlight, or else it would destroy him. Though the Vulture King fled into the deepest cave, he was mortally wounded, and summoned his underlings to ceremonially preserve his body and spirit. As he died, he cursed all those who had robbed him of "his" treasure, from the humans whose shaman had taken his headdress of shining light to the skies themselves for being home to the sun and moon. Thus was the domain of Tsuu-Y-Teke born.

In appearance, the Vulture King is a white-feathered giant vulture with a dark red bonnet of dried blood on his head, sickly yellow eyes that glow in the dark, and a jagged, uneven beak that gives him the appearance of fanged teeth. He is an [[undead]] creature with powers similar to those of a [[mummy]], althoug he looks like a living bird.

As Darklord, Heresa Heri is trapped in his cavern lair except during True Night, the one period of darkness that comes to Tsuu-Y-Teke once per month. He has become obsessed with the idea that if he can amass a sufficient number of gems, he can reimprison the light and restore the endless Night that the world once knew... but he knows that to do so, he needs the ''exact'' number of gems as there are stars in the sky, and he no longer remembers how many that is!

In combat, Heresa Heri is a powerhouse and all but impossible to destroy without the use of sunlight or powerful magical light. Even then, if destroyed, his spirit will possess any giant vulture within a 13 mile radius, which will transform into the Vulture King 1 week later.

When the Vulture King seeks to seal Tsuu-Y-Teke, then impenetrable magical darkness gathers on the borders; those who try to escape instead get lost in the utter blackness and stumble right back out into the domain.

===Jarl Gravstein Hansen===
Darklord of the Northlands. This male human was born to the Gand tribe, son of the man who had founded the trade guild known as the Key, which was bringing much-needed prosperity to the realm. He railed against the tradition by which the Gand and Kosti tribes alternated ownership of the capital city of Miklaheim every five years, and was determined to keep ownership of the city for himself.

To do so, he launched a brutal campaign against the Gand tribe, taxing his own people into famine and ruin to do so. When they were devastated, he turned his back on the traditional religion of the seidmen, secretly siphoning away funds from the church who thought he was supporting them. Finally, he began taxing the trade guild to borderline ruin itself. Through his short-sighted greed and selfishness, the realm was drawn into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Secretly, Gravstein yearns to be respected and loved, but he cannot attain it - only if he returns all the land of the Gand to them will this curse be broken, which mechanically manifests as an automatic failure on any Charisma check other than Intimidation. He doesn't have any magical powers to preserve his life, but whoever takes up the mantle of leadership should he die will be cursed in the same manner.

Closing the borders results in a vast army of warrior spirits descending from the heavens and physically blocking passage.

===Captain Jacobi Robertsonn===
Darklord of Whal. Born a fisherman's son on an unnamed world, Jacobi grew up in seas that were plentiful with a father who loved him and loved his life on the sea. Then, when Jacobi was young, he and his father were caught in a terrible storm whilst fishing, during which the youth spotted a giant whale - a ''leviathan'' - playing in the rough surf. Play that ended with the breaching whale crashing right on top of the small fishing boat; Jacobi awoke washed ashore, scarred, surrounded by debris, and with his father missing.

Years later, Jacobi was commanding a trading galleon called the Sailor's Blessing with his beloved only son Abram when the ship was caught in a tropical storm. On the fourth day, the ship hit something in the water and began to sink, and during the scramble to escape, Abram was swept over the side and vanished. Spotting a leviathan in the storm, Jacobi blamed his son's apparent death on the creature, and in fact convinced himself it was the same whale that had killed his father.

Returning to port, he purchased a new ship, the Retribution, and became a whaler, venting his wrath on whales indiscriminately for the next decade. He was beginning to lose all hope of ever attaining vengeance when he finally encountered the biggest whale he'd ever seen - what he was sure was the leviathan that had killed his father and son. He personally led the hunt and harpooned the beast, only for it turn and smash his boat to pieces. Driven by rage, the wounded Jacobi hauled himself onto the beast by climbing the rope of the embedded harpoon; even as the surviving crew fled, he stabbed the whale over and over again, all the while cursing it, himself and his crew with all his soul... until everything went black.

Then he awoke and found himself on a strange, yet vaguely familiar, island; the land of Whal. A place of whalers who, to his surprise, deferred to him with their problems. He has since figured out he rules Whal, but is cursed to never leave it.

As a Darklord, Jacobi's curse is that he has become a rare oceanic [[therianthrope]]: a [[wereorca]]. He has distinctly mixed feelings about this form; he acknowledges the appropriateness of it, but he loathes being associated with a whale. He's also been cursed to suffer from intense sea-sickness if he ever sets foot upon a water-borne vessel, so whilst he does enjoy the freedom offered by his alterante form, the fact he can only hunt as an orca means he misses the thrill of commanding his own ship. Whilst normally he has control over this changes, he is forced to assume orca form on the days of his father's and son's deaths, days that are also marked by intense storms.

Perhaps his true curse, however, is that despite his obsession with killing the leviathan he blames for ruining his life, the creature never appears in the waters off of Whal.

When Jacobi closes his borders, the sea parts down to the sea floor, creating a 300ft wide chasm between the two bodies of water. Flight is, of course, impossible. Nothing explicitly prevents you from walking across the chasm and then using water-breathing magic to escape through the water on the other side, though.

Jacobi has no life-preserving powers outside of his immunity to any weapon that isn't +1 or made from whalebone. He is a 16th level [[Avenger]], however, which combined with the aquatic capabilities of his form makes him more dangerous than you'd think.

===Jinx===
Darklord of the Lost Wizard's Tower. This male black cat was once the [[familiar]] of a [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale, a caring and heroic individual, but a slightly neglectful owner, and also too hubristic for her own good. Jinx's journey into damnation began when she decided to use the cat as the test subject for an experiment in increasing the intelligence of animals.

It worked... but it also made Jinx smart enough to realize just how much more there was to Margaret's life than him. He became convinced that she had chosen him as her test subject because she simply didn't ''care'' if he lived or died, developing a burning resentment for it. Worse, he became mentally human enough to become convinced that he was in love with Margaret, and to be consumed with jealousy that she had other interests in her life.

When the region where they lived was attacked by [[barbarian]]s, Jinx went out of his way to assist Margaret, hoping to prove his worth in the hopes that she would come to reciprocate his jealous, obsessive love. She did not. Instead, she fell in love with a young warrior under her command. When she announced their upcoming marriage, he devised and enacted a plan to lead the man Margaret had fallen for to his death in battle. With no spellcasters in the region powerful enough to revive the fallen, Jinx was sure that this would be the end of his "competition".

To Jinx's fury, the death of her betrothed only filled Margaret with rage and suicidal grief. She prepared a super-powerful alchemical explosive, and made a personal assault on the horde's camp. Blind with fury, she waded through the ranks of the enemy, surviving many attacks only because Jinx fought like a hellcat to save her - to the familiar's growing rage as he realized she didn't even notice her efforts. Finally, Margaret planted the explosive, only to be attacked by the horde's leader. Though she defeated him, she was badly hurt in the process, leaving her helpless in the face of the coming explosion.

Jinx tried to pull her to safety, but was too weak to do so. Margaret told him to flee to safety, and expressed her happiness that in dying, she would meet her beloved fiancee in the afterlife. At that, the cat flew into a rage and revealed how ''he'' had arranged the warrior's death, blaming his actions on Margaret's decision to give him the curse of reason. Finally, he vowed that Margaret would neither see Jinx's death nor her beloved, raking her eyes with his claws and then fleeing his master, whose screams of pain were swiftly cut off by the explosion.

Unrepentant, yet fearful, Jinx fled all the way back to the tower where he and Margaret once lived, only to find it mysteriously deserted. He has remained there ever since.

Jinx waits endlessly now for people to visit the lost tower, hoping to claim a new master. His first preference is a female [[wizard]], then a female [[sorcerer]], then a female [[bard]] or any other arcane spellcasting clas, and then finally a male arcanist. He will do whatever he can to first persuade them to accept his presence, and then separate his chosen master from their former companions. His curse, of course, is that he will always destroy any relationship he establishes - if nothing else, he will end up killing the would-be master when they fail to meet his standards for loving and doting upon him. He prefers to use his retained spells ability, which allows him to cast Flesh to Stone one per day, to "immortalize" failed masters by petrifying them.

Jinx has no specific powers keeping him alive, so if you can kill the little beast, he's done for. He can't even close the borders properly, but instead just summons the Mists; those who flee will find themselves emerging from the mist elsewhere in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

===Warden Jonar Tamh===
Darklord of Karss. This [[Harmonium]]-sworn male [[aasimar]] [[Fighter]] joined the Harmonium at a young age, and very quickly moved up the ranks, attaining the position of Mover One at the age of 25. When he was selected to lead the experimental Great Prison of Ortho, a reformation-focused alternative to the [[Mercykiller]]-run prison of [[Sigil]], he saw it as a great honor... until it became apparent that the majority of the cynical Sigil-originated prisoners were unwilling to cooperate with the project.

Fearful for his reputation, Jonar Tamh resorted to increasingly brutal and draconian punishments, covering up the ongoing breakdown from his superiors and replacing subordinates who dared to question him. Growing convinced that some force - the [[Mercykiller]]s, the [[Revolutionary League]], or the agents of evil - was sabotaging the Great Prison, he descended ever-deeper into brutality. Finally, his best friend, the deputy warden Zet Keffen, tried to convince Jonar to return to the Great Prison's original premise; when Jonar refused, he declared he would bring this matter to the Factol of the Harmonium.

Jonar panicked and killed Zet right then and there, covering it up by blaming the murder on two particularly troublesome prisoners and executing them for it.

But Jonar couldn't cover it up forever. Hearing that his superiors were on their way to investigate the prison, and also that there were plans for a mass uprisiong, Jonar gathered 28 of the most outspoken and problematic inmates and hanged them all, one by one. As the last expired, a great hurricane arose from nowhere, forcing the Harmonium guards indoors. When the storm ended, the Great Prison now sat on the barren island of Karss.

Jonar Tamh suffers two major curses. Firstly, although he now has the ability to mentally control large numbers of people at once, he experiences all of the pain and misery of those he is controlling. Secondly, the vengeful spirit of Zet has become bound to Jonar's sword; if Jonar inflicts 12 or more damage with it against a single foe, Zet gains the abilities of a rank 2 ghost for one hour, allowing him to attack his former best friend.

The aasimar darklord cannot close the borders of Karss.

===Kasselheim Blightlyng===
Darklord of Vulnara. This [[gnome]] [[vampire]] had the misfortune to be born a gnome with no sense of humor. Whilst other gnomes were happily running round, playing stupid pranks and making silly illusions, Kasselheim was stuck fuming over how non-gnomish races didn't treat them with the slightest respect, all whilst the other gnomes reacted to his pleas for them to just try and be a little more serious by pranking him worse than ever. Eventually, he became a [[Transmuter]], bitterly thumbing his nose at a centuries old family radition, and withdrew to the deepest depths of their underground home. Then a few years later, a great flood washed through the gnome community and drove them up onto the surface, and the survivors counted Kasselheim as one of the dead.

They didn't know that Kasselheim had severely blinded and deafened himself in an alchemical explosion during his period of isolation. Nor could they know that many of those presumed dead in the flood were actually kidnapped by Kasselheim, who began experimenting in dark magic to steal their senses for himself, ultimately transforming them into warped monsters called "tactyles". But when they finally began moving back into the tunnels years later, they found out.

They formed a great war party with the aid of [elf]], [[dwarf]] and [[human]] adventurers from communities who had also suffered Kasselheim's depredations, and tracked him down to his underground fortress... only to be all but wiped out. Even though former friends (well, ''they'' considered themselves to be his friends, at least) and family were amongst the party, Kasselheim killed or captured them all. The last survivor was one of his sisters, a [[cleric]] of the gnome gods who threw herself to her death over a cliff whilst cursing him. An earthquake, and Kasselheim was knocked unconscious, rising to discover he had become a unique form of gnomish [[vampire]].

Kasselheim's curse is that he must ''constantly'' feed; his stolen senses of sight, hearing, scent and taste dwindle rapidly after feeding, until all that he has left is enough of a sense of touch to register pain. However, because of how fast his senses fade, and the isolated nature of his lair, he is effectively confined to a small part of his domain, and thus must go long, terrible intervals between feedings.

Killing Kasselheim can be done in two ways. First, if he is exposed to sunlight, he becomes incorporeal; if he is kept from fleeing back to his lair for two hours whilst in this form, he dissipates into nothing. Secondly, one can complete a complicated ritual, slightly altered from the traditional gnomish vampire. To achieve his permanent destruction, Kasselheim must first be immobilized by staking him with a silver spike through the heart. Then his hands must be cut off and boiled in a volcanic hot spring for 24 hours, after which his eyes must be gouged out and replaced with precious gems (100gp value minimum for each eye). Finally, his inert body must be carried to some place where it can be exposed to direct sunlight for an hour - but this will revive him in his incorporeal form, so the would-be vampire killer will need to use some method to trap him in the light for the full hour.

===General Martin Jose Maconda===
Darklord of Maconda. This charismatic male human was, from his earliest days, both adept at manipulating others with his natural charm and good looks, prone to surprising moments of generosity, and feared for his grudge-holding, horrifying fits of temper, and trait for cold-blooded manipulation. It came a great surprise to him when he discovered that there were people he could not dominate at will - and worse still, his mixed heritage would forever prevent him from joining the upepr echelon of Manzanillan society.

Thus, out of a mixture of pride and genuine interest, he became involved in the growing revolutionary movement, and ultimately he became the leader of the guerilla forces fighting against the brutal suppressionist forces of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez. When Maconda's beloved wife Isabel died in her childbed as a result of of Don Santiago's cruelty, Maconda went in search of the fearsome Warlok of the Peak, determined to have the power to triumph over his enemies.

And he returned with that power. Only to find, to Maconda's fury, that Don Santiago had died of fever in his sickbed mere hours before the last Royalist troops were defeated. Enraged, he ordered the Royalists massacred, cutting down a priest who dared argue against this behavior, and once the bloodshed was over, he left Resistencia for the mainland of Libertad, vowing never to return - a vow the [[Dark Powers]] were happy to fulfill for him.

A year later, he became the president of the Republic, and he soon established himself as a brutal tyrant as bad as the royalists he had overthrown.

The Warlock of the Peak transformed Maconda into a powerful [[wereanaconda]], and despite the many powers his state gives him, Maconda loathes this form, in part because he believes Isabel would be disgusted by it, and also in part because he is compellede to transform into a giant anaconda and feed on human flesh on the night of the new moon. Unusually, he cannot create other wereanacondas with his biter, but those who drink or touch his blood, even if they are spattered with it in combat, risk being turn into either were-fer-de-lanes or were-bushmasters, species of [[weresnake]] (treat as Neutral Evil [[werecobra]]s) native to Libertad and compelled to be loyal to him.

Maconda's curse is that he desperately yearns to be loved and adored, but his insistence upon doing so by repressing and removing all opposition or dissent merely stokes the hatred and fear of those he rules over.

He can be wounded by weapons made of silver or the wood of the caobo tree, and is sickened by both the smell and taste of guavas. If defeated in battle, Maconda doesn't die but instead assumes anaconda form and slithers off into the jungle, unable to regain his human form until the next new moon. There is no known way to permanently destroy him.

Maconda can close the domain borders of his island by causing the jungles and seas to become engulfed in massive swarms of lethally poisonous snakes.

===Miles Havelocke===
Darklord of the Eternal Torture. Born in a coastal city, Miles was pressganged at the age of 15, which ruined his life; he suffered from incurable seasickness, for which his fellows tormented him mercilessly and the bullying captain only made it worse by assigning him to the worst tasks possible for somebody with his condition, ordering him severely beaten when, inevitably, he threw up. With no aptitude for mathematics, Miles couldn't master the art of navigation, and so couldn't hope to progress to the higher ranks of the navy.

Twenty years of this treatment turned Miles into a bitter, miserable bully who loathed the sea and used what little authority he could get to exact vengeance upon those few below him on the ship's pecking order. Why he never simply fled during his first shore leave, nobody knows.

Eventually, Miles' captain was chosen to make a voyage into the uncharted western ocean, to Miles' dismay. But when the captain continued in pressing on in pursuit of ever-richer islands to the west, it led to the ship becoming lost in the waters and supplies running low. Miles seized this opportunity for revenge and began spreading rumors about the ship's officers hoarding food for themselves, ultimately leading a successful mutiny. When his ineptitude at seamanship led to them being becalmed, he led his mutineers to cannibalize the captured officers, gleefully rubbing their faces in their past abuse of him and coming to relish human flesh.

And then, as this supply of food began to run low, they finally spotted land... but, as they rowed frantcially to reach it, the Mists arose and swallowed the ship. When they cleared, the mutineers found themselves in the middle of a sea in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Overwhelmed by misery, they sat down and waited for death... and then, a fortnight later, they arose as [[ghoul]]s under the command of Miles Havelock, a Ghoul Lord, and began searching for food and land.

Miles Havelock suffers multiple curses. Firstly, he can never reach land, no matter how desperately he tries - at best, he can get a brief glimpse of the coast before the Mists immediately rise and teleport his ship elsewhere. Secondly, his seasickness has not only survived undeath, but intensified; he is '''perpetually''' seasick and also starving hungry, and these twin pains are why he has rechristened his ship "The Eternal Torture". If destroyed, his essence will inhabit the body of a living prisoner in the ship's hold and consume them from the inside out; the only way to end his curse is to kill him, rescue all of the prisoners, and sink the Eternal Torture, then make for land at full speed.

===Rafe Ungard===
Darklord of Callista. This male [[Half-Vistani]] [[Bard]] used his natural charm (and a complexion that allowed him to hide his hated Vistani blood) to swindle innocent women into marriage scams, start feuds amongst noble families for his own amusement, and delve into increasingly cruel and lethal manipulation. The backstory of poor Susannah Joson from [[Children of the Night]]: [[Ghost]]s is but one example of his misdeeds. When a party of [[adventurer]]s tried to bring him to justice, he continually slipped away, leaving the bodies of victims in his wake to torment them, and ultimately murdered his pursuers by burning down the inn they were staying in as they slept, which is when the Mists took him.

Rafe now possesses a strange form of immortality; he will ''always'' die once per day, no matter what steps he takes to try and avoid it, only to spontaneously return to life the next day. There is no known method to stop him from returning.

When he closes the domain, Callista's borders become a ring of boiling geysers that will kill anyone who passes through them, and which extend as high into the sky as needed to reach anyone trying to fly through.

===Sean Mako & Alice/Alison Marjory===
Darklords of Carcharodon Isle. Sort of a combination of Ladyhawke and the Little Mermaid. Over a century ago, a male human fisherman named Sean Marko lived in the village of Mistlington. One day, he discovered an injured [[merfolk|mermaid]] washed up on the isle's northwest shore, unconscious and bleeding from several wounds, including a severed left hand. Unable to turn away from someone in need, he brought her to his home and nursed her back to health. The mermaid, whose name translated into Common as "Alice", explained that she was the only survivor of a tribe that had been slaughtered by [[sahuagin]].

The two fell in love, much to the displeasure of the locals; the fishermen thought Sean was foolish for pining over a mermaid, and their wives were jealous of Alice's beauty, leading to them slandering her and Sean's relationship as "unnatural". Ultimately, a bunch of the village's men took it upon themselves to "repatriate" Alice; they came to Sean's house in the night, bludgeoned him unconscious, and carried Alice away. When Sean regained consciousness, he rowed desperately to catch up to them, but by the time he did so, they'd thrown the still-bound mermaid overboard.

Enraged, Sean snatched up a boathook and attacked the men who had assaulted him and the woman he loved, butchering them. When the carnage was over, he dove into the water after Alice, and then begged the full moon above for a fins and a tail so he might never be separated from his love.

Naturally, the [[Dark Powers]] chose to be dicks about granting this wish...

Both Sean and the revived Alice, now a human calling herself Alison Marjory, have become maledictive [[therianthrope]]s.

Sean is a giant [[wereshark]] who spends most of the month as an intelligent megalodon, unaware that he ''can'' transform and remembering nothing of his human life; only during the nights of the full moon and those nights directly before and after it does he return to his human form... which remembers everything he did as a giant killer shark. Because of his curse-spawned ignorance, the only way that shark!Sean can transform is if he is magically compelled to do so, such as by an Amulet of the Beast. He spends his days asleep and his nights hunting for food.

In contrast, Alison is a [[seawolf]] who spends most of the month as a human, but assumes her seawolf form on the nights before, during and after the full moon - the same nights when Sean regains his humanity. Like Sean, as a seawolf, she is completely ignorant of her human life. She keeps to herself, for the people of the isle still distrust and dislike her, gladly telling the nastiest stories they can think of about her to anyone who'll listen.

Neither darklord can be slain permanently through violence; they fully heal and return to life 1 round after being defeated. They also can't close the domain's borders, although since the only local vessels are small fishing boats that are no match for a giant shark or a massive seafaring wolf, they don't need to do much more than patrol the borders themselves.

Curing them simply requires breaking the curse by getting them to touch as humans, but doing so is tough; aside from the fact that they alternate human and monster forms, neither is aware of the fact that the other survives. Whichever of them is in beast form also refuses to get within 10 feet of the other one. They also won't willingly get within 5 feet of an Amulet of the Beast. So players are going to have to get creative to break their curse.

===Serenissa D'Aubliet===
Darklord of Romagna. Serenissa (female human spectre) was born an orphan; her father, a miller's son, was killed soon after her conception, and her peasant girl mother died in birthing her. She was taken in the local lord to serve as companion to his two daughters, but their initial friendship soured as they came of age and Serenissa realized the social gap between them. At the age of twelve, she was sent to the family of a neighboring lord to become a nursemaid to that lord's newly born twin children; Serenissa doted upon the children, and happily threw herself into their care.

However, she also became increasingly obsessed with fanciful daydreams about her origins, fixating on the belief that she was actually of noble birth and that her parents were both alive and desperately seeking her. She loved to tell these stories to her two charges... until the eve of their fourth birthdays, when, at the top of the Eagle's Tower, the two young children scolded her for lying and corrected her that she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a simpleton and a millerboy, both of whom had died. Mad with rage, especially when the twins revealed that everyone in the castle claimed that this was so, she pushed them off of the tower to their deaths.

Her skill at lying allowed her to escape being blamed for what she described as a terrible accident. For two weeks she festered on the idea that people were "slandering her" behind her back, and finally, two months after the day she had murdered the twins, she set a fire in the Great Hall that night, killing everyone in the castle.

Slinking away from the carnage, she made her way to the barony of Romagna, where she seduced her way into both a respectable position as lady's maid to the younger sister of Baron Etain and into the arms of Baron Etain himself. After several months of dalliance, he gifted her with a gemstone brooch... and then announced his upcoming marriage to the Lady Fialle, daughter of a neighboring lord, the very next day.

This pushed Serenissa over the edge and soon thereafter, she drew Baron Etain to a high tower, where she grabbed him and leapt off the edge, intending that they die together so she would not live alone.

But this time, with the interference of the [[Dark Powers]], her scheme failed. Serenissa hit the ground and was killed on impact, but her body cushioned Etain's fall, and so he lived. The madwoman's spirit rose from its grave as a ghost, trapped in an endless time loop; Romagna experiences only a single year, constantly recycling itself. It starts one week before the equinox Spring Festival, when Fialle arrives in Romagna for her upcoming wedding to Baron Etain. That week is spent in feasts and celebrations, capped off by a three-day non-stop revelry for the weding proper. Then, six months later, Fialle conceives Etain's child. And then, one week before the first anniversary of the wedding, time looks back and it is the week before the Spring Festival again.

Furthering Serenissa's torment, she is completely incapable of physically interacting with the people of Romagna, although she can manipulate their emotions despite the fact they cannot see, hear or touch her. She uses her emotional control to turn them into her agents of retribution, although she can't turn them against Etain or Fialle. This ability is defined vaguely, because she herself hasn't really studied her full capabilities with it.

Only visitors to Romagna are in true danger from Serenissa, because she is fully visible and audible to them, although still intangible. She invariably attempts to seduce the handsome male visitors to the domain, luring them away if they prove receptive to try and embrace them - doing so, however, results in her draining 1 level per 2 rounds, causing them to disintegrate... but if they break free, she attacks.

Serenissa is vulnerable to holy water, +2 or stronger magic weapons, and functional weapons made of gold. She is impervious to holy symbols, but can be turned with symbols of true love and matrimony - for example, the wedding rings of people who are actually married. If destroyed, she can reform at Etain and Fialle's wedding. Exactly ho to destroy her permanently is left vague, with her entry in the Book of Sorrows concluding with this paragraph:
::''Weapons forged from symbols of love (such as rings, charms, wooden wands, or ceremonial ropes used to bind a man and woman together at their wedding) may have greater effect, rendering her helpless or immobile. Her final death is likely to involve elements of her first experience; rejection, a long fall, and/or a noble lover. Heroes should beware, though—the dark powers may look with interest upon anyone who willingly transforms a symbol of love into a weapon of war.''

===Urdogen "The Red"===
Darklord of The Raging Tears. Male Human Spectre. In life, Urdogen (who first appeared in the [[Forgotten Realms]] splat "Pirates of the Fallen Stars") was basically Faerun's version of Blackbeard - if Blackbeard was a redhead. He terrorized the Inner Sea so badly that the nations of that region united to defeat his fleet, whereupon Urdogen fled and found himself spirited away by the Mists into the Sea of Sorrows... where he promptly hit a hidden reef and sank his ship, drowning.

Ever since then, Urdogen's ghostly vessel has sailed all the seas of the Misty Realm, cursed to never be able to come within sight of land and only able to rise from his watery grave during the nocturnal hours. Further stymying his desperate desire to reclaim his former reputation as a fearsome pirate lord, any who encounter Urdogen and live to tell the tale are cursed to forget his name.

To put an end to Urdogen, the ruin of the Raging Tears must be hauled up from the seafloor and carried inland, where it must then be burned completely to ash in a funeral pyre.

Interestingly, Urdogen's ghostly ship is actually able to return to the Inner Sea of Faerun on moonless, foggy nights in his homeworld, although he must return to the Misty Realms upon dawn.

If Urdogen chooses to close the borders of his traveling domain, the waters around his ship become rough and infested with a feeding frenzy of sharks; those who try to fly away will instead find themselves sinking into the water.

==5e Darklords==
As part of its general overhaul of the [[Demiplane of Dread]], 5th edition added a significant number of new darklords - some to replace former darklords, others ruling over brand new domains. Darklords who simply got retconned backstories and other traits have those details added to their entries above. Quite a few of these characters don't have much info on them due to being only mentioned in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book, most of which only have a single paragraph dedicated to their domain and darklord.

One unique trait common to all 5e darklords is that the personalized domain border closures of the past are largely gone; there might be cosmetic tweaks, but in general most 5e Domains of Dread all function the same when a person tries to escape through a closed border.

===Chakuna===
The replacement Darklord of Valachan, and one of the few 5e darklords to explicitly continue on in some fashion from the setting as it existed before. A female [[werepanther]], Chakuna belongs to a tribe of [[werecat]]s (specifically panthers and ocelots) called the Oselo, whom were hunted to the brink of extinction by Baron Urik von Kharkov, as he had come to fixate upon them as the most intriguing and challenging quarry. (Nevermind that Urik was originally "Blacula Strahd" with no real interest in "hunting the most dangerous game".) To save her people, she went to the literal heart of the domain and performed an unholy rite, cutting out her own heart and offering it to the land as sacrifice in exchange for the power to defeat Urik. Long story short, it worked; she ripped out his heart, tore him to pieces, and buried his still-living and curse-spewing head in the ruins of his castle before building her own treetop hunting lodge atop the ruins. Which is actually kind of badass. But now the jungle has become hungrier than ever, and she must regularly sacrifice human hearts to the land to keep the plants and animals from slaughtering all the Valachani (shades of the Wildlands, there), which she obtains through the "Trials of the Heart" - ceremonially hunting down designated victims with the aid of trained [[Displacer Beast]]s. She won't touch a fellow Oselo, but everybody else is fair game.

Chakuna can only be killed if her heart is found in the secret grove where she performed her dark rite and destroyed, but unless somebody assumes her mantle in the process, then the jungle will be free to kill everyone.
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===Flimira Vhage===
Currently very little is known about Flimira Vhage other than that their domain is the office of a detective agency which is actually is an extension of their own broken mind.

===Jacqueline Renier===
While this character is really just a reimagining of Jaqueline Renier, her minimally different name means she's technically a new character and gets her own section here. Besides being a wererat she has almost nothing in common with the original Jaqueline anyway.

A century ago, the Richemulot was a prosperous nation with a growing middle class. As the commoners began to gain more wealth and power, it caused the influence of the nobility to wane, a fact that Jacqueline Renier did not like. As her family seemed oblivious to the threat this posed, she began to look allies and heard of the Trueblood Council, a secret society of Richemulot’s eldest and most esteemed families. She spent a fortune finding a way to attain membership to the council, but discovered they were not actually nobles, but wererats. That same night, she was inducted into their ranks.

Renier swiftly accepted her new life as a wererat, her scorn for commoners expanding to include all non-wererats. Her first major act consisted of conferring the gift of lycanthropy upon her family. Only her twin, Louise, resisted, for which Jacqueline disfigured her and cast her out. Within the sewers of Pont-a-Museau, the wererats concocted a roiling pestilence known as the Gnawing Plague, which swept through the population. The disease wiped out the nation's rulers and all other nobles save for the Reniers, and eventually Jacqueline stood as the highest-born noble in the land, and the nation’s de facto leader.

Though the people begged her to help them, she let them all die, deeming them unworthy due to their poverty and low birth. As the last human soul expired in Pont-a-Museau, the Mists rose, drawing Richemulot into the Domains of Dread.

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===The Inheritors of Darkon===
Similar to what happened during [[Grim Harvest]], Darkon currently has multiple Darklords while Azalin is missing. Specificly, there's only three of them this time.

'''"Baron" Alcio Metus''' is a female vampire, and the sister of Baron Metus - the vampire who got [[Van Richten]] started on his monster-killing path. Having risen to rule the criminal underworld of the Jagged Coast region, driving out her former Kargat masters in the process, Alcio burns with the desire for revenge against Van Richten for killing her brother. Not helping is that she's occupied Van Richten's ancestral home of Richten House and found that Van Richten's wife Ingrid still lingers as a [[ghost]] - but one who refuses to help Alcio in her quest for vengeance.

'''Cardinna Artazas''', the thrice-reincarnated leader of an elfin mystery cult in Nevuchar Springs, has damned her soul in the name of good: desperate to preserve Darkon, she has striven to revive the spirit of Darcalus Rex, the king who reigned over Darkon prior to the coming of Azalin. Unfortunately, all she has called forth is a necrichor, and she must constantly weigh her belief that what she is doing serves "the greater good" against the very real demands that the undead tyrant makes for ever-greater magical reagents and sacrifices.

Finally, '''Madame Talisveri Eris''' is an elderly but vibrant and intelligent aristocrat who accidentally made herself permanently invisible whilst seeking to make herself look younger. She uses her invisibility to her advantage, having created an array of different identities that she assumes through costumes and cosmetics. She's currently built up a cult amongst the younger members of Il Aluk's nobility, offering them an elixir on the night of the new moon that makes them invisible until dawn and then sending them out to commit crimes and mayhem that advance her cause.

Because none of them are true darklords yet, none of them have specific curses.

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===Isolde & Nepenthe===
Like the original Isolde, the 5e Isolde is an [[eladrin]] [[paladin]], though this one was an [[adventurer]] who battled [[dragon]]s and [[demon]]s that threatened the [[Feywild]]. This unknowingly led her into the machinations of Zybilna, an evil [[archfey]] who had lost a number of [[fiend]]ish allies to Isolde and her companions. Zybilna called upon her remaining pacts to arrange for a powerful [[incubus]] called "The Caller" (5e's retconned version of the Gentleman Caller) to corrupt and slaughter Isolde's companions; once that was done, the archfey stepped in and exploited Isolde's vulnerable state to become her "new best friend". She arranged for Isolde to become the guardian of a traveling fey carnival that also concealed a portal to Zybilna's realm... then, when Isolde began to tire of this role and their relationship grew strained, she secretly warped Isolde's mind with magic to ensure that Isolde would always prioritize the needs of the Carnival over her own wants. Even so, this wasn't enough to keep Isolde bound to Zybilna's reins. When Isolde encountered a traveling carnival from the [[Shadowfell]] managed by [[shadar-kai]], she made a pact with its twin managers to trade ownership of their carnivals, but only until next the two carnivals met. The shadar-kai agreed, and gave her the magical sword Nepenthe as symbol of her new status as owner and champion - but that wasn't enough for Zybilna. She used her magic to erase Isolde's memories of all things relating to Zybilna, and also sent fey creatures to forever follow and harass Isolde's new carnival.

To make things worse, Nepenthe was a cursed blade; an intelligent Holy Avenger used to executed thousands of criminals, not all of whom were actually guilty, the blade had developed a deep craving for bloodshed in the name of justice. In Isolde, it found an easily manipulated host; it awoke her memories of the Caller, and stoked her desire for retribution. In many ways, it could be considered the "true" darklord of the Carnival, especially given how Isolde constantly struggles to resist its naked, insatiable need to kill.

Isolde's curse, then, is to wrestle with both the imperatives of Zybilna and those of Nepenthe; she craves vengeance, but finds herself forever stymied by her need to tend to the ever-growing Carnival's need, as well as fearing that she may one day encounter the Carnival's true owners and be forced to relinquish it back to them. Explicitly, she could be saved if Nepenthe was taken from her, but its grip on her mind means she would refuse to abandon it.

===Klorr===
Darklord of Klorr. We know nothing about this darklord, but the name is taken from a character who appeared in the original Red Box; a clockwork-obsessed [[planeswalker]] [[mage]] who was infuriated that he couldn't synchronize and control his heart the way he could his clockwork creations. He made assorted dark bargains and ultimately came to rest in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], where he produced four cursed timepieces: the Water Clock of Klorr, the Moondial of Klorr, the Hourglass of Klorr, and his final work: the Timepiece of Klorr. This cursed pocketwatch gave Klorr extended life and increased arcane power, but required him to regularly charge it with murder, an impulse he succumbed to. It ultimately killed him when he failed to sacrifice a life to it on time.

The Timepiece of Klorr is given mechanical stats in the "Forbidden Lore" boxed set. Klorr's other works are statted in "Forged of Darknes":
* The Water Clock lets the user transform into a water [[elemental]], but might kill them in the process and also might leave them permanently trapped in elemental form.
* The Moondial grants powers based on the phase of the moon, but slowly transforms the user into a light-averse monster.
* The Hourglass can grant the user Improved Haste for 1 hour, but will age them 1d10 years and might also leave them under the effects of Slow for 24 hours after being used.

===The Last Passenger===
Darklord of The Mourning Rail. Nothing is known about this Darklord other than they were a VIP that delayed a train escaping from The Mourning, and threw out a bunch of passengers to make room for their self and their retinue, dooming the train, and they are now an undead being of some kind trapped on the train with the rest of the undead passengers.

===Myar Hiregaard===
Mentioned only in passing as the Darklord of the revised Nova Vaasa, She's basically a female Genghis Khan with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde; she was originally a female chieftain who united the nomadic plains-dwelling tribes of Nova Vaasa into a single culture, but she proved to be a terrible peacetime leader because she craved bloodshed and excitement. She tried to stave off her boredom with, quote, "brutal games" for a time, but ultimately she couldn't resist the thrill of war: she began fostering disputes amongst her vassal tribes so she had an excuse to lead her forces to crush both sides. This eventually got her claimed by the mists, and now she switches between two personas and possibly two bodies: as Mya Hiregaard, she rules with "strict fairness", but when she gets too bloodlusty, she transforms into her alter-ego of Malken and "sows discord across the plains".

...Whatever else you may think of it, at least it's more justified than Tristren "My dad got cursed and died, so I inherited his curse and became a Darklord without ever having to do anything to actually earn it" Hiregaard.

===Pietra van Riese===
A gender-swapped version of Pieter van Riese and the darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Not much is known about her due to being in the "Other Domains of Dread" section, and therefore only getting one paragraph to herself. She was a ruthless pirate with a fondness for keelhauling her victims, and now she's a ruthless ''zombie'' pirate who speaks through the mouths of her undead crew.

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===Ramya Vasavadan===
Darklord of Kalakeri. Ramya was hand-picked by her father, the last ruler of Kalkeri, to succeed him, but when he died, her brother Arijani contested her claim, leading to a brief civil war. Ramya would have killed Arijani then and there, but their sister Reeva counseled mercy, and Ramya conceded, not really wanting to kill her brother anyway. She enjoyed a brief period of unchallenged leadership, bringing a golden age to Kalakeri, but all the while Reeva was working behind her back to build up support for Arijani, culminating in her freeing Arijani and launching a second civil war. Enraged, Ramya suppressed the rebellion with brutal methods, executing captured rebel ranas and executing them in horrifically inventive methods that only made the people distrust her more and furthered the fighting. At the second war's climax, Arijani and Reeva sued for peace and Ramya agreed... only to be captured by her treacherous siblings and murdered. Before the court strangler garotted her in the central courtyard of her own palace, Ramya cursed her siblings as bloodthirsty beasts.

Once it was done, Arijani and Reeva further disrespected their sister by throwing her body into the ocean... an act that resulted in a terrible monsoon lashing Kalakeri for weeks. And then, when it was done, Ramya rose from her watery grave and marched on her former siblings, followed by an ever-swelling army of undead soldiers made up of all her loyal warriors who had fought and died for her. This time, Ramya showed no mercy, capturing her siblings and having them crushed to death by undead elephants.

...And then they came back as fiends - Arijani as a [[rakshasa]] and Reeva as an [[arcanoloth]] - and the civil war has raged ever since.

This civil war is the primary curse that Ramya experiences, with two secondary elements. Firstly, despite knowing better, Ramya ''always'' remains vulnerable to their lies and deceptions, which prevents her from truly ending the war. Secondly, Ramya's direct control over the domain is tied to her being seated in the Sapphire Throne, the symbol of Kalakeri's ruler; if the rebels oust her from the Cerulean Citadel, then her dominion diminishes until she can reclaim it. A second curse she labors under is the fact that, despite being shrouded in an illusion of life, Ramya ''knows'' that she's actually [[undead]], and this is apparent in her reflection, so she bans mirrors from her presence.
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===Saidra d'Honaire===
The future darklord Saidra grew up on a tiny farm, raised by her widower father, who filled her head with stories of her noble bloodline - he claimed to be a duke that had been ousted from his rightful throne by a vicious younger brother. Life was hard, especially as Saidra's sincere belief in her father's stories meant she alienated her peers, and only got worse when Saidra's father married a prosperous merchant woman with two daughters from her previous marriage, all of whom tormented Saidra and forced her to work as their personal servant, ala Cinderella. One day, a nearby duke perished, and when Saidra wondered if it had been her father's evil little brother, she was forced to confront the cruel truth: her father's stories had all been a pack of lies, and he was nothing more than a common-born servant who had fled to save his neck after trying to nick silverware from the duke's kitchen.

Saidra went to her mom's grave to beg her mother's spirit for help, which was when a "kind, grandmotherly figure" appeared and granted Saidra her wish, clothing her in a magnificent gown and fine jewelry before conjuring a stately carriage to carry her to the masquerade ball that was being held to celebrate the coronation of the new duke. We don't know who this figure was, but it's interesting to note that Saidra's version of Dementlieu contains a [[hag]] coven who basically love to pretend to be Fairy Godmother figures so they can mess with people. Anyway, off Saidra went to the ball, plotting to kill the new duke and claim his title. When she got there, she swiftly seduced the new duke, so successfully that she began contemplating if it mightn't be better to wed the duke instead. Things were going smashingly... until the clock chimed midnight and the whole party began dropping dead of a sudden, fast-acting plague, which rather put a downer on things. The kicker, for Saidra, was as she and the duke lay dying in each other's arms and he confessed that he ''wasn't'' noble-born, but instead a commoner who had been adopted by the previous duke. In fact, he was actually Saidra's long-lost brother.

Enraged at this second "betrayal", Saidra stabbed her brother in the heart with the last of her strength and then tried to stagger away from the corpse, only to collapse dead on the stairs leading into the palace.

And then she woke up as a [[wraith]], the new spectral queen of Dementlieu, a shabby and impoverished town whose populace struggle to fake the appearance of being more important than they truly are, all the while risking Saidra's deadly wrath: she '''hates''' pompous fools who pretend to be what they aren't, aspire to higher station than they deserve, and fail to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

...Well, yeah, she wouldn't be a ''darklord'' if she wasn't at least a little bit of a hypocrite, now would she?

Saidra is a wraith who has the ability to launch free Disintegrates at anyone who reveals themselves to be lying about who they are in her presence - we don't know much more than that, mechanically. She lives in constant terror of being exposed as a fraud herself, and in fact she can only be killed permanently if she is revealed to be a fraud first. Related to that, she lives in terror that her hated stepmother and stepsisters are still alive somewhere in Dementlieu. Finally, almost tangentially, her status as a wraith means her beloved masquerade balls are a complete waste of time, as she can't enjoy any of the physical pleasures associated with them.

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===Sarthak===
Darklord of the Ashram of Niranjan, Sarthak is an evil bronze dragon who poses as a mystic named Niranjan. He send agents into the Mists bearing his philosophical writings, which promise escape, peace, and enlightenment to any who adopt their teachings. Anyone who comes to his monastery is told that they must divest themselves of worldly goods, which are added to Sarthak’s hidden hoard. Sarthak then helps his victim enter a blissful trance that causes their soul to slip away from their body over the course of days. Sarthak consumes this soul and replaces it with a shadow, leaving the victim’s body under his control.

There's no indication of what his curse might be, since he's in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book and as such only gets a single paragraph to himself.

===Teresa Bleysmith===

===Viktra Mordenheim===
Basically, she's Victor Mordenheim but a woman... what, that's not good enough? Alright...

Viktra Mordenheim was born the daughter of a minor noble family, as well as a natural prodigy in medicine - she taught herself anatomy as a child, and by the time she was a teenager she held a doctorate ''and'' had been appointed as a preeminent researcher at a local university. For all her genius, however, Viktra was arrogant, not to mention completely lacking in empathy, compassion and moral qualms. To her, medicine was just a way to sate her burning curiosity about the secrets of life. Also, she hated magic, regarding it as as "stealing the powers of otherworldly beings and cheating the laws of nature", and thus inferior to '''SCIENCE!'''

In the best Frankenstein tradition, she grew obsessed with the idea that she could not merely mend the sick, but actively create and even improve upon life. So she began hiring the services of bodysnatchers to provide her with fresh human cadavers for her research. This is how she met Elise; amazingly, the cold, aloof methodical surgeon and the beautiful but reckless and spontaneous body snatcher became infatuated with each other, and the two women's relationship swiftly changed from professional to personal. When Elise contracted an incurable wasting disease, Mordenheim became obsessed with saving her, and her experiments increased in numbers - she also began having living victims actively kidnapped for her experiments. Through countless murders, resurrections and remurders, Viktra honed her knowledege. Finally, as Elise fell into the deep sleep that marked the final stages of the disease, Viktra poured everything she had learned from a thousand deaths into saving a single life, crafting and installing the Unbreakable Heart: an artificial super-organ.

But just as she was stitching the fabulous device into place, constables burst into her lab, accusing her of being behind the recent string of kidnappings and murders. In the struggle, the lab caught fire and flooded with acrid chemical smoke: Mordenheim's last vision was of Elise rising from her table, a golden light glowing in her chest where the Unbreakable Heart had been installed.

When Mordenheim came to, she was in a strange, icy realm called "Lamordia", where she was hailed as the greatest genius ever, but there was no sign of Elise.

Viktra's torments largely center around Elise and the Unbreakable Heart; she can neither recreate the Heart on her own, but nor can she find Elise to study it again. Secondary to this curse is that she is showered with the love, respect and attention of Lamordia, whose people view her as a luminary savior; to Mordenheim, they are incomprehensible, and she loathes their constant distractions from her work.
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===Vladeska Drakov===
In a nameless world, in a land torn between myriad bitterly feuding royal families, the woman named Vladeska Drakov was a skilled fighter and general, a mercenary who came to be known as the Crimson Falcon, the leader of a well-regarded mercenary army called the Falcon's Talons. Business was profitable, and Vladeska was raking in the loot, with dreams of retiring young, cashing in her wealth and reputation to buy land and a title. Then came the sacking of Veivere, where the Talons accidentally killed a very important figure. So important that the entirety of the aristocracy took up arms against the Talons, determined to kill them all for it. Well, Vladeska had no intention of just rolling over and dying, and she launched a bloody counter-attack that soon turned into a crushing campaign of conquest; her forces swept through the land, replenishing themselves with conscripted peasants and wiping out everyone stupid enough to stand against them. Vladeska made a point of impaling ''everybody'' with even the slightest drop of aristocratic blood that she caught alive. Through years of bloody effort, she became the ruler of an empire that stretched over the former patchwork nation, but as she crushed the last defiant village, the smoke engulfed Vladeska and her most elite warriors.

They found themselves in a new realm, and after swiftly conquering its capital city, Vladeska declared herself Empress of Falkovnia. Which was when she found the downside of her rule... namely, the armies of [[zombie]]s that would attack her new kingdom every month with the rising of the new moon.

Vladeska's curse, obviously, is the zombie attacks, which press her to her limit as she struggles to throw back the dead and preserve what she has, but it goes deeper than that. Firstly, she suffers a horrible sensation of recognition; every zombie, to her, seems to be the animate corpse of one of her victims or her fallen soldiers, filling her with the gnawing belief that the dead are coming for ''her'' specifically. Secondly, no matter what scheme or ploy she tries, the result is always Phyrric; her people haven't been wiped out yet, but there's a big difference between 'survival' and 'winning'. Finally, she '''knows''' that her efforts doomed - there is ''no way'' to hold Falkovnia against the dead, not with the forces that she has, and the only chance she has for survival is to take her people and flee during the peaceful period after the dead are repulsed for the month. But she's too stubborn to run, and so she keeps fighting her bloody, futile war.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Ravenloft]]

Darklord

2021-05-24T03:42:21Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* Jacqueline Renier */

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{{Topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

The '''Darklords''' are the rulers ''and'' prisoners of the plane of [[Ravenloft]], from the D&D setting of the same name.

You might be wondering "How are they both rulers and prisoners at the same time?" The reason for this is simple: each Darklord was pulled into the plane by the nebulous forces known only as the Dark Powers after an especially heinous deed (known in-universe as a "Act of Ultimate Darkness"), which reshapes a part of the plane into [[Demiplane of Dread|a realm tailored to each Darklord's defining crime]]. In its own realm a Darklord is a BBEG to rule over all other BBEGs, with absolute power over everything except whatever they desire most - whatever thing that might be, it is always dangled ever so slightly out of their reach by the Dark Powers to amplify their torment further. They have no mouth, and they must scream. (Thus the common description of the setting as "Hell, but not for you".)

=Common Characteristics of Darklords=
The exact abilities and backstories of Ravenloft's Darklords have varied from edition to edition, but almost all exert considerable control over their individual domains, and many Darklords also rule their domains (assuming the domain has a population to rule), either openly or behind the scenes. Many Darklords are also extremely dangerous to confront in open combat, or otherwise have hidden powers up their sleeves that can neutralize entire groups of player characters even without combat.

Keeping in line with the Gothic Horror theme of Ravenloft, the presence and persistence of insidious evil on this plane is the rule and not the exception. By contrast, lasting triumphs of good are vanishingly rare possibilities. As such, PCs aren't really supposed to go toe-to-toe with Darklords and expect to come out on top like your average group of [[murderhobos]] in other D&D settings. Trying to storm through Castle Ravenloft or Castle Avernus (not the Avernus of [[Baator]]) and expecting to put Strahd's or Azalin's skulls on a pike by the end of the play session will most likely either end in a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|total party kill]] or a fate worse than death, assuming the Dungeon Master is at all trying to run the game in a thematically appropriate way. At most, the PCs' efforts might preserve a bit of light in the ever-present mists and hope their activities stay beneath the local Darklord's notice. [[Grimdark|Heroes in this benighted plane are not guaranteed a peaceful death in bed surrounded by family and friends, or a life of glory and deeds well remembered.]] Openly going up against a Darklord is one of the surest ways of ending your character's life and career for good.

A few things about Darklords have remained constant throughout Ravenloft's editions, however. First, unless the Dark Powers will it, Darklords are completely unable to leave their own domains (note that certain "pocket domains" are in fact mobile and can travel between larger domains, but the Darklord within is still powerless to leave its own pocket domain as any other). If PCs manage to leave a Darklord's domain, that specific Darklord is usually powerless to personally come after them (but see "Closing the Borders" below). Second, almost every Darklord has a weakness, usually in the form of something or someone they desire above all else that they would risk anything and everything for, or a personal vulnerability tied to its curse that is usually well-hidden and hard to figure out. Discovering and exploiting these weaknesses are one of the only ways to accomplish some good in spite of a Darklord's efforts, but if it comes to that you've likely already attracted (or will very soon attract) a Darklord's attention and are in deep trouble. A couple other abilities common to Darklords are discussed below.

===Closing the Borders===
The vast majority of Darklords have the ability to force others to share in their imprisonment by supernaturally closing the borders of their domains, usually leaving no way out even with the aid of magic. Trying to leave a closed domain border will just result in a grisly death or automatic failure, and teleportation magic won't work past a closed domain border either. As Ravenloft was an early AD&D product, the designers gave this handy tool to DMs so as to stop players from just up and leaving without going through the DM's plot. Improperly used it can smack of railroading, but it fits well within the Gothic Horror genre convention of having characters get trapped in sinister and dangerous locales with no safe passage out, until a situation is resolved (or the Darklord opens the borders again, as in the case of Ravenloft).

The few Darklords who cannot supernaturally close their borders either lack that ability as part of their curse, or are unable to do so as part of their nature. Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia for instance disdains magic and the supernatural, and in line with this attitude gained no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders upon becoming a Darklord. However, even these Darklords have more mundane ways of barring escape from their domains, such as sending their numerous lackeys to patrol the borders, though thankfully this doesn't impede magical methods of escape. An even smaller number of Darklords are completely unable to close their domain borders in any way, such as Haki Shinpi of Rokushima Taiyoo who was cursed to become a powerless geist upon becoming Darklord (rather than becoming a Death Knight as he originally planned) and was doomed to watch everything he built in his life's conquest literally sink into ruin through the squabbling of his sons.

===Immortality===
Another reason to avoid going up against Darklords is that many of them have ways of returning from death, rendering all of your hard work moot. Even those who don't have explicitly mentioned methods of cheating death, like Strahd, generally have many contingency plans to avoid ever being at risk of getting truly destroyed. To make a bad situation worse, the Dark Powers appear to get occasionally "attached" to their playthings, and frown harshly upon attempts to take their toys away. In game terms, this means that certain Darklords are truly indestructible and can ever only be put out of commission temporarily, and even the attempt at doing so may end up drawing the Dark Powers' attention to whoever tries such a feat. Mercifully, these individuals are the exception, not the rule.

By contrast, some Darklords are fairly ordinary people with no significant combat skills and no more resistance to being killed off for real than their subjects. However, as mentioned above, even these seemingly vulnerable BBEGs often still have the means or minions to deal with a bunch of murderhobos, and most of these non-combat-focused Darklords are still savvy enough to be wary of any potential threats to their survival, and to nip those threats in the bud via underhanded means.

Outside of these extremes, permanently destroying most Darklords requires either killing one in a very specific manner and/or destroying a Darklord's means of cheating death (which in some cases might be nigh-impossible, such as killing every specimen of a very numerous type of creature in a domain before confronting the Darklord). Finding out this information is likely to require a good deal of questing and research to find out, but can make for a great campaign if properly handled. However, even accomplishing all this does nothing to stop the Dark Powers from "promoting" someone in the realm evil enough to assume the mantle of Darklord, possibly leaving the realm and its inhabitants in [[Not as planned|a worse situation than before]]. In fact, not a few of the "current" Darklords assumed their positions by killing the previous ones. In other cases, the title and sometimes even the personality of the Darklord is immediately passed down to another being on the moment of the Darklord's death, thus ensuring that their position is never lost.

===What happens if you permanently destroy a Darklord somehow?===
It's likely that some of you action-oriented elegan/tg/entleman reading this are just champing at the bit to claim a Darklord's skull for your trophy rooms, but as noted above, the odds and the themes of the setting itself are decidedly against you. Or maybe you're a DM who wants to run a Ravenloft campaign where good really can make a difference and want to know what happens when these Gothic Horror BBEGs finally bite the dust for real and no one takes their place.

Unfortunately, the rulebooks have historically been rather ambivalent and lacking in detail about the answer to this question and the resulting implications. Some Ravenloft rulebooks say that once a Darklord is permanently destroyed and no successor is forthcoming, the destroyed Darklord's associated domain might simply disappear, leaving open the question of what happens to all the people who were living there. If the people there simply disappear as well, were they never real in the first place, instead being undispellable illusions made up whole-cloth by the Dark Powers to torment the Darklord? That might work out just fine if your group stuck to playing [[Weekend in Hell]] style adventures in Ravenloft, but what would it say about PCs native to Ravenloft, or even native to the domain now without a Darklord? Or were the people in the Darklord-less domain no more real (and therefore no more morally troubling to harm in any way) than characters in a video game, making the whole "Powers Check" mechanic moot with regards to harming innocents? Is there now a gaping misty void where the previous domain used to be?

Canonically, the answer might be found in how two domains (Arkandale and Gundarak) where the Darklords lost their darklordship were absorbed by neighbouring ones, essentially meaning the people inside those domains just exchanged one insidious tyrant for another. This solution is probably the smoothest way to incorporate the plot element of Darklords being permanently destroyed in your campaign. On the other hand, geographically isolated domains (such as one of the numerous "Islands of Terror" that are completely surrounded by the Mists), or mobile pocket domains with no notable population of sentients can just disappear back into the mists with no larger consequences to other domains upon the permanent death of their Darklords. It still leaves open the question of what happens to the population of sentients in domains situated in the middle of nowhere that suffer a sudden lack of a Darklord, though.

Strahd himself is explicitly mentioned to be a special case with regards to permanent destruction, most probably due to his status as the posterboy of the entire Ravenloft setting (even in universe, it's noted that the Demi-Plane of Dread didn't seem to exist until Strahd's damnation). In 5e's Curse of Strahd module, it is said that in the absurdly unlikely event he is permanently killed with all of his failsafes destroyed or deactivated, the Dark Powers will intervene to resurrect him within a month [[Grimdark|because they refuse to allow the possibility of ending his torment]]. They're "possessive" about their favourite playthings like that.

Players crying foul about this should note that the Dark Powers are mighty enough to bar the gods themselves from coming to Ravenloft. In light of that, something like bringing a Darklord back to life looks like a trivial feat by comparison.

5e Overhall of some domains of Dreads gives some more definitive insight, either hinted at or explicit With some of the newer darklords stealing rulership from older ones. Darklordship Darkon is a prime example of a missing Darklord, as, without Azalin Rex, the domains is slowly dissolving.

Bottom line? Hash it out with your DM beforehand, or if you're a DM yourself, make sure you have a sensible plot thread lined up if you choose to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords, while keeping in mind how important Darklords are to the themes of Ravenloft.

=Notable Darklords=

==The "Hammer Horror" Darklords==
With the horror films by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions Hammer Film Productions] officially cited as a major source of inspiration for the setting of Ravenloft, the Darklords who are patterned after the horror monster archetypes featured in those films will be listed here.

===Strahd von Zarovich===
{{main|Strahd von Zarovich}}
Darklord of Barovia, and the first Darklord to be introduced to the setting--in fact, it's named after his own castle. He is the archetypal vampire darklord in the setting, though by no means the only one, and his appearance is clearly based off of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula in the 1958 ''Dracula'' film by Hammer Film Productions.

Originally the conqueror of a region called Barovia that he claims was the ancestral home of his family, Strahd came to lust after a woman called Tatyana who rejected him in favor of his younger brother Sergei. Strahd took this very badly; badly enough that at some point he made what he called "a pact with Death" that turned him into a [[vampire]] in a desperate attempt to restore his youth. This too failed to win her over, and on the day Tatyana was to be married to Sergei, Strahd killed him and drove her to suicide.

His realm is a copy of Barovia from the Prime Material plane (the original apparently still exists but nothing is said about its current condition or even which D&D setting it originated from), which he has absolute power over to the point where he can enter any private home uninvited in spite of the fact most vampires are unable to do so (since as he boasts, "I am the land"), and he can ignore the standard vampiric weaknesses to mirrors, garlic or holy symbols, none of which ordinary vampires can do. He isn't even "killed" when staked through the heart like ordinary vampires are (though he is effectively paralyzed while staked) and can resist up to ten rounds of sunlight exposure before being destroyed, though he has always a contingency spell cast on himself that will teleport him away to a hidden mountain sanctuary should he ever be exposed to sunlight or staked by a prepared party, much like Bram Stoker's own Dracula had many coffins to sleep in to make his final destruction more difficult. However, Strahd's curse is to have the events leading to his damnation repeat themselves forever--once every generation he will encounter a woman who he believes to be Tatyana's reincarnation, only to be rejected by her in spite of all his vampiric mind control powers, and become responsible for her death once more, all while being unable to simply give up on trying to win her love.

===Ankhtepot===
Darklord of Har'Akir, partially based on the monster from the 1959 film ''The Mummy'' by Hammer Film Productions. He is the archetypal Mummy-based Darklord in the setting, but he is not the only "Ancient Dead" (i.e., a preserved corpse animated into undeath) who happens to be a Darklord.

Ankhtepot in life was a hubristic ruler of a land also named Har'Akir, patterned after Ancient Egypt and sharing the same pantheon of gods. As the head priest of the sun god Ra, the chief god of his land, Ankhtepot was [[Nagash|obsessed with death and became consumed with the desire to live forever]]. Despite sparing no expense (nor quite a few lives, for that matter) his efforts were in vain, and in his rage he razed several temples, stormed into the greatest one and cursed the gods for withholding his heart's desire. For this blasphemy, Ra contacted Ankhtepot directly and said that Ankhtepot would indeed live after death, though he might wish otherwise. Anhktepot was confused about this, but later discovered that he had received a dire curse (making him one of the few outlander Darklords to have received the majority of his curse ''before'' being taken into Ravenloft); anyone he touched was dead by nightfall, and those he killed in this fashion rose from their tombs to serve him absolutely as undead mummies, because apparently Ra considers having mindless servants a punishment. Taking this in stride despite killing many of his relatives, he used his new undead servants to tighten his grip over Har'Akir, but his fellow priests rebelled, killed Ankhtepot in his sleep, and mummified him, little knowing he was still conscious and going insane inside his sarcophagus during his month-long funeral. After being entombed in a remote area with one small village named Mudar, the mists of Ravenloft claimed Ankhtepot, his tomb, and the nearby village, leaving no trace of them in Ankhtepot's home plane.

As Darklord, Ankhtepot spends most of his time in a deathless dream of better days in his tomb, but he can be roused from this state in a few ways, such as if his tomb is disturbed, or if the people of Mudar are anxious or otherwise distressed. His hubris and pride followed him into undeath, and similarly his greatest torment is his desire to be human again, as the god-king of a great empire he once was, while in reality he "rules" over a barren patch of desert with naught but a small mud-hut village. To frustrate him further, the Dark Powers granted Ankhtepot the ability to regain his human form and mortality by draining a human of moisture and life force in a dread sunrise ceremony, but this reversion to mortality lasts only from dawn to nightfall, and during those few daylight hours "under Ra's gaze" he loses all his supernatural powers, once again becoming a normal human with no appreciable abilities until nightfall, whereupon the transformation is undone. Knowing that he would face an eternity of solitude were he to sacrifice everyone in his domain to fleetingly experience mortality again, Ankhtepot generally prefers to wait and dream until he might rule a larger population, a time he seems unaware will never come.

With respect to his crunch, Ankhtepot can be an unholy terror in his Greater Mummy form. He retains much of the high-level spellcasting ability he had in life, his touch-delivered Mummy Rot is both more virulent and harder to cure than almost any other Ravenloft Mummy's, and those who become infected and are mummified alive become Greater Mummies under his total control. Other aces up his sleeve (or rather, his bandages) are the fact that he commands virtually every mummy in his domain, so if sufficiently provoked he can summon up an entire shambling army of mummies to do his bidding, and the fact that a certain item on his person allows him to heal lost hitpoints very quickly, even if reduced below zero, unless that item is removed from him or his downed "corpse." Ankhtepot can, however, easily be killed during his bouts of mortality (even though doing so might attract the attention of the Dark Powers since he poses no real threat during these times), but if he is killed while an ordinary human he can reanimate if he is mummified and entombed again. As a result of a possible oversight by the writers, no mention is made of how Ankhtepot might be able to return to unlife should he be defeated in his Greater Mummy form nor how he might be permanently destroyed, though he can simply reform in his tomb in the case of the former and the latter might simply require that both his tomb and his physical body be completely destroyed, resulting in the village of Mudar returning to its home plane and Ankhtepot's desert joining an adjacent domain.

Given the relative lack of sex appeal for mummies compared to the far more famous vampires and werewolves (unless you're a fan of the [[Tomb Kings]] or [[Mummy: The Curse]]), Ankhtepot and his domain more or less dropped off the face of Ravenloft canon after the AD&D version, and even in AD&D he was fairly passive. Even so, he did affect Ravenloft and D&D at large in one way by creating the first Greater Mummies (AKA "Children of Ankhtepot") to ever exist in a D&D system, though they have since significantly changed from their original incarnation. Ankhtepot has also been known to send his Mummy and Greater Mummy servants outside of his domain to track and kill grave robbers who defile his tomb and other unfortunates who incur his wrath.

Ankhtepot and his domain made his first appearance as the star villain of the classic ''Touch of Death'' Ravenloft module in 1991.

Despite not having shown up since AD&D, he was re-introduced to the setting in 5e, albeit with some significant retcons.

In an ancient country the inhabitants called the Land of Reeds and Lotuses, Ankhtepot served three generations of pharaohs as high priest. When the second pharaoh died, her unworthy son ascended to the throne. The new pharaoh quickly became unpopular among the people and priests, and Ankhtepot came to believe that the gods wanted himself to take the pharaoh's place. On the day of the pharaoh's coronation, Ankhtepot rallied his loyal priests and murdered their liege. Unfortunately he had misjudged both the people's loyalty and the gods' wills. The people rose up and killed him and his fellow priests, and when he died the gods forsook him and barred him from the afterlife. The gods returned him to the world, but stripped away a piece of his soul called the ka -- the vital essence that inspires all living beings.

He awoke immobilized and trapped in his sarcophagus, during which he felt the pain of every cut and every organ removed as if he were alive. One day, after untold years of this suffering, he a voice asking if he still felt he was worthy to rule. Still arrogant after all he had been through, he answered with certainty, and thus emerged from his crypt into the domain of Har’Akir. In this new land, Ankhtepot found a pious people devoted to the same gods he once served, and immediately set to wiping that religion out and replacing their gods with false idols of his own invention. Using blasphemous rites, Ankhtepot resurrected the priests once buried alongside him as powerful mummies, replacing their heads with those of beasts holy to his new faith. These Children of Ankhtepot served him as they did in life, and together the dead conquered the souls of Har’Akir.

Since then he has seen much, and known many things, but now he seeks one thing only: to be reconnected with his lost Ka, which he believes will allow him to finally die. Where and what his Ka is now is left up to the DM to decide, as is what happens when he is reunited with it. All of the suggested results are pretty grim, ranging from him being reborn as a living tyrant far more decadent and sadistic than he was as an undead, to discovering that he cannot be returned to mortality and deciding to wipe out all life in his domain out of spite.

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===Alfred Timothy===
Darklord of Verbrek, and the archetypal werewolf Darklord of the setting, though by no means the only lycanthrope Darklord in Ravenloft. Alfred Timothy was born to Nathan Timothy (former werewolf Darklord of Arkandale) and an unknown mother. Disdained by Nathan for being frail and sickly in his human form, Alfred in turn disdained his father for his "overly human" interest in ferrying cargo and passengers with his paddleboat (in truth, Nathan was cursed as Darklord of Arkandale to become cripplingly nauseous with "land sickness" anytime he tried to set foot on dry land, but instead of suffering from this curse, Nathan grew so accustomed to boating and the company of his human passengers that he unknowingly lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction, despite still being confined to river waters and remaining an unrepentant serial killer).

Leaving to find his own way and to escape the perpetual treatment as the runt of the litter, Alfred happened upon villagers in his father's domain who regularly made sacrifices to appease a savage being they called [[the Wolf God]] in the hopes of relief from continual attacks by bloodthirsty wolves. Taking inspiration from the sight of humans propitiating a lupine deity and perhaps indulging more than a little megalomania at the prospect of being an object of worship or leading a werewolf-centric religion, Alfred wandered the domains and interrogated clerics he met, sometimes lethally, on how he could become a cleric of this "Wolf God" and use its granted powers to inaugurate a werewolf-led reign of terror over humans. Unfortunately, his efforts and sacrifices were fruitless in provoking any response from this "deity," and he began to take out his frustrations on any clerics and religious buildings he could find whenever his latest interrogation target failed to provide the missing ingredient to contacting and receiving spells from the Wolf God. After [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=425913 one such iconoclastic rampage], Alfred incautiously fell asleep near the mutilated corpses and smouldering wreckage of his latest failure. Not content to "let sleeping dogs lie," Alfred was discovered, chained, and about to be burned at the stake by vengeful villagers, were it not for a mother-daughter pair of prescient Vistani who purchased his freedom and told Nathan that for this stay of execution, he must allow all Vistani safe passage in the future. Enraged at the possibility of being bound by a bargain struck with "mere" humans, Alfred promptly killed the Vistani mother, and the mists of Ravenloft claimed him for this betrayal, leaving him within his new domain of Verbrek, which eventually grew to encompass his father's former domain of Arkandale.

Now a Darklord, Alfred was initially delighted at having truly become a cleric of the Wolf God, receiving divine spells and being able to "converse" with it (assuming it exists, but if you decide to play with a nonexistent Wolf God, Ravenloft's Dark Powers have been known to grant divine spells and Alfred might just be hearing voices in his head). The price, as ever with Darklords, was an insidious curse. Alfred wants nothing more than to revel in the bestial fury and passion he once enjoyed as a werewolf, but as Darklord he is forced to transform back into his human form should he ever succumb to any kind of base passion: fear, rage, or lust. Having built a cult of savagery, wanton bloodshed, and debauchery among a large pack of werewolves as the chief priest of the Wolf God, his uncharacteristic unwillingness to practice what he preaches by frequently refraining from hunts and hesitance at finding a mate means his position is growing increasingly precarious. Realizing that widespread knowledge of his weakness would spell his doom (because [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=262657 "being an alpha means proving it every full moon"]), Alfred is trying to divest himself of his humanity by commanding and occasionally participating in ever-greater acts of slaughter, dedicating and offering them to his god who has remained silent on this one pressing issue, with the only exceptions to his wrath being the Vistani as he still remembers what happened the last time he killed one.

Crunch-wise, Alfred is rather conventional as lycanthrope BBEGs go, aside from his cleric levels and being forced to fight in a calculating and tactical manner unlike most werewolves lest he be forced to return to his much weaker human form. He doesn't cast a shadow (since his domain is effectively the shadow he casts on Ravenloft), and can even teleport from shadow to shadow within his domain whenever the moon is visible. As an ironic reminder from the Dark Powers of his fundamental weakness, Alfred cannot even supernaturally close the borders of his own domain, short of sending his dire wolf and werewolf minions to patrol them, though the true nature of this additional curse is likely lost on him, since he probably doesn't know about other Darklords and their ability to close their domain's borders supernaturally. Though not specifically mentioned, Alfred's fluff implies that even ''[https://youtu.be/ZxcljnLb95M?t=1m8s harsh language]'' might be one of the most potent weapons against him; if PCs can recognize him in either his wolf or hybrid forms and manage to enrage him through taunts, he will be forced to return to human form and at a minimum be robbed of the natural weapons of his alternate forms, or even be forced to kill any wolf or werewolf witnesses to his weakness with his clerical powers before turning his attentions to the PCs. However, even if Alfred is killed (and his crunch does not mention any method through which he could cheat death), it is likely the Darklordship (and possibly even Alfred's curse) will simply pass to whichever werewolf in his domain is evil enough for the Dark Powers' liking, preserving Verbrek as a separate domain unless every werewolf in the domain is killed or driven out before the current Darklord's death. Even then, the Dark Powers can always make more Darklordship candidates, though a more darkly ironic postmortem fate for Alfred's cult and domain might be for the Wolf God cult to scatter to the winds after Alfred's death, in essence metastasizing and spreading its cell members and evil elsewhere, while Alfred's father returns to Arkandale just in time to resume his old Darklordship and hear about his son's death, saying only ''"So that self-righteous runt finally bit off more than he could chew. No matter. Runts have always thought themselves to be bigger than they are."''

On a side note, players who want to play a Ravenloft campaign set in Verbrek, but who also want to use [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition|D&D 5e]] rules instead of relying on older books, might opt to use the official Magic-the-Gathering-to-D&D-5e conversion [[Innistrad|''Plane Shift: Innistrad'']] book, using its rules to play a campaign set in Innistrad's Kessig province. Kessig is thematically similar to Ravenloft's Verbrek as both are "werewolf country" locations, minus Darklords and other Ravenloft-exclusive mechanics. Until the Ravenloft setting is more fully adapted for D&D 5e, the Innistrad conversion is probably the best foundation for playing Verbrek in 5e.

===Dr. Victor Mordenheim/Adam===
Co-Darklords of Lamordia, of a sort. Like the character of Victor Frankenstein (best known for creating Frankenstein's monster) he was based on, Dr. Victor Mordenheim sought to create life and was certain that a soul was not necessary for it to exist. To show him the error of his ways, the gods saw fit to endow the doctor's creation with a soul--specifically, an irredeemably evil soul. The newly created dread flesh [[golem]] was dubbed Adam, and he soon grew jealous of the love that his maker's wife Elise and adopted daughter Eva had for him. Adam's plan to kidnap Elise failed, and instead he killed Eva and wounded Elise so badly she went into a vegetative state. It was at that time that the doctor and his creation were taken together into Ravenloft.

The doctor himself resides in his own mansion, Schloss Mordenheim, spending most of his time obsessively trying to revive his comatose-but-alive wife (who has herself long since gone mad due to her life support system causing her constant pain simply by being active), up to the point of continually constructing new bodies out of exhumed or painlessly-killed female corpses for her, but is cursed to never succeed and to never stop trying. Note that this is not out of love, though Mordenheim still believes that it is--it has become nothing more than a compulsion that has become his only reason for living. Meanwhile, Adam is now the "ruler" of an inhospitable island aptly dubbed the Isle of Agony in the middle of Lamordia inhabited solely by himself, forever cut off from the acceptance that he sought, cursed to feel the doctor's pain as his own, and rejected by the very land that he supposedly controls (as it is influenced by Mordenheim and not Adam). Adam's only form of solace comes from sabotaging Dr. Mordenheim's attempts at reviving Elise just to spite him. Player characters who meet Adam and treat him without pity or revulsion may be able to get some useful information out of him or even get him to open the borders of Lamordia, but he is very prone to anger and is virtually unstoppable once enraged.

So strong is Mordenheim's disbelief in magic that his own domain also (potentially) interferes with divine magic of any kind, making it unreliable, and may even block any magical attempts to heal Elise. Worse still, Mordenheim's attempts at training apprentices over the years in the vain hope that they might just achieve the necessary breakthrough to restoring Elise has unleashed quite a few mad scientist villains, or monsters born of mad science (such as the Living Brain, a disembodied brain in a life-support jar that uses its psionic powers to direct and dominate a major organized crime ring), onto Ravenloft at large.

In a curious twist, Adam is the Darklord and is the one with the power to close Lamordia's borders, but both Adam and his creator are effectively immortal and ageless, and Mordenheim even shares his creation's immunities and regenerative properties. If either is killed and their corpse completely destroyed by fire, acid, or even disintegration, either will simply reincarnate into the nearest most recently deceased male corpse (for Mordenheim) or flesh golem corpse (for Adam, and there are a quite a number of these running around Lamordia, made either by Mordenheim as failed bodies for Elise and futile attempts to recreate Adam's "success," or Adam's frustrated attempts at making sympathetic company for himself), and will shortly thereafter shape their new bodies into looking just like their previous selves. The only way to destroy Adam and Mordenheim for good is to destroy them together at the same time. If DMs decide to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords (see above), then the fate of Elise and Lamordia itself is up to them; one appropriate denouement could be that the permanent deaths of Adam and Mordenheim might just be the spark Mordenheim's machinery needs to briefly restore Elise long enough to rise up and forgive their long-suffering spirits before leading both to their afterlives, just before the land suddenly twists and shifts to reflect the curse and nature of its new Darklord.

Adam and Dr. Mordenheim first appeared in the one-shot adventure in a 1994 boxed set named "Adam's Wrath," intended for outlander PCs to undertake a [[Weekend in Hell]] adventure.

===Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken===
The "Jekyll & Hyde" Darklord of Nova Vaasa. Sir Hiregaard is a staunch, gruff but sincerely righteous man who is dedicated to his people and his land. However, he also plays host to Malken- an alternate personality that takes over Tristen's body, warping it into [[Caliban (Ravenloft)|a form so hideously ugly one can't recognize they're the same person]] and who delights in killing anyone who stands in the way of Hiregaard's repressed desires.

Strangely, Tristen did nothing at all to earn the position of Darklord; Malken is an entity born from a curse that was placed on Tristen's ''father'' by Tristen's mother Romir that compelled him to kill every woman he loved and any man who crossed him; Hiregaard Senior was an intensely jealous man and killed his wife and the man teaching her how to waltz in a fit of rage, thinking she was having an affair with him. When he killed himself to escape the curse, the curse passed to Tristen instead. Six years and nine killings after the curse first manifested itself in him, Tristen was taken into the mists and the secret jealousies and angers born from the curse coalesced into the being known as Malken. Tristen is only partially aware of Malken's existence, just enough to have his guards lock him into his personal chambers when he feels a fit of jealousy or anger coming on. For years he has assumed this has kept Malken in check, but as of late he is starting to suspect that Malken is too clever to be thwarted by mundane confinement despite the latter's attempts at keeping his influence a secret. Were he to discover the whole truth, he would be willing to do anything to end the curse.

This curse is the key to Malken's immortality; if Tristen is killed, then Tristen's eldest living male descendant will be possessed - and Malken will keep going down the chain each time his host dies, meaning that unless you find "the right way" to kill him, Malken can only be stopped by massacring Tristen's entire family line... which the players could potentially belong to. However, if Malken's host is killed by a woman genuinely in love with that man, then Malken will be dragged screaming into whatever hell-hole awaits him. And given that this would be a massive act of betrayal on that woman's part, she would likely end up becoming the new Darklord herself.

It should also be noted for DMs that "the struggle within his soul" prevents Malken from achieving the proper focus to Close the Borders of his domain, so if you want to run a session or campaign focussed around Nova Vaasa, you had better have a compelling in-universe reason to keep the PCs from simply up and leaving, since canonically DMs can't force the issue and simply lock the PCs into Nova Vaasa like they can with most other Darklords. It's possible that if Malken possesses a more evil host, he might just be able to Close the Borders then, but the form such a closed border would take has never been revealed in canon.

==Other Darklords==

===Addar===
{{main|Addar}}
The father of [[Shadow Unicorn]]s and a Darklord of questionable canon. More info on his page.

===Azalin Rex===
Darklord of Darkon. A powerful mage who inherited the rule of the city-state of Knurl, his draconian rule culminated in the execution of his son when he was caught freeing political prisoners. Soon afterward, Azalin became a [[lich]] and devoted himself to searching for a spell that could resurrect the dead; he believed that his son's sense of compassion was due to a mistake in his upbringing and assumed that if he could be revived that mistake could be fixed.

As soon as he was taken into Ravenloft he lost the ability to learn any new magic at all- a terrible thing for any magic user, and even worse for a lich like him who became undead for the sole purpose of gaining more knowledge. This power over memory affects anyone else who enters Darkon as well; staying there for more than three months at a time causes a visitor's memories to be erased and replaced with false ones of spending one's whole life in Darkon. Originally an ally of Strahd when he first entered the mists, their relationship soured quickly after a failed attempt at escaping the Demi-plane of Dread temporarily split the former into two separate beings and they've remained enemies ever since. Another ill-fated attempt at breaking free in which he planned to become a demilich backfired even more spectacularly. Instead of allowing his essence to be freed from Ravenloft, it dispersed his essence across Darkon and destroyed the domain's capital. It took five years for him to reassume a corporeal form and take control of his realm again.

In 5th edition, Azalin has mysteriously gone missing. Did he finally outsmart the Dark Powers and escape? The only clue about where he went is that when he vanished a strange golden star or starlike thing called The King's Tear appeared in the sky and hasn't moved since and the sun and moon pass ''behind'' it instead of in front of it every day.

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===Baron Urik von Kharkov===
Considered one of the goofier Darklords, albeit not as bad as Tristen ApBlanc, and with a much more usable domain in Valachan. Baron Kharkov is basically half-Blacula and half-Werepanther; he was a black panther that a Red Wizard of Thay turned into a human being to use as an assassin. The Red Wizard arranged for him to fall in love with his rival, and then undid the transfiguration spell on him while they were together so he would tear her apart as a panther. When he was turned back into a human, he freaked out and ran off into the Mists. He found himself in Darkon, where he spent 20 years as a member of Azalin's secret police (turning into a Nosferatu in the process). He later escaped and subsequently became the Darklord of Valachan after entering the Mists again. We don't know what he did that turned him into a Darklord, in part due to his own fuzzy memories of what happened during that time, but he claims he killed many people while in the mists, including the Red Wizard that transformed him the first time.

Anyway, he's a blood-drinking black vampire cursed with yellow eyes (that turn into cat's eyes when he's pissed off) and with hands that resemble paws, being covered in fur and bearing retractile claws. He can still turn into a panther, in which state his bite turns people into werepanthers, and controls panthers instead of the normal wolves. His curse is to basically relive his most traumatizing event over and over again; he's constantly seeking a human bride, but once he has one, he can never trust her not to find out that he's not human, and inevitably murders her in a fit of paranoid fury. (He should try dating a [[Furry]] fan or Jaqueline Reiner, that would solve it.)

In 5th edition he has been killed and succeeded by Chakuna.

===Bluebeard===
A rare darklord actually ''liked'' by his subjects, Bluebeard rules over Blaustein (German: "Blue Stone"), a small nation from an unknown world. His rule was considered just and fair, and as a ruler he was considered to be quite generous. Unfortunately for him, he was an incredibly ugly man -- a blue-tinted beard and all -- which to his credit, he overcame with his own charms... and being incredibly wealthy didn't hurt either. Despite all of his good qualities, however, Bluebeard could not achieve a lasting marriage.

He would find a woman to marry, and soon after the wedding he would leave the castle for a time, handing its care over to his new wife. He would give her a set of keys to every door in the castle, and pointing out the one special golden key which opened a room at the very top floor. His instruction was to never open that particular door, with vague consequences. So far none of his wives have been able to overcome this temptation; and when they did open the door they found his grisly collection of former wives, hung up by meat-hooks with their throats slit. By opening the door, the key -- which was magical in nature -- would have a bloody mark that would appear that could not be removed except by Bluebeard himself. He would return to the castle soon after, and demand to see the keys. If the woman had given into temptation (which each invariably did), she would then share the fate as the other women in the room. Marcella was his fourth wife and victim. Her death was not the final, but eventually Bluebeard's repeated murders brought Blaustein into Ravenloft.

After becoming a darklord, Bluebeard was gifted by the Dark Powers with a minor charisma increase, which does not make him handsome by any means but does not leave him as ugly as he once was. He is also able to perfectly detect any lie. Even after the Mists took hold, Bluebeard is still the de facto leader of Blaustein, although his rule was twisted to be even more sadistic. Simply displeasing him is a death sentence, yet the populace still holds him in incredibly high regard. This is because he also has complete control over their memories, and freely erases or rewrites their recollections of his atrocities.

He is unable to marry any woman native to Blaustein, as their visages always twist to the posthumous appearance of one of his dead wives. This curse does not affect women who were born foreign of Blaustein, and Bluebeard along with his subjects are always on the constant lookout for any attractive women who fit this criteria. Lorel, an outlander he grabbed through the Mists, was his latest wife (and victim).

Bluebeard is also haunted by the ghosts of the wives he killed. Every third night must be spent in his castle in order to sleep, and he always awakes to the frightening caress of the specters of his murdered wives. Like his subjects, they are utterly devoted to him, yet in the most twisted way possible. While he considers this distressing, it has not stopped him from sending another wife to the same fate.

It is currently unknown if he has any dealings with any other nation or darklord, at least beyond welcoming in his harbour ships including those engaged in piracy.

He's mentioned in a single sentence in 5e, which states that apparently his spectral wives overthrew him and now endlessly torment him. Exactly how this happened or what this entails is not elaborated upon.

===Captain Alain Monette===

Darklord of L'ile de la Tempete. A violent and cruel privateer and captain of the ''Ouragan''. Eventually his crew snapped from his vicious temper and regular abuse and mutinied against him, keelhauling him thrice before throwing him into the sea. This was meant to be an execution- keelhauling, or dragging a sailor around the keel of a ship to be cut by the barnacles growing on it and hit against the ship's hull, is traumatic even when it's only done once and the victim is taken on board the ship afterward. But Alain survived, and washed up on the shores of a small island in the mists. Vampire bats came to drink the blood from his wounds, and Alain survived in turn by eating them- which turned him into a werebat.

Alain thus recovered from his keelhauling, but physical health was a cold comfort as he soon found that even with the flight he gained as a werebat, he could not leave his lonesome island. Driven mad by the isolation and cut off from the sea, he now vents his frustrations on those who sail as he no longer can. His island contains a lighthouse, but as with many things in Ravenloft, it's a trap in the guise of something helpful. Anyone, even outside the Mists, who investigates the light is drawn to the hazardous waters near his lighthouse, where most are shipwrecked. If any survivors somehow make it to shore, Alain will greet them. He'll be quite friendly, at first- he's starved for company and news of the outside world. But he's even more starved for flesh, and within a few days at most he will attack and kill them.

===Captain Pieter van Riese===
Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Originally from Gothic Earth's version of the Netherlands, Pieter was a ship's captain obsessed with finding the legendary Northwest Passage. When his ship was sunk in an encounter with an iceberg, he offered his own life along with the lives of his crew to any being who could help them forward, and the Dark Powers answered him. Naturally, they didn't actually give him what he wanted.

Pieter is now a ghost, and the captain of the ghost ship ''The Relentless''. He has the power to summon the ghosts of those who killed others and then were killed in the Sea of Sorrows to crew his ship, and can sail anywhere in his domain. However, he can no longer explore as he wishes, since the island domains in the Sea of Sorrows move around and he can only sail to land that he's chartered to go to.

Pieter is Ravenloft's answer to the legends of the ''Flying Dutchman'', a ghost ship that is unable to make port and sails the seas forever. Most versions say that the curse is because of her captain, Hendrick van der Decken, refusing to go to port while crossing the Cape of Good Hope, declaring that he would not make port "though I should beat about here till the day of judgment". He got shipwrecked in a storm, and the ghost of his ship is now bound by his curse to never be able to rest at port.

===Councilor Dominic d'Honaire===
The darklord of Dementlieu. Originally born in Mordentshire, Dominic led his nanny to suicide at age 7 and then manipulated his family to move away to avoid the Mordentshire police, with the mists giving him the domain of Dementlieu. Dominic is not the domain's temporal leader but does serve as an adviser for Marcel Guignol, Dementlieu's head of state. However, Dominic has much more power than his official position would suggest. The darklord's power is domination over the minds of other people on a prodigious scale. A great many in the land, including its recognized head, are his obedients and through this network he knows whatever goes on in his land.

His personal curse is that any woman he woos sees him as more repulsive the more he is attracted to her. Also, for some time his rule is challenged by an entity who is called (and virtually is) the Living Brain (re: ''Sherlock Holmes''' Moriarty), the last remains of Rudolph von Aubrecker, the youngest son of Lamordia's political ruler.

in 5e, the domain was revamped and the Darklord is now Saidra d’Honaire, though there is a plot hook that hints he's still around and trying to get his position back (then again Dementlieu is now a place where everyone pretends).

==="Death"===
Darklord of Necropolis (formerly Il-Aluk, the capital of Darkon). He is one of several minor Darklords that took over pieces of Darkon in Azalin's absence during the [[Grim Harvest]] and the only one of them to become a full Darklord after Azalin came back. Originally a clone of Azalin made by him as part of a convoluted scheme to bypass his curse, he was transformed into a negative energy elemental by the prototype version of the "Doomsday Device" Azalin thought would make him into a demilich. When it backfired, the massive surge of negative energy it released killed the whole of Il-Aluk's population. "Death" then claimed the ruined capital and its remaining undead inhabitants as its own, and after Azalin reconstituted himself Necropolis became its own domain. A shroud of negative energy still remains over Necropolis, which instantly kills all non-undead which attempt to enter its borders.

===Draga Salt-Biter===

Darklord of Saragoss, a watery domain where the only analogue to 'land' is 'places where the seaweed is clumped particularly tight'. Draga is a [[Therianthrope|wereshark]] pirate [[Cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] with a deep-rooted fear of sharks. Yes, it's ironic that he hates sharks while being able to turn into one. He knows. He got both his wereshark infection and his fear of sharks in the same incident; as a child, he was captured by a crew of pirates, who stuck a hook into one of his calves and dangled him into shark-infested waters, understandably traumatizing the kid. And after his own piracy and terrorism of the seas in Umberlee's name caught the Dark Powers' attention, they saw no reason to mess with a perfectly good case of irony and gave him a neat selection of new powers... all of which were shark-themed. He controls sharks, can only breathe underwater (though he also has a ring of air-breathing that allows him to surface for a few hours at a time), and his resurrection method involves his spirit being reborn via sharks. He's also becoming increasingly shark-like in mentality as time passes, a prospect which terrifies him.

===Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth===

Darklord of Dominia. Reknowned throughout the Demiplane of Dread as an expert on mental illness, few know the dark secret behind his knowledge. Terrified of falling victim to the heredity madness that plagued his family, Heinfroth conducted horrific experiments on his mental patients to deepen his understanding of insanity. One of these experiments turned him into the first cerebral vampire, a vampire subspecies that feeds on cerebral fluid instead of blood.

===Dr. Frantisek Markov===
Darklord of Markovia. Originally a pig farmer from Barovia, he grew increasingly obsessed with the anatomy of the pigs he butchered and began to perform bizarre experiments on them that wouldn't be out of place in a [[Haemonculus]]' laboratory. When his "subjects" inevitably died, he simply sold the meat without telling anyone what he had done to it first. Eventually his wife discovered his gruesome hobby and threatened to expose him, at which time she ended up becoming one of his experiments as well. After three days of vivisection, she finally expired- her corpse was so horrifically mangled that when it was first discovered it was mistaken for the remains of a monster. When Markov's involvement in her death became clear, the mists claimed him and made him a Darklord.

Fittingly, Markov's curse allows him to shapeshift into any animal form he wishes (save for his head, which remains human), but is incapable of assuming his original human form. As a result, he normally takes the shape of a gorilla in order to continue his increasingly deranged experiments without being impeded by a lack of thumbs. Said experiments culminated in the creation of the "[[Broken One]]s"- animals (and the occasional unlucky human) that have been surgically mutilated into a human-animal hybrid form and given a semblance of intellect, similar to the Beast Folk of ''The Island of Dr. Moreau''. Like said Beast Folk, they too are highly prone to reverting to their primal instincts and bestial appearance after only a few days.

===Easan the Mad===
Darklord and ruler of Vechor. Easan has the power to reshape the land, and even reality itself, within his domain. Combined with his capricious whims, his power makes the realm a place of constant change.

Easan is a short wood elf and former agitator for a war against Iuz the Evil. For his efforts, he was seemingly driven mad by the possession of a fiend. Now Easan only looks for a cure to his madness, but he is willing to tear many innocent lives apart, and maybe even reality itself, to find a cure. His vile research has focused on souls and soul transference. Among other monstrosities, his research created the dread mechanical golem from fellow outlander Ahmi Vanjuko.

It all started on the outlander world of Oerth. Easan argued the cause for war to his colleagues among the rulers of a tiny elf kingdom bordering Iuz's empire. To make an example of the upstart elf, Iuz ordered his agents to kidnap Easan. With Easan rendered helpless before him, Iuz bound a fiend to Easan.

The presence of the fiend within Easan began eating away at his mind. Many magical means of expulsion failed, including the divine magic of [[St. Cuthbert]]'s followers. In an effort to find a way to free himself from the fiend, Easan visited a far-off island of mystics. They managed to suppress the fiend for a time, but eventually the monks and their island were rent asunder by a disaster of mysterious circumstances. Only Easan came out of it alive. The cause of the incident was Iuz's visit to the island and his ensuing frustration at Easan's seeming mastery over the fiendish spirit within. Iuz brought about the magical destruction that wiped out the entire island.

Whereas Easan emerged from the disaster with his body intact, his mind had only deteriorated further. The fiend had returned, but Easan did not give up hope. Where religion had failed, Easan resolved to find a way to banish the fiend with perverse experiments. Easan sacrificed many lives in his pursuit for a cure before he was taken in by the Mists.

Eventually, Easan noticed he was in a foreign, if familiar, land where he was viewed as a god. Indeed, he now had the power to warp reality (albeit slowly) within his own domain. Although he enjoys this from time to time, for the most part he remains obsessed with finding secrets of the soul. For all his power, he cannot seem to best his own inner demons, for he has all but forgotten the reasons why he began his foul research.

In truth, Easan never had a fiend implanted in him at all. It was all merely a deception to throw him off balance. Still, Easan's mind locked onto it, and when others couldn't detect the nonexistent affliction, Easan turned to his own methods for finding a cure.

===Ebonbane===
First introduced in the Darklords sourcebook, Ebonbane is a villainous character strongly associated with the mythos surrounding the Shadowborn Family and the Shadowlands cluster. In universe, Ebonbane is a source of horrific evil that has been opposed by Lady Kateri Shadowborn and her kin for almost two centuries, going back to the Heretical Wars on the Prime Material Plane. Once a powerful fiend known as Lussimar, Ebonbane was conjured and trapped inside a sword by mortal spellcasters. Ebonbane struck back at its summoners and enslaved them. After Ebonbane killed Kateri Shadowborn, it became darklord of Shadowborn Manor, the former residence of its nemesis.

===Elena Faith-Hold===
Darklord of Nidala. Elena was a [[Paladin]] of the god [[Belenus]] that acted as a guardian of a land also called Nidala, but her devotion to Belenus was tainted by her fondness for the adoration of the masses. Following a great crusade against the forces of evil, the people began to scorn those who did not worship Belenus. The more zealous members of the clergy appealed to her vanity and drive to please Belenus, and soon she grew so fanatical that after the "non-believers" were wiped out, she turned on followers that she deemed unworthy, always finding some new target for her purges. For this, Belenus withdrew his support, but Elena never realized that she fell because her formerly [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies had blossomed into full-fledged self-righteousness- thus leaving her incapable of even considering that she might have gone astray from her god's teachings.

Believing her fall to be only a test of faith, she grew ever more ruthless in purging those who she deemed unclean, until she was eventually drawn by the Mists into the Demiplane of Dread. She didn't actually become a Darklord until later, when she started slaughtering entire villages because she saw more evil than good in them (not knowing that she was only looking at the worst parts of each town). At that point, she was given the domain of Nidala, which she runs as a dour police state, forbidding all practices she sees as evil while allowing her cult of personality to reach new heights. When she considers a town to be too corrupted, she and her followers destroy it, blaming the deed on the fictional [[dragon]] Banemaw. Ironically enough, in her domain the true dogma of Belenus is considered [[Heresy]], and her servant/"spiritual guide" Theokos (a fiend-like entity masquerading as a [[Cleric]] of Belenus) strives to wipe it out entirely.

As a Darklord, Elena has her paladin powers back, except they're from the Dark Powers, so they're warped in ways that Elena is in severe denial about (to the point where she's a straight [[Blackguard]] in some writeups). Her unicorn steed is now fiendish, she commands undead instead of turning them, her Aura of Courage is an Aura of Despair, she can only heal herself or her steed, and most notably her Detect Evil power instead detects strong emotions that others feel towards her (any emotion works, so someone who genuinely loves her will still be detected as "evil" with predictable results), leaving them vulnerable to her version of Smite Evil. Naturally, Elana refuses to believe that her Detect Evil power doesn't actually work as it's supposed to and insists that the inability of anyone else to use Detect Evil in the Demiplane of Dread is proof of their spiritual impurity. She is also able to "convert" foes to her side as loyal servants who will gladly die for her, which functions like an enhanced humanoid-only version of Charm Monster.

She is cursed with bouts of self-doubt, and once every week she must take a midnight ride as a chorus of voices denounce her for becoming one of the forces of evil she once fought against.

===Eli Van Hassen===

Darklord of the Endless Road, and a creation of the 4th edition to replace the infamously-dubious Headless Horseman and his Winding Road domain. Eli, unlike the Horseman, has an actual known reason to be Darklord, with the Horseman being downgraded to part of Eli's curse.

Eli was once a minor nobleman who ruled over a hamlet called Tranquility, despite having much grander ambitions. When his lands were ravaged by a hydra, a wandering horseman came by and slew the beast, being lauded as a hero. Eli was filled with envy as the huntsman received praise and admiration that he didn't, and his daughter falling in love with the man was the last straw. He forced the girl to claim that the Horseman had raped her, whipped the denizens of Tranquility into a frenzied mob, and executed the innocent man. Drawn to the Demiplane of Dread for this crime, Eli is now trapped on his estate, for the Headless Horseman, the spectre of the hero he murdered, wanders the road outside and will kill Eli if he ever steps beyond his estate's boundaries.

===Gabrielle Aderre===
Darklord of Invidia. A [[half-Vistani]] whose mother was raped by Drakov and was rejected by her fellow Vistani, she had always fantasized about her father's identity and resented her mother's unwillingness to speak of him, as well as her warning that if she bore a child it would end in disaster for everyone around her. When her mother was attacked by a werewolf, Gabrielle refused to aid her until she revealed the truth about her father. But when her mother did so, Gabrielle refused to believe it and left her to die. The mists took her after that, and she came to be cursed with an inability to cause direct harm to the [[Vistani]], either physically or magically. Soon afterward she came to become the temporal leader of Invidia as well as its darklord, an opportunity that allowed her to begin persecuting the Vistani in spite of her curse.

She took many lovers as Invidia's ruler, though she only truly loved one of them, a wolfwere called Matton Blanchard. However, she was later seduced by the incubus calling himself "The Gentleman Caller" and left pregnant by him. Her son Malocchio soon proved to be one of the Dukkar- one of the rare males of Vistani blood with The Sight. On its own this would be a cause for concern among the Vistani, as the Dukkar is effectively the Vistani equivalent of the Antichrist; however, Gabrielle went even further and taught him to hate the Vistani as much as she did. Ultimately she taught him too well, as Malocchio betrayed Gabrielle and took the position of Invidia's temporal ruler for himself. She survived due to the intervention of Blanchard, but since then Malocchio has been the ruler of Invidia, persecuting the Vistani far more effectively than Gabrielle ever could have done. The only reason he has yet to kill her is because he knows that if she dies, he will inevitably inherit her title of Darklord, which he has no interest in gaining.

===Gregor Zolnik===

Darklord of Vorostokov. The only known Darklord from [[Birthright]], Gregor is descended from Azrai, and lives down to the bloodline's negative reputation. Gregor was an excellent hunter, and back in Cerilia, his skills saved his village during an exceptionally harsh winter. Gregor loved being a hero to the people, but his talent for hunting couldn't work so well every winter. And so, to keep bringing back meat, he started hunting humans. This drew Vorostokov into Ravenloft, where the winter has continued ever since (though recently it has shown some signs of abatement). Gregor still "hunts" for his people, although they've started to cotton on to Gregor's lies and resent their dependence on him, they have no other choice, for Gregor forbids anyone else from hunting.

Gregor is a [[Loup du Noir]], and the boyarsky who support him are the same, as he infected them. His two sons are also nascent Loup du Noir, but the younger, Mikhail, wishes to escape him.

===Gwydion the Sorceror-Fiend===
Darklord of the Shadow Rift, and such an asshole that even the ''Shadow Fey'' think he's a monster. He is also responsible for their current state, as prior to Ravenloft, he was a powerful warlord on the Plane of Shadow, and to sate his ambitions, he kidnapped a bunch of normal fey, turned them into the Shadow Fey, and told them to create an interdimensional portal so he could use them as an army to conquer other planes. This worked as well as could be expected [[Derp|considering he had no mental domination of his creations]]. The Shadow Fey made a portal, alright... but it wasn't to the Prime Material and the armies that marched through it were actually a mass exodus of the Shadow Fey, hidden by illusions.

Gwydion eventually discovered the Shadow Fey's treachery, but it was too late, and by the time he got to the portal to stop them, the exodus was almost complete. The Shadow Fey king, Arak, held Gwydion back long enough for the Shadow Fey to all escape and seal the portal while Gwydion was going through it, trapping the Sorceror-Fiend. The other side of the portal led to the Demiplane of Dread, where the Dark Powers created the Shadow Rift to contain Gwydion further.

And that's pretty much how it remains. Aside from a failed escape attempt during the Grand Conjunction, Gwydion has remained stuck in that portal, unable to do anything but watch and send Shadow Fey an occasional bad dream.

===Haki Shinpi===
Darklord of Rokushima Táiyoo. He's a powerless [[Geist]] that, in life, was a powerful [[samurai]] and clan leader that forged a big and powerful empire. He felt pride in the fact that his clan and lands held together while others fell to discord, despair, and war, which he helped to instigate via manipulation and betrayal. Haki Shinpi somewhat lived by the code of Bushido but abused and exploited it to manipulate his nemeses, play them against each other, and run their hopes into the ground.

Shortly prior to Haki's death, he made it known that each of his six sons would inherit part of his conquered lands evenly. As expected, this went swimmingly for everyone involved. After his death, his children turned to bickering and then all out war against each other. Two of his children met their doom, and their islands were leveled by earthquakes before Rokushima Taiyoo was brought into the Demiplane of Dread.

Far from the influential and powerful man he was in life, Haki Shinpi can now do little to keep his sons from tearing his land apart in civil war.

===Harkon Lukas===
Darklord of Kartakass. A [[wolfwere]] bard from the [[Forgotten Realms]] unusual among his kind for his highly social nature, as most wolfweres are lone predators who only come together temporarily to breed. Seeing as how he couldn't get other wolfweres to agree to hang around together, he started focusing more on integrating into human society. He still hunted and ate humans, but he also gained a genuine love of human culture and of the idea of being somebody important. One day, for no reason since he'd basically been doing the same stuff any wolfwere does, just spending a bit more time in town in between kills, the Dark Powers grabbed his ass and yanked him into Barovia. At which point he went on an anti-wolf killing spree for, again, no particular reason. This attracted Strahd's attention, and he nearly killed Lukas, forcing the wolfwere to flee into the Mists, which gave him his own domain of Kartakass. Which, much to his frustration, is a tiny, rustic place where the most power he'll ever have is being mayor of a small town, so he's got the letter of what he wanted but not the spirit, making for a hollow victory.

The 5th edition version of Harkon Lukas is a [[Loup-garou]] instead of a wolfwere, and it changes some of the other details about him. As in the original, he had dreams of a [[werewolf]] society - an empire of werewolves, in fact - but that dream was dashed by the werewolf indifference to gathering in large numbers. So he tried to forge an empire amongst [[human]]s, this time actually directly getting involved; ultimately, he led a revolution against a king by faking his own death as a martyr to stir up riots, then using these to get him close enough to the king that he could burst out of the coffin his followers were carrying him around in, rip the king to shreds, and take the king's crown for himself... which was when the mists swallowed him and he found himself in Kartakass. His curse is also tweaked slightly as well; rather than being doomed to never rise above the position of mayor, he's doomed to never rise above the even less prestigious position of nearly-forgotten, washed-up performer.
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===Hazlik===
Darklord of Hazlan. A gay [[Forgotten Realms|Red Wizard of Thay]] who was publicly humiliated and stripped of his status by his female rival and her boyfriend, the latter of which he lusted after. As revenge, he murdered the guy, made his girlfriend eat his corpse, then tortured her to death as well, at which time he was then swept up by the mists. His curse is to suffer from nightmares of his now-inaccessible rivals defeating him with impunity and generally humiliating him every night, which has made him even more fixated on getting revenge against the Red Wizards. So he's crafting plans to cast a spell that will genocide all members of his race, the Mulan, throughout the multiverse. To escape being killed by said genocide spell himself, he's prepared to bodysnatch his female Rashemani apprentice when he's ready to use it.

The 5e version retcons him quite a bit. Once an ambitious Red Wizard with a habit of horribly scarring his rivals, Hazlik came to believe that his lover/rival, a man named Indreficus, was planning to betray him. In retribution, he captured Indreficus and subjected him to a nightmarish experiment that left him permanently transformed into a pain-wracked living portal. Hazlik presented what had become of his former lover as to the zulkirs with hopes to impress them, only to be told Indreficus did not betray him and he had merely been manipulated by the zulkirs into thinking so as a way to halt the ambitious pair's ascent. They then declared Hazlik’s transformation of Indreficus an abomination, and that as punishment, every rival Hazlik had defeated could exact a penance of their choosing upon him. In desperation, Hazlik fled through the twisted portal that had been Indreficus and found himself in the demiplane of dread, where he eventually found his way to a realm that knew nothing of magic.

As well as his old nightmares (which are now of Indreficus taunting him for his failures), he also has a new curse borrowed from the now-absent Azalin Rex, making him unable to learn any new magic. On top of no longer being able to advance the magical research that used to drive his life, he's also absolutely terrified that anyone will learn of his limitations.

===Hive Queen===
Darklord of the sewer domain of Timor that lies beneath Paridon, and a half-Marikith because somebody thought it was time to rip off the Aliens franchise. She wasn't always a monster, though. She was originally a spoiled princess who decided one day to scare her mother to death. To do this, she seduced a wizard into casting an illusion of her transforming into a half-Marikith, but when said wizard saw her with her real lover, he decided to spice up the spell a bit by removing the 'illusion' bit and ''actually'' transforming her. She now lurks in the sewers as the Queen of the Marikiths, regularly laying more Marikith eggs. But she fears being usurped even from what little power she has, so if any of those eggs hatches another Marikith Queen, the Hive Queen kills the hatchling.

===Illithid God-Brain===
The darklord of Bluetspur is an [[illithid]] [[Elder Brain]], a massive conglomeration of the brain of every dead illithid, merged together into a new, living, entirely alien entity. It's the reason using psionic powers in Ravenloft is a dicey proposition, as the God-Brain might notice and attempt to integrate you into itself. It's notable for having '''no''' attempt to justify its position in Ravenloft whatsoever, with the original writeup in the Red Box, the original Ravenloft campaign setting collection, literally saying that nobody knows why it's in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], what crime it committed to end up here, or even how it's actually being tormented by its stay here!

The ''Book of Sacrifices'' gives it a backstory and reason for its Darklordship. Its core persona was once a human psion named Seldrid, whose people were at war with the Illithids. Eventually, they began to win for good once the Illithid Elder Brain started to die, but unfortunately for them, Seldrid had come to admire the Illithids' power and discipline, and merged with the Elder Brain to revive it. This act of betraying his people to such a great evil caught the Dark Powers' attention, and as the Illithids sacked his home city, they drew the country into the Demiplane of Dread as Bluetspur, with the Seldrid-brain as Darklord. Seldrid's curse is an inability to transfer his consciousness as he once did or to integrate any new consciousnesses into himself. Now trapped as a giant brain in a pool with nothing but Illithid tadpoles for company, unable to make himself more mobile or gain any outside experiences, Seldrid has gone quite insane.

5th edition has its own take on the idea. In a nutshell, the God-Brain hails from the era when the Illithid empire was at its peak, performing whatever blasphemous experiments took its fancy until it literally thought something that was unthinkable. That is, it had a thought so blasphemous, so utterly inimical to reality itself, that even an Elder Brain couldn't actually think it. Becoming obsessed with this ineffable thought, the God-Brain began cannibalizing other Elder Brains to try and upgrade itself to the point where it could finally contemplate this mysterious thought-form. Instead, it just gave itself a kind of aggressive psychic cancer, which began fatally necrotizing the God-Brain's neural tissues. Aghast at its behavior and terrified of catching the disease themselves, the other Elder Brains pooled their powers and tried to erase the God-Brain from existence; thanks to the meddling of the [[Dark Powers]], they only succeeded in banishing the God-Brain to the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Now the God-Brain struggles endlessly to both find a cure for its disease and to manifest the alien thought-form still gestating inside of it, all the while subconsciously aware that there is '''nothing''' it can do to achieve either goal, but desperate to fight for every last moment of life.

===Inza Magdova Kulchevitch===

The current Darklord of Sithicus, replacing Lord Soth. She was born in Gundarak, on the night Duke Gundar was assassinated, and two years later, her caravan wandered into Sithicus, where they were trapped, although her mother Magda managed to bargain for protection with Soth.

Inza's dark mindset showed from a very early age. Even as a child she loved thieving and manipulating the giorgio of Sithicus, and for the most part stood aside from her tribe. Her only friend was Piotr, a boy 1 year her senior, and this wasn't such a good thing as Inza pushed him to join her in both emnity to the giorgios and bullying a boy named Nikolas for his kindness towards non-Vistani. Their friendship eventually came to an end when Inza allowed Nikolas to be brutally beaten and pinned the blame on Piotr. Inza also hated animals, since they were not fooled by her facade of innocence, and would torture and kill them on the sly. None of this disturbing behavior ever reached Magda, who doted on her daughter, but by adulthood her rampant kleptomania and unlikeable personality had alienated most of the other Vistani.

Inza became Darklord of Sithicus after betraying her mother and caravan to Malocchio Aderre, breaking the caravan's oath to Lord Soth in the process. She attempted to usurp Soth's power, but was foiled and as the surviving members of her caravan hunted her down, she leapt into a chasm to escape. The darkness within the chasm surrounded and embraced her, turning her into the new Darklord.

As Darklord, Inza exists as a force of corruption. Her curse is twofold- first, her form has become a mass of shadow, and she has to concentrate to look human. Second, she stole, manipulated, and was a general bitch because of her philosophy that everyone was as evil as her at heart. The presence of true heroes in her domain (to say nothing of the redeemed spirit of Lord Soth himself) has shaken her to the core, and despite all her efforts to stomp out the forces of good in her domain, they still exist as thorns in her side.

===Ivana Bortisi===

Darklord of Borca, and a reference to the titular character of ''Rappaccini's Daughter''. Ivana inherited the domain by poisoning her lover for cheating with her mother Camille (who she also poisoned). Thus, Ivana inherited Camille's domain, along with immunity and power over poison. This, of course, came with a curse- Ivana cannot turn her lethally poisonous touch ''off'', and thus will never be able to take a lover.

Ivana is best known for the creation of Ermordenung, humans infused with poison to make them super-assassins. The first of these was Nostalia Romaine, Ivana's childhood friend and the one to actually do the dirty work of killing Camille.

5e retcons her a bit, though not nearly as much as Borca's other Darklord. While the whole thing with her mother seducing her lover did still happen, there's no mention of her poisoning her lover and it's not the only reason she kills her mother. Rather, she murdered her brothers and mother in an attempt to force her father to name her his heir. When he still refused to do so, insisting that her cousin Ivan Dilisnya would be his sole inheritor instead, she murdered him and all of their servants with poison gas. She's still terrified of the possibility of her father's will being found, as that would mean that the business she's worked so hard to grow would go to her childish and depraved cousin.

Her poisonous touch is gone, with her curse now being the more mundane and psychological torments of boredom due to feeling like no one around her is her intellectual peer, and the fact that she is never given the respect she feels she is owed, always being doubted, second-guessed, and looked down upon just like her father did.

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===Ivan Dilisnya===

Co-Darklord of Borca, and former darklord of Dorvinia. He's a cousin to Ivana Bortisi, and shares many similarities with her, most notably his love of poisoning people who draw his ire. After he poisoned his sister (who he lusted after) and her husband, he became a Darklord. His curse is simple but effective; his greatest pleasure aside from killing was fine food and drink, so he lost his sense of taste, rendering all the luxury around him hollow and unenjoyable.

His similar nature and modus operandi to his cousin caused their domains to fuse together under the name of Borca during the Grand Conjunction. Both he and Ivana are immune to poison and can create any toxin they can imagine, but Ivana has one more gift- agelessness. Ivan is desperate to learn the secret to her immortality, and refuses to believe she has no idea how she came by the gift (the Dark Powers granted it). Unlike Ivana, Ivan doesn't create Ermordenung, but he does have one nasty trick up his sleeve: Borrowed Time, a poison that only he can create. It stays in one's bloodstream for life and causes lethal convulsions every sunset unless you've ingested the antidote, 'Mercy', which is also something only Ivan can create, that day. Most of his minions are thus held hostage, knowing that Ivan holds the key to each day of their lives.

5e retcons him heavily. While he's still the cousin of Ivana and co-darklord of Borca who envies his cousin's immortality, that's pretty much all that stays the same. Ivan was groomed from a young age to be the head of a noble family, but despite all the opportunity in the world he instead took to wallowing in childish depravity, his family ignoring and enabling his worst and strangest impulses as they hoped he would grow out of it. He of course did not grow out of it, only becoming more violent and immature as he aged. On the same night that Ivana Boritsi poisoned her family, Ivan learned of his parents’ intention to send his beloved sister Kristina to a prestigious boarding school, and murdered his entire family for it.

He now resides in the Dilisnya family estate, a twisted funhouse that he lures people to to torment. Those unable to escape are eventually forced to don the colorful uniforms of the Dilisnya household staff and become Ivan’s new servants. He rarely leaves the estate, instead communicating through letters and acting through his "toys," animate creatures of clockwork or cloth provided to him by the Dark Powers.

===Jaqueline Reiner===

Darklord of Richemulot. Appropriately to the name, she's a natural wererat, born to a wererat branch of the Reiner family. The Reiners followed their patriarch Claude into the mists, where he reigned as Richemulot's original Darklord, but eventually Jaqueline had enough of his abuse and killed him, taking on his title of Darklord in the process. And while that title came with neat perks like control over Richemulot, it also came with a pair of curses.

First, Jaqueline suffers from intense monophobia. She hates nothing worse than being alone, but her entire family is made up of evil wererats whom she ''also'' really hates, so being in their company is not that much better. Second, while Jaqueline falls in love easily, she will involuntarily shift into rat form whenever she's alone with someone she truly loves. And while that love is as genuine as anything Jaqueline has experienced, she can never muster up the trust that her lover will accept her as a wererat, and she almost invariably then kills him. She might make a good pair with Urik von Kharkov, but Darklords can never leave their domains and it's uncertain if she knows about him.

5e replaced her with the very-slightly-differently-named Jacqueline Reiner, details about which can be found in her own section below.

===King Crocodile===
Yes, Ravenloft even has Darklords that are talking animals! No, you cannot [[Furry|play as one yourself]].

King Crocodile is the savage and bestial Darklord of the equally savage and bestial Wildlands, which is based on Rudyard Kipling's ''Just-So Stories'' and ''The Jungle Book''. This talking crocodile was so bloodthirsty and ferocious to his fellow talking animals in the jungle, they begged the hairless apes (i.e. humans) to come and kill him, but instead of holding up their end of the bargain, the hairless apes just started destroying the jungle for resources and colonizing it. This drove the other talking animals into pleading for King Crocodile to kill the hairless apes, and he agreed on the condition that the other animals all loan him their powers, which they did with the exception of the Python (the "wisest of the animals") and the Fly (whom King Crocodile thought was too insignificant to matter).

King Crocodile did slake his bloodthirsty appetite on the hairless apes and drove them out, but instead of returning the other animals' powers when he was finished as he had promised, he instead returned to his old ways of gorging himself on the animal population even more wantonly and gluttonously than before. It was at this point that the Python told King Crocodile a prophecy, which was that King Crocodile would either be killed by one of the hairless apes or by something he thought was pathetic and beneath him. With this done, the Python and his fellow snakes left King Crocodile's jungle to its fate at the hands of Ravenloft's Dark Powers, who quickly claimed the land as their own.

True to the Python's words, King Crocodile is slowly dying of the sleeping sickness spread by the flies, and the only thing that might help him are the hairless apes. But he is unable to keep himself from attacking any who might cure his affliction, and might attack them even if they do help him. The other talking animals still live in fear of King Crocodile and will implore any player characters they meet to dispose of him, but the cycle of betrayal in this land is only doomed to repeat itself. As a result, even if the player characters succeed in killing King Crocodile none of the talking animals will honour their words and the other crocodiles will fight to the death to assume King Crocodile's crown (and his cursed fate), as "''gratitude is not a quality well-known in the jungle.''"

===Kas===
Darklord of Tovag. The infamous vampire who betrayed [[Vecna]] and cut off his hand and eye. Was drawn into the mists at the same time as Vecna and the two of them were at constant war with each other until Vecna escaped. It is confirmed in 5th edition that Kas is still in the Demiplane of Dread and also is unaware that Vecna is gone. He repeatedly sends out armies to attack Vecna which never return, leaving him increasingly frustrated.

In the [[World Axis]] cosmology from 4th edition, he's not a Darklord, but he ''does'' hang out in the Domain of Dread called Monadhan; because he's figured out how to freely leave the domain whenever he wishes, he's turned it into his own personal base under the nose of its [[dracolich]] Darklord.

===Lemot Sediam Juste===
Darklord of Scaena, one of the few Domains capable of traveling through the mists. Scaena is a theater house, and one that Juste worked at as a playwright prior to his becoming a Darklord. Juste was a well-known and talented writer of comedies and dramas, but this never satisfied him, as he wished to write tragedies. Unfortunately for him, his [[Grimdark]] always came out as grimderp, and the actors invariably played his tragic works as farces, since they weren't good for much else. Driven to a deep bitterness by his failure to fulfill his obsession with tragedy, he wrote one last play- this one designed to be a real-life tragedy that killed all of his actors, and when the audience booed this one too, he locked up the house and burned it down with them inside.

Now, as a Darklord, Lemot has ultimate control of his theater, allowing him to trap people in his plays and alter reality for these press-ganged performers, but all this is undercut because he can't believe any of it; for his Darklord curse, the Dark Powers have taken away his suspension of disbelief, forcing him to always see actors, props, and scenery for what they truly are instead of what he wants them to be.

===Lord Wilfred Godefroy===
Darklord of Mordent (the same place from the old Ravenloft II module). A nobleman who murdered his wife when she was unable to produce a son for him as an heir and then murdered his daughter for trying to stop him, and then framed their deaths as an accident. Their ghosts came back to haunt him for a year until he killed himself to make it stop, and when Azalin and Strahd inadvertently drew Mordent into the mists Godefroy (now a ghost himself) became its darklord. His curse is to be continually tormented by the ghosts of his wife and daughter just as he was in life, who tear him apart every night as they curse him for murdering them.

While he was formerly known to be rather passive as a Darklord, in recent times he has taken to enslaving other ghosts to do his bidding. In particular, he's had the mayor of Mordentshire under his thumb for years by holding the ghost of his wife hostage.
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===Maharaja Arijani===
[[Rakshasa]] darklord of Sri Raji, Arijani attained his position after betraying both his kind and his father, Ravana (or rather, the Avatar of Ravana), having received the scorn of the rakshasa for most of his life. Although Ravana is a deity venerated by the rakshasa, Arijani's mother was Mahiji, then high priest of the hated goddess Kali and a leader of the Dark Sisters. To compound things, the Avatar of Kali delivered Arijanni to a home of low caste rank. He lived as a pariah shunned by his fellow rakshasa and languished in a position of low social importance. This alienated Arijani from his own kind, such that he arranged the death of many rakshasa in the conflict with humans. Gradually, Arijani's manipulations became so great that the people of Bahru began hunting their former hunters.

Arijani's depredations climaxed with rakshasa retaliatory siege against Bahru. Although the city fell, the cost was massive casualties on both sides and the city left in ruins. Angered and disgusted by Arijani's actions, Ravana sent his avatar to dispatch his prodigal son. However, Arijani conspired with Mahiji and lured the avatar into a trap. Thus rendered helpless, Ravana offered Arijani a wish in return for his release. Ravana accepted the offer, wishing to become immune to the attacks of rakshasas. The wish was granted, but Arijani slew the avatar anyway. Such was the level of his treachery that the Mists brought Sri Raji into the Demiplane of Dread.

The Maharaja's curse is that, although he is a talented illusionist, Arijani cannot disguise himself in a pleasing form, as most rakshasa do. Instead, he can only assume despicable aspects, such as that of the viewer's worst enemy. Maharaja Arijani resides in Mahakala, in Bahru. There, he is served by the Dark Sisters, whom through him, must provide to Kali daily human sacrifice.

Beyond the threat of an all weretiger cult called "The Stalkers" that were huge fans of his dad trying to kill him, Arijani's greatest fear is the very weapon he used to kill the avatar with, knowing full well it's somewhere in the jungle and very likely to be used on him just like Ravana.

===Maligno===
Darklord of Odiare, and originally from Gothic Earth's version of Italy. In the same vein as Pinocchio, he was originally a marionette brought to life through his toymaker "father" Giuseppe's wishes for a son. Though beloved by the children of Odiare, the adults of the village did not consider him to be a "real" boy. He soon grew bitter over the discovery that he wasn't truly alive, and after terrorizing Guiseppe into making more [[carrionette]]s like himself he had them kill every adult at one of his performances. It was this act that drew Odiare into the Mists as an Island of Terror.

Later on, he planned to have the carrionettes steal the bodies of every surviving adult there so they would be forced to love him, but due to the intervention of the PCs in the module "The Created" he was forced to simply kill the adults off instead. The children now adore him only out of fear, and as they grow older they wonder when Maligno will come for them as well.

Maligno's curse is that he can never be human as he craves, as he alone among the carrionettes is unable to steal the bodies of others. Furthermore, he cannot kill Guiseppe because any injury he suffers is inflicted on Maligno himself. Instead, the old toymaker was driven insane and now exists solely to create more toys for his "son" to command. Should Maligno's body be totally destroyed, Guiseppe is compelled to rebuild it, with the foul puppet's spirit claiming the new body as its own.

In 5e, Maligno was originally called ''Figlio'', which at least is an actual Italian name and not literally calling him "Evil" from the start.

===Marquis Stezen d'Polarno===
Darklord of Ghastria. As Strahd is for Dracula, Dr. Mordenheim for Dr. Frankenstein, and Tristren/Malken for Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so is Stezen to Dorian Grey, of ''The Picture of Dorian Grey''. But unlike Dorian, Stezen was a piece of work before his cursed painting came into play. As a noble in an unknown land, he enjoyed sowing chaos and rebellion and assassinated many people, but his charismatic nature meant that he hung on to a good reputation. But after one particular attempted coup went too far, his king had enough. Consulting with his mistress, a master of dark arts, he laid a curse upon d'Polarno that would do the Dark Powers proud; trapping a good chunk of Stezen's soul in a painting, he robbed him of all his charisma, vibrance, and capacity for enjoyment.

In retaliation, Stezen poisoned the king and his family, which drew the land into the mists. But he wasn't yet its Darklord. That happened when he realized that, once per season, he could temporarily reclaim his soul from the painting- at the cost of up to 50 other souls, each granting him one hour of rejuvenation. Now, once per season, he'll invite every stranger in Ghastria to a party (he'll grab some peasants if not enough foreigners answer). The party is for him, and him alone. With the exception of a few guests that he debauches himself with/upon, all guests are exposed to the painting, giving him up to 50 hours of being able to enjoy himself again before he returns to his normal drab state. While this is when he's at his most dangerous, it's also when he's most vulnerable- when his soul is still in the painting, he's essentially immortal, but when he's whole, he is as vulnerable as any other (And ''unlike'' the original Dorian, killing the painting won't work until Stezen is dead).

===Prince Ladislav Mircea===
Darklord of Sanguinia. Ladislav's story is a ripoff of the Edgar Allan Poe classic ''The Masque of the Red Death'', with the prince abandoning his people to a lethal plague, and retreating to a closed castle with his friends. And like in the original story, the plague entered the castle anyway. When Ladislav caught the plague, he turned to alchemy in a desperate attempt to cure himself. This failed and he died, only to rise as a Vrykolaka (usually mindless plague-carrier vampires that feed on bodily humors) and become Darklord of Sanguinia. He still experiments with alchemy to cure himself of his undeath, but this is unlikely to ever succeed.

===Sisters Mindefisk===
The three [[Hag]] co-Darklords of Tepest, and based the "the three wicked witches" from folkloric stories. Three sisters who were left as babies for a humble farm wife who wished for daughters, but from their birth displayed mysterious traits. Most notably, after their mother died from the strain of caring for the three sickly girls (or possibly because they drained her life), their father (who had often voiced his dislike of "weakling daughters") tried to leave the three 2-year olds for dead repeatedly, but they always came back. Eventually he let them stay as long as they cooked for him and his sons. Growing up dissatisfied with their surroundings, they took to seducing, murdering, and eating travelers to build up a stockpile of money so they could ultimately leave the farm. This worked until one final traveler tried to turn them against each other, only to be murdered so none of the sisters could claim him as theirs. This was what ultimately led to their being taken into the Mists and stuck in the depths of a forest full of [[goblin]]s and witch-burning, faerie-chasing bumpkins. They still lure in any unwary travelers to their cottage, taking advantage of the locals' blaming the goblins for their victims' deaths, but otherwise have little influence on their domain.

The sisters consist of Laveeda, an Annis Hag, Leticia, a Sea Hag, and Lorinda, a Green Hag. Though they can shapeshift, they are cursed to always see themselves and each other as their true forms no matter which shape they take.

====Mother Lorina====
In the 5e version of Tepest, only Lorinda is the darklord, having imprisoned her sisters when they refused to let her make and rear a child despite how badly she wanted to be a mom. Which ignores the complete and utter lack of maternal feelings they had in past editions, but whatever. She desperately yearns to have a family, but is thwarted by both her own inherently controlling, murderous nature, her inability to trust that her offspring genuinely love her (and the subsequent smothering, demanding, overbearing way that this makes her act), and the curse that any child she magics up for herself is a short-lived, ravenous monster; she can only make [[hexblood]]s for other people.
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===Sodo===
Darklord of Paridon. A low-ranked dread [[Doppelganger]] who resented being born into a lowly clan and thus being prevented from rising through the ranks by merit. After acquiring a magical Hat of Disguise, he fulfilled this previously-thwarted ambition by killing the elders who ruled over the clans and impersonating them, while also offing anyone else who questioned him. For managing the impressive feat of committing a betrayal egregious even by doppelganger standards, he was claimed by the Mists and given Darklordship of Paridon, and nailed with three separate curses: inability to control his shapeshifting, a healing touch (which wouldn't be much of a curse to anyone else, [[Dark Eldar|but Sodo's a sadist]] and this along with the previous curse renders him unable to effectively torture people), and an extra dose of paranoia for flavor.

===Thakok-An===
Darklord of Kalidnay, formerly from Athas. She was a templar of Kalidnay's sorceror-king, Kalid-Ma. To help him ascend to dragonhood, she sacrificed her family for the ascension ritual- an act which, ironically, would ruin it, as the Dark Powers took notice and drew Kalidnay into Ravenloft, in one of the few occasions in which being in the Demiplane of Dread was an improvement for most people. But not for Thakok-An nor Kalid-Ma, as the failed ritual put Kalid-Ma into a coma. Thakok-An remains active, ruling the realm as a theocracy of Kalid-Ma, despite said lord being comatose and all her efforts being for naught.

===Tsien Chiang===
Originally from the continent of Kara-Tur on the world of Toril, Tsien Chiang was beautiful and powerful wizard, who hated all men due to her father's dismissal of her abilities. After killing him and disabling her relatives, she seized control of her family lands. She used her charm and position to marry a total of four men, each of whom fathered a child with her before she killed him and moved on to the next. Three of the daughters so produced were evil, with the fourth, Nightingale, being truly good-hearted and adored by the gods. Tsien Chang would go on to commit various evil acts, including the desecration of four sacred bells and four sacred trees, but her mistreatment of Nightingale is what ultimately led to her being taken by the mists. On the fourth time that Nightingale objected to her family's atrocities, Tsien Chang decided to do far worse than merely beat her as they had the last three times, and she and her evil daughters were taken by the mists as the torture began. Tsien Chiang imprisoned the living remains of Nightingale in the Tower of Broken Promises as the Mists tore I'Cath from Kara-Tur forever.

If you're wondering why the number four is mentioned so much, it's because it's homophonous with "death" in most Chinese languages and is considered bad luck in many east-Asian cultures.

Her 5e incarnation gives her such a radically different backstory that pretty much the only things that remain are the four daughters and a magic bell.

When Tsien Chiang was a child, her home was destroyed by invaders, forcing her to flee into frozen mountains where she expected to die. Luckily for her, she was found and taken in by a gold dragon who took pity on her, and she served him as an attendant in thanks for saving her life. While serving the dragon, she learned much of magic and medicine, growing to become an accomplished wizard. The dragon refused to teach her any truly dangerous or powerful magic though, knowing that she would only use it for revenge. In her studies, she learned of the Nightingale bell, an artifact that could make its ringer’s dreams come true -- but creating the bell required the scale of a gold dragon. Knowing her mentor would never provide a scale she attempted to drug him so she could steal a scale while he slept, but got the mixture wrong and not only killed him, but caused his entire hoard to be destroyed, with all that remained being a single scale. Chiang crafted the bell and took it to her home, where she used it to wish away the invaders, which instantly vanished. In awe and gratitude, the people elevated her to royalty and she became their queen.

She ruled well for years, enacting vast reforms and strict but sensible laws in pursuit of creating the perfect empire. She had a family, taking particular pride in her four beloved daughters. Though her kingdom was prosperous, her people eventually began to chafe under her strict laws and demanding orders and revolted. Chiang was swift and merciless in her attempts to quell the rebellion, but her ruthlessness only caused the resistance against her to grow. When she ordered her armies to kill the families of all insurrectionists, assassins struck Tsien Chiang’s palace and killed her family. Distraught, Chiang climbed to the highest tower of her palace, looked out over her burning dreams, and struck the Nightingale Bell. Rather than granting her vengeful wish, the bell cracked and spilled a golden mist across the land. When the mist cleared, Tsien Chiang’s perfect city was gone, replaced by the unreal prison-city of I’Cath.

I'Cath is a city divided in two: The true I'Cath of the waking world, and Tsien Chiang's impossible, perfect dream. In the waking world the city is a silent and chaotic labyrinth composed of surreal, knotted streets and citizens trapped in eternal slumber. In the dream the city is vibrant and living, a place of ultimate beauty and efficiency where all things move according to Tsien Chiang's design, and a nightmare of constant drudgery for her people. Every twilight, Tsien Chiang climbs the spirit-infested Ping’On Tower and tolls the Nightingale Bell. This renews the magic of her dream world and keeps her citizens asleep, but it also calls forth a legion of jiangshi, which emerge from their tombs to reshape the waking city’s mazelike streets in a fruitless attempt to match Tsien Chiang’s perfectionist vision.

Her curse is that while the dream is near-perfection in her eyes, that only makes the imperfections of the waking world all the more obvious and inescapable. No matter how many times she tries to bring the same order and beauty she sees in her dream to the waking world, I'Cath's streets grow only more twisted and labyrinthine. She spends as much time as she can with the dream-versions of her daughters though she knows they aren't real, and in the waking world she actively avoids the twisted reflections of her daughters that wander the true I'Cath's streets.

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===Tristen ApBlanc===
Darklord of Forlorn. A Vampyre (living vampire) born when his dad was turned into a vampire but refused to leave his wife, which resulted in their son being born a vampyre. Tristen's parents were killed by fearful peasantfolk, but not before his mom gave him to the druid Rual to be raised. By all accounts, Rual was a pretty good foster mom, but when he was fifteen years old, Rual caught him drinking the blood of a deer. Believing she had betrayed him when he saw her talking to other druids, he attacked her- only to get his ass impaled by a blessed deer antler she was carrying, and when he drank her blood, he was both poisoned and partially cured of his vampyrism by the holy water she'd just drank. As she died, Rual cursed Tristen to be trapped in the sacred grove where he killed her, and to (agonizingly) die and become a ghost each night, and rise as a vampyre each morning. This makes him one of the few Darklords to receive most of his curse prior to Darklordship, as Forlorn was only pulled into Ravenloft centuries later, when Tristen engineered a bloody civil war to take control of the land.

As it is now, Forlorn really lives down to its name; there's little there except savage goblyns, a few beleagured Druids, and Castle Tristenoira, where Tristen is stuck, along with the ghosts of his family. The castle is split between three separate time periods that adventurers can shift between, thought to be because of all the ghostly shenanigans. Because there's really not much to do in Forlorn besides exploring Castle Tristenoira and trying not to get eaten by goblyns, it has no real political importance and is ignored by basically everyone, despite being most likely the second-oldest domain after Barovia.

He gets some very minor retcons in 5e, but since he only gets a single paragraph there's not much in the way of details. Seemingly the only changes are that he's now a dhampir (which is really more-or-less the same thing as a vampyre) and that he was taken by the mists almost immediately after killing the druids.

===Vlad Drakov===
Darklord of Falkovnia. He was originally the leader of a mercenary band called the Talons of the Hawk in [[Dragonlance|Krynn]]. For their wanton brutality and bloodlust, they were taken into Ravenloft and claimed Falkovia for themselves (after a failed invasion of Darkon that was repulsed by Azalin's undead).[[Berserk|If this seems familiar]] then good, you're paying attention.

This rivalry with Azalin has since become part of Drakov's curse, though he seems unaware of it. While four other countries (that have themselves agreed to an alliance should Falkovnia ever attack one of them) surround him, Drakov considers them "women and fops" not worth the effort of invasion, obsesses over an enemy he has no way of defeating, and is forever unable to gain the approval and respect of the great military leaders that he has sought all his life. And even if he did somehow conquer Darkon, [[fail|no Darklord can ever leave his own realm]] so he would never actually get to conquer it himself. Another factor in his defeats is that his way of doing war is distinctly and doggedly medieval (no gunpowder, no magic), so on the rare occasions he decides to try his luck at conquering other neighbouring domains than Darkon (all of which are at a higher technological level than Falkovnia) his forces almost always get shot to pieces by firearms or, more rarely, blown to pieces with magic. Oddly enough, his realm may in fact be, on the whole, a net ''benefit'' to the other domains of the Core, as his penchant for overworking his peasantry/slaves (when he's not busy having them impaled for his entertainment, of course) means that his realm produces large amounts of grain and foodstuffs which he sells for funds to equip and train his forces, unintentionally making Falkovnia "the breadbasket of the Core."

In addition, Drakov may be unique as the one of the most "conventional" Darklords in Ravenloft in the sense that he is statted like a run-of-the-mill fighter-class BBEG, and much like this archetype he has no magical abilities aside from a few magical weapons and armour at his disposal, coupled with no ability to cheat death, and no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders (all of which are in line with his disdain for magic and the supernatural), except for a good amount of inherent magic resistance that will also work against beneficial spells (so if he's ever in a tight enough bind to require magical healing, he's screwed). However, PCs and DMs shouldn't mistake his one-dimensional combat abilities as a sign that Falkovnia would be easy to liberate from his iron-fisted rule via a [[Raven Guard|simple decapitation raid]]; the totalitarian and thoroughly abusive nature of his rule means that those he trusts enough to carry out his orders are all likely evil enough and think enough like him to instantly assume his mantle of Darklord should Drakov ever be killed, just like similar totalitarian regimes in real life can survive the deaths of multiple successive leaders. Truly liberating Falkovnia in a thematically appropriate way would require the PCs to either engineer a full-scale revolution, or otherwise ensure the complete destruction of his regime, much like truly destroying a cancerous tumour in real life requires removing or destroying every last cancer cell. And all of this says nothing about which neighbouring realm would end up absorbing Falkovnia on the off-chance it ever gets truly liberated, though at this point even Azalin would be a better ruler than Drakov given that the lich dispenses harsh but fair justice and otherwise leaves his subjects alone to continue his arcane pursuits.

5th edition got rid of him, since the developers found him redundant. He's replaced by Ledeska Drakov, and Falkovnia was reskinned with a zombie apocalypse vibe.

===Yagno Petrovna===
Darklord of G'Henna. The Petrovna family was one of those taken by the Mists when Barovia was absorbed into Ravenloft, and although they avoided Strahd's attention by hiding away in the mountains this in turn led to inbreeding. As Yagno grew up, it became clear to all that he was insane- he conversed with imaginary people and cowered from beasts that weren't there. One day, he was locked out of his family's home and had to take shelter in a cave for the night. When he woke up, he saw the name "[[Zhakata]]" scrawled on a wall.

Yagno concluded that Zhakata was the name of the god that had protected him when he slept that night and created a shrine to his savior. (In reality, the name was written by his brother as a prank and meant absolutely nothing.) At first he merely sacrificed animals to Zhakata, but then he moved on to sacrificing people. When he was caught trying to offer his sister's newborn baby to Zhakata, he was chased out of Barovia by his family. The Mists welcomed him to the domain of G'henna, where he became the Darklord.

Yagno is cursed to constantly suffer doubts about whether or not Zhakata is real. No matter how many sacrifices he makes or how many people he commands to starve themselves in the name of Zhakata, he can never quite get rid of his nagging disbelief and the worry that all his devotion has been directed towards a lie. This eventually led Yagno to call upon a wizard who claimed he could summon Zhakata; as he could not summon a nonexistent god, a nalfeshnee by the name of Malistroi answered the summons instead and told Yagno that Zhakata was just a figment of his imagination. The Darklord immediately flew into a rage and killed the wizard, while Malistroi later escaped to ravage G'Henna. Since then, he has merely redoubled his fanaticism in a futile attempt to dispel his doubts.

==Former Darklords==
You remember that section where the permanent death of Darklords is discussed? Well, it's actually happened in the past, though never yet to a band of plucky adventurers, and the results usually haven't been good. These Darklords for whatever reason no longer rule their domain, usually because some asshole killed them and was promptly saddled with their domain as the new Darklord.

===Bakholis===
Former Darklord of Invidia, and formerly a tyrannical king whose kingdom was claimed by the mists when he was spurned by a woman named Marta, and in return had her lover killed and eaten in front of her and Marta herself raped to death by his soldiers. As she died, Marta cursed him to be the beast he was inside and never be free of the blood of loved ones on his hands, which manifested as turning him into a werewolf. Unlike most Darklords, Bakholis said 'fuck this' to angst and [[Dark Eldar|embraced his curse]], descending to ever-greater depths of savagery until, to everyone's relief, the half-Vistani Gabrielle Aderre showed up and promptly murdered his ass, succeeding him as Darklord of Invidia.

===Camille Boritsi===
The mother of Ivana Boritsi and the first Darklord of Borca, who earned her position by poisoning her husband and his lover. She was cursed to be betrayed by any man she trusted, which left her with serious issues relating to men and a blindspot towards scheming women, which ultimately proved her downfall when her daughter Ivana turned the poison tables by killing ''her'' for sleeping with Ivana's lover. She was succeeded as Darklord by her daughter and murderer, Ivana Boritsi.

===Claude Reiner===
The first darklord of Richemulot. The patriarch of a family of wererats who lead his family into the mists to escape hunters, gaining his domain when his monstrous cruelty caught the attention of the Dark Powers. He was eventually killed when his granddaughter Jaqueline had enough of his abuse, making her the new Darklord of Richemulot.

===Duke Nharov Gundar===
Former Darklord of Gundarak, prior to being betrayed and usurped by Daclaud Heinfroth, who would later gain his own, separate domain. As Darklord of Gundarak, he enforced the worship of the malevolent trickster-god [[Erlin]] and taxed basically everything he could think of (with a special emphasis on the birth of girls), but little else is known of his rule. During the Grand Conjunction, Gundarak was absorbed by Barovia and Invidia.

But that wasn't the end of Nharov Gundar. He was a vampire, and though Heinfroth had staked him, he remained alive, but dormant. His skeletal remains somehow found their way to the traveling curio show of Professor Arcanus, where some complete berk went and yanked the stake out. This brought him back to life, though his time spent as a skeleton has reduced him to a near-bestial state, only vaguely remembering Heinfroth's betrayal.

===Lord Soth===
{{main|Lord Soth}}
The infamous Death Knight of Krynn was for a time the Darklord of Sithicus. More details can be found on his page, but suffice to say that the Dark Powers grew tired of him, and he was succeeded as Darklord by the [[Vistani]] Inza Kulchevitch.

===Nathan Timothy===
Darklord of Arkendale. There are more details on him in the section for his more important son Alfred, but suffice to say that Nathan was possessed of a deep-seated wanderlust, which the Dark Powers curtailed by cursing him such that he couldn't leave the river Musarde, lest he be crippled by land sickness. Nathan rolled with the curse and adapted so well to being a boatman that he outright lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction. He's still confined to river waters, but Arkendale has been absorbed into Alfred's domain of Verbrek.

===Vecna===
{{main|Vecna}}
Yes, THAT Vecna, the Maimed God; the guy whose eye and hand are still around for PCs to mess (and ''be'' messed) with.

The whole tale of Vecna's ascension to godhood is complicated, but at one point where he was 'merely' a demigod, he and Kas were pulled into the Mists after a bunch of meddlesome adventurers thwarted one of his plans. Not one to be contained for long, Vecna has the dubious honor of being the only Darklord to force his way out of the Demi-Plane of Dread after being drawn in by the Mists. On top of that, he managed to get himself 'promoted' to full-fledged minor God in the process, which is how he got the Dark Powers to kick him out due to their ban on allowing gods to influence Ravenloft. (The full story is recounted in the modules ''Vecna Lives!'', ''Vecna Reborn'' and ''Die Vecna Die!''.)

==Netbook Darklords==
These darklords represent the rulers of fan-made domains from [[netbook]]s such as the [[Books of S]], the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]], [[Quoth the Raven]], and other projects from the [[Fraternity of Shadows]].

===Ahasveros===
Darklord of Incitatus. Once, Ahasveros (male human) was the greatest scientist of his civilization, until the day his homeland was drawn into a great war against a rival nation. He invented the Adamas theory, a device that could be used to generate a mighty tidal wave to devaste the enemy's fleets and harbors.

But that wasn't enough for Ahasveros; he became obsessed with improving the device, banishing his assistants when they protested the potential dangers of doing so, cutting off all contact with those who might challenge his beliefs, and reducing the time he spent running his calculations.

The result was, when the device was used, Ahasveros lost control of it and the tidal wave annihilated ''his'' homeland as well, drowning him in the tower from whence he'd launched it.

Ever since then, the bussengeist he became has lingered in his tower, unable to decide whose fault the mess was, alternating between blaming his associates and himself. Honestly, he's not much of a darklord, and this is reflected by how empty and meaningless Incitatus is. He currently occupies a limbo; too dull to be truly absorbed into the [[Demiplane of Dread]], but still too evil and in denial of what he did to be released, either.

Ahasveros' existence is completely tied to the remnants of the Adamas machine. Only by destroying it, which will unshackle his spirit, and performing a brief rite to the long-forgotten sea god of ruined Misenos, which requires lighting the lanterns in the temple and praying for both Misenos and Ahasveros, will his torment end.

If Ahasveros wishes to seal his domain's borders, those attempting to cross it are overwhelmed by misery and the urge to seek comfort, which only those outside of the border can give them.

===The Barons Gustav===
Darklords of Gustavstan.

Baron Gustav the Elder is a male human ghost who once ruled a small kingdom in his homeland. Though he had intended to pass his holdings on to his younger brother Klaus, the younger sibling had no interest in ruling, so the elderly Gustav took a wife and fathered a son, Gustav the Younger. Then, when his son was fifteen, Gustav the Elder stepped on a snake in his garden and was fatally bitten.

Gustav the Younger (male human [[Fighter]]) was inconsolable, his mind fracturing under the sudden death of his beloved father. In his grief, he refused to take up the throne, forcing his uncle Klaus to become Baron in his place - as well as to wed Ingrid, Gustav the Elder's widow and Gustav the Younger's mother, to secure the Younger's inheritance. Unfortunately, this gesture was misunderstood by ''both'' Gustavs; the Younger began to despise his uncle and mother for their apparent disloyalty, whilst the Elder's restless spirit also became incensed at Klaus's apparent betrayal. He seized upon the idea of exploiting his son's fractured mind to both weaponize him against Klaus and to make him vulnerable, so the Elder could live again by stealing his son's body.

This domain is basically [[grimdark]] Hamlet, in case it's not obvious already.

So Gustav the Elder manifests to his son, lies that he was murdered by Klaus, and convinces his half-crazed son that Klaus wants to steal the throne for himself. Klaus the Younger swallows this bullshit hook, line and sinker, and pretending to be even madder than he actually was, he began preparing to kill his uncle and his mother both - ignoring that Gustav the Elder wanted Ingrid spared, having figured that once he stole his son's body, [[/d/|he could reclaim her as his wife]].

This led to Gustav the Younger murdering the father of Elaine, the woman he loved, and driving her so insane that she ended up committing suicide by throwing herself off the battlements of the castle - which didn't do Gustav Junior's sanity any great shakes. Instead, it provoked him into finally battling his uncle, killing Klaus and his mother in the process. Which was when Gustav the Eldler showed up and, horrified at his wife's death, he revealed the truth about how he'd played his son for a fool. Enraged, the son attacked his father's ghost, and that was when Gustavstan was snatched up by the mists.

Gustav the Younger now burns with the urge to hunt his father's spirit down and destroy him, a task not helped by his paranoia. Every night, he is haunted by the angry ghosts of Elaine and Klaus, who spend the night cursing him out for their murders.

Gustav the Elder now spends his days haunting the local insane asylum, where Ingrid - who actually survived her son's attack, but was left a raving madwoman - is now kept. At night, he strives to manipulate others into killing his son.

Neither darklord can be permanently destroyed by violence; they regenerate and revive from destruction. Only by killing Ingrid will their resurrective regeneration cease... but doing this will cause the killer to immediately suffer a failed [[Powers Check]], whilst those who watch get to roll one.

===Benada Nameless===
Darklord of Vin'Ejal. Conceived when the Eye of Toldun, the fake prophet of a phony goddess called Appissa (actually a powerful half-breed [[yuan-ti]] [[psion]] magically held in stasis), used a potion given to him by his goddess to drug and rape a woman named Dillura Ogfenhauer, Benada's mother despised her daughter from the moment she was born. Only Benada's uncle, Dillura's 12-year-old brother Ekkim, cared for her, and he raised her throughout her life, even taking her off with him to be his squire when he went to war after discovering her nature as a [[psion]]icist [[weresnake]]. Even when they returned, however, Dillura wanted nothing to do with her bastard daughter.

Finally, the enraged Benada sought to confront her mother one evening, only to track her to the Shrine of the Eye. When she saw Dillura embracing the Eye, she realized that this man was her father. Filled with hatred, she grabbed a bone knife and fatally stabbed her mother, before psionically torturing her father to death. As she turned to leave, she found herself confronted by her uncle Ekkim, who had seen everything. Realizing she couldn't let him live now, a weeping Benada killed the only person to ever show her love, transporting Vin'Ejal to the Misty Realm.

Benada's curse seems to be an insatiable hunger that only human flesh can sate; she only gives in to its demands once per month, however, as she fears depleting her domain's population. If she wishes to close the domain, the waters around Vin'Ejal decrease in temperature to the point that would-be swimmers will freeze solid, whilst hail begins savagely pelting down from above.

===Baroness Ilsabet Obour===
Darklord of Kislova. This female human [[alchemist]] was born the youngest daughter and favored child of Baron Janosk Obour of Kislova, and remained loyal and obedient to him even as he descended into brutal tyranny and made a failed attempt to conquer a neighboring barony, only to be crushed, captured and executed. Before he died, Janosk commanded each of his three children to take steps to both preserve their family and avenge the loss of their power.

Of the three, Ilsabet was the most loyal to her father, honing her alchemical skills and delving into dark alchemical practices, focusing on hideous poisons and the creation of alchemical undead. She crippled and maimed many prisoners who had dared to rebel against her father's rule before his conquest by Baron Peto, created a unique strain of alchemical vampires, fatally poisoned her elder siblings for perceived disloyalty to their father's dying wishes, and finally married Baron Peto herself and bore him a son in order to gain the opportunity to poison him with a paralytic venom. It was only as she administered what she intended to be the final, fatal dose, killing her mentor (and true love) to do so, that the Mists finally claimed her.

Ilsabet currently suffers two curses. Her most direct darklord-related curse is that her desire for power and revenge are thwarted; though her husband, Baron Peto, remains incurably paralyzed, he also remains unkillable - no matter what she does, he always returns to life. As a result, she remains forever his regent, rather than the true Baroness of Kislova, which she regards as unacceptable; she yearns to resume the interrupted reign of her own family. Secondly, Ilsabet has become a vampire-like creature that feeds on pain, and must have one person killed every day in order to survive.

Unlike many Darklords, Ilsabet has no particular powers of supernatural survival. If you can beat an 11th level [[wizard]] protected by her guard of alchemical vampires, you can kill her.

When Ilsabet closes the borders, a poisonous green mist surrounds Kislova, inflicting irresistable damage per round until the would-be escapee returns to Kislova.

===Bethany Stone===
Darklord of Stonewall. A sad, broken, bitter woman, Bethany was born the daughter of a family of puritans, self-righteous and obsessed with sin. When her father discovered the child Bethany, a cheerful, whimsical young girl, had dreams of leaving the family home to become a dollmaker, he destroyed the dolls she had painstakingly constructed over years of work and beat her within an inch of her life. Later, when she came of age, he arranged her marriage to a man of high standing.

After long years of often-lonely marriage, pregnant with her sixth child, Bethany's father and husband were caught in a terrible accident, with the former dying and the latter being left in a coma. That was hardship enough, but as she cared for her husband, Bethany discovered his diary, in which he revealed he had only wed her to cover up his "sinful" nature as a homosexual. Enraged, Bethany began tampering with her husband's medicine to ensure he remained comatose, and then launched her own moral crusade, something aided by the fact she established her charismatic but broken-willed son Clarence as the town's minister.

When the Salem Witch trials broke out, Bethany eagerly spread their madness to Stonewall. But the tenth victim was the friend of Bethany's youngest daughter, Katherine, who unearthed evidence that this was really a way for Bethany to resolve a land-dispute between their families in the Stone's favor. When Katherine tried to intervene, she called out her mother for the cold, twisted monster that she was. Bethany promptly stabbed Katherine in the heart, and that was when the Mists took the town.

Bethany Stone is now a [[harpy]], although she has limited shapeshifting abilities that let her masquerade as a human. Her curse is that she will be forever doomed to lose her children before they are fully ready, whether by death, betrayal or abandonment. Though she doesn't know it yet, as part of this curse, she will become spontaneously pregnant and give birth to a human child every 5 years. Both of her arms are permanently blood-red from the elbow down, although she considers it a sign of her righteousness and so doesn't hide it.

The borders of Stonewall are permanently closed; unless the departee has the approval of either Bethany or Clarence to leave, they will be struck by lightning bolts until they turn back. It's unknown if lightning immunity will nullify this border, but it's not explicitly countered.

Nothing explicitly says that Bethany cannot just be killed in a fight (and, frankly, Stonewall is described as the kind of place where wiping out everybody is actually the heroic thing to do), but she ''does'' have an explicit method of redemption. If the party can find one of the dolls she made as a child, as one survived her father's wrath, and present it to her, she will break down in tears. If consoled and successfully reminded of her long-lost dreams, the rest of the town will break down weeping with her, and then Stonewall will slide out of the Mists and back to the prime material. On the other hand, if they fail, then she'll destroy the doll herself and become even more fanatical.

===Caleb Wicks===
Darklord of Wayward on the Bone Sands. Even at the age of 10, Caleb was a fearless, stubborn, trouble-making brat. The only thing able to scare him into obedience were stories of a local boogeyman: Black Hat the Swordslinger.

Caleb's transformation from mere brat to full-blown Darklord came when his family were hired by the lord of the distant Hangingshire, which required a long trek that passed through a desert region known as the Bone Sands. During this leg of the journey, Caleb's family were seperated from the caravan and veered their wagon over a tall, steep dune as a result of a sudden sandstorm. The wagon was destroyed, their horses killed, and Caleb's elder brother Horatio was severely injured. Though they initially settled in to wait for the caravan to send a rescue party after them, their food swiftly ran out and they realized they would have to try and walk out of the desert on foot... a journey that Horatio couldn't make.

The senior Wicks came to a grim realization: Horatio wasn't going to live much longer anyway, so when he died, the family would eat his body for sustenane before making their trek towards safety. They were content to wait... but Caleb found out about their plans, and taunted his brother with this fact; when Horatio began to scream and cry, Caleb panicked and stabbed him to death with a cooking knife. Caleb's parents were horrified, but ultimately decided there was nothing left to do. They ate their dead son, and then broke camp the next morning.

As they were traveling, Caleb found himself separated from his family by another sandstorm, wandering on his own for days before he stumbled across a small town called "Wayward". Mad with hunger, he murdered the first townsman who tried to offer him help, devouring as much of the man's flesh as he could before fleeing into the night. The next morning, he revealed himself to the horrified townsfolk and claimed that he had witnessed Black Hat kill and eat the man. Unable to believe a youngster like Caleb could be responsible for so monstrous a crime, the townsfolk believed him, and opened their homes to the young cannibal.

Caleb became a beloved fixture of the community... and then, the neighboring [[gnome]] community of Rumbleton was destroyed in an earthquake that crushed the subterranean village like an egg. They begged Wayward for shelter whilst they tried to rebuild, and the humans took them in. But rebuilding a new gnomish settlement wasn't easy, as Rumbleton had already been built in what was considered the most stable, accessible ground for miles around. With little choice, the gnomes began to put down roots in Wayward.

Which was a problem: Wayward already had troubles supporting its own population before the gnomes came in, and now things were worse than ever. The population increase led to a famine, known as "The Lean Times" by the locals, and tensions began to grow between humans and gnomes... tensions only fanned by Caleb, who began advocating the humans of Wayward should eat the baby gnomes born after the refugees settled in their village. Whilst initially this proposal was rejected, the gnomes took affront when they learned of its proposal at all, and relations only continued to deteriorate... especially because Caleb was continuing to egg things on, pushing his cannibalistic plan in secret.

Finally, it all came to a head; on the first night of the full moon, the Waywarders, driven mad with hunger, descended on the gnome shantytown and abducted as many gnomish children as they could, cannibalizing them in a disgusting, bloody orgy. Over the next two days they massacred the surviving gnomes and ate them as well, then they ate the few Waywarders who had protested "The Feast", as it was dubbed. And on that final full moon night, as the cannibal villagers slept off their full bellies, Wayward on the Bone Sands was pulled into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Caleb and the other villagers are now [[quevari]]. They spend most of their time in an enchanted slumber, only waking when visitors come to town. Like all quevari, they are peaceful and innocent-seeming during the day, but revert to bloodthirsty cannibals at night, as the first three nights after outsiders arrive are all full moons - after those three nights, they fall back into slumber until disturbed again. It's unclear what happens if a survivor somehow avoids being killed on that third night.

Wayward itself has a couple of curses. Firstly, there are no children here; all of their youths were left behind when the village was pulled into the Misty Realms, and none of the women ever fall pregnant, save when Caleb is killed (we'll get to that). Secondly, all food and drink in the domain is inherently inedible - even foods brought in from outside instantly spoil, although the look and smell perfectly fine. Finally, none of the villagers will ever age beyond the day they were when they committed their sins.

Caleb himself is a 5th level [[quevari]] [[thief]] who wields an enchanted knife +3 of bleeding. He can Charm Person 1/day by speaking to them, and still carries the Triangle of the Feast - the triangular dinner bell he played before the cannibalism of the gnomes. This can function as a Chime of Hunger that only affects non-Waywarders 3/day, and can also summon 2d6 Waywarders to his aid at will. The other quevari only openly recognize him as their lord and master during the night, but still are fiercely protective of him during the day. He can potentially be driven away in fear by forcefully invoking Black Hat - this requires something like disguising yourself ''as'' the boogeyman or telling a Black Hat story, simply saying the name won't scare him.

If killed, one of the Wayward women will find herself pregnant within a week, and give birth to Caleb's reincarnation a month later. Caleb will resume his true form as an elven year old a month after being born. The only way to kill Caleb for good is to wipe out the entire town of Wayward, which frankly you should be wanting to do anyway.

Caleb can close the borders by summoning tornadoes that lash all around the domain's periphery, kicking up lethal sandstorms and making it impossible to flee.

===Cassandre Desesprits===
Darklord of Miseria. Born to a humble farmer's family, Cassandre was gifted with the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, which also made her a very effective seer. When this was revealed to her village, she became an immediate celebrity, and this situation - never permitted time to herself or any true friends, but also showered in displays of good will and thanks - twisted her heart. She became completely self-centered, egotistical and immoral, regarding all others as nothing more than things to use for her own amusement and gratification.

When a war broke out amongst the local villages over the ability to use her seer powers, Cassandre exploited this to become a veritable queen, feeding just the right predictions to all factions to keep the war dragging on perpetually for over two years, wallowing in opulence whilst others bled, died and starved over her. Inevitably, the war drew to its climax, with both factions preparing to launch a decisive blow with a super-spell; Cassandre manipulated them into both acting at the exact same time, figuring that this would cause the spells to negate each other and stalemate, thus preserving the war and her power. Instead, they magnified each other, resulting in the annihilation of the warring armies and Cassandre being literally blown into Miseria.

Cassandre's curse is, fundamentally, that she will never again enjoy the lifestyle she once enjoyed. Although surrounded by people who genuinely like and care for her rather than her gifts, she pines for the days when people doted upon her every wish and resents being forced to work for a living as a barmaid. Her [[diviner]] powers have dwindled and become almost useless, but her spiritual powers have expanded; she now commands incorporeal [[undead]] with the proficiency of a master [[necromancer]], and her life is supplement with the years drained by her [[ghost]]ly minions. None of her schemes to regain her "royal" status will ever work, and so she seems doomed to an eternity as a beloved but otherwise unremarkable barmaid.

When she closes the borders, Miseria is surrounded by thick red fog that causes those who try to leave to age and eventually crumble to dust, whereupon they become ghosts under her command.

If slain, Cassandre becomes a ghost herself, but then resurrects 2d4 days later. Only if she is confronted in ghost form by an exorcist of the local deity Saint-Ambroise who can denounce her for her crimes in life will she be banished from the world of the living forever.

===Coyote===
Darklord of Yatehcaa. Once, this animal god aided the First Man in protecting his American Aboriginal-flavored world from powerful monsters. But his greed, malice and cruelty led to him committing many dark acts, and so the gods declared him unfit to remain amongst their ranks. First Man took back Coyote's cloak of stars, condemning him to stay forever on the world and be vulnerable to the monsters he had once battled. But Coyote showed no regret, no compassion, no willingness to learn from his mistakes or to try and make amends, and so he found himself trapped in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Ever since, he has continued his old ways, playing cruel, malicious tricks on the people of Yatehcaa, all the while trying to distract himself from how afraid he is that some day, he might be caught and killed by "The Dark Watchers", the antediluvian monsters whom he once battled alongside First Man.

Technically, nothing protects Coyote from death, but between his lack of shame and utter cowardice combined with his powerful magical abilities, actually killing him in a fight is easier said than done.

===Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez===
Darklord of Resistencia. Born the son of a once-great noble family in the Holy Republic of Aragona, Santiago's family had fallen in stature to such a degree that the impoverished patricians had mortaged their lands to the hilt and lived a life barely above that of their peasant tenats. They scrimped and saved to send Santiago to court, but the Don of Quijada found himself a laughing stock, regarded as little better than a jumped up hayseed peasant. This only fueled a lifelong hatred for those lacking in noble blood.

Desperate to try and reclaim the respect he had been taught from birth his family name deserved, Santiago bought a commission in the army. He proved little better here than he had in the court; poor of health, average at best with the sword, and no genius in the command of men or the intricacies of tactics and strategy. His only saving grace was his thoroughness and dedication... but even this went sour, breeding in him an obsession with discipline, cleanliness and presentation, and a love of punishment so extreme that even the Aragonan army considered him a draconian tyrant.

Though Santiago managed to win a few fairly creditable actions early in his career, his faults quickly stole away what his successes had won him, sending him into a self-inflicted downward spiral of ever-worsening behavior and failures as a result. He was appointed as the governor a rebellious backwater province, and only made things worse as he extended the same tyrannical, brutal law he held over his military forces to the population.

Then he was offered the chance to take up governship in a minor overseas colony called Neuva Aragona, which was also currently rebelling. Despite recognizing that this was intended to be a sentence of exile, Santiago accepted, dreaming of reversing his fortunes. Instead, he proved the absolute ''worst'' choice for the role; a born-and-bred monarchist with no sympathy for the lot of the peasants, he ignored the legitimate grievances of the rebels and remained fundamentally convinced that the isle of Manzanilla - renamed "Resistencia" by the rebels - was home to a silent majority of good, loyal followers of the kings. Ignoring all opportunities efor a diplomatic solution, he launched into his trademark brutality, which only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the natives.

Among his many atrocities, he took captive the pregnant wife of the rebel leader Martin Jose Maconda, one Isabel de Maconda. Simultaneously smitten with her and repulsed by her loyalty to the rebel's cause, he alternatively cajoled her and brutalized her, culminating in his ordering that she would be permitted no midwife when she went into labor. The birth went bad, and both mother and child died.

All his atrocities were for nothing, ineptitude and his habit of overworking his never-great health led to him dying in his sickbed, on the very day the last of his depleted forced were overwhelmed and Neuva Aragona formally seceded independence. But even as he died, he cursed that the rebels must be defeated at any cost.

Santiago now exists as a ghost, cursed to forever mentally relieve every battle he lost on Resistencia and see with perfect clarity how he could have won. And, of course, he's also cursed that no matter how he schemes and plots, on those rare moments he tears himself away from his biter memories and dreams of glory to actually try and do something, his plans to re-conquer Manzanilla are doomed to fail.

If defeated in battle, Santiago reforms in his burial chamber below Castillo Ascension, although he remains trapped there until the next full moon. The only way he can be destroyed is if his personal sword is stolen from this chamber and used to deliver the death blow in combat.

When he closes the borders, the sea surrounding Resistencia takes on an eerie, unnatural calm; sailing ships cannot move, and rowers will find that they simply can't get more than a half-mile away from the coast.

===Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll===
Darklord of Immerabt. This female human alchemist could in many ways be considered a mirror to Dr. Mordenheim of Lamordia. Like him, she was born a scientific prodigy who had neither time nor patience for religions and matters of faith. When she was twelve, Dorothy's mother died in childbirth giving birth to a son, something Dorothy blamed upon both the local priest - for he had both refused to allow Dorothy to be present at the birth, despite her knowledge of herbs and medicines, for her lack of faith, and proven unable to save Lady Hemphyll's life with his limited divine magic - and her father, for he had listened to the priest.

This became the cornerstone of Dorothy's growing loathing for religion, something that grew ever stronger as she aged. She went abroad to study medical sciencies, [[transmuter|transmutation magic]] and [[alchemist|philosophical alchemy]], always seeking to refine her medical skills. She also visited the dark, seedy corners of society: brothels, dog-fighting arenas, drug-fueled parties and other such realms that further convinced her of the absence of divine intervention.

The kicker was when she met and fell in love with another medical student of noble ancestry; Hermann Leawly. Despite her feelings, she refused to marry him, for that would require submitting to a religious ceremony she wanted nothing to do with. But he bent under the pressure from his traditional family and returned to their home, something that enraged Dorothy, who now derided him as a weakling.

After a long, bloody war, a terrible plague gripped her homeland, and Dorothy came up with an idea for a new method to care for the terminally ill. She purchased an abandoned penitentiary on a small rocky island and converted it into a sickbay, hiring the best healers she could find (so long as they weren't divine spellcasters). One of those she hired was Hermann. She became ever-more obsessive, pushing her followers brutally, and gaining the first attention of the [[Dark Powers]]. When she perfected her prototype life support mechanisms and began abducting the terminally ill from her hospice to install them in the devices, trapping them at the brink of life and death in a state of constant, unrelenting pain, they grew anticipatory. But it wasn't until she got drunk at a party celebrating her newly produced plague vaccine, and revealed to Hermann her monstrous experiments, injecting him with concentrated plague serum and deliberately waiting for him to reach the still-incurable terminal stage of the disease before strapping him into one of her hideous living death machines that they seized her and transformed goal island into Immerabt.

Dorothy's curse is three-fold, and could be a considered a blend of Mordenheim's and Azalin's. Though she is well-aware of the fact that the local industries of Immerabt are poisoning the population, her attempts to plan and execute social projects to counter the pollution invariably fail due to being rejected or ignored. Secondly, she is kept so busy working her daily job that she cannot devote the time to furthering her understandings of magic and alchemy, preventing her from attaining the greater power she needs to pursue her goal of the ultimate curatives. Finally, she is unable to invent a vaccine to cure those suffering from the terminal effects of the plague, which means she cannot cure Hermann, who remains bound and suffering in his life-support in the depths of her sanitarium.

Unlike many darklords, Dorothy has no inherent abilities that make her unkillable, although her disease-bearing touch and biomechanical golem guards make her a force to be reckoned with in combat. She can regenerate, but she's vulnerable to fire.

If she wishes to close the borders of Immerabt, violent storms with strong winds and heavy rain surround the archipelago, whilst the waters boil with mutated [[shark]]s and other aquatic predators.

===Elizabeth Michelle Cole III===
Darklord of Hibernate. This female human [[vampire]] was born to the noble family of the Coles in the land of Hybernaya on Boram'ith. Despite her aristocratic lineage, she did not believe in the inherent superiority of her bloodline, and fell in love with a peasant boy, whom her parents had executed on trumped-up charges. This engendered a deep hatred for her parents in Elizabeth's heart, and at the age of 28, she left home to "think about things".

In her wanderings, she met and fell in love with a man named Alexander Berzinski, a [[vampire]] who converted her into one as well. They traveled together for seven years before parting, whereupon Elizaeth returned home, murdered her parents, and ruled their lands with an iron first for a decade.

During this time, she became a high priestess of [[Thanatos]], and attempted to lure a prophesied warrior known as "The Son of the Black Moon" into Thanatos' service. A task she delighted in, for she fell in love with him when she met him - a one-sided love, for he was devoted to his [[half-elf]] girlfriend. When he died escaping from his contract with the dark god, Elizabeth had him resurrected and attempted to lure him through a portal to the [[Lower Planes]], only to find herself alone in Darkon. Here, she fell afoul of the Kargat and fled to the Sea of Sorrows, only to find herself bound to the newly formed isle of Hibernate when she set foot there.

She has risen to power as the madame of the most well-respected brothel in Hibernate, leading a force of twenty eight call girls, all of whom she has turned into [[vampire]]s. Her curse is that she yearns to find the Son of the Black Moon and claim him for herself, but he has never materialized in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Elizabeth is unaffected by Hibernatian holy symbols, due to the combined facts that they represent a non-existant god and the lack of true faith endemic in Hibernate's people, but can be slain by a pine wood stake, or paralyzed with any other kind of stake. If Elizabeth is killed, one of her vampire prostitutes will fall into a month-long coma, during which she will physically and mentally be subsumed and transformed into a new incarnation of Elizabeth. It's unclear how this can be prevented.

When she wishes to close the domain, Hibernate's borders are choked by a thick fog that is impossible to navigate; those who try only find themselves circling back to Hibernate, no matter how hard they try.

The [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002 version of Elizabeth emphasizes her fundamental selfishness and cruelty, and also notes that her Undying Soul will allow her to possess any woman in Hibernate should all of her prostitutes be killed.

===Gatwe and Mr. Klein===
The domain of Nzari is home to two darklords, struggling for dominance.

'''Gatwe''' is the original Darklord; an Mwele man who was forever questioning the traditions of his people even from a youth and who burned to hold power. He apprenticed himself to the tribal shaman, whom he perceived held the true power, but his ambitions remained unchecked. When the most beautiful woman in the village chose to marry a respected hunter, that was the last straw; he forsook all the traditional limits on the shaman and began practicing sorcery. He used curses to sicken and kill those he hated, and goad the tribe into war, slowly building an empire from the scattered tribes of the Mwele. When suspicion began to fall upon him, he murdered his own family to try and throw it off, assuming the form of a leopard to plant a curse-bundle that would kill them all slowly and painfully. When he began to resume his human form, that was when the [[Dark Powers]] struck, trapping him in a twisted [[Broken One|nightmarish conglomerate form]], incapable of wielding his former magic, and launching Nzari into the Misty Realm.

'''Mr. Klein''' came to Nzari after its appearance in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. A fanatical devotee of [[Ezra]], he yearned to be a missionary, but found that goal stymied during the initial rush to explore the Sea of Sorrows; the merchants who controlled the expedition wanted profits, not proselytizing. Only when Nzari was discovered, with its savage cannibal tribes and vast wealth of ivory, did Mr. Klein finally find his desire within his grasp. He founded the Dementlieur Exploration Company, and led its first expedition to Nzari. The Mwele naturally resisted this foreign invasion, but Klein had the zeal of a fanatic and pressed on, resorting to ever-more brutal tactics as months of battle and disease took its toll on his followers. Eventually, he caught the attention of Gatwe, but managed to fight the feared "leopard-devil" off - an act that won him inroads amongst the Mwele. His followers swelled in numbers, and he seemed to make real progress in "civilizing" Nzari... until he realized that his followers were not worshipping Ezra, but Klein himself, and that those he conquered were merely paying lip service to his commands. Furious, he resorted to to ever-more draconian methods to "stamp out the heathenism", but succeeded only in pushing the Mwele to rebel. Klein counter-attacked viciously with his own forces, and responded by flaying every last one of them alive before he had them beheaded, their bodies cast into the river, and their heads impaled on stakes around his house.

In the face of such brutality, the Dark Powers aren't sure ''which'' of the two better deserves the title of Darklord.

Gatwe's curse is simple: he is forever cut off from the adoration and power he changes. No Mwele will have anything to do with one so obviously marked as a sorcerer, and he cannot change or disguise his form regardless of what artifice he tries. Mr. Klein, on the other hand, is cursed that when he sleeps, he sees the world through Gatwe's eyes, experiencing the broken one's life as he lives it. Both, ironically, share the curse of wanting to change the Mwele culture, but being completely incapable of doing so.

The two Darklords ''despise'' each other. Gatwe has become convinced that if he can kill Klein, his full powers will be restored to him. Klein, on the other hand, believes that Gatwe is a literal demon, a symbol of the savagery hidden in humanity's heart, and that only by "civilizing" the Mwele will the nightmarish dream-visions cease.

Unusually for co-darklords, they can both close Nzari's borders; Gatwe surrounds the domain an impenetrable thicket of vegetation, whilst those trying to flee against Klein's wishes find themselves lost in thick fog and eventually attacked by an endless hail of arrows.

Both darklords also have their own unique forms of immortality. If Gatwe is killed, one of the leopards of Nzari will become his reincarnation a day later. Klein, on the other hand, is simply impervious to all attacks not dealt with an ivory weapon (a ''blessed'' ivory weapon deals double damage!) and will not return if slain.

===Geren Horstadt===
Darklord of Seradan. Born the favored son of a minor noble family, Geren was a bullying braggart in private, but a charming and idolized peer in public. All that changed when, at the age of 17, he was struck by a strange wasting disease that crippled him irreversibly; he lost use of his legs, his muscles withered, and all his senses faded. Though his family bankrupted themselves to try and cure him, nothing worked. He spent fifteen years in his own personal hell, watching and envying those with normal lives, and resenting his family despite the love and care they still showered him with.

His true descent into damnation came when one of his brothers brought down a trunk full of books from the attack, and Geren learned one of his great-grandfathers had been a powerful [[wizard]] - one with considerable experience in summoning beings from the [[Lower Planes]]. When his family refused to hire a wizard to tutor Geren in magic, he decided to try summoning a [[fiend]] on his own. He called forth a [[yugoloth]], who was so surprised by the venomous manner in which Geren pleaded his case that he offered Geren a trade: the souls of Geren's families in exchange for the ability to "help Geren feel what others feel".

It was a bargain Geren made without hesitation. He hired an [[assassin]] to kill every last member of his family, other than his mother. In exchange, the yugoloth gifted him with the ability to possess others, which allowed him to vicariously experience life as a normal person again. He slowly began to rebuild the family's fortunes by using possessed thralls to commit acts of murder and theft... then the townsfolk began to suspect his mother was involved, and she in turn wondered if Geren was responsible. When she confronted him, however, Geren petuantly seized control of her mind and made her kill herself. But some of the townsfolk had just arrived to question her again, and they discovered her slumping over the infamous and now-hated cripple. Realizing that Geren had been responsible, they beat him with clubs and then dragged him into the streets, where the mob lynched him; hanging him from a tree and beating him to death as they burned his family's home and himself.

Such was Geren's rage at this fate that he returned from the grave as a powerful haunt - a [[Ravenloft]] strain of [[ghost]]. With his possession abilities enhanced, he used them to massacre the entire population of the village... which was when the Mists rolled in and claimed him for Seradan.

Geren's darklord status brings with it a cocktail of curses. The standard Darklord curse of being unable to leave his domain chafes him particularly, being that he yearns to explore and experience the world. Making matters worse is that he is now trapped in a realm of dullards, so docile, unimaginative and unfeeling that possessing them is little better than staying a ghost. For further insult, Geren can now only possess hosts for short periods of time, or else they die of a supernaturally induced fever, forcing him to largely avoid using his possession abilities.

Geren always reforms one week after being destroyed. Only if he is allowed to kill Wilhelm Braugh, the only survivor of Geren's hometown and the inspector who gave him over to the mob, will he cease to exist, having decided that there is nothing left to live for. If he closes the borders, supernatural exhaustion claims any who try to leave the domain, sapping their strength until they are left helpless.

===Henry Arlington===
Darklord of Arlington Farm. Henry Arlington was a farmer who obsessed about success. Inheriting his farm after the tragic death of his parents in a house fire, he killed his own elder brothers in a duel to secure his inheritance. He proved to be a demanding, overbearing farmer, and obsessed with successful crops; when an unexpected New Year's late frost resulted in damage to a significant portion of the crops, Henry flew into a rage, even though he had more than enough funds to weather this less-than-perfect year. In his rage, he murdered one of his farmhands, concealing the crime by cutting up his body and hiding it amongst the scarecrows on the property. That year, the farm bloomed with a record-breaking bounty.

The next year saw a similar pattern: the crops failed early in the year, but when Henry killed (in this case a stray dog), they suddenly reversed fortune and flourished. Henry became convinced that his farm would reward him with bounty only in exchange for blood sacrifices, and he began a yearly ritual of murdering some human victim and stuffing their dismembered body into the scarecrows. Over a decade of this grisly work, he soon had no farmhands left to sacrifice, and so instead he slaughtered his entire family for the sake of his farm.

That was the last straw. The grisly, corpse-stuffed scarecrows came to life and burned down all his crops, then dragged Henry out into the field and mutilated him, turning him into a fleshy scarecrow like themselves. That was when the Mists swallowed the farm.

In the present, Henry still tends to his farm as an animate corpse [[scarecrow]], only to find his labors undone whatever he achieves. In addition, every harvest moon, he finds himself human once more - and subsequently butchered by his vengeful scarecrow "workers".

Henry can close the border for up to an hour at a time by summoning a vast murder of crows that attack whoever tries to leave. After an hour, however, Henry is exhausted and must rest for 3 rounds before he can resummon the swarm. If slain, Henry remains dead until the next full moon or blue moon, whereupon he will possess one of the scarecrows in his domain and return to life. Theoretically, he can be destroyed forever by destroying all of the scarecrows.

===Hercules===
Darklord of Olympus. Born the son of the High Priest of [[Zeus]] in a theocratic nation ruled over by a collective of seven temples to the Greek Gods - Zeus, [[Athena]], [[Aphrodite]], [[Hermes]], [[Ares]], [[Apollo]] and [[Hades]], the man now known only as Hercules earned great fame in his youth by speaking up against the brutal repression of the priest-lords and championing the rights of the oppressed commoners. Although originally he sought peace, the overwhelming corruption opposing him led him first to delving into the murky depths of politics, and finally into leading a full-blown revolution.

This angered the realm's rulers, the conclave of High Priests known as the Council of Seven, who came up with three plans to ruin Hercules. The High Priest of Zeus sent his son cursed gauntlets that would drive him into bloodthirsty rages under false pretence of truce. The High Priestess of Athena sought to summon a daemonic entity that would grant the Council magical powers that would allow them to crush the rebels and prove themselves the true "Voices of the Gods". Finally, the High Priestess of Aphrodite arranged for one of her serving girls to be sent to seduce Hercules, with the ultimate plan of disgracing him by tempting him into committing the blasphemous act of making love in the holy ground of the temple of Zeus.

They couldn't have expected that Dejanira, the girl chosen by the Voice of Aphrodite, would fall in love with Hercules and reveal the ploy to him. Any more than she could have expected for him to revile her as a traitorous seductress, but hide his loathing and use her to deliver a strike against the Council as they performed the summoning ritual. At the height of battle and ritual both, Hercules turned on Dejanira and stabbed her to death before throwing her into the center of the Council, then beating his father to death as he was paralyzed by the sudden influx of magical energies from the rite.

The Seven Voices of the Gods were transformed into quasi-daemons in their own right, and Hercules became the Darklord of the realm now called simply "Olympus".

Hercules is cursed both with the erratic and dangerous rages from his braces, and in that he is haunted by the terrifying spectre of Dejanira, who still loves him even in death. Worse still, his reputation continually sours due to his berserk rages.

The only way to kill Hercules for good is to force him, the six "Living Gods" of Olympus and the Forsaken One (the half-daemonic ghost of the High Priest of Zeus) to meet in the abandoned temple of Zeus and perform the fiend summoning ritual again. Only if Hercules allows himself to be sacrificed as part of the ritual will his curse be ended - which will also strip the Living Gods of their powers and make them mortal as well.

If Hercules wishes to seal the borders of Olympus, a titanic lightning storm envelops the domain, striking down any who attempt to escape.

===Heresa Heri, The Vulture King===
Darklord of Tsuu-Y-Teke. Long ago, Heresa Heri was one of the great animal lords, powerful spirits subordinate to the greater animal gods, but he betrayed his master's wishes after being named ruler over the skies: when given the ability to create permanent light from enchanted crystals, rather than sharing this light with the world, he selfishly kept them for himself, turning them into a shining feathered headdress. But his treachery was uncovered by a human hero-shaman named Kanaciwe, who captured Heresa Heri and tore out the golden and silver feathers, turning them into the sun, moon and stars. But the appearance of the sun dazed Kanaciwe, allowing Heresa Heri to break free of the shaman's grip and kill him.

This act enraged his rival, the newly empowered Haloe-Tsuu (Sun Puma), who cursed Heresa Heri; never again would he be allowed to face the sunlight, or else it would destroy him. Though the Vulture King fled into the deepest cave, he was mortally wounded, and summoned his underlings to ceremonially preserve his body and spirit. As he died, he cursed all those who had robbed him of "his" treasure, from the humans whose shaman had taken his headdress of shining light to the skies themselves for being home to the sun and moon. Thus was the domain of Tsuu-Y-Teke born.

In appearance, the Vulture King is a white-feathered giant vulture with a dark red bonnet of dried blood on his head, sickly yellow eyes that glow in the dark, and a jagged, uneven beak that gives him the appearance of fanged teeth. He is an [[undead]] creature with powers similar to those of a [[mummy]], althoug he looks like a living bird.

As Darklord, Heresa Heri is trapped in his cavern lair except during True Night, the one period of darkness that comes to Tsuu-Y-Teke once per month. He has become obsessed with the idea that if he can amass a sufficient number of gems, he can reimprison the light and restore the endless Night that the world once knew... but he knows that to do so, he needs the ''exact'' number of gems as there are stars in the sky, and he no longer remembers how many that is!

In combat, Heresa Heri is a powerhouse and all but impossible to destroy without the use of sunlight or powerful magical light. Even then, if destroyed, his spirit will possess any giant vulture within a 13 mile radius, which will transform into the Vulture King 1 week later.

When the Vulture King seeks to seal Tsuu-Y-Teke, then impenetrable magical darkness gathers on the borders; those who try to escape instead get lost in the utter blackness and stumble right back out into the domain.

===Jarl Gravstein Hansen===
Darklord of the Northlands. This male human was born to the Gand tribe, son of the man who had founded the trade guild known as the Key, which was bringing much-needed prosperity to the realm. He railed against the tradition by which the Gand and Kosti tribes alternated ownership of the capital city of Miklaheim every five years, and was determined to keep ownership of the city for himself.

To do so, he launched a brutal campaign against the Gand tribe, taxing his own people into famine and ruin to do so. When they were devastated, he turned his back on the traditional religion of the seidmen, secretly siphoning away funds from the church who thought he was supporting them. Finally, he began taxing the trade guild to borderline ruin itself. Through his short-sighted greed and selfishness, the realm was drawn into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Secretly, Gravstein yearns to be respected and loved, but he cannot attain it - only if he returns all the land of the Gand to them will this curse be broken, which mechanically manifests as an automatic failure on any Charisma check other than Intimidation. He doesn't have any magical powers to preserve his life, but whoever takes up the mantle of leadership should he die will be cursed in the same manner.

Closing the borders results in a vast army of warrior spirits descending from the heavens and physically blocking passage.

===Captain Jacobi Robertsonn===
Darklord of Whal. Born a fisherman's son on an unnamed world, Jacobi grew up in seas that were plentiful with a father who loved him and loved his life on the sea. Then, when Jacobi was young, he and his father were caught in a terrible storm whilst fishing, during which the youth spotted a giant whale - a ''leviathan'' - playing in the rough surf. Play that ended with the breaching whale crashing right on top of the small fishing boat; Jacobi awoke washed ashore, scarred, surrounded by debris, and with his father missing.

Years later, Jacobi was commanding a trading galleon called the Sailor's Blessing with his beloved only son Abram when the ship was caught in a tropical storm. On the fourth day, the ship hit something in the water and began to sink, and during the scramble to escape, Abram was swept over the side and vanished. Spotting a leviathan in the storm, Jacobi blamed his son's apparent death on the creature, and in fact convinced himself it was the same whale that had killed his father.

Returning to port, he purchased a new ship, the Retribution, and became a whaler, venting his wrath on whales indiscriminately for the next decade. He was beginning to lose all hope of ever attaining vengeance when he finally encountered the biggest whale he'd ever seen - what he was sure was the leviathan that had killed his father and son. He personally led the hunt and harpooned the beast, only for it turn and smash his boat to pieces. Driven by rage, the wounded Jacobi hauled himself onto the beast by climbing the rope of the embedded harpoon; even as the surviving crew fled, he stabbed the whale over and over again, all the while cursing it, himself and his crew with all his soul... until everything went black.

Then he awoke and found himself on a strange, yet vaguely familiar, island; the land of Whal. A place of whalers who, to his surprise, deferred to him with their problems. He has since figured out he rules Whal, but is cursed to never leave it.

As a Darklord, Jacobi's curse is that he has become a rare oceanic [[therianthrope]]: a [[wereorca]]. He has distinctly mixed feelings about this form; he acknowledges the appropriateness of it, but he loathes being associated with a whale. He's also been cursed to suffer from intense sea-sickness if he ever sets foot upon a water-borne vessel, so whilst he does enjoy the freedom offered by his alterante form, the fact he can only hunt as an orca means he misses the thrill of commanding his own ship. Whilst normally he has control over this changes, he is forced to assume orca form on the days of his father's and son's deaths, days that are also marked by intense storms.

Perhaps his true curse, however, is that despite his obsession with killing the leviathan he blames for ruining his life, the creature never appears in the waters off of Whal.

When Jacobi closes his borders, the sea parts down to the sea floor, creating a 300ft wide chasm between the two bodies of water. Flight is, of course, impossible. Nothing explicitly prevents you from walking across the chasm and then using water-breathing magic to escape through the water on the other side, though.

Jacobi has no life-preserving powers outside of his immunity to any weapon that isn't +1 or made from whalebone. He is a 16th level [[Avenger]], however, which combined with the aquatic capabilities of his form makes him more dangerous than you'd think.

===Jinx===
Darklord of the Lost Wizard's Tower. This male black cat was once the [[familiar]] of a [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale, a caring and heroic individual, but a slightly neglectful owner, and also too hubristic for her own good. Jinx's journey into damnation began when she decided to use the cat as the test subject for an experiment in increasing the intelligence of animals.

It worked... but it also made Jinx smart enough to realize just how much more there was to Margaret's life than him. He became convinced that she had chosen him as her test subject because she simply didn't ''care'' if he lived or died, developing a burning resentment for it. Worse, he became mentally human enough to become convinced that he was in love with Margaret, and to be consumed with jealousy that she had other interests in her life.

When the region where they lived was attacked by [[barbarian]]s, Jinx went out of his way to assist Margaret, hoping to prove his worth in the hopes that she would come to reciprocate his jealous, obsessive love. She did not. Instead, she fell in love with a young warrior under her command. When she announced their upcoming marriage, he devised and enacted a plan to lead the man Margaret had fallen for to his death in battle. With no spellcasters in the region powerful enough to revive the fallen, Jinx was sure that this would be the end of his "competition".

To Jinx's fury, the death of her betrothed only filled Margaret with rage and suicidal grief. She prepared a super-powerful alchemical explosive, and made a personal assault on the horde's camp. Blind with fury, she waded through the ranks of the enemy, surviving many attacks only because Jinx fought like a hellcat to save her - to the familiar's growing rage as he realized she didn't even notice her efforts. Finally, Margaret planted the explosive, only to be attacked by the horde's leader. Though she defeated him, she was badly hurt in the process, leaving her helpless in the face of the coming explosion.

Jinx tried to pull her to safety, but was too weak to do so. Margaret told him to flee to safety, and expressed her happiness that in dying, she would meet her beloved fiancee in the afterlife. At that, the cat flew into a rage and revealed how ''he'' had arranged the warrior's death, blaming his actions on Margaret's decision to give him the curse of reason. Finally, he vowed that Margaret would neither see Jinx's death nor her beloved, raking her eyes with his claws and then fleeing his master, whose screams of pain were swiftly cut off by the explosion.

Unrepentant, yet fearful, Jinx fled all the way back to the tower where he and Margaret once lived, only to find it mysteriously deserted. He has remained there ever since.

Jinx waits endlessly now for people to visit the lost tower, hoping to claim a new master. His first preference is a female [[wizard]], then a female [[sorcerer]], then a female [[bard]] or any other arcane spellcasting clas, and then finally a male arcanist. He will do whatever he can to first persuade them to accept his presence, and then separate his chosen master from their former companions. His curse, of course, is that he will always destroy any relationship he establishes - if nothing else, he will end up killing the would-be master when they fail to meet his standards for loving and doting upon him. He prefers to use his retained spells ability, which allows him to cast Flesh to Stone one per day, to "immortalize" failed masters by petrifying them.

Jinx has no specific powers keeping him alive, so if you can kill the little beast, he's done for. He can't even close the borders properly, but instead just summons the Mists; those who flee will find themselves emerging from the mist elsewhere in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

===Warden Jonar Tamh===
Darklord of Karss. This [[Harmonium]]-sworn male [[aasimar]] [[Fighter]] joined the Harmonium at a young age, and very quickly moved up the ranks, attaining the position of Mover One at the age of 25. When he was selected to lead the experimental Great Prison of Ortho, a reformation-focused alternative to the [[Mercykiller]]-run prison of [[Sigil]], he saw it as a great honor... until it became apparent that the majority of the cynical Sigil-originated prisoners were unwilling to cooperate with the project.

Fearful for his reputation, Jonar Tamh resorted to increasingly brutal and draconian punishments, covering up the ongoing breakdown from his superiors and replacing subordinates who dared to question him. Growing convinced that some force - the [[Mercykiller]]s, the [[Revolutionary League]], or the agents of evil - was sabotaging the Great Prison, he descended ever-deeper into brutality. Finally, his best friend, the deputy warden Zet Keffen, tried to convince Jonar to return to the Great Prison's original premise; when Jonar refused, he declared he would bring this matter to the Factol of the Harmonium.

Jonar panicked and killed Zet right then and there, covering it up by blaming the murder on two particularly troublesome prisoners and executing them for it.

But Jonar couldn't cover it up forever. Hearing that his superiors were on their way to investigate the prison, and also that there were plans for a mass uprisiong, Jonar gathered 28 of the most outspoken and problematic inmates and hanged them all, one by one. As the last expired, a great hurricane arose from nowhere, forcing the Harmonium guards indoors. When the storm ended, the Great Prison now sat on the barren island of Karss.

Jonar Tamh suffers two major curses. Firstly, although he now has the ability to mentally control large numbers of people at once, he experiences all of the pain and misery of those he is controlling. Secondly, the vengeful spirit of Zet has become bound to Jonar's sword; if Jonar inflicts 12 or more damage with it against a single foe, Zet gains the abilities of a rank 2 ghost for one hour, allowing him to attack his former best friend.

The aasimar darklord cannot close the borders of Karss.

===Kasselheim Blightlyng===
Darklord of Vulnara. This [[gnome]] [[vampire]] had the misfortune to be born a gnome with no sense of humor. Whilst other gnomes were happily running round, playing stupid pranks and making silly illusions, Kasselheim was stuck fuming over how non-gnomish races didn't treat them with the slightest respect, all whilst the other gnomes reacted to his pleas for them to just try and be a little more serious by pranking him worse than ever. Eventually, he became a [[Transmuter]], bitterly thumbing his nose at a centuries old family radition, and withdrew to the deepest depths of their underground home. Then a few years later, a great flood washed through the gnome community and drove them up onto the surface, and the survivors counted Kasselheim as one of the dead.

They didn't know that Kasselheim had severely blinded and deafened himself in an alchemical explosion during his period of isolation. Nor could they know that many of those presumed dead in the flood were actually kidnapped by Kasselheim, who began experimenting in dark magic to steal their senses for himself, ultimately transforming them into warped monsters called "tactyles". But when they finally began moving back into the tunnels years later, they found out.

They formed a great war party with the aid of [elf]], [[dwarf]] and [[human]] adventurers from communities who had also suffered Kasselheim's depredations, and tracked him down to his underground fortress... only to be all but wiped out. Even though former friends (well, ''they'' considered themselves to be his friends, at least) and family were amongst the party, Kasselheim killed or captured them all. The last survivor was one of his sisters, a [[cleric]] of the gnome gods who threw herself to her death over a cliff whilst cursing him. An earthquake, and Kasselheim was knocked unconscious, rising to discover he had become a unique form of gnomish [[vampire]].

Kasselheim's curse is that he must ''constantly'' feed; his stolen senses of sight, hearing, scent and taste dwindle rapidly after feeding, until all that he has left is enough of a sense of touch to register pain. However, because of how fast his senses fade, and the isolated nature of his lair, he is effectively confined to a small part of his domain, and thus must go long, terrible intervals between feedings.

Killing Kasselheim can be done in two ways. First, if he is exposed to sunlight, he becomes incorporeal; if he is kept from fleeing back to his lair for two hours whilst in this form, he dissipates into nothing. Secondly, one can complete a complicated ritual, slightly altered from the traditional gnomish vampire. To achieve his permanent destruction, Kasselheim must first be immobilized by staking him with a silver spike through the heart. Then his hands must be cut off and boiled in a volcanic hot spring for 24 hours, after which his eyes must be gouged out and replaced with precious gems (100gp value minimum for each eye). Finally, his inert body must be carried to some place where it can be exposed to direct sunlight for an hour - but this will revive him in his incorporeal form, so the would-be vampire killer will need to use some method to trap him in the light for the full hour.

===General Martin Jose Maconda===
Darklord of Maconda. This charismatic male human was, from his earliest days, both adept at manipulating others with his natural charm and good looks, prone to surprising moments of generosity, and feared for his grudge-holding, horrifying fits of temper, and trait for cold-blooded manipulation. It came a great surprise to him when he discovered that there were people he could not dominate at will - and worse still, his mixed heritage would forever prevent him from joining the upepr echelon of Manzanillan society.

Thus, out of a mixture of pride and genuine interest, he became involved in the growing revolutionary movement, and ultimately he became the leader of the guerilla forces fighting against the brutal suppressionist forces of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez. When Maconda's beloved wife Isabel died in her childbed as a result of of Don Santiago's cruelty, Maconda went in search of the fearsome Warlok of the Peak, determined to have the power to triumph over his enemies.

And he returned with that power. Only to find, to Maconda's fury, that Don Santiago had died of fever in his sickbed mere hours before the last Royalist troops were defeated. Enraged, he ordered the Royalists massacred, cutting down a priest who dared argue against this behavior, and once the bloodshed was over, he left Resistencia for the mainland of Libertad, vowing never to return - a vow the [[Dark Powers]] were happy to fulfill for him.

A year later, he became the president of the Republic, and he soon established himself as a brutal tyrant as bad as the royalists he had overthrown.

The Warlock of the Peak transformed Maconda into a powerful [[wereanaconda]], and despite the many powers his state gives him, Maconda loathes this form, in part because he believes Isabel would be disgusted by it, and also in part because he is compellede to transform into a giant anaconda and feed on human flesh on the night of the new moon. Unusually, he cannot create other wereanacondas with his biter, but those who drink or touch his blood, even if they are spattered with it in combat, risk being turn into either were-fer-de-lanes or were-bushmasters, species of [[weresnake]] (treat as Neutral Evil [[werecobra]]s) native to Libertad and compelled to be loyal to him.

Maconda's curse is that he desperately yearns to be loved and adored, but his insistence upon doing so by repressing and removing all opposition or dissent merely stokes the hatred and fear of those he rules over.

He can be wounded by weapons made of silver or the wood of the caobo tree, and is sickened by both the smell and taste of guavas. If defeated in battle, Maconda doesn't die but instead assumes anaconda form and slithers off into the jungle, unable to regain his human form until the next new moon. There is no known way to permanently destroy him.

Maconda can close the domain borders of his island by causing the jungles and seas to become engulfed in massive swarms of lethally poisonous snakes.

===Miles Havelocke===
Darklord of the Eternal Torture. Born in a coastal city, Miles was pressganged at the age of 15, which ruined his life; he suffered from incurable seasickness, for which his fellows tormented him mercilessly and the bullying captain only made it worse by assigning him to the worst tasks possible for somebody with his condition, ordering him severely beaten when, inevitably, he threw up. With no aptitude for mathematics, Miles couldn't master the art of navigation, and so couldn't hope to progress to the higher ranks of the navy.

Twenty years of this treatment turned Miles into a bitter, miserable bully who loathed the sea and used what little authority he could get to exact vengeance upon those few below him on the ship's pecking order. Why he never simply fled during his first shore leave, nobody knows.

Eventually, Miles' captain was chosen to make a voyage into the uncharted western ocean, to Miles' dismay. But when the captain continued in pressing on in pursuit of ever-richer islands to the west, it led to the ship becoming lost in the waters and supplies running low. Miles seized this opportunity for revenge and began spreading rumors about the ship's officers hoarding food for themselves, ultimately leading a successful mutiny. When his ineptitude at seamanship led to them being becalmed, he led his mutineers to cannibalize the captured officers, gleefully rubbing their faces in their past abuse of him and coming to relish human flesh.

And then, as this supply of food began to run low, they finally spotted land... but, as they rowed frantcially to reach it, the Mists arose and swallowed the ship. When they cleared, the mutineers found themselves in the middle of a sea in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Overwhelmed by misery, they sat down and waited for death... and then, a fortnight later, they arose as [[ghoul]]s under the command of Miles Havelock, a Ghoul Lord, and began searching for food and land.

Miles Havelock suffers multiple curses. Firstly, he can never reach land, no matter how desperately he tries - at best, he can get a brief glimpse of the coast before the Mists immediately rise and teleport his ship elsewhere. Secondly, his seasickness has not only survived undeath, but intensified; he is '''perpetually''' seasick and also starving hungry, and these twin pains are why he has rechristened his ship "The Eternal Torture". If destroyed, his essence will inhabit the body of a living prisoner in the ship's hold and consume them from the inside out; the only way to end his curse is to kill him, rescue all of the prisoners, and sink the Eternal Torture, then make for land at full speed.

===Rafe Ungard===
Darklord of Callista. This male [[Half-Vistani]] [[Bard]] used his natural charm (and a complexion that allowed him to hide his hated Vistani blood) to swindle innocent women into marriage scams, start feuds amongst noble families for his own amusement, and delve into increasingly cruel and lethal manipulation. The backstory of poor Susannah Joson from [[Children of the Night]]: [[Ghost]]s is but one example of his misdeeds. When a party of [[adventurer]]s tried to bring him to justice, he continually slipped away, leaving the bodies of victims in his wake to torment them, and ultimately murdered his pursuers by burning down the inn they were staying in as they slept, which is when the Mists took him.

Rafe now possesses a strange form of immortality; he will ''always'' die once per day, no matter what steps he takes to try and avoid it, only to spontaneously return to life the next day. There is no known method to stop him from returning.

When he closes the domain, Callista's borders become a ring of boiling geysers that will kill anyone who passes through them, and which extend as high into the sky as needed to reach anyone trying to fly through.

===Sean Mako & Alice/Alison Marjory===
Darklords of Carcharodon Isle. Sort of a combination of Ladyhawke and the Little Mermaid. Over a century ago, a male human fisherman named Sean Marko lived in the village of Mistlington. One day, he discovered an injured [[merfolk|mermaid]] washed up on the isle's northwest shore, unconscious and bleeding from several wounds, including a severed left hand. Unable to turn away from someone in need, he brought her to his home and nursed her back to health. The mermaid, whose name translated into Common as "Alice", explained that she was the only survivor of a tribe that had been slaughtered by [[sahuagin]].

The two fell in love, much to the displeasure of the locals; the fishermen thought Sean was foolish for pining over a mermaid, and their wives were jealous of Alice's beauty, leading to them slandering her and Sean's relationship as "unnatural". Ultimately, a bunch of the village's men took it upon themselves to "repatriate" Alice; they came to Sean's house in the night, bludgeoned him unconscious, and carried Alice away. When Sean regained consciousness, he rowed desperately to catch up to them, but by the time he did so, they'd thrown the still-bound mermaid overboard.

Enraged, Sean snatched up a boathook and attacked the men who had assaulted him and the woman he loved, butchering them. When the carnage was over, he dove into the water after Alice, and then begged the full moon above for a fins and a tail so he might never be separated from his love.

Naturally, the [[Dark Powers]] chose to be dicks about granting this wish...

Both Sean and the revived Alice, now a human calling herself Alison Marjory, have become maledictive [[therianthrope]]s.

Sean is a giant [[wereshark]] who spends most of the month as an intelligent megalodon, unaware that he ''can'' transform and remembering nothing of his human life; only during the nights of the full moon and those nights directly before and after it does he return to his human form... which remembers everything he did as a giant killer shark. Because of his curse-spawned ignorance, the only way that shark!Sean can transform is if he is magically compelled to do so, such as by an Amulet of the Beast. He spends his days asleep and his nights hunting for food.

In contrast, Alison is a [[seawolf]] who spends most of the month as a human, but assumes her seawolf form on the nights before, during and after the full moon - the same nights when Sean regains his humanity. Like Sean, as a seawolf, she is completely ignorant of her human life. She keeps to herself, for the people of the isle still distrust and dislike her, gladly telling the nastiest stories they can think of about her to anyone who'll listen.

Neither darklord can be slain permanently through violence; they fully heal and return to life 1 round after being defeated. They also can't close the domain's borders, although since the only local vessels are small fishing boats that are no match for a giant shark or a massive seafaring wolf, they don't need to do much more than patrol the borders themselves.

Curing them simply requires breaking the curse by getting them to touch as humans, but doing so is tough; aside from the fact that they alternate human and monster forms, neither is aware of the fact that the other survives. Whichever of them is in beast form also refuses to get within 10 feet of the other one. They also won't willingly get within 5 feet of an Amulet of the Beast. So players are going to have to get creative to break their curse.

===Serenissa D'Aubliet===
Darklord of Romagna. Serenissa (female human spectre) was born an orphan; her father, a miller's son, was killed soon after her conception, and her peasant girl mother died in birthing her. She was taken in the local lord to serve as companion to his two daughters, but their initial friendship soured as they came of age and Serenissa realized the social gap between them. At the age of twelve, she was sent to the family of a neighboring lord to become a nursemaid to that lord's newly born twin children; Serenissa doted upon the children, and happily threw herself into their care.

However, she also became increasingly obsessed with fanciful daydreams about her origins, fixating on the belief that she was actually of noble birth and that her parents were both alive and desperately seeking her. She loved to tell these stories to her two charges... until the eve of their fourth birthdays, when, at the top of the Eagle's Tower, the two young children scolded her for lying and corrected her that she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a simpleton and a millerboy, both of whom had died. Mad with rage, especially when the twins revealed that everyone in the castle claimed that this was so, she pushed them off of the tower to their deaths.

Her skill at lying allowed her to escape being blamed for what she described as a terrible accident. For two weeks she festered on the idea that people were "slandering her" behind her back, and finally, two months after the day she had murdered the twins, she set a fire in the Great Hall that night, killing everyone in the castle.

Slinking away from the carnage, she made her way to the barony of Romagna, where she seduced her way into both a respectable position as lady's maid to the younger sister of Baron Etain and into the arms of Baron Etain himself. After several months of dalliance, he gifted her with a gemstone brooch... and then announced his upcoming marriage to the Lady Fialle, daughter of a neighboring lord, the very next day.

This pushed Serenissa over the edge and soon thereafter, she drew Baron Etain to a high tower, where she grabbed him and leapt off the edge, intending that they die together so she would not live alone.

But this time, with the interference of the [[Dark Powers]], her scheme failed. Serenissa hit the ground and was killed on impact, but her body cushioned Etain's fall, and so he lived. The madwoman's spirit rose from its grave as a ghost, trapped in an endless time loop; Romagna experiences only a single year, constantly recycling itself. It starts one week before the equinox Spring Festival, when Fialle arrives in Romagna for her upcoming wedding to Baron Etain. That week is spent in feasts and celebrations, capped off by a three-day non-stop revelry for the weding proper. Then, six months later, Fialle conceives Etain's child. And then, one week before the first anniversary of the wedding, time looks back and it is the week before the Spring Festival again.

Furthering Serenissa's torment, she is completely incapable of physically interacting with the people of Romagna, although she can manipulate their emotions despite the fact they cannot see, hear or touch her. She uses her emotional control to turn them into her agents of retribution, although she can't turn them against Etain or Fialle. This ability is defined vaguely, because she herself hasn't really studied her full capabilities with it.

Only visitors to Romagna are in true danger from Serenissa, because she is fully visible and audible to them, although still intangible. She invariably attempts to seduce the handsome male visitors to the domain, luring them away if they prove receptive to try and embrace them - doing so, however, results in her draining 1 level per 2 rounds, causing them to disintegrate... but if they break free, she attacks.

Serenissa is vulnerable to holy water, +2 or stronger magic weapons, and functional weapons made of gold. She is impervious to holy symbols, but can be turned with symbols of true love and matrimony - for example, the wedding rings of people who are actually married. If destroyed, she can reform at Etain and Fialle's wedding. Exactly ho to destroy her permanently is left vague, with her entry in the Book of Sorrows concluding with this paragraph:
::''Weapons forged from symbols of love (such as rings, charms, wooden wands, or ceremonial ropes used to bind a man and woman together at their wedding) may have greater effect, rendering her helpless or immobile. Her final death is likely to involve elements of her first experience; rejection, a long fall, and/or a noble lover. Heroes should beware, though—the dark powers may look with interest upon anyone who willingly transforms a symbol of love into a weapon of war.''

===Urdogen "The Red"===
Darklord of The Raging Tears. Male Human Spectre. In life, Urdogen (who first appeared in the [[Forgotten Realms]] splat "Pirates of the Fallen Stars") was basically Faerun's version of Blackbeard - if Blackbeard was a redhead. He terrorized the Inner Sea so badly that the nations of that region united to defeat his fleet, whereupon Urdogen fled and found himself spirited away by the Mists into the Sea of Sorrows... where he promptly hit a hidden reef and sank his ship, drowning.

Ever since then, Urdogen's ghostly vessel has sailed all the seas of the Misty Realm, cursed to never be able to come within sight of land and only able to rise from his watery grave during the nocturnal hours. Further stymying his desperate desire to reclaim his former reputation as a fearsome pirate lord, any who encounter Urdogen and live to tell the tale are cursed to forget his name.

To put an end to Urdogen, the ruin of the Raging Tears must be hauled up from the seafloor and carried inland, where it must then be burned completely to ash in a funeral pyre.

Interestingly, Urdogen's ghostly ship is actually able to return to the Inner Sea of Faerun on moonless, foggy nights in his homeworld, although he must return to the Misty Realms upon dawn.

If Urdogen chooses to close the borders of his traveling domain, the waters around his ship become rough and infested with a feeding frenzy of sharks; those who try to fly away will instead find themselves sinking into the water.

==5e Darklords==
As part of its general overhaul of the [[Demiplane of Dread]], 5th edition added a significant number of new darklords - some to replace former darklords, others ruling over brand new domains. Darklords who simply got retconned backstories and other traits have those details added to their entries above. Quite a few of these characters don't have much info on them due to being only mentioned in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book, most of which only have a single paragraph dedicated to their domain and darklord.

One unique trait common to all 5e darklords is that the personalized domain border closures of the past are largely gone; there might be cosmetic tweaks, but in general most 5e Domains of Dread all function the same when a person tries to escape through a closed border.

===Chakuna===
The replacement Darklord of Valachan, and one of the few 5e darklords to explicitly continue on in some fashion from the setting as it existed before. A female [[werepanther]], Chakuna belongs to a tribe of [[werecat]]s (specifically panthers and ocelots) called the Oselo, whom were hunted to the brink of extinction by Baron Urik von Kharkov, as he had come to fixate upon them as the most intriguing and challenging quarry. (Nevermind that Urik was originally "Blacula Strahd" with no real interest in "hunting the most dangerous game".) To save her people, she went to the literal heart of the domain and performed an unholy rite, cutting out her own heart and offering it to the land as sacrifice in exchange for the power to defeat Urik. Long story short, it worked; she ripped out his heart, tore him to pieces, and buried his still-living and curse-spewing head in the ruins of his castle before building her own treetop hunting lodge atop the ruins. Which is actually kind of badass. But now the jungle has become hungrier than ever, and she must regularly sacrifice human hearts to the land to keep the plants and animals from slaughtering all the Valachani (shades of the Wildlands, there), which she obtains through the "Trials of the Heart" - ceremonially hunting down designated victims with the aid of trained [[Displacer Beast]]s. She won't touch a fellow Oselo, but everybody else is fair game.

Chakuna can only be killed if her heart is found in the secret grove where she performed her dark rite and destroyed, but unless somebody assumes her mantle in the process, then the jungle will be free to kill everyone.
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===Flimira Vhage===
Currently very little is known about Flimira Vhage other than that their domain is the office of a detective agency which is actually is an extension of their own broken mind.

===Jacqueline Renier===
While this character is really just a reimagining of Jaqueline Renier, her minimally different name means she's technically a new character and gets her own section here. Besides being a wererat she has almost nothing in common with the original Jaqueline anyway.

A century ago, the Richemulot was a prosperous nation with a growing middle class. As the commoners began to gain more wealth and power, it caused the influence of the nobility to wane, a fact that Jacqueline Renier did not like. As her family seemed oblivious to the threat this posed, she began to look allies and heard of the Trueblood Council, a secret society of Richemulot’s eldest and most esteemed families. She spent a fortune finding a way to attain membership to the council, but discovered they were not actually nobles, but wererats. That same night, she was inducted into their ranks.

Renier swiftly accepted her new life as a wererat, her scorn for commoners expanding to include all non-wererats. Her first major act consisted of conferring the gift of lycanthropy upon her family. Only her twin, Louise, resisted, for which Jacqueline disfigured her and cast her out. Within the sewers of Pont-a-Museau, the wererats concocted a roiling pestilence known as the Gnawing Plague, which swept through the population. The disease wiped the nation's rulers and all other nobles save for the Reniers, and eventually Jacqueline stood as the highest-born noble in the land, and the nation’s de facto leader.

Though the people begged her to help them, she let them all die, deeming them unworthy due to their poverty and low birth. As the last human soul expired in Pont-a-Museau, the Mists rose, drawing Richemulot into the Domains of Dread.

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===The Inheritors of Darkon===
Similar to what happened during [[Grim Harvest]], Darkon currently has multiple Darklords while Azalin is missing. Specificly, there's only three of them this time.

'''"Baron" Alcio Metus''' is a female vampire, and the sister of Baron Metus - the vampire who got [[Van Richten]] started on his monster-killing path. Having risen to rule the criminal underworld of the Jagged Coast region, driving out her former Kargat masters in the process, Alcio burns with the desire for revenge against Van Richten for killing her brother. Not helping is that she's occupied Van Richten's ancestral home of Richten House and found that Van Richten's wife Ingrid still lingers as a [[ghost]] - but one who refuses to help Alcio in her quest for vengeance.

'''Cardinna Artazas''', the thrice-reincarnated leader of an elfin mystery cult in Nevuchar Springs, has damned her soul in the name of good: desperate to preserve Darkon, she has striven to revive the spirit of Darcalus Rex, the king who reigned over Darkon prior to the coming of Azalin. Unfortunately, all she has called forth is a necrichor, and she must constantly weigh her belief that what she is doing serves "the greater good" against the very real demands that the undead tyrant makes for ever-greater magical reagents and sacrifices.

Finally, '''Madame Talisveri Eris''' is an elderly but vibrant and intelligent aristocrat who accidentally made herself permanently invisible whilst seeking to make herself look younger. She uses her invisibility to her advantage, having created an array of different identities that she assumes through costumes and cosmetics. She's currently built up a cult amongst the younger members of Il Aluk's nobility, offering them an elixir on the night of the new moon that makes them invisible until dawn and then sending them out to commit crimes and mayhem that advance her cause.

Because none of them are true darklords yet, none of them have specific curses.

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===Isolde & Nepenthe===
Like the original Isolde, the 5e Isolde is an [[eladrin]] [[paladin]], though this one was an [[adventurer]] who battled [[dragon]]s and [[demon]]s that threatened the [[Feywild]]. This unknowingly led her into the machinations of Zybilna, an evil [[archfey]] who had lost a number of [[fiend]]ish allies to Isolde and her companions. Zybilna called upon her remaining pacts to arrange for a powerful [[incubus]] called "The Caller" (5e's retconned version of the Gentleman Caller) to corrupt and slaughter Isolde's companions; once that was done, the archfey stepped in and exploited Isolde's vulnerable state to become her "new best friend". She arranged for Isolde to become the guardian of a traveling fey carnival that also concealed a portal to Zybilna's realm... then, when Isolde began to tire of this role and their relationship grew strained, she secretly warped Isolde's mind with magic to ensure that Isolde would always prioritize the needs of the Carnival over her own wants. Even so, this wasn't enough to keep Isolde bound to Zybilna's reins. When Isolde encountered a traveling carnival from the [[Shadowfell]] managed by [[shadar-kai]], she made a pact with its twin managers to trade ownership of their carnivals, but only until next the two carnivals met. The shadar-kai agreed, and gave her the magical sword Nepenthe as symbol of her new status as owner and champion - but that wasn't enough for Zybilna. She used her magic to erase Isolde's memories of all things relating to Zybilna, and also sent fey creatures to forever follow and harass Isolde's new carnival.

To make things worse, Nepenthe was a cursed blade; an intelligent Holy Avenger used to executed thousands of criminals, not all of whom were actually guilty, the blade had developed a deep craving for bloodshed in the name of justice. In Isolde, it found an easily manipulated host; it awoke her memories of the Caller, and stoked her desire for retribution. In many ways, it could be considered the "true" darklord of the Carnival, especially given how Isolde constantly struggles to resist its naked, insatiable need to kill.

Isolde's curse, then, is to wrestle with both the imperatives of Zybilna and those of Nepenthe; she craves vengeance, but finds herself forever stymied by her need to tend to the ever-growing Carnival's need, as well as fearing that she may one day encounter the Carnival's true owners and be forced to relinquish it back to them. Explicitly, she could be saved if Nepenthe was taken from her, but its grip on her mind means she would refuse to abandon it.

===Klorr===
Darklord of Klorr. We know nothing about this darklord, but the name is taken from a character who appeared in the original Red Box; a clockwork-obsessed [[planeswalker]] [[mage]] who was infuriated that he couldn't synchronize and control his heart the way he could his clockwork creations. He made assorted dark bargains and ultimately came to rest in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], where he produced four cursed timepieces: the Water Clock of Klorr, the Moondial of Klorr, the Hourglass of Klorr, and his final work: the Timepiece of Klorr. This cursed pocketwatch gave Klorr extended life and increased arcane power, but required him to regularly charge it with murder, an impulse he succumbed to. It ultimately killed him when he failed to sacrifice a life to it on time.

The Timepiece of Klorr is given mechanical stats in the "Forbidden Lore" boxed set. Klorr's other works are statted in "Forged of Darknes":
* The Water Clock lets the user transform into a water [[elemental]], but might kill them in the process and also might leave them permanently trapped in elemental form.
* The Moondial grants powers based on the phase of the moon, but slowly transforms the user into a light-averse monster.
* The Hourglass can grant the user Improved Haste for 1 hour, but will age them 1d10 years and might also leave them under the effects of Slow for 24 hours after being used.

===The Last Passenger===
Darklord of The Mourning Rail. Nothing is known about this Darklord other than they were a VIP that delayed a train escaping from The Mourning, and threw out a bunch of passengers to make room for their self and their retinue, dooming the train, and they are now an undead being of some kind trapped on the train with the rest of the undead passengers.

===Myar Hiregaard===
Mentioned only in passing as the Darklord of the revised Nova Vaasa, She's basically a female Genghis Khan with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde; she was originally a female chieftain who united the nomadic plains-dwelling tribes of Nova Vaasa into a single culture, but she proved to be a terrible peacetime leader because she craved bloodshed and excitement. She tried to stave off her boredom with, quote, "brutal games" for a time, but ultimately she couldn't resist the thrill of war: she began fostering disputes amongst her vassal tribes so she had an excuse to lead her forces to crush both sides. This eventually got her claimed by the mists, and now she switches between two personas and possibly two bodies: as Mya Hiregaard, she rules with "strict fairness", but when she gets too bloodlusty, she transforms into her alter-ego of Malken and "sows discord across the plains".

...Whatever else you may think of it, at least it's more justified than Tristren "My dad got cursed and died, so I inherited his curse and became a Darklord without ever having to do anything to actually earn it" Hiregaard.

===Pietra van Riese===
A gender-swapped version of Pieter van Riese and the darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Not much is known about her due to being in the "Other Domains of Dread" section, and therefore only getting one paragraph to herself. She was a ruthless pirate with a fondness for keelhauling her victims, and now she's a ruthless ''zombie'' pirate who speaks through the mouths of her undead crew.

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===Ramya Vasavadan===
Darklord of Kalakeri. Ramya was hand-picked by her father, the last ruler of Kalkeri, to succeed him, but when he died, her brother Arijani contested her claim, leading to a brief civil war. Ramya would have killed Arijani then and there, but their sister Reeva counseled mercy, and Ramya conceded, not really wanting to kill her brother anyway. She enjoyed a brief period of unchallenged leadership, bringing a golden age to Kalakeri, but all the while Reeva was working behind her back to build up support for Arijani, culminating in her freeing Arijani and launching a second civil war. Enraged, Ramya suppressed the rebellion with brutal methods, executing captured rebel ranas and executing them in horrifically inventive methods that only made the people distrust her more and furthered the fighting. At the second war's climax, Arijani and Reeva sued for peace and Ramya agreed... only to be captured by her treacherous siblings and murdered. Before the court strangler garotted her in the central courtyard of her own palace, Ramya cursed her siblings as bloodthirsty beasts.

Once it was done, Arijani and Reeva further disrespected their sister by throwing her body into the ocean... an act that resulted in a terrible monsoon lashing Kalakeri for weeks. And then, when it was done, Ramya rose from her watery grave and marched on her former siblings, followed by an ever-swelling army of undead soldiers made up of all her loyal warriors who had fought and died for her. This time, Ramya showed no mercy, capturing her siblings and having them crushed to death by undead elephants.

...And then they came back as fiends - Arijani as a [[rakshasa]] and Reeva as an [[arcanoloth]] - and the civil war has raged ever since.

This civil war is the primary curse that Ramya experiences, with two secondary elements. Firstly, despite knowing better, Ramya ''always'' remains vulnerable to their lies and deceptions, which prevents her from truly ending the war. Secondly, Ramya's direct control over the domain is tied to her being seated in the Sapphire Throne, the symbol of Kalakeri's ruler; if the rebels oust her from the Cerulean Citadel, then her dominion diminishes until she can reclaim it. A second curse she labors under is the fact that, despite being shrouded in an illusion of life, Ramya ''knows'' that she's actually [[undead]], and this is apparent in her reflection, so she bans mirrors from her presence.
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===Saidra d'Honaire===
The future darklord Saidra grew up on a tiny farm, raised by her widower father, who filled her head with stories of her noble bloodline - he claimed to be a duke that had been ousted from his rightful throne by a vicious younger brother. Life was hard, especially as Saidra's sincere belief in her father's stories meant she alienated her peers, and only got worse when Saidra's father married a prosperous merchant woman with two daughters from her previous marriage, all of whom tormented Saidra and forced her to work as their personal servant, ala Cinderella. One day, a nearby duke perished, and when Saidra wondered if it had been her father's evil little brother, she was forced to confront the cruel truth: her father's stories had all been a pack of lies, and he was nothing more than a common-born servant who had fled to save his neck after trying to nick silverware from the duke's kitchen.

Saidra went to her mom's grave to beg her mother's spirit for help, which was when a "kind, grandmotherly figure" appeared and granted Saidra her wish, clothing her in a magnificent gown and fine jewelry before conjuring a stately carriage to carry her to the masquerade ball that was being held to celebrate the coronation of the new duke. We don't know who this figure was, but it's interesting to note that Saidra's version of Dementlieu contains a [[hag]] coven who basically love to pretend to be Fairy Godmother figures so they can mess with people. Anyway, off Saidra went to the ball, plotting to kill the new duke and claim his title. When she got there, she swiftly seduced the new duke, so successfully that she began contemplating if it mightn't be better to wed the duke instead. Things were going smashingly... until the clock chimed midnight and the whole party began dropping dead of a sudden, fast-acting plague, which rather put a downer on things. The kicker, for Saidra, was as she and the duke lay dying in each other's arms and he confessed that he ''wasn't'' noble-born, but instead a commoner who had been adopted by the previous duke. In fact, he was actually Saidra's long-lost brother.

Enraged at this second "betrayal", Saidra stabbed her brother in the heart with the last of her strength and then tried to stagger away from the corpse, only to collapse dead on the stairs leading into the palace.

And then she woke up as a [[wraith]], the new spectral queen of Dementlieu, a shabby and impoverished town whose populace struggle to fake the appearance of being more important than they truly are, all the while risking Saidra's deadly wrath: she '''hates''' pompous fools who pretend to be what they aren't, aspire to higher station than they deserve, and fail to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

...Well, yeah, she wouldn't be a ''darklord'' if she wasn't at least a little bit of a hypocrite, now would she?

Saidra is a wraith who has the ability to launch free Disintegrates at anyone who reveals themselves to be lying about who they are in her presence - we don't know much more than that, mechanically. She lives in constant terror of being exposed as a fraud herself, and in fact she can only be killed permanently if she is revealed to be a fraud first. Related to that, she lives in terror that her hated stepmother and stepsisters are still alive somewhere in Dementlieu. Finally, almost tangentially, her status as a wraith means her beloved masquerade balls are a complete waste of time, as she can't enjoy any of the physical pleasures associated with them.

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===Sarthak===
Darklord of the Ashram of Niranjan, Sarthak is an evil bronze dragon who poses as a mystic named Niranjan. He send agents into the Mists bearing his philosophical writings, which promise escape, peace, and enlightenment to any who adopt their teachings. Anyone who comes to his monastery is told that they must divest themselves of worldly goods, which are added to Sarthak’s hidden hoard. Sarthak then helps his victim enter a blissful trance that causes their soul to slip away from their body over the course of days. Sarthak consumes this soul and replaces it with a shadow, leaving the victim’s body under his control.

There's no indication of what his curse might be, since he's in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book and as such only gets a single paragraph to himself.

===Teresa Bleysmith===

===Viktra Mordenheim===
Basically, she's Victor Mordenheim but a woman... what, that's not good enough? Alright...

Viktra Mordenheim was born the daughter of a minor noble family, as well as a natural prodigy in medicine - she taught herself anatomy as a child, and by the time she was a teenager she held a doctorate ''and'' had been appointed as a preeminent researcher at a local university. For all her genius, however, Viktra was arrogant, not to mention completely lacking in empathy, compassion and moral qualms. To her, medicine was just a way to sate her burning curiosity about the secrets of life. Also, she hated magic, regarding it as as "stealing the powers of otherworldly beings and cheating the laws of nature", and thus inferior to '''SCIENCE!'''

In the best Frankenstein tradition, she grew obsessed with the idea that she could not merely mend the sick, but actively create and even improve upon life. So she began hiring the services of bodysnatchers to provide her with fresh human cadavers for her research. This is how she met Elise; amazingly, the cold, aloof methodical surgeon and the beautiful but reckless and spontaneous body snatcher became infatuated with each other, and the two women's relationship swiftly changed from professional to personal. When Elise contracted an incurable wasting disease, Mordenheim became obsessed with saving her, and her experiments increased in numbers - she also began having living victims actively kidnapped for her experiments. Through countless murders, resurrections and remurders, Viktra honed her knowledege. Finally, as Elise fell into the deep sleep that marked the final stages of the disease, Viktra poured everything she had learned from a thousand deaths into saving a single life, crafting and installing the Unbreakable Heart: an artificial super-organ.

But just as she was stitching the fabulous device into place, constables burst into her lab, accusing her of being behind the recent string of kidnappings and murders. In the struggle, the lab caught fire and flooded with acrid chemical smoke: Mordenheim's last vision was of Elise rising from her table, a golden light glowing in her chest where the Unbreakable Heart had been installed.

When Mordenheim came to, she was in a strange, icy realm called "Lamordia", where she was hailed as the greatest genius ever, but there was no sign of Elise.

Viktra's torments largely center around Elise and the Unbreakable Heart; she can neither recreate the Heart on her own, but nor can she find Elise to study it again. Secondary to this curse is that she is showered with the love, respect and attention of Lamordia, whose people view her as a luminary savior; to Mordenheim, they are incomprehensible, and she loathes their constant distractions from her work.
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===Vladeska Drakov===
In a nameless world, in a land torn between myriad bitterly feuding royal families, the woman named Vladeska Drakov was a skilled fighter and general, a mercenary who came to be known as the Crimson Falcon, the leader of a well-regarded mercenary army called the Falcon's Talons. Business was profitable, and Vladeska was raking in the loot, with dreams of retiring young, cashing in her wealth and reputation to buy land and a title. Then came the sacking of Veivere, where the Talons accidentally killed a very important figure. So important that the entirety of the aristocracy took up arms against the Talons, determined to kill them all for it. Well, Vladeska had no intention of just rolling over and dying, and she launched a bloody counter-attack that soon turned into a crushing campaign of conquest; her forces swept through the land, replenishing themselves with conscripted peasants and wiping out everyone stupid enough to stand against them. Vladeska made a point of impaling ''everybody'' with even the slightest drop of aristocratic blood that she caught alive. Through years of bloody effort, she became the ruler of an empire that stretched over the former patchwork nation, but as she crushed the last defiant village, the smoke engulfed Vladeska and her most elite warriors.

They found themselves in a new realm, and after swiftly conquering its capital city, Vladeska declared herself Empress of Falkovnia. Which was when she found the downside of her rule... namely, the armies of [[zombie]]s that would attack her new kingdom every month with the rising of the new moon.

Vladeska's curse, obviously, is the zombie attacks, which press her to her limit as she struggles to throw back the dead and preserve what she has, but it goes deeper than that. Firstly, she suffers a horrible sensation of recognition; every zombie, to her, seems to be the animate corpse of one of her victims or her fallen soldiers, filling her with the gnawing belief that the dead are coming for ''her'' specifically. Secondly, no matter what scheme or ploy she tries, the result is always Phyrric; her people haven't been wiped out yet, but there's a big difference between 'survival' and 'winning'. Finally, she '''knows''' that her efforts doomed - there is ''no way'' to hold Falkovnia against the dead, not with the forces that she has, and the only chance she has for survival is to take her people and flee during the peaceful period after the dead are repulsed for the month. But she's too stubborn to run, and so she keeps fighting her bloody, futile war.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Ravenloft]]

Darklord

2021-05-24T03:29:31Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* 5e Darklords */

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{{Topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

The '''Darklords''' are the rulers ''and'' prisoners of the plane of [[Ravenloft]], from the D&D setting of the same name.

You might be wondering "How are they both rulers and prisoners at the same time?" The reason for this is simple: each Darklord was pulled into the plane by the nebulous forces known only as the Dark Powers after an especially heinous deed (known in-universe as a "Act of Ultimate Darkness"), which reshapes a part of the plane into [[Demiplane of Dread|a realm tailored to each Darklord's defining crime]]. In its own realm a Darklord is a BBEG to rule over all other BBEGs, with absolute power over everything except whatever they desire most - whatever thing that might be, it is always dangled ever so slightly out of their reach by the Dark Powers to amplify their torment further. They have no mouth, and they must scream. (Thus the common description of the setting as "Hell, but not for you".)

=Common Characteristics of Darklords=
The exact abilities and backstories of Ravenloft's Darklords have varied from edition to edition, but almost all exert considerable control over their individual domains, and many Darklords also rule their domains (assuming the domain has a population to rule), either openly or behind the scenes. Many Darklords are also extremely dangerous to confront in open combat, or otherwise have hidden powers up their sleeves that can neutralize entire groups of player characters even without combat.

Keeping in line with the Gothic Horror theme of Ravenloft, the presence and persistence of insidious evil on this plane is the rule and not the exception. By contrast, lasting triumphs of good are vanishingly rare possibilities. As such, PCs aren't really supposed to go toe-to-toe with Darklords and expect to come out on top like your average group of [[murderhobos]] in other D&D settings. Trying to storm through Castle Ravenloft or Castle Avernus (not the Avernus of [[Baator]]) and expecting to put Strahd's or Azalin's skulls on a pike by the end of the play session will most likely either end in a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|total party kill]] or a fate worse than death, assuming the Dungeon Master is at all trying to run the game in a thematically appropriate way. At most, the PCs' efforts might preserve a bit of light in the ever-present mists and hope their activities stay beneath the local Darklord's notice. [[Grimdark|Heroes in this benighted plane are not guaranteed a peaceful death in bed surrounded by family and friends, or a life of glory and deeds well remembered.]] Openly going up against a Darklord is one of the surest ways of ending your character's life and career for good.

A few things about Darklords have remained constant throughout Ravenloft's editions, however. First, unless the Dark Powers will it, Darklords are completely unable to leave their own domains (note that certain "pocket domains" are in fact mobile and can travel between larger domains, but the Darklord within is still powerless to leave its own pocket domain as any other). If PCs manage to leave a Darklord's domain, that specific Darklord is usually powerless to personally come after them (but see "Closing the Borders" below). Second, almost every Darklord has a weakness, usually in the form of something or someone they desire above all else that they would risk anything and everything for, or a personal vulnerability tied to its curse that is usually well-hidden and hard to figure out. Discovering and exploiting these weaknesses are one of the only ways to accomplish some good in spite of a Darklord's efforts, but if it comes to that you've likely already attracted (or will very soon attract) a Darklord's attention and are in deep trouble. A couple other abilities common to Darklords are discussed below.

===Closing the Borders===
The vast majority of Darklords have the ability to force others to share in their imprisonment by supernaturally closing the borders of their domains, usually leaving no way out even with the aid of magic. Trying to leave a closed domain border will just result in a grisly death or automatic failure, and teleportation magic won't work past a closed domain border either. As Ravenloft was an early AD&D product, the designers gave this handy tool to DMs so as to stop players from just up and leaving without going through the DM's plot. Improperly used it can smack of railroading, but it fits well within the Gothic Horror genre convention of having characters get trapped in sinister and dangerous locales with no safe passage out, until a situation is resolved (or the Darklord opens the borders again, as in the case of Ravenloft).

The few Darklords who cannot supernaturally close their borders either lack that ability as part of their curse, or are unable to do so as part of their nature. Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia for instance disdains magic and the supernatural, and in line with this attitude gained no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders upon becoming a Darklord. However, even these Darklords have more mundane ways of barring escape from their domains, such as sending their numerous lackeys to patrol the borders, though thankfully this doesn't impede magical methods of escape. An even smaller number of Darklords are completely unable to close their domain borders in any way, such as Haki Shinpi of Rokushima Taiyoo who was cursed to become a powerless geist upon becoming Darklord (rather than becoming a Death Knight as he originally planned) and was doomed to watch everything he built in his life's conquest literally sink into ruin through the squabbling of his sons.

===Immortality===
Another reason to avoid going up against Darklords is that many of them have ways of returning from death, rendering all of your hard work moot. Even those who don't have explicitly mentioned methods of cheating death, like Strahd, generally have many contingency plans to avoid ever being at risk of getting truly destroyed. To make a bad situation worse, the Dark Powers appear to get occasionally "attached" to their playthings, and frown harshly upon attempts to take their toys away. In game terms, this means that certain Darklords are truly indestructible and can ever only be put out of commission temporarily, and even the attempt at doing so may end up drawing the Dark Powers' attention to whoever tries such a feat. Mercifully, these individuals are the exception, not the rule.

By contrast, some Darklords are fairly ordinary people with no significant combat skills and no more resistance to being killed off for real than their subjects. However, as mentioned above, even these seemingly vulnerable BBEGs often still have the means or minions to deal with a bunch of murderhobos, and most of these non-combat-focused Darklords are still savvy enough to be wary of any potential threats to their survival, and to nip those threats in the bud via underhanded means.

Outside of these extremes, permanently destroying most Darklords requires either killing one in a very specific manner and/or destroying a Darklord's means of cheating death (which in some cases might be nigh-impossible, such as killing every specimen of a very numerous type of creature in a domain before confronting the Darklord). Finding out this information is likely to require a good deal of questing and research to find out, but can make for a great campaign if properly handled. However, even accomplishing all this does nothing to stop the Dark Powers from "promoting" someone in the realm evil enough to assume the mantle of Darklord, possibly leaving the realm and its inhabitants in [[Not as planned|a worse situation than before]]. In fact, not a few of the "current" Darklords assumed their positions by killing the previous ones. In other cases, the title and sometimes even the personality of the Darklord is immediately passed down to another being on the moment of the Darklord's death, thus ensuring that their position is never lost.

===What happens if you permanently destroy a Darklord somehow?===
It's likely that some of you action-oriented elegan/tg/entleman reading this are just champing at the bit to claim a Darklord's skull for your trophy rooms, but as noted above, the odds and the themes of the setting itself are decidedly against you. Or maybe you're a DM who wants to run a Ravenloft campaign where good really can make a difference and want to know what happens when these Gothic Horror BBEGs finally bite the dust for real and no one takes their place.

Unfortunately, the rulebooks have historically been rather ambivalent and lacking in detail about the answer to this question and the resulting implications. Some Ravenloft rulebooks say that once a Darklord is permanently destroyed and no successor is forthcoming, the destroyed Darklord's associated domain might simply disappear, leaving open the question of what happens to all the people who were living there. If the people there simply disappear as well, were they never real in the first place, instead being undispellable illusions made up whole-cloth by the Dark Powers to torment the Darklord? That might work out just fine if your group stuck to playing [[Weekend in Hell]] style adventures in Ravenloft, but what would it say about PCs native to Ravenloft, or even native to the domain now without a Darklord? Or were the people in the Darklord-less domain no more real (and therefore no more morally troubling to harm in any way) than characters in a video game, making the whole "Powers Check" mechanic moot with regards to harming innocents? Is there now a gaping misty void where the previous domain used to be?

Canonically, the answer might be found in how two domains (Arkandale and Gundarak) where the Darklords lost their darklordship were absorbed by neighbouring ones, essentially meaning the people inside those domains just exchanged one insidious tyrant for another. This solution is probably the smoothest way to incorporate the plot element of Darklords being permanently destroyed in your campaign. On the other hand, geographically isolated domains (such as one of the numerous "Islands of Terror" that are completely surrounded by the Mists), or mobile pocket domains with no notable population of sentients can just disappear back into the mists with no larger consequences to other domains upon the permanent death of their Darklords. It still leaves open the question of what happens to the population of sentients in domains situated in the middle of nowhere that suffer a sudden lack of a Darklord, though.

Strahd himself is explicitly mentioned to be a special case with regards to permanent destruction, most probably due to his status as the posterboy of the entire Ravenloft setting (even in universe, it's noted that the Demi-Plane of Dread didn't seem to exist until Strahd's damnation). In 5e's Curse of Strahd module, it is said that in the absurdly unlikely event he is permanently killed with all of his failsafes destroyed or deactivated, the Dark Powers will intervene to resurrect him within a month [[Grimdark|because they refuse to allow the possibility of ending his torment]]. They're "possessive" about their favourite playthings like that.

Players crying foul about this should note that the Dark Powers are mighty enough to bar the gods themselves from coming to Ravenloft. In light of that, something like bringing a Darklord back to life looks like a trivial feat by comparison.

5e Overhall of some domains of Dreads gives some more definitive insight, either hinted at or explicit With some of the newer darklords stealing rulership from older ones. Darklordship Darkon is a prime example of a missing Darklord, as, without Azalin Rex, the domains is slowly dissolving.

Bottom line? Hash it out with your DM beforehand, or if you're a DM yourself, make sure you have a sensible plot thread lined up if you choose to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords, while keeping in mind how important Darklords are to the themes of Ravenloft.

=Notable Darklords=

==The "Hammer Horror" Darklords==
With the horror films by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions Hammer Film Productions] officially cited as a major source of inspiration for the setting of Ravenloft, the Darklords who are patterned after the horror monster archetypes featured in those films will be listed here.

===Strahd von Zarovich===
{{main|Strahd von Zarovich}}
Darklord of Barovia, and the first Darklord to be introduced to the setting--in fact, it's named after his own castle. He is the archetypal vampire darklord in the setting, though by no means the only one, and his appearance is clearly based off of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula in the 1958 ''Dracula'' film by Hammer Film Productions.

Originally the conqueror of a region called Barovia that he claims was the ancestral home of his family, Strahd came to lust after a woman called Tatyana who rejected him in favor of his younger brother Sergei. Strahd took this very badly; badly enough that at some point he made what he called "a pact with Death" that turned him into a [[vampire]] in a desperate attempt to restore his youth. This too failed to win her over, and on the day Tatyana was to be married to Sergei, Strahd killed him and drove her to suicide.

His realm is a copy of Barovia from the Prime Material plane (the original apparently still exists but nothing is said about its current condition or even which D&D setting it originated from), which he has absolute power over to the point where he can enter any private home uninvited in spite of the fact most vampires are unable to do so (since as he boasts, "I am the land"), and he can ignore the standard vampiric weaknesses to mirrors, garlic or holy symbols, none of which ordinary vampires can do. He isn't even "killed" when staked through the heart like ordinary vampires are (though he is effectively paralyzed while staked) and can resist up to ten rounds of sunlight exposure before being destroyed, though he has always a contingency spell cast on himself that will teleport him away to a hidden mountain sanctuary should he ever be exposed to sunlight or staked by a prepared party, much like Bram Stoker's own Dracula had many coffins to sleep in to make his final destruction more difficult. However, Strahd's curse is to have the events leading to his damnation repeat themselves forever--once every generation he will encounter a woman who he believes to be Tatyana's reincarnation, only to be rejected by her in spite of all his vampiric mind control powers, and become responsible for her death once more, all while being unable to simply give up on trying to win her love.

===Ankhtepot===
Darklord of Har'Akir, partially based on the monster from the 1959 film ''The Mummy'' by Hammer Film Productions. He is the archetypal Mummy-based Darklord in the setting, but he is not the only "Ancient Dead" (i.e., a preserved corpse animated into undeath) who happens to be a Darklord.

Ankhtepot in life was a hubristic ruler of a land also named Har'Akir, patterned after Ancient Egypt and sharing the same pantheon of gods. As the head priest of the sun god Ra, the chief god of his land, Ankhtepot was [[Nagash|obsessed with death and became consumed with the desire to live forever]]. Despite sparing no expense (nor quite a few lives, for that matter) his efforts were in vain, and in his rage he razed several temples, stormed into the greatest one and cursed the gods for withholding his heart's desire. For this blasphemy, Ra contacted Ankhtepot directly and said that Ankhtepot would indeed live after death, though he might wish otherwise. Anhktepot was confused about this, but later discovered that he had received a dire curse (making him one of the few outlander Darklords to have received the majority of his curse ''before'' being taken into Ravenloft); anyone he touched was dead by nightfall, and those he killed in this fashion rose from their tombs to serve him absolutely as undead mummies, because apparently Ra considers having mindless servants a punishment. Taking this in stride despite killing many of his relatives, he used his new undead servants to tighten his grip over Har'Akir, but his fellow priests rebelled, killed Ankhtepot in his sleep, and mummified him, little knowing he was still conscious and going insane inside his sarcophagus during his month-long funeral. After being entombed in a remote area with one small village named Mudar, the mists of Ravenloft claimed Ankhtepot, his tomb, and the nearby village, leaving no trace of them in Ankhtepot's home plane.

As Darklord, Ankhtepot spends most of his time in a deathless dream of better days in his tomb, but he can be roused from this state in a few ways, such as if his tomb is disturbed, or if the people of Mudar are anxious or otherwise distressed. His hubris and pride followed him into undeath, and similarly his greatest torment is his desire to be human again, as the god-king of a great empire he once was, while in reality he "rules" over a barren patch of desert with naught but a small mud-hut village. To frustrate him further, the Dark Powers granted Ankhtepot the ability to regain his human form and mortality by draining a human of moisture and life force in a dread sunrise ceremony, but this reversion to mortality lasts only from dawn to nightfall, and during those few daylight hours "under Ra's gaze" he loses all his supernatural powers, once again becoming a normal human with no appreciable abilities until nightfall, whereupon the transformation is undone. Knowing that he would face an eternity of solitude were he to sacrifice everyone in his domain to fleetingly experience mortality again, Ankhtepot generally prefers to wait and dream until he might rule a larger population, a time he seems unaware will never come.

With respect to his crunch, Ankhtepot can be an unholy terror in his Greater Mummy form. He retains much of the high-level spellcasting ability he had in life, his touch-delivered Mummy Rot is both more virulent and harder to cure than almost any other Ravenloft Mummy's, and those who become infected and are mummified alive become Greater Mummies under his total control. Other aces up his sleeve (or rather, his bandages) are the fact that he commands virtually every mummy in his domain, so if sufficiently provoked he can summon up an entire shambling army of mummies to do his bidding, and the fact that a certain item on his person allows him to heal lost hitpoints very quickly, even if reduced below zero, unless that item is removed from him or his downed "corpse." Ankhtepot can, however, easily be killed during his bouts of mortality (even though doing so might attract the attention of the Dark Powers since he poses no real threat during these times), but if he is killed while an ordinary human he can reanimate if he is mummified and entombed again. As a result of a possible oversight by the writers, no mention is made of how Ankhtepot might be able to return to unlife should he be defeated in his Greater Mummy form nor how he might be permanently destroyed, though he can simply reform in his tomb in the case of the former and the latter might simply require that both his tomb and his physical body be completely destroyed, resulting in the village of Mudar returning to its home plane and Ankhtepot's desert joining an adjacent domain.

Given the relative lack of sex appeal for mummies compared to the far more famous vampires and werewolves (unless you're a fan of the [[Tomb Kings]] or [[Mummy: The Curse]]), Ankhtepot and his domain more or less dropped off the face of Ravenloft canon after the AD&D version, and even in AD&D he was fairly passive. Even so, he did affect Ravenloft and D&D at large in one way by creating the first Greater Mummies (AKA "Children of Ankhtepot") to ever exist in a D&D system, though they have since significantly changed from their original incarnation. Ankhtepot has also been known to send his Mummy and Greater Mummy servants outside of his domain to track and kill grave robbers who defile his tomb and other unfortunates who incur his wrath.

Ankhtepot and his domain made his first appearance as the star villain of the classic ''Touch of Death'' Ravenloft module in 1991.

Despite not having shown up since AD&D, he was re-introduced to the setting in 5e, albeit with some significant retcons.

In an ancient country the inhabitants called the Land of Reeds and Lotuses, Ankhtepot served three generations of pharaohs as high priest. When the second pharaoh died, her unworthy son ascended to the throne. The new pharaoh quickly became unpopular among the people and priests, and Ankhtepot came to believe that the gods wanted himself to take the pharaoh's place. On the day of the pharaoh's coronation, Ankhtepot rallied his loyal priests and murdered their liege. Unfortunately he had misjudged both the people's loyalty and the gods' wills. The people rose up and killed him and his fellow priests, and when he died the gods forsook him and barred him from the afterlife. The gods returned him to the world, but stripped away a piece of his soul called the ka -- the vital essence that inspires all living beings.

He awoke immobilized and trapped in his sarcophagus, during which he felt the pain of every cut and every organ removed as if he were alive. One day, after untold years of this suffering, he a voice asking if he still felt he was worthy to rule. Still arrogant after all he had been through, he answered with certainty, and thus emerged from his crypt into the domain of Har’Akir. In this new land, Ankhtepot found a pious people devoted to the same gods he once served, and immediately set to wiping that religion out and replacing their gods with false idols of his own invention. Using blasphemous rites, Ankhtepot resurrected the priests once buried alongside him as powerful mummies, replacing their heads with those of beasts holy to his new faith. These Children of Ankhtepot served him as they did in life, and together the dead conquered the souls of Har’Akir.

Since then he has seen much, and known many things, but now he seeks one thing only: to be reconnected with his lost Ka, which he believes will allow him to finally die. Where and what his Ka is now is left up to the DM to decide, as is what happens when he is reunited with it. All of the suggested results are pretty grim, ranging from him being reborn as a living tyrant far more decadent and sadistic than he was as an undead, to discovering that he cannot be returned to mortality and deciding to wipe out all life in his domain out of spite.

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===Alfred Timothy===
Darklord of Verbrek, and the archetypal werewolf Darklord of the setting, though by no means the only lycanthrope Darklord in Ravenloft. Alfred Timothy was born to Nathan Timothy (former werewolf Darklord of Arkandale) and an unknown mother. Disdained by Nathan for being frail and sickly in his human form, Alfred in turn disdained his father for his "overly human" interest in ferrying cargo and passengers with his paddleboat (in truth, Nathan was cursed as Darklord of Arkandale to become cripplingly nauseous with "land sickness" anytime he tried to set foot on dry land, but instead of suffering from this curse, Nathan grew so accustomed to boating and the company of his human passengers that he unknowingly lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction, despite still being confined to river waters and remaining an unrepentant serial killer).

Leaving to find his own way and to escape the perpetual treatment as the runt of the litter, Alfred happened upon villagers in his father's domain who regularly made sacrifices to appease a savage being they called [[the Wolf God]] in the hopes of relief from continual attacks by bloodthirsty wolves. Taking inspiration from the sight of humans propitiating a lupine deity and perhaps indulging more than a little megalomania at the prospect of being an object of worship or leading a werewolf-centric religion, Alfred wandered the domains and interrogated clerics he met, sometimes lethally, on how he could become a cleric of this "Wolf God" and use its granted powers to inaugurate a werewolf-led reign of terror over humans. Unfortunately, his efforts and sacrifices were fruitless in provoking any response from this "deity," and he began to take out his frustrations on any clerics and religious buildings he could find whenever his latest interrogation target failed to provide the missing ingredient to contacting and receiving spells from the Wolf God. After [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=425913 one such iconoclastic rampage], Alfred incautiously fell asleep near the mutilated corpses and smouldering wreckage of his latest failure. Not content to "let sleeping dogs lie," Alfred was discovered, chained, and about to be burned at the stake by vengeful villagers, were it not for a mother-daughter pair of prescient Vistani who purchased his freedom and told Nathan that for this stay of execution, he must allow all Vistani safe passage in the future. Enraged at the possibility of being bound by a bargain struck with "mere" humans, Alfred promptly killed the Vistani mother, and the mists of Ravenloft claimed him for this betrayal, leaving him within his new domain of Verbrek, which eventually grew to encompass his father's former domain of Arkandale.

Now a Darklord, Alfred was initially delighted at having truly become a cleric of the Wolf God, receiving divine spells and being able to "converse" with it (assuming it exists, but if you decide to play with a nonexistent Wolf God, Ravenloft's Dark Powers have been known to grant divine spells and Alfred might just be hearing voices in his head). The price, as ever with Darklords, was an insidious curse. Alfred wants nothing more than to revel in the bestial fury and passion he once enjoyed as a werewolf, but as Darklord he is forced to transform back into his human form should he ever succumb to any kind of base passion: fear, rage, or lust. Having built a cult of savagery, wanton bloodshed, and debauchery among a large pack of werewolves as the chief priest of the Wolf God, his uncharacteristic unwillingness to practice what he preaches by frequently refraining from hunts and hesitance at finding a mate means his position is growing increasingly precarious. Realizing that widespread knowledge of his weakness would spell his doom (because [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=262657 "being an alpha means proving it every full moon"]), Alfred is trying to divest himself of his humanity by commanding and occasionally participating in ever-greater acts of slaughter, dedicating and offering them to his god who has remained silent on this one pressing issue, with the only exceptions to his wrath being the Vistani as he still remembers what happened the last time he killed one.

Crunch-wise, Alfred is rather conventional as lycanthrope BBEGs go, aside from his cleric levels and being forced to fight in a calculating and tactical manner unlike most werewolves lest he be forced to return to his much weaker human form. He doesn't cast a shadow (since his domain is effectively the shadow he casts on Ravenloft), and can even teleport from shadow to shadow within his domain whenever the moon is visible. As an ironic reminder from the Dark Powers of his fundamental weakness, Alfred cannot even supernaturally close the borders of his own domain, short of sending his dire wolf and werewolf minions to patrol them, though the true nature of this additional curse is likely lost on him, since he probably doesn't know about other Darklords and their ability to close their domain's borders supernaturally. Though not specifically mentioned, Alfred's fluff implies that even ''[https://youtu.be/ZxcljnLb95M?t=1m8s harsh language]'' might be one of the most potent weapons against him; if PCs can recognize him in either his wolf or hybrid forms and manage to enrage him through taunts, he will be forced to return to human form and at a minimum be robbed of the natural weapons of his alternate forms, or even be forced to kill any wolf or werewolf witnesses to his weakness with his clerical powers before turning his attentions to the PCs. However, even if Alfred is killed (and his crunch does not mention any method through which he could cheat death), it is likely the Darklordship (and possibly even Alfred's curse) will simply pass to whichever werewolf in his domain is evil enough for the Dark Powers' liking, preserving Verbrek as a separate domain unless every werewolf in the domain is killed or driven out before the current Darklord's death. Even then, the Dark Powers can always make more Darklordship candidates, though a more darkly ironic postmortem fate for Alfred's cult and domain might be for the Wolf God cult to scatter to the winds after Alfred's death, in essence metastasizing and spreading its cell members and evil elsewhere, while Alfred's father returns to Arkandale just in time to resume his old Darklordship and hear about his son's death, saying only ''"So that self-righteous runt finally bit off more than he could chew. No matter. Runts have always thought themselves to be bigger than they are."''

On a side note, players who want to play a Ravenloft campaign set in Verbrek, but who also want to use [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition|D&D 5e]] rules instead of relying on older books, might opt to use the official Magic-the-Gathering-to-D&D-5e conversion [[Innistrad|''Plane Shift: Innistrad'']] book, using its rules to play a campaign set in Innistrad's Kessig province. Kessig is thematically similar to Ravenloft's Verbrek as both are "werewolf country" locations, minus Darklords and other Ravenloft-exclusive mechanics. Until the Ravenloft setting is more fully adapted for D&D 5e, the Innistrad conversion is probably the best foundation for playing Verbrek in 5e.

===Dr. Victor Mordenheim/Adam===
Co-Darklords of Lamordia, of a sort. Like the character of Victor Frankenstein (best known for creating Frankenstein's monster) he was based on, Dr. Victor Mordenheim sought to create life and was certain that a soul was not necessary for it to exist. To show him the error of his ways, the gods saw fit to endow the doctor's creation with a soul--specifically, an irredeemably evil soul. The newly created dread flesh [[golem]] was dubbed Adam, and he soon grew jealous of the love that his maker's wife Elise and adopted daughter Eva had for him. Adam's plan to kidnap Elise failed, and instead he killed Eva and wounded Elise so badly she went into a vegetative state. It was at that time that the doctor and his creation were taken together into Ravenloft.

The doctor himself resides in his own mansion, Schloss Mordenheim, spending most of his time obsessively trying to revive his comatose-but-alive wife (who has herself long since gone mad due to her life support system causing her constant pain simply by being active), up to the point of continually constructing new bodies out of exhumed or painlessly-killed female corpses for her, but is cursed to never succeed and to never stop trying. Note that this is not out of love, though Mordenheim still believes that it is--it has become nothing more than a compulsion that has become his only reason for living. Meanwhile, Adam is now the "ruler" of an inhospitable island aptly dubbed the Isle of Agony in the middle of Lamordia inhabited solely by himself, forever cut off from the acceptance that he sought, cursed to feel the doctor's pain as his own, and rejected by the very land that he supposedly controls (as it is influenced by Mordenheim and not Adam). Adam's only form of solace comes from sabotaging Dr. Mordenheim's attempts at reviving Elise just to spite him. Player characters who meet Adam and treat him without pity or revulsion may be able to get some useful information out of him or even get him to open the borders of Lamordia, but he is very prone to anger and is virtually unstoppable once enraged.

So strong is Mordenheim's disbelief in magic that his own domain also (potentially) interferes with divine magic of any kind, making it unreliable, and may even block any magical attempts to heal Elise. Worse still, Mordenheim's attempts at training apprentices over the years in the vain hope that they might just achieve the necessary breakthrough to restoring Elise has unleashed quite a few mad scientist villains, or monsters born of mad science (such as the Living Brain, a disembodied brain in a life-support jar that uses its psionic powers to direct and dominate a major organized crime ring), onto Ravenloft at large.

In a curious twist, Adam is the Darklord and is the one with the power to close Lamordia's borders, but both Adam and his creator are effectively immortal and ageless, and Mordenheim even shares his creation's immunities and regenerative properties. If either is killed and their corpse completely destroyed by fire, acid, or even disintegration, either will simply reincarnate into the nearest most recently deceased male corpse (for Mordenheim) or flesh golem corpse (for Adam, and there are a quite a number of these running around Lamordia, made either by Mordenheim as failed bodies for Elise and futile attempts to recreate Adam's "success," or Adam's frustrated attempts at making sympathetic company for himself), and will shortly thereafter shape their new bodies into looking just like their previous selves. The only way to destroy Adam and Mordenheim for good is to destroy them together at the same time. If DMs decide to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords (see above), then the fate of Elise and Lamordia itself is up to them; one appropriate denouement could be that the permanent deaths of Adam and Mordenheim might just be the spark Mordenheim's machinery needs to briefly restore Elise long enough to rise up and forgive their long-suffering spirits before leading both to their afterlives, just before the land suddenly twists and shifts to reflect the curse and nature of its new Darklord.

Adam and Dr. Mordenheim first appeared in the one-shot adventure in a 1994 boxed set named "Adam's Wrath," intended for outlander PCs to undertake a [[Weekend in Hell]] adventure.

===Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken===
The "Jekyll & Hyde" Darklord of Nova Vaasa. Sir Hiregaard is a staunch, gruff but sincerely righteous man who is dedicated to his people and his land. However, he also plays host to Malken- an alternate personality that takes over Tristen's body, warping it into [[Caliban (Ravenloft)|a form so hideously ugly one can't recognize they're the same person]] and who delights in killing anyone who stands in the way of Hiregaard's repressed desires.

Strangely, Tristen did nothing at all to earn the position of Darklord; Malken is an entity born from a curse that was placed on Tristen's ''father'' by Tristen's mother Romir that compelled him to kill every woman he loved and any man who crossed him; Hiregaard Senior was an intensely jealous man and killed his wife and the man teaching her how to waltz in a fit of rage, thinking she was having an affair with him. When he killed himself to escape the curse, the curse passed to Tristen instead. Six years and nine killings after the curse first manifested itself in him, Tristen was taken into the mists and the secret jealousies and angers born from the curse coalesced into the being known as Malken. Tristen is only partially aware of Malken's existence, just enough to have his guards lock him into his personal chambers when he feels a fit of jealousy or anger coming on. For years he has assumed this has kept Malken in check, but as of late he is starting to suspect that Malken is too clever to be thwarted by mundane confinement despite the latter's attempts at keeping his influence a secret. Were he to discover the whole truth, he would be willing to do anything to end the curse.

This curse is the key to Malken's immortality; if Tristen is killed, then Tristen's eldest living male descendant will be possessed - and Malken will keep going down the chain each time his host dies, meaning that unless you find "the right way" to kill him, Malken can only be stopped by massacring Tristen's entire family line... which the players could potentially belong to. However, if Malken's host is killed by a woman genuinely in love with that man, then Malken will be dragged screaming into whatever hell-hole awaits him. And given that this would be a massive act of betrayal on that woman's part, she would likely end up becoming the new Darklord herself.

It should also be noted for DMs that "the struggle within his soul" prevents Malken from achieving the proper focus to Close the Borders of his domain, so if you want to run a session or campaign focussed around Nova Vaasa, you had better have a compelling in-universe reason to keep the PCs from simply up and leaving, since canonically DMs can't force the issue and simply lock the PCs into Nova Vaasa like they can with most other Darklords. It's possible that if Malken possesses a more evil host, he might just be able to Close the Borders then, but the form such a closed border would take has never been revealed in canon.

==Other Darklords==

===Addar===
{{main|Addar}}
The father of [[Shadow Unicorn]]s and a Darklord of questionable canon. More info on his page.

===Azalin Rex===
Darklord of Darkon. A powerful mage who inherited the rule of the city-state of Knurl, his draconian rule culminated in the execution of his son when he was caught freeing political prisoners. Soon afterward, Azalin became a [[lich]] and devoted himself to searching for a spell that could resurrect the dead; he believed that his son's sense of compassion was due to a mistake in his upbringing and assumed that if he could be revived that mistake could be fixed.

As soon as he was taken into Ravenloft he lost the ability to learn any new magic at all- a terrible thing for any magic user, and even worse for a lich like him who became undead for the sole purpose of gaining more knowledge. This power over memory affects anyone else who enters Darkon as well; staying there for more than three months at a time causes a visitor's memories to be erased and replaced with false ones of spending one's whole life in Darkon. Originally an ally of Strahd when he first entered the mists, their relationship soured quickly after a failed attempt at escaping the Demi-plane of Dread temporarily split the former into two separate beings and they've remained enemies ever since. Another ill-fated attempt at breaking free in which he planned to become a demilich backfired even more spectacularly. Instead of allowing his essence to be freed from Ravenloft, it dispersed his essence across Darkon and destroyed the domain's capital. It took five years for him to reassume a corporeal form and take control of his realm again.

In 5th edition, Azalin has mysteriously gone missing. Did he finally outsmart the Dark Powers and escape? The only clue about where he went is that when he vanished a strange golden star or starlike thing called The King's Tear appeared in the sky and hasn't moved since and the sun and moon pass ''behind'' it instead of in front of it every day.

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===Baron Urik von Kharkov===
Considered one of the goofier Darklords, albeit not as bad as Tristen ApBlanc, and with a much more usable domain in Valachan. Baron Kharkov is basically half-Blacula and half-Werepanther; he was a black panther that a Red Wizard of Thay turned into a human being to use as an assassin. The Red Wizard arranged for him to fall in love with his rival, and then undid the transfiguration spell on him while they were together so he would tear her apart as a panther. When he was turned back into a human, he freaked out and ran off into the Mists. He found himself in Darkon, where he spent 20 years as a member of Azalin's secret police (turning into a Nosferatu in the process). He later escaped and subsequently became the Darklord of Valachan after entering the Mists again. We don't know what he did that turned him into a Darklord, in part due to his own fuzzy memories of what happened during that time, but he claims he killed many people while in the mists, including the Red Wizard that transformed him the first time.

Anyway, he's a blood-drinking black vampire cursed with yellow eyes (that turn into cat's eyes when he's pissed off) and with hands that resemble paws, being covered in fur and bearing retractile claws. He can still turn into a panther, in which state his bite turns people into werepanthers, and controls panthers instead of the normal wolves. His curse is to basically relive his most traumatizing event over and over again; he's constantly seeking a human bride, but once he has one, he can never trust her not to find out that he's not human, and inevitably murders her in a fit of paranoid fury. (He should try dating a [[Furry]] fan or Jaqueline Reiner, that would solve it.)

In 5th edition he has been killed and succeeded by Chakuna.

===Bluebeard===
A rare darklord actually ''liked'' by his subjects, Bluebeard rules over Blaustein (German: "Blue Stone"), a small nation from an unknown world. His rule was considered just and fair, and as a ruler he was considered to be quite generous. Unfortunately for him, he was an incredibly ugly man -- a blue-tinted beard and all -- which to his credit, he overcame with his own charms... and being incredibly wealthy didn't hurt either. Despite all of his good qualities, however, Bluebeard could not achieve a lasting marriage.

He would find a woman to marry, and soon after the wedding he would leave the castle for a time, handing its care over to his new wife. He would give her a set of keys to every door in the castle, and pointing out the one special golden key which opened a room at the very top floor. His instruction was to never open that particular door, with vague consequences. So far none of his wives have been able to overcome this temptation; and when they did open the door they found his grisly collection of former wives, hung up by meat-hooks with their throats slit. By opening the door, the key -- which was magical in nature -- would have a bloody mark that would appear that could not be removed except by Bluebeard himself. He would return to the castle soon after, and demand to see the keys. If the woman had given into temptation (which each invariably did), she would then share the fate as the other women in the room. Marcella was his fourth wife and victim. Her death was not the final, but eventually Bluebeard's repeated murders brought Blaustein into Ravenloft.

After becoming a darklord, Bluebeard was gifted by the Dark Powers with a minor charisma increase, which does not make him handsome by any means but does not leave him as ugly as he once was. He is also able to perfectly detect any lie. Even after the Mists took hold, Bluebeard is still the de facto leader of Blaustein, although his rule was twisted to be even more sadistic. Simply displeasing him is a death sentence, yet the populace still holds him in incredibly high regard. This is because he also has complete control over their memories, and freely erases or rewrites their recollections of his atrocities.

He is unable to marry any woman native to Blaustein, as their visages always twist to the posthumous appearance of one of his dead wives. This curse does not affect women who were born foreign of Blaustein, and Bluebeard along with his subjects are always on the constant lookout for any attractive women who fit this criteria. Lorel, an outlander he grabbed through the Mists, was his latest wife (and victim).

Bluebeard is also haunted by the ghosts of the wives he killed. Every third night must be spent in his castle in order to sleep, and he always awakes to the frightening caress of the specters of his murdered wives. Like his subjects, they are utterly devoted to him, yet in the most twisted way possible. While he considers this distressing, it has not stopped him from sending another wife to the same fate.

It is currently unknown if he has any dealings with any other nation or darklord, at least beyond welcoming in his harbour ships including those engaged in piracy.

He's mentioned in a single sentence in 5e, which states that apparently his spectral wives overthrew him and now endlessly torment him. Exactly how this happened or what this entails is not elaborated upon.

===Captain Alain Monette===

Darklord of L'ile de la Tempete. A violent and cruel privateer and captain of the ''Ouragan''. Eventually his crew snapped from his vicious temper and regular abuse and mutinied against him, keelhauling him thrice before throwing him into the sea. This was meant to be an execution- keelhauling, or dragging a sailor around the keel of a ship to be cut by the barnacles growing on it and hit against the ship's hull, is traumatic even when it's only done once and the victim is taken on board the ship afterward. But Alain survived, and washed up on the shores of a small island in the mists. Vampire bats came to drink the blood from his wounds, and Alain survived in turn by eating them- which turned him into a werebat.

Alain thus recovered from his keelhauling, but physical health was a cold comfort as he soon found that even with the flight he gained as a werebat, he could not leave his lonesome island. Driven mad by the isolation and cut off from the sea, he now vents his frustrations on those who sail as he no longer can. His island contains a lighthouse, but as with many things in Ravenloft, it's a trap in the guise of something helpful. Anyone, even outside the Mists, who investigates the light is drawn to the hazardous waters near his lighthouse, where most are shipwrecked. If any survivors somehow make it to shore, Alain will greet them. He'll be quite friendly, at first- he's starved for company and news of the outside world. But he's even more starved for flesh, and within a few days at most he will attack and kill them.

===Captain Pieter van Riese===
Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Originally from Gothic Earth's version of the Netherlands, Pieter was a ship's captain obsessed with finding the legendary Northwest Passage. When his ship was sunk in an encounter with an iceberg, he offered his own life along with the lives of his crew to any being who could help them forward, and the Dark Powers answered him. Naturally, they didn't actually give him what he wanted.

Pieter is now a ghost, and the captain of the ghost ship ''The Relentless''. He has the power to summon the ghosts of those who killed others and then were killed in the Sea of Sorrows to crew his ship, and can sail anywhere in his domain. However, he can no longer explore as he wishes, since the island domains in the Sea of Sorrows move around and he can only sail to land that he's chartered to go to.

Pieter is Ravenloft's answer to the legends of the ''Flying Dutchman'', a ghost ship that is unable to make port and sails the seas forever. Most versions say that the curse is because of her captain, Hendrick van der Decken, refusing to go to port while crossing the Cape of Good Hope, declaring that he would not make port "though I should beat about here till the day of judgment". He got shipwrecked in a storm, and the ghost of his ship is now bound by his curse to never be able to rest at port.

===Councilor Dominic d'Honaire===
The darklord of Dementlieu. Originally born in Mordentshire, Dominic led his nanny to suicide at age 7 and then manipulated his family to move away to avoid the Mordentshire police, with the mists giving him the domain of Dementlieu. Dominic is not the domain's temporal leader but does serve as an adviser for Marcel Guignol, Dementlieu's head of state. However, Dominic has much more power than his official position would suggest. The darklord's power is domination over the minds of other people on a prodigious scale. A great many in the land, including its recognized head, are his obedients and through this network he knows whatever goes on in his land.

His personal curse is that any woman he woos sees him as more repulsive the more he is attracted to her. Also, for some time his rule is challenged by an entity who is called (and virtually is) the Living Brain (re: ''Sherlock Holmes''' Moriarty), the last remains of Rudolph von Aubrecker, the youngest son of Lamordia's political ruler.

in 5e, the domain was revamped and the Darklord is now Saidra d’Honaire, though there is a plot hook that hints he's still around and trying to get his position back (then again Dementlieu is now a place where everyone pretends).

==="Death"===
Darklord of Necropolis (formerly Il-Aluk, the capital of Darkon). He is one of several minor Darklords that took over pieces of Darkon in Azalin's absence during the [[Grim Harvest]] and the only one of them to become a full Darklord after Azalin came back. Originally a clone of Azalin made by him as part of a convoluted scheme to bypass his curse, he was transformed into a negative energy elemental by the prototype version of the "Doomsday Device" Azalin thought would make him into a demilich. When it backfired, the massive surge of negative energy it released killed the whole of Il-Aluk's population. "Death" then claimed the ruined capital and its remaining undead inhabitants as its own, and after Azalin reconstituted himself Necropolis became its own domain. A shroud of negative energy still remains over Necropolis, which instantly kills all non-undead which attempt to enter its borders.

===Draga Salt-Biter===

Darklord of Saragoss, a watery domain where the only analogue to 'land' is 'places where the seaweed is clumped particularly tight'. Draga is a [[Therianthrope|wereshark]] pirate [[Cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] with a deep-rooted fear of sharks. Yes, it's ironic that he hates sharks while being able to turn into one. He knows. He got both his wereshark infection and his fear of sharks in the same incident; as a child, he was captured by a crew of pirates, who stuck a hook into one of his calves and dangled him into shark-infested waters, understandably traumatizing the kid. And after his own piracy and terrorism of the seas in Umberlee's name caught the Dark Powers' attention, they saw no reason to mess with a perfectly good case of irony and gave him a neat selection of new powers... all of which were shark-themed. He controls sharks, can only breathe underwater (though he also has a ring of air-breathing that allows him to surface for a few hours at a time), and his resurrection method involves his spirit being reborn via sharks. He's also becoming increasingly shark-like in mentality as time passes, a prospect which terrifies him.

===Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth===

Darklord of Dominia. Reknowned throughout the Demiplane of Dread as an expert on mental illness, few know the dark secret behind his knowledge. Terrified of falling victim to the heredity madness that plagued his family, Heinfroth conducted horrific experiments on his mental patients to deepen his understanding of insanity. One of these experiments turned him into the first cerebral vampire, a vampire subspecies that feeds on cerebral fluid instead of blood.

===Dr. Frantisek Markov===
Darklord of Markovia. Originally a pig farmer from Barovia, he grew increasingly obsessed with the anatomy of the pigs he butchered and began to perform bizarre experiments on them that wouldn't be out of place in a [[Haemonculus]]' laboratory. When his "subjects" inevitably died, he simply sold the meat without telling anyone what he had done to it first. Eventually his wife discovered his gruesome hobby and threatened to expose him, at which time she ended up becoming one of his experiments as well. After three days of vivisection, she finally expired- her corpse was so horrifically mangled that when it was first discovered it was mistaken for the remains of a monster. When Markov's involvement in her death became clear, the mists claimed him and made him a Darklord.

Fittingly, Markov's curse allows him to shapeshift into any animal form he wishes (save for his head, which remains human), but is incapable of assuming his original human form. As a result, he normally takes the shape of a gorilla in order to continue his increasingly deranged experiments without being impeded by a lack of thumbs. Said experiments culminated in the creation of the "[[Broken One]]s"- animals (and the occasional unlucky human) that have been surgically mutilated into a human-animal hybrid form and given a semblance of intellect, similar to the Beast Folk of ''The Island of Dr. Moreau''. Like said Beast Folk, they too are highly prone to reverting to their primal instincts and bestial appearance after only a few days.

===Easan the Mad===
Darklord and ruler of Vechor. Easan has the power to reshape the land, and even reality itself, within his domain. Combined with his capricious whims, his power makes the realm a place of constant change.

Easan is a short wood elf and former agitator for a war against Iuz the Evil. For his efforts, he was seemingly driven mad by the possession of a fiend. Now Easan only looks for a cure to his madness, but he is willing to tear many innocent lives apart, and maybe even reality itself, to find a cure. His vile research has focused on souls and soul transference. Among other monstrosities, his research created the dread mechanical golem from fellow outlander Ahmi Vanjuko.

It all started on the outlander world of Oerth. Easan argued the cause for war to his colleagues among the rulers of a tiny elf kingdom bordering Iuz's empire. To make an example of the upstart elf, Iuz ordered his agents to kidnap Easan. With Easan rendered helpless before him, Iuz bound a fiend to Easan.

The presence of the fiend within Easan began eating away at his mind. Many magical means of expulsion failed, including the divine magic of [[St. Cuthbert]]'s followers. In an effort to find a way to free himself from the fiend, Easan visited a far-off island of mystics. They managed to suppress the fiend for a time, but eventually the monks and their island were rent asunder by a disaster of mysterious circumstances. Only Easan came out of it alive. The cause of the incident was Iuz's visit to the island and his ensuing frustration at Easan's seeming mastery over the fiendish spirit within. Iuz brought about the magical destruction that wiped out the entire island.

Whereas Easan emerged from the disaster with his body intact, his mind had only deteriorated further. The fiend had returned, but Easan did not give up hope. Where religion had failed, Easan resolved to find a way to banish the fiend with perverse experiments. Easan sacrificed many lives in his pursuit for a cure before he was taken in by the Mists.

Eventually, Easan noticed he was in a foreign, if familiar, land where he was viewed as a god. Indeed, he now had the power to warp reality (albeit slowly) within his own domain. Although he enjoys this from time to time, for the most part he remains obsessed with finding secrets of the soul. For all his power, he cannot seem to best his own inner demons, for he has all but forgotten the reasons why he began his foul research.

In truth, Easan never had a fiend implanted in him at all. It was all merely a deception to throw him off balance. Still, Easan's mind locked onto it, and when others couldn't detect the nonexistent affliction, Easan turned to his own methods for finding a cure.

===Ebonbane===
First introduced in the Darklords sourcebook, Ebonbane is a villainous character strongly associated with the mythos surrounding the Shadowborn Family and the Shadowlands cluster. In universe, Ebonbane is a source of horrific evil that has been opposed by Lady Kateri Shadowborn and her kin for almost two centuries, going back to the Heretical Wars on the Prime Material Plane. Once a powerful fiend known as Lussimar, Ebonbane was conjured and trapped inside a sword by mortal spellcasters. Ebonbane struck back at its summoners and enslaved them. After Ebonbane killed Kateri Shadowborn, it became darklord of Shadowborn Manor, the former residence of its nemesis.

===Elena Faith-Hold===
Darklord of Nidala. Elena was a [[Paladin]] of the god [[Belenus]] that acted as a guardian of a land also called Nidala, but her devotion to Belenus was tainted by her fondness for the adoration of the masses. Following a great crusade against the forces of evil, the people began to scorn those who did not worship Belenus. The more zealous members of the clergy appealed to her vanity and drive to please Belenus, and soon she grew so fanatical that after the "non-believers" were wiped out, she turned on followers that she deemed unworthy, always finding some new target for her purges. For this, Belenus withdrew his support, but Elena never realized that she fell because her formerly [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies had blossomed into full-fledged self-righteousness- thus leaving her incapable of even considering that she might have gone astray from her god's teachings.

Believing her fall to be only a test of faith, she grew ever more ruthless in purging those who she deemed unclean, until she was eventually drawn by the Mists into the Demiplane of Dread. She didn't actually become a Darklord until later, when she started slaughtering entire villages because she saw more evil than good in them (not knowing that she was only looking at the worst parts of each town). At that point, she was given the domain of Nidala, which she runs as a dour police state, forbidding all practices she sees as evil while allowing her cult of personality to reach new heights. When she considers a town to be too corrupted, she and her followers destroy it, blaming the deed on the fictional [[dragon]] Banemaw. Ironically enough, in her domain the true dogma of Belenus is considered [[Heresy]], and her servant/"spiritual guide" Theokos (a fiend-like entity masquerading as a [[Cleric]] of Belenus) strives to wipe it out entirely.

As a Darklord, Elena has her paladin powers back, except they're from the Dark Powers, so they're warped in ways that Elena is in severe denial about (to the point where she's a straight [[Blackguard]] in some writeups). Her unicorn steed is now fiendish, she commands undead instead of turning them, her Aura of Courage is an Aura of Despair, she can only heal herself or her steed, and most notably her Detect Evil power instead detects strong emotions that others feel towards her (any emotion works, so someone who genuinely loves her will still be detected as "evil" with predictable results), leaving them vulnerable to her version of Smite Evil. Naturally, Elana refuses to believe that her Detect Evil power doesn't actually work as it's supposed to and insists that the inability of anyone else to use Detect Evil in the Demiplane of Dread is proof of their spiritual impurity. She is also able to "convert" foes to her side as loyal servants who will gladly die for her, which functions like an enhanced humanoid-only version of Charm Monster.

She is cursed with bouts of self-doubt, and once every week she must take a midnight ride as a chorus of voices denounce her for becoming one of the forces of evil she once fought against.

===Eli Van Hassen===

Darklord of the Endless Road, and a creation of the 4th edition to replace the infamously-dubious Headless Horseman and his Winding Road domain. Eli, unlike the Horseman, has an actual known reason to be Darklord, with the Horseman being downgraded to part of Eli's curse.

Eli was once a minor nobleman who ruled over a hamlet called Tranquility, despite having much grander ambitions. When his lands were ravaged by a hydra, a wandering horseman came by and slew the beast, being lauded as a hero. Eli was filled with envy as the huntsman received praise and admiration that he didn't, and his daughter falling in love with the man was the last straw. He forced the girl to claim that the Horseman had raped her, whipped the denizens of Tranquility into a frenzied mob, and executed the innocent man. Drawn to the Demiplane of Dread for this crime, Eli is now trapped on his estate, for the Headless Horseman, the spectre of the hero he murdered, wanders the road outside and will kill Eli if he ever steps beyond his estate's boundaries.

===Gabrielle Aderre===
Darklord of Invidia. A [[half-Vistani]] whose mother was raped by Drakov and was rejected by her fellow Vistani, she had always fantasized about her father's identity and resented her mother's unwillingness to speak of him, as well as her warning that if she bore a child it would end in disaster for everyone around her. When her mother was attacked by a werewolf, Gabrielle refused to aid her until she revealed the truth about her father. But when her mother did so, Gabrielle refused to believe it and left her to die. The mists took her after that, and she came to be cursed with an inability to cause direct harm to the [[Vistani]], either physically or magically. Soon afterward she came to become the temporal leader of Invidia as well as its darklord, an opportunity that allowed her to begin persecuting the Vistani in spite of her curse.

She took many lovers as Invidia's ruler, though she only truly loved one of them, a wolfwere called Matton Blanchard. However, she was later seduced by the incubus calling himself "The Gentleman Caller" and left pregnant by him. Her son Malocchio soon proved to be one of the Dukkar- one of the rare males of Vistani blood with The Sight. On its own this would be a cause for concern among the Vistani, as the Dukkar is effectively the Vistani equivalent of the Antichrist; however, Gabrielle went even further and taught him to hate the Vistani as much as she did. Ultimately she taught him too well, as Malocchio betrayed Gabrielle and took the position of Invidia's temporal ruler for himself. She survived due to the intervention of Blanchard, but since then Malocchio has been the ruler of Invidia, persecuting the Vistani far more effectively than Gabrielle ever could have done. The only reason he has yet to kill her is because he knows that if she dies, he will inevitably inherit her title of Darklord, which he has no interest in gaining.

===Gregor Zolnik===

Darklord of Vorostokov. The only known Darklord from [[Birthright]], Gregor is descended from Azrai, and lives down to the bloodline's negative reputation. Gregor was an excellent hunter, and back in Cerilia, his skills saved his village during an exceptionally harsh winter. Gregor loved being a hero to the people, but his talent for hunting couldn't work so well every winter. And so, to keep bringing back meat, he started hunting humans. This drew Vorostokov into Ravenloft, where the winter has continued ever since (though recently it has shown some signs of abatement). Gregor still "hunts" for his people, although they've started to cotton on to Gregor's lies and resent their dependence on him, they have no other choice, for Gregor forbids anyone else from hunting.

Gregor is a [[Loup du Noir]], and the boyarsky who support him are the same, as he infected them. His two sons are also nascent Loup du Noir, but the younger, Mikhail, wishes to escape him.

===Gwydion the Sorceror-Fiend===
Darklord of the Shadow Rift, and such an asshole that even the ''Shadow Fey'' think he's a monster. He is also responsible for their current state, as prior to Ravenloft, he was a powerful warlord on the Plane of Shadow, and to sate his ambitions, he kidnapped a bunch of normal fey, turned them into the Shadow Fey, and told them to create an interdimensional portal so he could use them as an army to conquer other planes. This worked as well as could be expected [[Derp|considering he had no mental domination of his creations]]. The Shadow Fey made a portal, alright... but it wasn't to the Prime Material and the armies that marched through it were actually a mass exodus of the Shadow Fey, hidden by illusions.

Gwydion eventually discovered the Shadow Fey's treachery, but it was too late, and by the time he got to the portal to stop them, the exodus was almost complete. The Shadow Fey king, Arak, held Gwydion back long enough for the Shadow Fey to all escape and seal the portal while Gwydion was going through it, trapping the Sorceror-Fiend. The other side of the portal led to the Demiplane of Dread, where the Dark Powers created the Shadow Rift to contain Gwydion further.

And that's pretty much how it remains. Aside from a failed escape attempt during the Grand Conjunction, Gwydion has remained stuck in that portal, unable to do anything but watch and send Shadow Fey an occasional bad dream.

===Haki Shinpi===
Darklord of Rokushima Táiyoo. He's a powerless [[Geist]] that, in life, was a powerful [[samurai]] and clan leader that forged a big and powerful empire. He felt pride in the fact that his clan and lands held together while others fell to discord, despair, and war, which he helped to instigate via manipulation and betrayal. Haki Shinpi somewhat lived by the code of Bushido but abused and exploited it to manipulate his nemeses, play them against each other, and run their hopes into the ground.

Shortly prior to Haki's death, he made it known that each of his six sons would inherit part of his conquered lands evenly. As expected, this went swimmingly for everyone involved. After his death, his children turned to bickering and then all out war against each other. Two of his children met their doom, and their islands were leveled by earthquakes before Rokushima Taiyoo was brought into the Demiplane of Dread.

Far from the influential and powerful man he was in life, Haki Shinpi can now do little to keep his sons from tearing his land apart in civil war.

===Harkon Lukas===
Darklord of Kartakass. A [[wolfwere]] bard from the [[Forgotten Realms]] unusual among his kind for his highly social nature, as most wolfweres are lone predators who only come together temporarily to breed. Seeing as how he couldn't get other wolfweres to agree to hang around together, he started focusing more on integrating into human society. He still hunted and ate humans, but he also gained a genuine love of human culture and of the idea of being somebody important. One day, for no reason since he'd basically been doing the same stuff any wolfwere does, just spending a bit more time in town in between kills, the Dark Powers grabbed his ass and yanked him into Barovia. At which point he went on an anti-wolf killing spree for, again, no particular reason. This attracted Strahd's attention, and he nearly killed Lukas, forcing the wolfwere to flee into the Mists, which gave him his own domain of Kartakass. Which, much to his frustration, is a tiny, rustic place where the most power he'll ever have is being mayor of a small town, so he's got the letter of what he wanted but not the spirit, making for a hollow victory.

The 5th edition version of Harkon Lukas is a [[Loup-garou]] instead of a wolfwere, and it changes some of the other details about him. As in the original, he had dreams of a [[werewolf]] society - an empire of werewolves, in fact - but that dream was dashed by the werewolf indifference to gathering in large numbers. So he tried to forge an empire amongst [[human]]s, this time actually directly getting involved; ultimately, he led a revolution against a king by faking his own death as a martyr to stir up riots, then using these to get him close enough to the king that he could burst out of the coffin his followers were carrying him around in, rip the king to shreds, and take the king's crown for himself... which was when the mists swallowed him and he found himself in Kartakass. His curse is also tweaked slightly as well; rather than being doomed to never rise above the position of mayor, he's doomed to never rise above the even less prestigious position of nearly-forgotten, washed-up performer.
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===Hazlik===
Darklord of Hazlan. A gay [[Forgotten Realms|Red Wizard of Thay]] who was publicly humiliated and stripped of his status by his female rival and her boyfriend, the latter of which he lusted after. As revenge, he murdered the guy, made his girlfriend eat his corpse, then tortured her to death as well, at which time he was then swept up by the mists. His curse is to suffer from nightmares of his now-inaccessible rivals defeating him with impunity and generally humiliating him every night, which has made him even more fixated on getting revenge against the Red Wizards. So he's crafting plans to cast a spell that will genocide all members of his race, the Mulan, throughout the multiverse. To escape being killed by said genocide spell himself, he's prepared to bodysnatch his female Rashemani apprentice when he's ready to use it.

The 5e version retcons him quite a bit. Once an ambitious Red Wizard with a habit of horribly scarring his rivals, Hazlik came to believe that his lover/rival, a man named Indreficus, was planning to betray him. In retribution, he captured Indreficus and subjected him to a nightmarish experiment that left him permanently transformed into a pain-wracked living portal. Hazlik presented what had become of his former lover as to the zulkirs with hopes to impress them, only to be told Indreficus did not betray him and he had merely been manipulated by the zulkirs into thinking so as a way to halt the ambitious pair's ascent. They then declared Hazlik’s transformation of Indreficus an abomination, and that as punishment, every rival Hazlik had defeated could exact a penance of their choosing upon him. In desperation, Hazlik fled through the twisted portal that had been Indreficus and found himself in the demiplane of dread, where he eventually found his way to a realm that knew nothing of magic.

As well as his old nightmares (which are now of Indreficus taunting him for his failures), he also has a new curse borrowed from the now-absent Azalin Rex, making him unable to learn any new magic. On top of no longer being able to advance the magical research that used to drive his life, he's also absolutely terrified that anyone will learn of his limitations.

===Hive Queen===
Darklord of the sewer domain of Timor that lies beneath Paridon, and a half-Marikith because somebody thought it was time to rip off the Aliens franchise. She wasn't always a monster, though. She was originally a spoiled princess who decided one day to scare her mother to death. To do this, she seduced a wizard into casting an illusion of her transforming into a half-Marikith, but when said wizard saw her with her real lover, he decided to spice up the spell a bit by removing the 'illusion' bit and ''actually'' transforming her. She now lurks in the sewers as the Queen of the Marikiths, regularly laying more Marikith eggs. But she fears being usurped even from what little power she has, so if any of those eggs hatches another Marikith Queen, the Hive Queen kills the hatchling.

===Illithid God-Brain===
The darklord of Bluetspur is an [[illithid]] [[Elder Brain]], a massive conglomeration of the brain of every dead illithid, merged together into a new, living, entirely alien entity. It's the reason using psionic powers in Ravenloft is a dicey proposition, as the God-Brain might notice and attempt to integrate you into itself. It's notable for having '''no''' attempt to justify its position in Ravenloft whatsoever, with the original writeup in the Red Box, the original Ravenloft campaign setting collection, literally saying that nobody knows why it's in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], what crime it committed to end up here, or even how it's actually being tormented by its stay here!

The ''Book of Sacrifices'' gives it a backstory and reason for its Darklordship. Its core persona was once a human psion named Seldrid, whose people were at war with the Illithids. Eventually, they began to win for good once the Illithid Elder Brain started to die, but unfortunately for them, Seldrid had come to admire the Illithids' power and discipline, and merged with the Elder Brain to revive it. This act of betraying his people to such a great evil caught the Dark Powers' attention, and as the Illithids sacked his home city, they drew the country into the Demiplane of Dread as Bluetspur, with the Seldrid-brain as Darklord. Seldrid's curse is an inability to transfer his consciousness as he once did or to integrate any new consciousnesses into himself. Now trapped as a giant brain in a pool with nothing but Illithid tadpoles for company, unable to make himself more mobile or gain any outside experiences, Seldrid has gone quite insane.

5th edition has its own take on the idea. In a nutshell, the God-Brain hails from the era when the Illithid empire was at its peak, performing whatever blasphemous experiments took its fancy until it literally thought something that was unthinkable. That is, it had a thought so blasphemous, so utterly inimical to reality itself, that even an Elder Brain couldn't actually think it. Becoming obsessed with this ineffable thought, the God-Brain began cannibalizing other Elder Brains to try and upgrade itself to the point where it could finally contemplate this mysterious thought-form. Instead, it just gave itself a kind of aggressive psychic cancer, which began fatally necrotizing the God-Brain's neural tissues. Aghast at its behavior and terrified of catching the disease themselves, the other Elder Brains pooled their powers and tried to erase the God-Brain from existence; thanks to the meddling of the [[Dark Powers]], they only succeeded in banishing the God-Brain to the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Now the God-Brain struggles endlessly to both find a cure for its disease and to manifest the alien thought-form still gestating inside of it, all the while subconsciously aware that there is '''nothing''' it can do to achieve either goal, but desperate to fight for every last moment of life.

===Inza Magdova Kulchevitch===

The current Darklord of Sithicus, replacing Lord Soth. She was born in Gundarak, on the night Duke Gundar was assassinated, and two years later, her caravan wandered into Sithicus, where they were trapped, although her mother Magda managed to bargain for protection with Soth.

Inza's dark mindset showed from a very early age. Even as a child she loved thieving and manipulating the giorgio of Sithicus, and for the most part stood aside from her tribe. Her only friend was Piotr, a boy 1 year her senior, and this wasn't such a good thing as Inza pushed him to join her in both emnity to the giorgios and bullying a boy named Nikolas for his kindness towards non-Vistani. Their friendship eventually came to an end when Inza allowed Nikolas to be brutally beaten and pinned the blame on Piotr. Inza also hated animals, since they were not fooled by her facade of innocence, and would torture and kill them on the sly. None of this disturbing behavior ever reached Magda, who doted on her daughter, but by adulthood her rampant kleptomania and unlikeable personality had alienated most of the other Vistani.

Inza became Darklord of Sithicus after betraying her mother and caravan to Malocchio Aderre, breaking the caravan's oath to Lord Soth in the process. She attempted to usurp Soth's power, but was foiled and as the surviving members of her caravan hunted her down, she leapt into a chasm to escape. The darkness within the chasm surrounded and embraced her, turning her into the new Darklord.

As Darklord, Inza exists as a force of corruption. Her curse is twofold- first, her form has become a mass of shadow, and she has to concentrate to look human. Second, she stole, manipulated, and was a general bitch because of her philosophy that everyone was as evil as her at heart. The presence of true heroes in her domain (to say nothing of the redeemed spirit of Lord Soth himself) has shaken her to the core, and despite all her efforts to stomp out the forces of good in her domain, they still exist as thorns in her side.

===Ivana Bortisi===

Darklord of Borca, and a reference to the titular character of ''Rappaccini's Daughter''. Ivana inherited the domain by poisoning her lover for cheating with her mother Camille (who she also poisoned). Thus, Ivana inherited Camille's domain, along with immunity and power over poison. This, of course, came with a curse- Ivana cannot turn her lethally poisonous touch ''off'', and thus will never be able to take a lover.

Ivana is best known for the creation of Ermordenung, humans infused with poison to make them super-assassins. The first of these was Nostalia Romaine, Ivana's childhood friend and the one to actually do the dirty work of killing Camille.

5e retcons her a bit, though not nearly as much as Borca's other Darklord. While the whole thing with her mother seducing her lover did still happen, there's no mention of her poisoning her lover and it's not the only reason she kills her mother. Rather, she murdered her brothers and mother in an attempt to force her father to name her his heir. When he still refused to do so, insisting that her cousin Ivan Dilisnya would be his sole inheritor instead, she murdered him and all of their servants with poison gas. She's still terrified of the possibility of her father's will being found, as that would mean that the business she's worked so hard to grow would go to her childish and depraved cousin.

Her poisonous touch is gone, with her curse now being the more mundane and psychological torments of boredom due to feeling like no one around her is her intellectual peer, and the fact that she is never given the respect she feels she is owed, always being doubted, second-guessed, and looked down upon just like her father did.

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===Ivan Dilisnya===

Co-Darklord of Borca, and former darklord of Dorvinia. He's a cousin to Ivana Bortisi, and shares many similarities with her, most notably his love of poisoning people who draw his ire. After he poisoned his sister (who he lusted after) and her husband, he became a Darklord. His curse is simple but effective; his greatest pleasure aside from killing was fine food and drink, so he lost his sense of taste, rendering all the luxury around him hollow and unenjoyable.

His similar nature and modus operandi to his cousin caused their domains to fuse together under the name of Borca during the Grand Conjunction. Both he and Ivana are immune to poison and can create any toxin they can imagine, but Ivana has one more gift- agelessness. Ivan is desperate to learn the secret to her immortality, and refuses to believe she has no idea how she came by the gift (the Dark Powers granted it). Unlike Ivana, Ivan doesn't create Ermordenung, but he does have one nasty trick up his sleeve: Borrowed Time, a poison that only he can create. It stays in one's bloodstream for life and causes lethal convulsions every sunset unless you've ingested the antidote, 'Mercy', which is also something only Ivan can create, that day. Most of his minions are thus held hostage, knowing that Ivan holds the key to each day of their lives.

5e retcons him heavily. While he's still the cousin of Ivana and co-darklord of Borca who envies his cousin's immortality, that's pretty much all that stays the same. Ivan was groomed from a young age to be the head of a noble family, but despite all the opportunity in the world he instead took to wallowing in childish depravity, his family ignoring and enabling his worst and strangest impulses as they hoped he would grow out of it. He of course did not grow out of it, only becoming more violent and immature as he aged. On the same night that Ivana Boritsi poisoned her family, Ivan learned of his parents’ intention to send his beloved sister Kristina to a prestigious boarding school, and murdered his entire family for it.

He now resides in the Dilisnya family estate, a twisted funhouse that he lures people to to torment. Those unable to escape are eventually forced to don the colorful uniforms of the Dilisnya household staff and become Ivan’s new servants. He rarely leaves the estate, instead communicating through letters and acting through his "toys," animate creatures of clockwork or cloth provided to him by the Dark Powers.

===Jaqueline Reiner===

Darklord of Richemulot. Appropriately to the name, she's a natural wererat, born to a wererat branch of the Reiner family. The Reiners followed their patriarch Claude into the mists, where he reigned as Richemulot's original Darklord, but eventually Jaqueline had enough of his abuse and killed him, taking on his title of Darklord in the process. And while that title came with neat perks like control over Richemulot, it also came with a pair of curses.

First, Jaqueline suffers from intense monophobia. She hates nothing worse than being alone, but her entire family is made up of evil wererats whom she ''also'' really hates, so being in their company is not that much better. Second, while Jaqueline falls in love easily, she will involuntarily shift into rat form whenever she's alone with someone she truly loves. And while that love is as genuine as anything Jaqueline has experienced, she can never muster up the trust that her lover will accept her as a wererat, and she almost invariably then kills him. She might make a good pair with Urik von Kharkov, but Darklords can never leave their domains and it's uncertain if she knows about him.

5e replaced her with the very-slightly-differently-named Jacqueline Reiner, details about which can be found in her own section below.

===King Crocodile===
Yes, Ravenloft even has Darklords that are talking animals! No, you cannot [[Furry|play as one yourself]].

King Crocodile is the savage and bestial Darklord of the equally savage and bestial Wildlands, which is based on Rudyard Kipling's ''Just-So Stories'' and ''The Jungle Book''. This talking crocodile was so bloodthirsty and ferocious to his fellow talking animals in the jungle, they begged the hairless apes (i.e. humans) to come and kill him, but instead of holding up their end of the bargain, the hairless apes just started destroying the jungle for resources and colonizing it. This drove the other talking animals into pleading for King Crocodile to kill the hairless apes, and he agreed on the condition that the other animals all loan him their powers, which they did with the exception of the Python (the "wisest of the animals") and the Fly (whom King Crocodile thought was too insignificant to matter).

King Crocodile did slake his bloodthirsty appetite on the hairless apes and drove them out, but instead of returning the other animals' powers when he was finished as he had promised, he instead returned to his old ways of gorging himself on the animal population even more wantonly and gluttonously than before. It was at this point that the Python told King Crocodile a prophecy, which was that King Crocodile would either be killed by one of the hairless apes or by something he thought was pathetic and beneath him. With this done, the Python and his fellow snakes left King Crocodile's jungle to its fate at the hands of Ravenloft's Dark Powers, who quickly claimed the land as their own.

True to the Python's words, King Crocodile is slowly dying of the sleeping sickness spread by the flies, and the only thing that might help him are the hairless apes. But he is unable to keep himself from attacking any who might cure his affliction, and might attack them even if they do help him. The other talking animals still live in fear of King Crocodile and will implore any player characters they meet to dispose of him, but the cycle of betrayal in this land is only doomed to repeat itself. As a result, even if the player characters succeed in killing King Crocodile none of the talking animals will honour their words and the other crocodiles will fight to the death to assume King Crocodile's crown (and his cursed fate), as "''gratitude is not a quality well-known in the jungle.''"

===Kas===
Darklord of Tovag. The infamous vampire who betrayed [[Vecna]] and cut off his hand and eye. Was drawn into the mists at the same time as Vecna and the two of them were at constant war with each other until Vecna escaped. It is confirmed in 5th edition that Kas is still in the Demiplane of Dread and also is unaware that Vecna is gone. He repeatedly sends out armies to attack Vecna which never return, leaving him increasingly frustrated.

In the [[World Axis]] cosmology from 4th edition, he's not a Darklord, but he ''does'' hang out in the Domain of Dread called Monadhan; because he's figured out how to freely leave the domain whenever he wishes, he's turned it into his own personal base under the nose of its [[dracolich]] Darklord.

===Lemot Sediam Juste===
Darklord of Scaena, one of the few Domains capable of traveling through the mists. Scaena is a theater house, and one that Juste worked at as a playwright prior to his becoming a Darklord. Juste was a well-known and talented writer of comedies and dramas, but this never satisfied him, as he wished to write tragedies. Unfortunately for him, his [[Grimdark]] always came out as grimderp, and the actors invariably played his tragic works as farces, since they weren't good for much else. Driven to a deep bitterness by his failure to fulfill his obsession with tragedy, he wrote one last play- this one designed to be a real-life tragedy that killed all of his actors, and when the audience booed this one too, he locked up the house and burned it down with them inside.

Now, as a Darklord, Lemot has ultimate control of his theater, allowing him to trap people in his plays and alter reality for these press-ganged performers, but all this is undercut because he can't believe any of it; for his Darklord curse, the Dark Powers have taken away his suspension of disbelief, forcing him to always see actors, props, and scenery for what they truly are instead of what he wants them to be.

===Lord Wilfred Godefroy===
Darklord of Mordent (the same place from the old Ravenloft II module). A nobleman who murdered his wife when she was unable to produce a son for him as an heir and then murdered his daughter for trying to stop him, and then framed their deaths as an accident. Their ghosts came back to haunt him for a year until he killed himself to make it stop, and when Azalin and Strahd inadvertently drew Mordent into the mists Godefroy (now a ghost himself) became its darklord. His curse is to be continually tormented by the ghosts of his wife and daughter just as he was in life, who tear him apart every night as they curse him for murdering them.

While he was formerly known to be rather passive as a Darklord, in recent times he has taken to enslaving other ghosts to do his bidding. In particular, he's had the mayor of Mordentshire under his thumb for years by holding the ghost of his wife hostage.
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===Maharaja Arijani===
[[Rakshasa]] darklord of Sri Raji, Arijani attained his position after betraying both his kind and his father, Ravana (or rather, the Avatar of Ravana), having received the scorn of the rakshasa for most of his life. Although Ravana is a deity venerated by the rakshasa, Arijani's mother was Mahiji, then high priest of the hated goddess Kali and a leader of the Dark Sisters. To compound things, the Avatar of Kali delivered Arijanni to a home of low caste rank. He lived as a pariah shunned by his fellow rakshasa and languished in a position of low social importance. This alienated Arijani from his own kind, such that he arranged the death of many rakshasa in the conflict with humans. Gradually, Arijani's manipulations became so great that the people of Bahru began hunting their former hunters.

Arijani's depredations climaxed with rakshasa retaliatory siege against Bahru. Although the city fell, the cost was massive casualties on both sides and the city left in ruins. Angered and disgusted by Arijani's actions, Ravana sent his avatar to dispatch his prodigal son. However, Arijani conspired with Mahiji and lured the avatar into a trap. Thus rendered helpless, Ravana offered Arijani a wish in return for his release. Ravana accepted the offer, wishing to become immune to the attacks of rakshasas. The wish was granted, but Arijani slew the avatar anyway. Such was the level of his treachery that the Mists brought Sri Raji into the Demiplane of Dread.

The Maharaja's curse is that, although he is a talented illusionist, Arijani cannot disguise himself in a pleasing form, as most rakshasa do. Instead, he can only assume despicable aspects, such as that of the viewer's worst enemy. Maharaja Arijani resides in Mahakala, in Bahru. There, he is served by the Dark Sisters, whom through him, must provide to Kali daily human sacrifice.

Beyond the threat of an all weretiger cult called "The Stalkers" that were huge fans of his dad trying to kill him, Arijani's greatest fear is the very weapon he used to kill the avatar with, knowing full well it's somewhere in the jungle and very likely to be used on him just like Ravana.

===Maligno===
Darklord of Odiare, and originally from Gothic Earth's version of Italy. In the same vein as Pinocchio, he was originally a marionette brought to life through his toymaker "father" Giuseppe's wishes for a son. Though beloved by the children of Odiare, the adults of the village did not consider him to be a "real" boy. He soon grew bitter over the discovery that he wasn't truly alive, and after terrorizing Guiseppe into making more [[carrionette]]s like himself he had them kill every adult at one of his performances. It was this act that drew Odiare into the Mists as an Island of Terror.

Later on, he planned to have the carrionettes steal the bodies of every surviving adult there so they would be forced to love him, but due to the intervention of the PCs in the module "The Created" he was forced to simply kill the adults off instead. The children now adore him only out of fear, and as they grow older they wonder when Maligno will come for them as well.

Maligno's curse is that he can never be human as he craves, as he alone among the carrionettes is unable to steal the bodies of others. Furthermore, he cannot kill Guiseppe because any injury he suffers is inflicted on Maligno himself. Instead, the old toymaker was driven insane and now exists solely to create more toys for his "son" to command. Should Maligno's body be totally destroyed, Guiseppe is compelled to rebuild it, with the foul puppet's spirit claiming the new body as its own.

In 5e, Maligno was originally called ''Figlio'', which at least is an actual Italian name and not literally calling him "Evil" from the start.

===Marquis Stezen d'Polarno===
Darklord of Ghastria. As Strahd is for Dracula, Dr. Mordenheim for Dr. Frankenstein, and Tristren/Malken for Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so is Stezen to Dorian Grey, of ''The Picture of Dorian Grey''. But unlike Dorian, Stezen was a piece of work before his cursed painting came into play. As a noble in an unknown land, he enjoyed sowing chaos and rebellion and assassinated many people, but his charismatic nature meant that he hung on to a good reputation. But after one particular attempted coup went too far, his king had enough. Consulting with his mistress, a master of dark arts, he laid a curse upon d'Polarno that would do the Dark Powers proud; trapping a good chunk of Stezen's soul in a painting, he robbed him of all his charisma, vibrance, and capacity for enjoyment.

In retaliation, Stezen poisoned the king and his family, which drew the land into the mists. But he wasn't yet its Darklord. That happened when he realized that, once per season, he could temporarily reclaim his soul from the painting- at the cost of up to 50 other souls, each granting him one hour of rejuvenation. Now, once per season, he'll invite every stranger in Ghastria to a party (he'll grab some peasants if not enough foreigners answer). The party is for him, and him alone. With the exception of a few guests that he debauches himself with/upon, all guests are exposed to the painting, giving him up to 50 hours of being able to enjoy himself again before he returns to his normal drab state. While this is when he's at his most dangerous, it's also when he's most vulnerable- when his soul is still in the painting, he's essentially immortal, but when he's whole, he is as vulnerable as any other (And ''unlike'' the original Dorian, killing the painting won't work until Stezen is dead).

===Prince Ladislav Mircea===
Darklord of Sanguinia. Ladislav's story is a ripoff of the Edgar Allan Poe classic ''The Masque of the Red Death'', with the prince abandoning his people to a lethal plague, and retreating to a closed castle with his friends. And like in the original story, the plague entered the castle anyway. When Ladislav caught the plague, he turned to alchemy in a desperate attempt to cure himself. This failed and he died, only to rise as a Vrykolaka (usually mindless plague-carrier vampires that feed on bodily humors) and become Darklord of Sanguinia. He still experiments with alchemy to cure himself of his undeath, but this is unlikely to ever succeed.

===Sisters Mindefisk===
The three [[Hag]] co-Darklords of Tepest, and based the "the three wicked witches" from folkloric stories. Three sisters who were left as babies for a humble farm wife who wished for daughters, but from their birth displayed mysterious traits. Most notably, after their mother died from the strain of caring for the three sickly girls (or possibly because they drained her life), their father (who had often voiced his dislike of "weakling daughters") tried to leave the three 2-year olds for dead repeatedly, but they always came back. Eventually he let them stay as long as they cooked for him and his sons. Growing up dissatisfied with their surroundings, they took to seducing, murdering, and eating travelers to build up a stockpile of money so they could ultimately leave the farm. This worked until one final traveler tried to turn them against each other, only to be murdered so none of the sisters could claim him as theirs. This was what ultimately led to their being taken into the Mists and stuck in the depths of a forest full of [[goblin]]s and witch-burning, faerie-chasing bumpkins. They still lure in any unwary travelers to their cottage, taking advantage of the locals' blaming the goblins for their victims' deaths, but otherwise have little influence on their domain.

The sisters consist of Laveeda, an Annis Hag, Leticia, a Sea Hag, and Lorinda, a Green Hag. Though they can shapeshift, they are cursed to always see themselves and each other as their true forms no matter which shape they take.

====Mother Lorina====
In the 5e version of Tepest, only Lorinda is the darklord, having imprisoned her sisters when they refused to let her make and rear a child despite how badly she wanted to be a mom. Which ignores the complete and utter lack of maternal feelings they had in past editions, but whatever. She desperately yearns to have a family, but is thwarted by both her own inherently controlling, murderous nature, her inability to trust that her offspring genuinely love her (and the subsequent smothering, demanding, overbearing way that this makes her act), and the curse that any child she magics up for herself is a short-lived, ravenous monster; she can only make [[hexblood]]s for other people.
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===Sodo===
Darklord of Paridon. A low-ranked dread [[Doppelganger]] who resented being born into a lowly clan and thus being prevented from rising through the ranks by merit. After acquiring a magical Hat of Disguise, he fulfilled this previously-thwarted ambition by killing the elders who ruled over the clans and impersonating them, while also offing anyone else who questioned him. For managing the impressive feat of committing a betrayal egregious even by doppelganger standards, he was claimed by the Mists and given Darklordship of Paridon, and nailed with three separate curses: inability to control his shapeshifting, a healing touch (which wouldn't be much of a curse to anyone else, [[Dark Eldar|but Sodo's a sadist]] and this along with the previous curse renders him unable to effectively torture people), and an extra dose of paranoia for flavor.

===Thakok-An===
Darklord of Kalidnay, formerly from Athas. She was a templar of Kalidnay's sorceror-king, Kalid-Ma. To help him ascend to dragonhood, she sacrificed her family for the ascension ritual- an act which, ironically, would ruin it, as the Dark Powers took notice and drew Kalidnay into Ravenloft, in one of the few occasions in which being in the Demiplane of Dread was an improvement for most people. But not for Thakok-An nor Kalid-Ma, as the failed ritual put Kalid-Ma into a coma. Thakok-An remains active, ruling the realm as a theocracy of Kalid-Ma, despite said lord being comatose and all her efforts being for naught.

===Tsien Chiang===
Originally from the continent of Kara-Tur on the world of Toril, Tsien Chiang was beautiful and powerful wizard, who hated all men due to her father's dismissal of her abilities. After killing him and disabling her relatives, she seized control of her family lands. She used her charm and position to marry a total of four men, each of whom fathered a child with her before she killed him and moved on to the next. Three of the daughters so produced were evil, with the fourth, Nightingale, being truly good-hearted and adored by the gods. Tsien Chang would go on to commit various evil acts, including the desecration of four sacred bells and four sacred trees, but her mistreatment of Nightingale is what ultimately led to her being taken by the mists. On the fourth time that Nightingale objected to her family's atrocities, Tsien Chang decided to do far worse than merely beat her as they had the last three times, and she and her evil daughters were taken by the mists as the torture began. Tsien Chiang imprisoned the living remains of Nightingale in the Tower of Broken Promises as the Mists tore I'Cath from Kara-Tur forever.

If you're wondering why the number four is mentioned so much, it's because it's homophonous with "death" in most Chinese languages and is considered bad luck in many east-Asian cultures.

Her 5e incarnation gives her such a radically different backstory that pretty much the only things that remain are the four daughters and a magic bell.

When Tsien Chiang was a child, her home was destroyed by invaders, forcing her to flee into frozen mountains where she expected to die. Luckily for her, she was found and taken in by a gold dragon who took pity on her, and she served him as an attendant in thanks for saving her life. While serving the dragon, she learned much of magic and medicine, growing to become an accomplished wizard. The dragon refused to teach her any truly dangerous or powerful magic though, knowing that she would only use it for revenge. In her studies, she learned of the Nightingale bell, an artifact that could make its ringer’s dreams come true -- but creating the bell required the scale of a gold dragon. Knowing her mentor would never provide a scale she attempted to drug him so she could steal a scale while he slept, but got the mixture wrong and not only killed him, but caused his entire hoard to be destroyed, with all that remained being a single scale. Chiang crafted the bell and took it to her home, where she used it to wish away the invaders, which instantly vanished. In awe and gratitude, the people elevated her to royalty and she became their queen.

She ruled well for years, enacting vast reforms and strict but sensible laws in pursuit of creating the perfect empire. She had a family, taking particular pride in her four beloved daughters. Though her kingdom was prosperous, her people eventually began to chafe under her strict laws and demanding orders and revolted. Chiang was swift and merciless in her attempts to quell the rebellion, but her ruthlessness only caused the resistance against her to grow. When she ordered her armies to kill the families of all insurrectionists, assassins struck Tsien Chiang’s palace and killed her family. Distraught, Chiang climbed to the highest tower of her palace, looked out over her burning dreams, and struck the Nightingale Bell. Rather than granting her vengeful wish, the bell cracked and spilled a golden mist across the land. When the mist cleared, Tsien Chiang’s perfect city was gone, replaced by the unreal prison-city of I’Cath.

I'Cath is a city divided in two: The true I'Cath of the waking world, and Tsien Chiang's impossible, perfect dream. In the waking world the city is a silent and chaotic labyrinth composed of surreal, knotted streets and citizens trapped in eternal slumber. In the dream the city is vibrant and living, a place of ultimate beauty and efficiency where all things move according to Tsien Chiang's design, and a nightmare of constant drudgery for her people. Every twilight, Tsien Chiang climbs the spirit-infested Ping’On Tower and tolls the Nightingale Bell. This renews the magic of her dream world and keeps her citizens asleep, but it also calls forth a legion of jiangshi, which emerge from their tombs to reshape the waking city’s mazelike streets in a fruitless attempt to match Tsien Chiang’s perfectionist vision.

Her curse is that while the dream is near-perfection in her eyes, that only makes the imperfections of the waking world all the more obvious and inescapable. No matter how many times she tries to bring the same order and beauty she sees in her dream to the waking world, I'Cath's streets grow only more twisted and labyrinthine. She spends as much time as she can with the dream-versions of her daughters though she knows they aren't real, and in the waking world she actively avoids the twisted reflections of her daughters that wander the true I'Cath's streets.

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===Tristen ApBlanc===
Darklord of Forlorn. A Vampyre (living vampire) born when his dad was turned into a vampire but refused to leave his wife, which resulted in their son being born a vampyre. Tristen's parents were killed by fearful peasantfolk, but not before his mom gave him to the druid Rual to be raised. By all accounts, Rual was a pretty good foster mom, but when he was fifteen years old, Rual caught him drinking the blood of a deer. Believing she had betrayed him when he saw her talking to other druids, he attacked her- only to get his ass impaled by a blessed deer antler she was carrying, and when he drank her blood, he was both poisoned and partially cured of his vampyrism by the holy water she'd just drank. As she died, Rual cursed Tristen to be trapped in the sacred grove where he killed her, and to (agonizingly) die and become a ghost each night, and rise as a vampyre each morning. This makes him one of the few Darklords to receive most of his curse prior to Darklordship, as Forlorn was only pulled into Ravenloft centuries later, when Tristen engineered a bloody civil war to take control of the land.

As it is now, Forlorn really lives down to its name; there's little there except savage goblyns, a few beleagured Druids, and Castle Tristenoira, where Tristen is stuck, along with the ghosts of his family. The castle is split between three separate time periods that adventurers can shift between, thought to be because of all the ghostly shenanigans. Because there's really not much to do in Forlorn besides exploring Castle Tristenoira and trying not to get eaten by goblyns, it has no real political importance and is ignored by basically everyone, despite being most likely the second-oldest domain after Barovia.

He gets some very minor retcons in 5e, but since he only gets a single paragraph there's not much in the way of details. Seemingly the only changes are that he's now a dhampir (which is really more-or-less the same thing as a vampyre) and that he was taken by the mists almost immediately after killing the druids.

===Vlad Drakov===
Darklord of Falkovnia. He was originally the leader of a mercenary band called the Talons of the Hawk in [[Dragonlance|Krynn]]. For their wanton brutality and bloodlust, they were taken into Ravenloft and claimed Falkovia for themselves (after a failed invasion of Darkon that was repulsed by Azalin's undead).[[Berserk|If this seems familiar]] then good, you're paying attention.

This rivalry with Azalin has since become part of Drakov's curse, though he seems unaware of it. While four other countries (that have themselves agreed to an alliance should Falkovnia ever attack one of them) surround him, Drakov considers them "women and fops" not worth the effort of invasion, obsesses over an enemy he has no way of defeating, and is forever unable to gain the approval and respect of the great military leaders that he has sought all his life. And even if he did somehow conquer Darkon, [[fail|no Darklord can ever leave his own realm]] so he would never actually get to conquer it himself. Another factor in his defeats is that his way of doing war is distinctly and doggedly medieval (no gunpowder, no magic), so on the rare occasions he decides to try his luck at conquering other neighbouring domains than Darkon (all of which are at a higher technological level than Falkovnia) his forces almost always get shot to pieces by firearms or, more rarely, blown to pieces with magic. Oddly enough, his realm may in fact be, on the whole, a net ''benefit'' to the other domains of the Core, as his penchant for overworking his peasantry/slaves (when he's not busy having them impaled for his entertainment, of course) means that his realm produces large amounts of grain and foodstuffs which he sells for funds to equip and train his forces, unintentionally making Falkovnia "the breadbasket of the Core."

In addition, Drakov may be unique as the one of the most "conventional" Darklords in Ravenloft in the sense that he is statted like a run-of-the-mill fighter-class BBEG, and much like this archetype he has no magical abilities aside from a few magical weapons and armour at his disposal, coupled with no ability to cheat death, and no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders (all of which are in line with his disdain for magic and the supernatural), except for a good amount of inherent magic resistance that will also work against beneficial spells (so if he's ever in a tight enough bind to require magical healing, he's screwed). However, PCs and DMs shouldn't mistake his one-dimensional combat abilities as a sign that Falkovnia would be easy to liberate from his iron-fisted rule via a [[Raven Guard|simple decapitation raid]]; the totalitarian and thoroughly abusive nature of his rule means that those he trusts enough to carry out his orders are all likely evil enough and think enough like him to instantly assume his mantle of Darklord should Drakov ever be killed, just like similar totalitarian regimes in real life can survive the deaths of multiple successive leaders. Truly liberating Falkovnia in a thematically appropriate way would require the PCs to either engineer a full-scale revolution, or otherwise ensure the complete destruction of his regime, much like truly destroying a cancerous tumour in real life requires removing or destroying every last cancer cell. And all of this says nothing about which neighbouring realm would end up absorbing Falkovnia on the off-chance it ever gets truly liberated, though at this point even Azalin would be a better ruler than Drakov given that the lich dispenses harsh but fair justice and otherwise leaves his subjects alone to continue his arcane pursuits.

5th edition got rid of him, since the developers found him redundant. He's replaced by Ledeska Drakov, and Falkovnia was reskinned with a zombie apocalypse vibe.

===Yagno Petrovna===
Darklord of G'Henna. The Petrovna family was one of those taken by the Mists when Barovia was absorbed into Ravenloft, and although they avoided Strahd's attention by hiding away in the mountains this in turn led to inbreeding. As Yagno grew up, it became clear to all that he was insane- he conversed with imaginary people and cowered from beasts that weren't there. One day, he was locked out of his family's home and had to take shelter in a cave for the night. When he woke up, he saw the name "[[Zhakata]]" scrawled on a wall.

Yagno concluded that Zhakata was the name of the god that had protected him when he slept that night and created a shrine to his savior. (In reality, the name was written by his brother as a prank and meant absolutely nothing.) At first he merely sacrificed animals to Zhakata, but then he moved on to sacrificing people. When he was caught trying to offer his sister's newborn baby to Zhakata, he was chased out of Barovia by his family. The Mists welcomed him to the domain of G'henna, where he became the Darklord.

Yagno is cursed to constantly suffer doubts about whether or not Zhakata is real. No matter how many sacrifices he makes or how many people he commands to starve themselves in the name of Zhakata, he can never quite get rid of his nagging disbelief and the worry that all his devotion has been directed towards a lie. This eventually led Yagno to call upon a wizard who claimed he could summon Zhakata; as he could not summon a nonexistent god, a nalfeshnee by the name of Malistroi answered the summons instead and told Yagno that Zhakata was just a figment of his imagination. The Darklord immediately flew into a rage and killed the wizard, while Malistroi later escaped to ravage G'Henna. Since then, he has merely redoubled his fanaticism in a futile attempt to dispel his doubts.

==Former Darklords==
You remember that section where the permanent death of Darklords is discussed? Well, it's actually happened in the past, though never yet to a band of plucky adventurers, and the results usually haven't been good. These Darklords for whatever reason no longer rule their domain, usually because some asshole killed them and was promptly saddled with their domain as the new Darklord.

===Bakholis===
Former Darklord of Invidia, and formerly a tyrannical king whose kingdom was claimed by the mists when he was spurned by a woman named Marta, and in return had her lover killed and eaten in front of her and Marta herself raped to death by his soldiers. As she died, Marta cursed him to be the beast he was inside and never be free of the blood of loved ones on his hands, which manifested as turning him into a werewolf. Unlike most Darklords, Bakholis said 'fuck this' to angst and [[Dark Eldar|embraced his curse]], descending to ever-greater depths of savagery until, to everyone's relief, the half-Vistani Gabrielle Aderre showed up and promptly murdered his ass, succeeding him as Darklord of Invidia.

===Camille Boritsi===
The mother of Ivana Boritsi and the first Darklord of Borca, who earned her position by poisoning her husband and his lover. She was cursed to be betrayed by any man she trusted, which left her with serious issues relating to men and a blindspot towards scheming women, which ultimately proved her downfall when her daughter Ivana turned the poison tables by killing ''her'' for sleeping with Ivana's lover. She was succeeded as Darklord by her daughter and murderer, Ivana Boritsi.

===Claude Reiner===
The first darklord of Richemulot. The patriarch of a family of wererats who lead his family into the mists to escape hunters, gaining his domain when his monstrous cruelty caught the attention of the Dark Powers. He was eventually killed when his granddaughter Jaqueline had enough of his abuse, making her the new Darklord of Richemulot.

===Duke Nharov Gundar===
Former Darklord of Gundarak, prior to being betrayed and usurped by Daclaud Heinfroth, who would later gain his own, separate domain. As Darklord of Gundarak, he enforced the worship of the malevolent trickster-god [[Erlin]] and taxed basically everything he could think of (with a special emphasis on the birth of girls), but little else is known of his rule. During the Grand Conjunction, Gundarak was absorbed by Barovia and Invidia.

But that wasn't the end of Nharov Gundar. He was a vampire, and though Heinfroth had staked him, he remained alive, but dormant. His skeletal remains somehow found their way to the traveling curio show of Professor Arcanus, where some complete berk went and yanked the stake out. This brought him back to life, though his time spent as a skeleton has reduced him to a near-bestial state, only vaguely remembering Heinfroth's betrayal.

===Lord Soth===
{{main|Lord Soth}}
The infamous Death Knight of Krynn was for a time the Darklord of Sithicus. More details can be found on his page, but suffice to say that the Dark Powers grew tired of him, and he was succeeded as Darklord by the [[Vistani]] Inza Kulchevitch.

===Nathan Timothy===
Darklord of Arkendale. There are more details on him in the section for his more important son Alfred, but suffice to say that Nathan was possessed of a deep-seated wanderlust, which the Dark Powers curtailed by cursing him such that he couldn't leave the river Musarde, lest he be crippled by land sickness. Nathan rolled with the curse and adapted so well to being a boatman that he outright lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction. He's still confined to river waters, but Arkendale has been absorbed into Alfred's domain of Verbrek.

===Vecna===
{{main|Vecna}}
Yes, THAT Vecna, the Maimed God; the guy whose eye and hand are still around for PCs to mess (and ''be'' messed) with.

The whole tale of Vecna's ascension to godhood is complicated, but at one point where he was 'merely' a demigod, he and Kas were pulled into the Mists after a bunch of meddlesome adventurers thwarted one of his plans. Not one to be contained for long, Vecna has the dubious honor of being the only Darklord to force his way out of the Demi-Plane of Dread after being drawn in by the Mists. On top of that, he managed to get himself 'promoted' to full-fledged minor God in the process, which is how he got the Dark Powers to kick him out due to their ban on allowing gods to influence Ravenloft. (The full story is recounted in the modules ''Vecna Lives!'', ''Vecna Reborn'' and ''Die Vecna Die!''.)

==Netbook Darklords==
These darklords represent the rulers of fan-made domains from [[netbook]]s such as the [[Books of S]], the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]], [[Quoth the Raven]], and other projects from the [[Fraternity of Shadows]].

===Ahasveros===
Darklord of Incitatus. Once, Ahasveros (male human) was the greatest scientist of his civilization, until the day his homeland was drawn into a great war against a rival nation. He invented the Adamas theory, a device that could be used to generate a mighty tidal wave to devaste the enemy's fleets and harbors.

But that wasn't enough for Ahasveros; he became obsessed with improving the device, banishing his assistants when they protested the potential dangers of doing so, cutting off all contact with those who might challenge his beliefs, and reducing the time he spent running his calculations.

The result was, when the device was used, Ahasveros lost control of it and the tidal wave annihilated ''his'' homeland as well, drowning him in the tower from whence he'd launched it.

Ever since then, the bussengeist he became has lingered in his tower, unable to decide whose fault the mess was, alternating between blaming his associates and himself. Honestly, he's not much of a darklord, and this is reflected by how empty and meaningless Incitatus is. He currently occupies a limbo; too dull to be truly absorbed into the [[Demiplane of Dread]], but still too evil and in denial of what he did to be released, either.

Ahasveros' existence is completely tied to the remnants of the Adamas machine. Only by destroying it, which will unshackle his spirit, and performing a brief rite to the long-forgotten sea god of ruined Misenos, which requires lighting the lanterns in the temple and praying for both Misenos and Ahasveros, will his torment end.

If Ahasveros wishes to seal his domain's borders, those attempting to cross it are overwhelmed by misery and the urge to seek comfort, which only those outside of the border can give them.

===The Barons Gustav===
Darklords of Gustavstan.

Baron Gustav the Elder is a male human ghost who once ruled a small kingdom in his homeland. Though he had intended to pass his holdings on to his younger brother Klaus, the younger sibling had no interest in ruling, so the elderly Gustav took a wife and fathered a son, Gustav the Younger. Then, when his son was fifteen, Gustav the Elder stepped on a snake in his garden and was fatally bitten.

Gustav the Younger (male human [[Fighter]]) was inconsolable, his mind fracturing under the sudden death of his beloved father. In his grief, he refused to take up the throne, forcing his uncle Klaus to become Baron in his place - as well as to wed Ingrid, Gustav the Elder's widow and Gustav the Younger's mother, to secure the Younger's inheritance. Unfortunately, this gesture was misunderstood by ''both'' Gustavs; the Younger began to despise his uncle and mother for their apparent disloyalty, whilst the Elder's restless spirit also became incensed at Klaus's apparent betrayal. He seized upon the idea of exploiting his son's fractured mind to both weaponize him against Klaus and to make him vulnerable, so the Elder could live again by stealing his son's body.

This domain is basically [[grimdark]] Hamlet, in case it's not obvious already.

So Gustav the Elder manifests to his son, lies that he was murdered by Klaus, and convinces his half-crazed son that Klaus wants to steal the throne for himself. Klaus the Younger swallows this bullshit hook, line and sinker, and pretending to be even madder than he actually was, he began preparing to kill his uncle and his mother both - ignoring that Gustav the Elder wanted Ingrid spared, having figured that once he stole his son's body, [[/d/|he could reclaim her as his wife]].

This led to Gustav the Younger murdering the father of Elaine, the woman he loved, and driving her so insane that she ended up committing suicide by throwing herself off the battlements of the castle - which didn't do Gustav Junior's sanity any great shakes. Instead, it provoked him into finally battling his uncle, killing Klaus and his mother in the process. Which was when Gustav the Eldler showed up and, horrified at his wife's death, he revealed the truth about how he'd played his son for a fool. Enraged, the son attacked his father's ghost, and that was when Gustavstan was snatched up by the mists.

Gustav the Younger now burns with the urge to hunt his father's spirit down and destroy him, a task not helped by his paranoia. Every night, he is haunted by the angry ghosts of Elaine and Klaus, who spend the night cursing him out for their murders.

Gustav the Elder now spends his days haunting the local insane asylum, where Ingrid - who actually survived her son's attack, but was left a raving madwoman - is now kept. At night, he strives to manipulate others into killing his son.

Neither darklord can be permanently destroyed by violence; they regenerate and revive from destruction. Only by killing Ingrid will their resurrective regeneration cease... but doing this will cause the killer to immediately suffer a failed [[Powers Check]], whilst those who watch get to roll one.

===Benada Nameless===
Darklord of Vin'Ejal. Conceived when the Eye of Toldun, the fake prophet of a phony goddess called Appissa (actually a powerful half-breed [[yuan-ti]] [[psion]] magically held in stasis), used a potion given to him by his goddess to drug and rape a woman named Dillura Ogfenhauer, Benada's mother despised her daughter from the moment she was born. Only Benada's uncle, Dillura's 12-year-old brother Ekkim, cared for her, and he raised her throughout her life, even taking her off with him to be his squire when he went to war after discovering her nature as a [[psion]]icist [[weresnake]]. Even when they returned, however, Dillura wanted nothing to do with her bastard daughter.

Finally, the enraged Benada sought to confront her mother one evening, only to track her to the Shrine of the Eye. When she saw Dillura embracing the Eye, she realized that this man was her father. Filled with hatred, she grabbed a bone knife and fatally stabbed her mother, before psionically torturing her father to death. As she turned to leave, she found herself confronted by her uncle Ekkim, who had seen everything. Realizing she couldn't let him live now, a weeping Benada killed the only person to ever show her love, transporting Vin'Ejal to the Misty Realm.

Benada's curse seems to be an insatiable hunger that only human flesh can sate; she only gives in to its demands once per month, however, as she fears depleting her domain's population. If she wishes to close the domain, the waters around Vin'Ejal decrease in temperature to the point that would-be swimmers will freeze solid, whilst hail begins savagely pelting down from above.

===Baroness Ilsabet Obour===
Darklord of Kislova. This female human [[alchemist]] was born the youngest daughter and favored child of Baron Janosk Obour of Kislova, and remained loyal and obedient to him even as he descended into brutal tyranny and made a failed attempt to conquer a neighboring barony, only to be crushed, captured and executed. Before he died, Janosk commanded each of his three children to take steps to both preserve their family and avenge the loss of their power.

Of the three, Ilsabet was the most loyal to her father, honing her alchemical skills and delving into dark alchemical practices, focusing on hideous poisons and the creation of alchemical undead. She crippled and maimed many prisoners who had dared to rebel against her father's rule before his conquest by Baron Peto, created a unique strain of alchemical vampires, fatally poisoned her elder siblings for perceived disloyalty to their father's dying wishes, and finally married Baron Peto herself and bore him a son in order to gain the opportunity to poison him with a paralytic venom. It was only as she administered what she intended to be the final, fatal dose, killing her mentor (and true love) to do so, that the Mists finally claimed her.

Ilsabet currently suffers two curses. Her most direct darklord-related curse is that her desire for power and revenge are thwarted; though her husband, Baron Peto, remains incurably paralyzed, he also remains unkillable - no matter what she does, he always returns to life. As a result, she remains forever his regent, rather than the true Baroness of Kislova, which she regards as unacceptable; she yearns to resume the interrupted reign of her own family. Secondly, Ilsabet has become a vampire-like creature that feeds on pain, and must have one person killed every day in order to survive.

Unlike many Darklords, Ilsabet has no particular powers of supernatural survival. If you can beat an 11th level [[wizard]] protected by her guard of alchemical vampires, you can kill her.

When Ilsabet closes the borders, a poisonous green mist surrounds Kislova, inflicting irresistable damage per round until the would-be escapee returns to Kislova.

===Bethany Stone===
Darklord of Stonewall. A sad, broken, bitter woman, Bethany was born the daughter of a family of puritans, self-righteous and obsessed with sin. When her father discovered the child Bethany, a cheerful, whimsical young girl, had dreams of leaving the family home to become a dollmaker, he destroyed the dolls she had painstakingly constructed over years of work and beat her within an inch of her life. Later, when she came of age, he arranged her marriage to a man of high standing.

After long years of often-lonely marriage, pregnant with her sixth child, Bethany's father and husband were caught in a terrible accident, with the former dying and the latter being left in a coma. That was hardship enough, but as she cared for her husband, Bethany discovered his diary, in which he revealed he had only wed her to cover up his "sinful" nature as a homosexual. Enraged, Bethany began tampering with her husband's medicine to ensure he remained comatose, and then launched her own moral crusade, something aided by the fact she established her charismatic but broken-willed son Clarence as the town's minister.

When the Salem Witch trials broke out, Bethany eagerly spread their madness to Stonewall. But the tenth victim was the friend of Bethany's youngest daughter, Katherine, who unearthed evidence that this was really a way for Bethany to resolve a land-dispute between their families in the Stone's favor. When Katherine tried to intervene, she called out her mother for the cold, twisted monster that she was. Bethany promptly stabbed Katherine in the heart, and that was when the Mists took the town.

Bethany Stone is now a [[harpy]], although she has limited shapeshifting abilities that let her masquerade as a human. Her curse is that she will be forever doomed to lose her children before they are fully ready, whether by death, betrayal or abandonment. Though she doesn't know it yet, as part of this curse, she will become spontaneously pregnant and give birth to a human child every 5 years. Both of her arms are permanently blood-red from the elbow down, although she considers it a sign of her righteousness and so doesn't hide it.

The borders of Stonewall are permanently closed; unless the departee has the approval of either Bethany or Clarence to leave, they will be struck by lightning bolts until they turn back. It's unknown if lightning immunity will nullify this border, but it's not explicitly countered.

Nothing explicitly says that Bethany cannot just be killed in a fight (and, frankly, Stonewall is described as the kind of place where wiping out everybody is actually the heroic thing to do), but she ''does'' have an explicit method of redemption. If the party can find one of the dolls she made as a child, as one survived her father's wrath, and present it to her, she will break down in tears. If consoled and successfully reminded of her long-lost dreams, the rest of the town will break down weeping with her, and then Stonewall will slide out of the Mists and back to the prime material. On the other hand, if they fail, then she'll destroy the doll herself and become even more fanatical.

===Caleb Wicks===
Darklord of Wayward on the Bone Sands. Even at the age of 10, Caleb was a fearless, stubborn, trouble-making brat. The only thing able to scare him into obedience were stories of a local boogeyman: Black Hat the Swordslinger.

Caleb's transformation from mere brat to full-blown Darklord came when his family were hired by the lord of the distant Hangingshire, which required a long trek that passed through a desert region known as the Bone Sands. During this leg of the journey, Caleb's family were seperated from the caravan and veered their wagon over a tall, steep dune as a result of a sudden sandstorm. The wagon was destroyed, their horses killed, and Caleb's elder brother Horatio was severely injured. Though they initially settled in to wait for the caravan to send a rescue party after them, their food swiftly ran out and they realized they would have to try and walk out of the desert on foot... a journey that Horatio couldn't make.

The senior Wicks came to a grim realization: Horatio wasn't going to live much longer anyway, so when he died, the family would eat his body for sustenane before making their trek towards safety. They were content to wait... but Caleb found out about their plans, and taunted his brother with this fact; when Horatio began to scream and cry, Caleb panicked and stabbed him to death with a cooking knife. Caleb's parents were horrified, but ultimately decided there was nothing left to do. They ate their dead son, and then broke camp the next morning.

As they were traveling, Caleb found himself separated from his family by another sandstorm, wandering on his own for days before he stumbled across a small town called "Wayward". Mad with hunger, he murdered the first townsman who tried to offer him help, devouring as much of the man's flesh as he could before fleeing into the night. The next morning, he revealed himself to the horrified townsfolk and claimed that he had witnessed Black Hat kill and eat the man. Unable to believe a youngster like Caleb could be responsible for so monstrous a crime, the townsfolk believed him, and opened their homes to the young cannibal.

Caleb became a beloved fixture of the community... and then, the neighboring [[gnome]] community of Rumbleton was destroyed in an earthquake that crushed the subterranean village like an egg. They begged Wayward for shelter whilst they tried to rebuild, and the humans took them in. But rebuilding a new gnomish settlement wasn't easy, as Rumbleton had already been built in what was considered the most stable, accessible ground for miles around. With little choice, the gnomes began to put down roots in Wayward.

Which was a problem: Wayward already had troubles supporting its own population before the gnomes came in, and now things were worse than ever. The population increase led to a famine, known as "The Lean Times" by the locals, and tensions began to grow between humans and gnomes... tensions only fanned by Caleb, who began advocating the humans of Wayward should eat the baby gnomes born after the refugees settled in their village. Whilst initially this proposal was rejected, the gnomes took affront when they learned of its proposal at all, and relations only continued to deteriorate... especially because Caleb was continuing to egg things on, pushing his cannibalistic plan in secret.

Finally, it all came to a head; on the first night of the full moon, the Waywarders, driven mad with hunger, descended on the gnome shantytown and abducted as many gnomish children as they could, cannibalizing them in a disgusting, bloody orgy. Over the next two days they massacred the surviving gnomes and ate them as well, then they ate the few Waywarders who had protested "The Feast", as it was dubbed. And on that final full moon night, as the cannibal villagers slept off their full bellies, Wayward on the Bone Sands was pulled into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Caleb and the other villagers are now [[quevari]]. They spend most of their time in an enchanted slumber, only waking when visitors come to town. Like all quevari, they are peaceful and innocent-seeming during the day, but revert to bloodthirsty cannibals at night, as the first three nights after outsiders arrive are all full moons - after those three nights, they fall back into slumber until disturbed again. It's unclear what happens if a survivor somehow avoids being killed on that third night.

Wayward itself has a couple of curses. Firstly, there are no children here; all of their youths were left behind when the village was pulled into the Misty Realms, and none of the women ever fall pregnant, save when Caleb is killed (we'll get to that). Secondly, all food and drink in the domain is inherently inedible - even foods brought in from outside instantly spoil, although the look and smell perfectly fine. Finally, none of the villagers will ever age beyond the day they were when they committed their sins.

Caleb himself is a 5th level [[quevari]] [[thief]] who wields an enchanted knife +3 of bleeding. He can Charm Person 1/day by speaking to them, and still carries the Triangle of the Feast - the triangular dinner bell he played before the cannibalism of the gnomes. This can function as a Chime of Hunger that only affects non-Waywarders 3/day, and can also summon 2d6 Waywarders to his aid at will. The other quevari only openly recognize him as their lord and master during the night, but still are fiercely protective of him during the day. He can potentially be driven away in fear by forcefully invoking Black Hat - this requires something like disguising yourself ''as'' the boogeyman or telling a Black Hat story, simply saying the name won't scare him.

If killed, one of the Wayward women will find herself pregnant within a week, and give birth to Caleb's reincarnation a month later. Caleb will resume his true form as an elven year old a month after being born. The only way to kill Caleb for good is to wipe out the entire town of Wayward, which frankly you should be wanting to do anyway.

Caleb can close the borders by summoning tornadoes that lash all around the domain's periphery, kicking up lethal sandstorms and making it impossible to flee.

===Cassandre Desesprits===
Darklord of Miseria. Born to a humble farmer's family, Cassandre was gifted with the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, which also made her a very effective seer. When this was revealed to her village, she became an immediate celebrity, and this situation - never permitted time to herself or any true friends, but also showered in displays of good will and thanks - twisted her heart. She became completely self-centered, egotistical and immoral, regarding all others as nothing more than things to use for her own amusement and gratification.

When a war broke out amongst the local villages over the ability to use her seer powers, Cassandre exploited this to become a veritable queen, feeding just the right predictions to all factions to keep the war dragging on perpetually for over two years, wallowing in opulence whilst others bled, died and starved over her. Inevitably, the war drew to its climax, with both factions preparing to launch a decisive blow with a super-spell; Cassandre manipulated them into both acting at the exact same time, figuring that this would cause the spells to negate each other and stalemate, thus preserving the war and her power. Instead, they magnified each other, resulting in the annihilation of the warring armies and Cassandre being literally blown into Miseria.

Cassandre's curse is, fundamentally, that she will never again enjoy the lifestyle she once enjoyed. Although surrounded by people who genuinely like and care for her rather than her gifts, she pines for the days when people doted upon her every wish and resents being forced to work for a living as a barmaid. Her [[diviner]] powers have dwindled and become almost useless, but her spiritual powers have expanded; she now commands incorporeal [[undead]] with the proficiency of a master [[necromancer]], and her life is supplement with the years drained by her [[ghost]]ly minions. None of her schemes to regain her "royal" status will ever work, and so she seems doomed to an eternity as a beloved but otherwise unremarkable barmaid.

When she closes the borders, Miseria is surrounded by thick red fog that causes those who try to leave to age and eventually crumble to dust, whereupon they become ghosts under her command.

If slain, Cassandre becomes a ghost herself, but then resurrects 2d4 days later. Only if she is confronted in ghost form by an exorcist of the local deity Saint-Ambroise who can denounce her for her crimes in life will she be banished from the world of the living forever.

===Coyote===
Darklord of Yatehcaa. Once, this animal god aided the First Man in protecting his American Aboriginal-flavored world from powerful monsters. But his greed, malice and cruelty led to him committing many dark acts, and so the gods declared him unfit to remain amongst their ranks. First Man took back Coyote's cloak of stars, condemning him to stay forever on the world and be vulnerable to the monsters he had once battled. But Coyote showed no regret, no compassion, no willingness to learn from his mistakes or to try and make amends, and so he found himself trapped in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Ever since, he has continued his old ways, playing cruel, malicious tricks on the people of Yatehcaa, all the while trying to distract himself from how afraid he is that some day, he might be caught and killed by "The Dark Watchers", the antediluvian monsters whom he once battled alongside First Man.

Technically, nothing protects Coyote from death, but between his lack of shame and utter cowardice combined with his powerful magical abilities, actually killing him in a fight is easier said than done.

===Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez===
Darklord of Resistencia. Born the son of a once-great noble family in the Holy Republic of Aragona, Santiago's family had fallen in stature to such a degree that the impoverished patricians had mortaged their lands to the hilt and lived a life barely above that of their peasant tenats. They scrimped and saved to send Santiago to court, but the Don of Quijada found himself a laughing stock, regarded as little better than a jumped up hayseed peasant. This only fueled a lifelong hatred for those lacking in noble blood.

Desperate to try and reclaim the respect he had been taught from birth his family name deserved, Santiago bought a commission in the army. He proved little better here than he had in the court; poor of health, average at best with the sword, and no genius in the command of men or the intricacies of tactics and strategy. His only saving grace was his thoroughness and dedication... but even this went sour, breeding in him an obsession with discipline, cleanliness and presentation, and a love of punishment so extreme that even the Aragonan army considered him a draconian tyrant.

Though Santiago managed to win a few fairly creditable actions early in his career, his faults quickly stole away what his successes had won him, sending him into a self-inflicted downward spiral of ever-worsening behavior and failures as a result. He was appointed as the governor a rebellious backwater province, and only made things worse as he extended the same tyrannical, brutal law he held over his military forces to the population.

Then he was offered the chance to take up governship in a minor overseas colony called Neuva Aragona, which was also currently rebelling. Despite recognizing that this was intended to be a sentence of exile, Santiago accepted, dreaming of reversing his fortunes. Instead, he proved the absolute ''worst'' choice for the role; a born-and-bred monarchist with no sympathy for the lot of the peasants, he ignored the legitimate grievances of the rebels and remained fundamentally convinced that the isle of Manzanilla - renamed "Resistencia" by the rebels - was home to a silent majority of good, loyal followers of the kings. Ignoring all opportunities efor a diplomatic solution, he launched into his trademark brutality, which only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the natives.

Among his many atrocities, he took captive the pregnant wife of the rebel leader Martin Jose Maconda, one Isabel de Maconda. Simultaneously smitten with her and repulsed by her loyalty to the rebel's cause, he alternatively cajoled her and brutalized her, culminating in his ordering that she would be permitted no midwife when she went into labor. The birth went bad, and both mother and child died.

All his atrocities were for nothing, ineptitude and his habit of overworking his never-great health led to him dying in his sickbed, on the very day the last of his depleted forced were overwhelmed and Neuva Aragona formally seceded independence. But even as he died, he cursed that the rebels must be defeated at any cost.

Santiago now exists as a ghost, cursed to forever mentally relieve every battle he lost on Resistencia and see with perfect clarity how he could have won. And, of course, he's also cursed that no matter how he schemes and plots, on those rare moments he tears himself away from his biter memories and dreams of glory to actually try and do something, his plans to re-conquer Manzanilla are doomed to fail.

If defeated in battle, Santiago reforms in his burial chamber below Castillo Ascension, although he remains trapped there until the next full moon. The only way he can be destroyed is if his personal sword is stolen from this chamber and used to deliver the death blow in combat.

When he closes the borders, the sea surrounding Resistencia takes on an eerie, unnatural calm; sailing ships cannot move, and rowers will find that they simply can't get more than a half-mile away from the coast.

===Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll===
Darklord of Immerabt. This female human alchemist could in many ways be considered a mirror to Dr. Mordenheim of Lamordia. Like him, she was born a scientific prodigy who had neither time nor patience for religions and matters of faith. When she was twelve, Dorothy's mother died in childbirth giving birth to a son, something Dorothy blamed upon both the local priest - for he had both refused to allow Dorothy to be present at the birth, despite her knowledge of herbs and medicines, for her lack of faith, and proven unable to save Lady Hemphyll's life with his limited divine magic - and her father, for he had listened to the priest.

This became the cornerstone of Dorothy's growing loathing for religion, something that grew ever stronger as she aged. She went abroad to study medical sciencies, [[transmuter|transmutation magic]] and [[alchemist|philosophical alchemy]], always seeking to refine her medical skills. She also visited the dark, seedy corners of society: brothels, dog-fighting arenas, drug-fueled parties and other such realms that further convinced her of the absence of divine intervention.

The kicker was when she met and fell in love with another medical student of noble ancestry; Hermann Leawly. Despite her feelings, she refused to marry him, for that would require submitting to a religious ceremony she wanted nothing to do with. But he bent under the pressure from his traditional family and returned to their home, something that enraged Dorothy, who now derided him as a weakling.

After a long, bloody war, a terrible plague gripped her homeland, and Dorothy came up with an idea for a new method to care for the terminally ill. She purchased an abandoned penitentiary on a small rocky island and converted it into a sickbay, hiring the best healers she could find (so long as they weren't divine spellcasters). One of those she hired was Hermann. She became ever-more obsessive, pushing her followers brutally, and gaining the first attention of the [[Dark Powers]]. When she perfected her prototype life support mechanisms and began abducting the terminally ill from her hospice to install them in the devices, trapping them at the brink of life and death in a state of constant, unrelenting pain, they grew anticipatory. But it wasn't until she got drunk at a party celebrating her newly produced plague vaccine, and revealed to Hermann her monstrous experiments, injecting him with concentrated plague serum and deliberately waiting for him to reach the still-incurable terminal stage of the disease before strapping him into one of her hideous living death machines that they seized her and transformed goal island into Immerabt.

Dorothy's curse is three-fold, and could be a considered a blend of Mordenheim's and Azalin's. Though she is well-aware of the fact that the local industries of Immerabt are poisoning the population, her attempts to plan and execute social projects to counter the pollution invariably fail due to being rejected or ignored. Secondly, she is kept so busy working her daily job that she cannot devote the time to furthering her understandings of magic and alchemy, preventing her from attaining the greater power she needs to pursue her goal of the ultimate curatives. Finally, she is unable to invent a vaccine to cure those suffering from the terminal effects of the plague, which means she cannot cure Hermann, who remains bound and suffering in his life-support in the depths of her sanitarium.

Unlike many darklords, Dorothy has no inherent abilities that make her unkillable, although her disease-bearing touch and biomechanical golem guards make her a force to be reckoned with in combat. She can regenerate, but she's vulnerable to fire.

If she wishes to close the borders of Immerabt, violent storms with strong winds and heavy rain surround the archipelago, whilst the waters boil with mutated [[shark]]s and other aquatic predators.

===Elizabeth Michelle Cole III===
Darklord of Hibernate. This female human [[vampire]] was born to the noble family of the Coles in the land of Hybernaya on Boram'ith. Despite her aristocratic lineage, she did not believe in the inherent superiority of her bloodline, and fell in love with a peasant boy, whom her parents had executed on trumped-up charges. This engendered a deep hatred for her parents in Elizabeth's heart, and at the age of 28, she left home to "think about things".

In her wanderings, she met and fell in love with a man named Alexander Berzinski, a [[vampire]] who converted her into one as well. They traveled together for seven years before parting, whereupon Elizaeth returned home, murdered her parents, and ruled their lands with an iron first for a decade.

During this time, she became a high priestess of [[Thanatos]], and attempted to lure a prophesied warrior known as "The Son of the Black Moon" into Thanatos' service. A task she delighted in, for she fell in love with him when she met him - a one-sided love, for he was devoted to his [[half-elf]] girlfriend. When he died escaping from his contract with the dark god, Elizabeth had him resurrected and attempted to lure him through a portal to the [[Lower Planes]], only to find herself alone in Darkon. Here, she fell afoul of the Kargat and fled to the Sea of Sorrows, only to find herself bound to the newly formed isle of Hibernate when she set foot there.

She has risen to power as the madame of the most well-respected brothel in Hibernate, leading a force of twenty eight call girls, all of whom she has turned into [[vampire]]s. Her curse is that she yearns to find the Son of the Black Moon and claim him for herself, but he has never materialized in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Elizabeth is unaffected by Hibernatian holy symbols, due to the combined facts that they represent a non-existant god and the lack of true faith endemic in Hibernate's people, but can be slain by a pine wood stake, or paralyzed with any other kind of stake. If Elizabeth is killed, one of her vampire prostitutes will fall into a month-long coma, during which she will physically and mentally be subsumed and transformed into a new incarnation of Elizabeth. It's unclear how this can be prevented.

When she wishes to close the domain, Hibernate's borders are choked by a thick fog that is impossible to navigate; those who try only find themselves circling back to Hibernate, no matter how hard they try.

The [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002 version of Elizabeth emphasizes her fundamental selfishness and cruelty, and also notes that her Undying Soul will allow her to possess any woman in Hibernate should all of her prostitutes be killed.

===Gatwe and Mr. Klein===
The domain of Nzari is home to two darklords, struggling for dominance.

'''Gatwe''' is the original Darklord; an Mwele man who was forever questioning the traditions of his people even from a youth and who burned to hold power. He apprenticed himself to the tribal shaman, whom he perceived held the true power, but his ambitions remained unchecked. When the most beautiful woman in the village chose to marry a respected hunter, that was the last straw; he forsook all the traditional limits on the shaman and began practicing sorcery. He used curses to sicken and kill those he hated, and goad the tribe into war, slowly building an empire from the scattered tribes of the Mwele. When suspicion began to fall upon him, he murdered his own family to try and throw it off, assuming the form of a leopard to plant a curse-bundle that would kill them all slowly and painfully. When he began to resume his human form, that was when the [[Dark Powers]] struck, trapping him in a twisted [[Broken One|nightmarish conglomerate form]], incapable of wielding his former magic, and launching Nzari into the Misty Realm.

'''Mr. Klein''' came to Nzari after its appearance in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. A fanatical devotee of [[Ezra]], he yearned to be a missionary, but found that goal stymied during the initial rush to explore the Sea of Sorrows; the merchants who controlled the expedition wanted profits, not proselytizing. Only when Nzari was discovered, with its savage cannibal tribes and vast wealth of ivory, did Mr. Klein finally find his desire within his grasp. He founded the Dementlieur Exploration Company, and led its first expedition to Nzari. The Mwele naturally resisted this foreign invasion, but Klein had the zeal of a fanatic and pressed on, resorting to ever-more brutal tactics as months of battle and disease took its toll on his followers. Eventually, he caught the attention of Gatwe, but managed to fight the feared "leopard-devil" off - an act that won him inroads amongst the Mwele. His followers swelled in numbers, and he seemed to make real progress in "civilizing" Nzari... until he realized that his followers were not worshipping Ezra, but Klein himself, and that those he conquered were merely paying lip service to his commands. Furious, he resorted to to ever-more draconian methods to "stamp out the heathenism", but succeeded only in pushing the Mwele to rebel. Klein counter-attacked viciously with his own forces, and responded by flaying every last one of them alive before he had them beheaded, their bodies cast into the river, and their heads impaled on stakes around his house.

In the face of such brutality, the Dark Powers aren't sure ''which'' of the two better deserves the title of Darklord.

Gatwe's curse is simple: he is forever cut off from the adoration and power he changes. No Mwele will have anything to do with one so obviously marked as a sorcerer, and he cannot change or disguise his form regardless of what artifice he tries. Mr. Klein, on the other hand, is cursed that when he sleeps, he sees the world through Gatwe's eyes, experiencing the broken one's life as he lives it. Both, ironically, share the curse of wanting to change the Mwele culture, but being completely incapable of doing so.

The two Darklords ''despise'' each other. Gatwe has become convinced that if he can kill Klein, his full powers will be restored to him. Klein, on the other hand, believes that Gatwe is a literal demon, a symbol of the savagery hidden in humanity's heart, and that only by "civilizing" the Mwele will the nightmarish dream-visions cease.

Unusually for co-darklords, they can both close Nzari's borders; Gatwe surrounds the domain an impenetrable thicket of vegetation, whilst those trying to flee against Klein's wishes find themselves lost in thick fog and eventually attacked by an endless hail of arrows.

Both darklords also have their own unique forms of immortality. If Gatwe is killed, one of the leopards of Nzari will become his reincarnation a day later. Klein, on the other hand, is simply impervious to all attacks not dealt with an ivory weapon (a ''blessed'' ivory weapon deals double damage!) and will not return if slain.

===Geren Horstadt===
Darklord of Seradan. Born the favored son of a minor noble family, Geren was a bullying braggart in private, but a charming and idolized peer in public. All that changed when, at the age of 17, he was struck by a strange wasting disease that crippled him irreversibly; he lost use of his legs, his muscles withered, and all his senses faded. Though his family bankrupted themselves to try and cure him, nothing worked. He spent fifteen years in his own personal hell, watching and envying those with normal lives, and resenting his family despite the love and care they still showered him with.

His true descent into damnation came when one of his brothers brought down a trunk full of books from the attack, and Geren learned one of his great-grandfathers had been a powerful [[wizard]] - one with considerable experience in summoning beings from the [[Lower Planes]]. When his family refused to hire a wizard to tutor Geren in magic, he decided to try summoning a [[fiend]] on his own. He called forth a [[yugoloth]], who was so surprised by the venomous manner in which Geren pleaded his case that he offered Geren a trade: the souls of Geren's families in exchange for the ability to "help Geren feel what others feel".

It was a bargain Geren made without hesitation. He hired an [[assassin]] to kill every last member of his family, other than his mother. In exchange, the yugoloth gifted him with the ability to possess others, which allowed him to vicariously experience life as a normal person again. He slowly began to rebuild the family's fortunes by using possessed thralls to commit acts of murder and theft... then the townsfolk began to suspect his mother was involved, and she in turn wondered if Geren was responsible. When she confronted him, however, Geren petuantly seized control of her mind and made her kill herself. But some of the townsfolk had just arrived to question her again, and they discovered her slumping over the infamous and now-hated cripple. Realizing that Geren had been responsible, they beat him with clubs and then dragged him into the streets, where the mob lynched him; hanging him from a tree and beating him to death as they burned his family's home and himself.

Such was Geren's rage at this fate that he returned from the grave as a powerful haunt - a [[Ravenloft]] strain of [[ghost]]. With his possession abilities enhanced, he used them to massacre the entire population of the village... which was when the Mists rolled in and claimed him for Seradan.

Geren's darklord status brings with it a cocktail of curses. The standard Darklord curse of being unable to leave his domain chafes him particularly, being that he yearns to explore and experience the world. Making matters worse is that he is now trapped in a realm of dullards, so docile, unimaginative and unfeeling that possessing them is little better than staying a ghost. For further insult, Geren can now only possess hosts for short periods of time, or else they die of a supernaturally induced fever, forcing him to largely avoid using his possession abilities.

Geren always reforms one week after being destroyed. Only if he is allowed to kill Wilhelm Braugh, the only survivor of Geren's hometown and the inspector who gave him over to the mob, will he cease to exist, having decided that there is nothing left to live for. If he closes the borders, supernatural exhaustion claims any who try to leave the domain, sapping their strength until they are left helpless.

===Henry Arlington===
Darklord of Arlington Farm. Henry Arlington was a farmer who obsessed about success. Inheriting his farm after the tragic death of his parents in a house fire, he killed his own elder brothers in a duel to secure his inheritance. He proved to be a demanding, overbearing farmer, and obsessed with successful crops; when an unexpected New Year's late frost resulted in damage to a significant portion of the crops, Henry flew into a rage, even though he had more than enough funds to weather this less-than-perfect year. In his rage, he murdered one of his farmhands, concealing the crime by cutting up his body and hiding it amongst the scarecrows on the property. That year, the farm bloomed with a record-breaking bounty.

The next year saw a similar pattern: the crops failed early in the year, but when Henry killed (in this case a stray dog), they suddenly reversed fortune and flourished. Henry became convinced that his farm would reward him with bounty only in exchange for blood sacrifices, and he began a yearly ritual of murdering some human victim and stuffing their dismembered body into the scarecrows. Over a decade of this grisly work, he soon had no farmhands left to sacrifice, and so instead he slaughtered his entire family for the sake of his farm.

That was the last straw. The grisly, corpse-stuffed scarecrows came to life and burned down all his crops, then dragged Henry out into the field and mutilated him, turning him into a fleshy scarecrow like themselves. That was when the Mists swallowed the farm.

In the present, Henry still tends to his farm as an animate corpse [[scarecrow]], only to find his labors undone whatever he achieves. In addition, every harvest moon, he finds himself human once more - and subsequently butchered by his vengeful scarecrow "workers".

Henry can close the border for up to an hour at a time by summoning a vast murder of crows that attack whoever tries to leave. After an hour, however, Henry is exhausted and must rest for 3 rounds before he can resummon the swarm. If slain, Henry remains dead until the next full moon or blue moon, whereupon he will possess one of the scarecrows in his domain and return to life. Theoretically, he can be destroyed forever by destroying all of the scarecrows.

===Hercules===
Darklord of Olympus. Born the son of the High Priest of [[Zeus]] in a theocratic nation ruled over by a collective of seven temples to the Greek Gods - Zeus, [[Athena]], [[Aphrodite]], [[Hermes]], [[Ares]], [[Apollo]] and [[Hades]], the man now known only as Hercules earned great fame in his youth by speaking up against the brutal repression of the priest-lords and championing the rights of the oppressed commoners. Although originally he sought peace, the overwhelming corruption opposing him led him first to delving into the murky depths of politics, and finally into leading a full-blown revolution.

This angered the realm's rulers, the conclave of High Priests known as the Council of Seven, who came up with three plans to ruin Hercules. The High Priest of Zeus sent his son cursed gauntlets that would drive him into bloodthirsty rages under false pretence of truce. The High Priestess of Athena sought to summon a daemonic entity that would grant the Council magical powers that would allow them to crush the rebels and prove themselves the true "Voices of the Gods". Finally, the High Priestess of Aphrodite arranged for one of her serving girls to be sent to seduce Hercules, with the ultimate plan of disgracing him by tempting him into committing the blasphemous act of making love in the holy ground of the temple of Zeus.

They couldn't have expected that Dejanira, the girl chosen by the Voice of Aphrodite, would fall in love with Hercules and reveal the ploy to him. Any more than she could have expected for him to revile her as a traitorous seductress, but hide his loathing and use her to deliver a strike against the Council as they performed the summoning ritual. At the height of battle and ritual both, Hercules turned on Dejanira and stabbed her to death before throwing her into the center of the Council, then beating his father to death as he was paralyzed by the sudden influx of magical energies from the rite.

The Seven Voices of the Gods were transformed into quasi-daemons in their own right, and Hercules became the Darklord of the realm now called simply "Olympus".

Hercules is cursed both with the erratic and dangerous rages from his braces, and in that he is haunted by the terrifying spectre of Dejanira, who still loves him even in death. Worse still, his reputation continually sours due to his berserk rages.

The only way to kill Hercules for good is to force him, the six "Living Gods" of Olympus and the Forsaken One (the half-daemonic ghost of the High Priest of Zeus) to meet in the abandoned temple of Zeus and perform the fiend summoning ritual again. Only if Hercules allows himself to be sacrificed as part of the ritual will his curse be ended - which will also strip the Living Gods of their powers and make them mortal as well.

If Hercules wishes to seal the borders of Olympus, a titanic lightning storm envelops the domain, striking down any who attempt to escape.

===Heresa Heri, The Vulture King===
Darklord of Tsuu-Y-Teke. Long ago, Heresa Heri was one of the great animal lords, powerful spirits subordinate to the greater animal gods, but he betrayed his master's wishes after being named ruler over the skies: when given the ability to create permanent light from enchanted crystals, rather than sharing this light with the world, he selfishly kept them for himself, turning them into a shining feathered headdress. But his treachery was uncovered by a human hero-shaman named Kanaciwe, who captured Heresa Heri and tore out the golden and silver feathers, turning them into the sun, moon and stars. But the appearance of the sun dazed Kanaciwe, allowing Heresa Heri to break free of the shaman's grip and kill him.

This act enraged his rival, the newly empowered Haloe-Tsuu (Sun Puma), who cursed Heresa Heri; never again would he be allowed to face the sunlight, or else it would destroy him. Though the Vulture King fled into the deepest cave, he was mortally wounded, and summoned his underlings to ceremonially preserve his body and spirit. As he died, he cursed all those who had robbed him of "his" treasure, from the humans whose shaman had taken his headdress of shining light to the skies themselves for being home to the sun and moon. Thus was the domain of Tsuu-Y-Teke born.

In appearance, the Vulture King is a white-feathered giant vulture with a dark red bonnet of dried blood on his head, sickly yellow eyes that glow in the dark, and a jagged, uneven beak that gives him the appearance of fanged teeth. He is an [[undead]] creature with powers similar to those of a [[mummy]], althoug he looks like a living bird.

As Darklord, Heresa Heri is trapped in his cavern lair except during True Night, the one period of darkness that comes to Tsuu-Y-Teke once per month. He has become obsessed with the idea that if he can amass a sufficient number of gems, he can reimprison the light and restore the endless Night that the world once knew... but he knows that to do so, he needs the ''exact'' number of gems as there are stars in the sky, and he no longer remembers how many that is!

In combat, Heresa Heri is a powerhouse and all but impossible to destroy without the use of sunlight or powerful magical light. Even then, if destroyed, his spirit will possess any giant vulture within a 13 mile radius, which will transform into the Vulture King 1 week later.

When the Vulture King seeks to seal Tsuu-Y-Teke, then impenetrable magical darkness gathers on the borders; those who try to escape instead get lost in the utter blackness and stumble right back out into the domain.

===Jarl Gravstein Hansen===
Darklord of the Northlands. This male human was born to the Gand tribe, son of the man who had founded the trade guild known as the Key, which was bringing much-needed prosperity to the realm. He railed against the tradition by which the Gand and Kosti tribes alternated ownership of the capital city of Miklaheim every five years, and was determined to keep ownership of the city for himself.

To do so, he launched a brutal campaign against the Gand tribe, taxing his own people into famine and ruin to do so. When they were devastated, he turned his back on the traditional religion of the seidmen, secretly siphoning away funds from the church who thought he was supporting them. Finally, he began taxing the trade guild to borderline ruin itself. Through his short-sighted greed and selfishness, the realm was drawn into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Secretly, Gravstein yearns to be respected and loved, but he cannot attain it - only if he returns all the land of the Gand to them will this curse be broken, which mechanically manifests as an automatic failure on any Charisma check other than Intimidation. He doesn't have any magical powers to preserve his life, but whoever takes up the mantle of leadership should he die will be cursed in the same manner.

Closing the borders results in a vast army of warrior spirits descending from the heavens and physically blocking passage.

===Captain Jacobi Robertsonn===
Darklord of Whal. Born a fisherman's son on an unnamed world, Jacobi grew up in seas that were plentiful with a father who loved him and loved his life on the sea. Then, when Jacobi was young, he and his father were caught in a terrible storm whilst fishing, during which the youth spotted a giant whale - a ''leviathan'' - playing in the rough surf. Play that ended with the breaching whale crashing right on top of the small fishing boat; Jacobi awoke washed ashore, scarred, surrounded by debris, and with his father missing.

Years later, Jacobi was commanding a trading galleon called the Sailor's Blessing with his beloved only son Abram when the ship was caught in a tropical storm. On the fourth day, the ship hit something in the water and began to sink, and during the scramble to escape, Abram was swept over the side and vanished. Spotting a leviathan in the storm, Jacobi blamed his son's apparent death on the creature, and in fact convinced himself it was the same whale that had killed his father.

Returning to port, he purchased a new ship, the Retribution, and became a whaler, venting his wrath on whales indiscriminately for the next decade. He was beginning to lose all hope of ever attaining vengeance when he finally encountered the biggest whale he'd ever seen - what he was sure was the leviathan that had killed his father and son. He personally led the hunt and harpooned the beast, only for it turn and smash his boat to pieces. Driven by rage, the wounded Jacobi hauled himself onto the beast by climbing the rope of the embedded harpoon; even as the surviving crew fled, he stabbed the whale over and over again, all the while cursing it, himself and his crew with all his soul... until everything went black.

Then he awoke and found himself on a strange, yet vaguely familiar, island; the land of Whal. A place of whalers who, to his surprise, deferred to him with their problems. He has since figured out he rules Whal, but is cursed to never leave it.

As a Darklord, Jacobi's curse is that he has become a rare oceanic [[therianthrope]]: a [[wereorca]]. He has distinctly mixed feelings about this form; he acknowledges the appropriateness of it, but he loathes being associated with a whale. He's also been cursed to suffer from intense sea-sickness if he ever sets foot upon a water-borne vessel, so whilst he does enjoy the freedom offered by his alterante form, the fact he can only hunt as an orca means he misses the thrill of commanding his own ship. Whilst normally he has control over this changes, he is forced to assume orca form on the days of his father's and son's deaths, days that are also marked by intense storms.

Perhaps his true curse, however, is that despite his obsession with killing the leviathan he blames for ruining his life, the creature never appears in the waters off of Whal.

When Jacobi closes his borders, the sea parts down to the sea floor, creating a 300ft wide chasm between the two bodies of water. Flight is, of course, impossible. Nothing explicitly prevents you from walking across the chasm and then using water-breathing magic to escape through the water on the other side, though.

Jacobi has no life-preserving powers outside of his immunity to any weapon that isn't +1 or made from whalebone. He is a 16th level [[Avenger]], however, which combined with the aquatic capabilities of his form makes him more dangerous than you'd think.

===Jinx===
Darklord of the Lost Wizard's Tower. This male black cat was once the [[familiar]] of a [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale, a caring and heroic individual, but a slightly neglectful owner, and also too hubristic for her own good. Jinx's journey into damnation began when she decided to use the cat as the test subject for an experiment in increasing the intelligence of animals.

It worked... but it also made Jinx smart enough to realize just how much more there was to Margaret's life than him. He became convinced that she had chosen him as her test subject because she simply didn't ''care'' if he lived or died, developing a burning resentment for it. Worse, he became mentally human enough to become convinced that he was in love with Margaret, and to be consumed with jealousy that she had other interests in her life.

When the region where they lived was attacked by [[barbarian]]s, Jinx went out of his way to assist Margaret, hoping to prove his worth in the hopes that she would come to reciprocate his jealous, obsessive love. She did not. Instead, she fell in love with a young warrior under her command. When she announced their upcoming marriage, he devised and enacted a plan to lead the man Margaret had fallen for to his death in battle. With no spellcasters in the region powerful enough to revive the fallen, Jinx was sure that this would be the end of his "competition".

To Jinx's fury, the death of her betrothed only filled Margaret with rage and suicidal grief. She prepared a super-powerful alchemical explosive, and made a personal assault on the horde's camp. Blind with fury, she waded through the ranks of the enemy, surviving many attacks only because Jinx fought like a hellcat to save her - to the familiar's growing rage as he realized she didn't even notice her efforts. Finally, Margaret planted the explosive, only to be attacked by the horde's leader. Though she defeated him, she was badly hurt in the process, leaving her helpless in the face of the coming explosion.

Jinx tried to pull her to safety, but was too weak to do so. Margaret told him to flee to safety, and expressed her happiness that in dying, she would meet her beloved fiancee in the afterlife. At that, the cat flew into a rage and revealed how ''he'' had arranged the warrior's death, blaming his actions on Margaret's decision to give him the curse of reason. Finally, he vowed that Margaret would neither see Jinx's death nor her beloved, raking her eyes with his claws and then fleeing his master, whose screams of pain were swiftly cut off by the explosion.

Unrepentant, yet fearful, Jinx fled all the way back to the tower where he and Margaret once lived, only to find it mysteriously deserted. He has remained there ever since.

Jinx waits endlessly now for people to visit the lost tower, hoping to claim a new master. His first preference is a female [[wizard]], then a female [[sorcerer]], then a female [[bard]] or any other arcane spellcasting clas, and then finally a male arcanist. He will do whatever he can to first persuade them to accept his presence, and then separate his chosen master from their former companions. His curse, of course, is that he will always destroy any relationship he establishes - if nothing else, he will end up killing the would-be master when they fail to meet his standards for loving and doting upon him. He prefers to use his retained spells ability, which allows him to cast Flesh to Stone one per day, to "immortalize" failed masters by petrifying them.

Jinx has no specific powers keeping him alive, so if you can kill the little beast, he's done for. He can't even close the borders properly, but instead just summons the Mists; those who flee will find themselves emerging from the mist elsewhere in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

===Warden Jonar Tamh===
Darklord of Karss. This [[Harmonium]]-sworn male [[aasimar]] [[Fighter]] joined the Harmonium at a young age, and very quickly moved up the ranks, attaining the position of Mover One at the age of 25. When he was selected to lead the experimental Great Prison of Ortho, a reformation-focused alternative to the [[Mercykiller]]-run prison of [[Sigil]], he saw it as a great honor... until it became apparent that the majority of the cynical Sigil-originated prisoners were unwilling to cooperate with the project.

Fearful for his reputation, Jonar Tamh resorted to increasingly brutal and draconian punishments, covering up the ongoing breakdown from his superiors and replacing subordinates who dared to question him. Growing convinced that some force - the [[Mercykiller]]s, the [[Revolutionary League]], or the agents of evil - was sabotaging the Great Prison, he descended ever-deeper into brutality. Finally, his best friend, the deputy warden Zet Keffen, tried to convince Jonar to return to the Great Prison's original premise; when Jonar refused, he declared he would bring this matter to the Factol of the Harmonium.

Jonar panicked and killed Zet right then and there, covering it up by blaming the murder on two particularly troublesome prisoners and executing them for it.

But Jonar couldn't cover it up forever. Hearing that his superiors were on their way to investigate the prison, and also that there were plans for a mass uprisiong, Jonar gathered 28 of the most outspoken and problematic inmates and hanged them all, one by one. As the last expired, a great hurricane arose from nowhere, forcing the Harmonium guards indoors. When the storm ended, the Great Prison now sat on the barren island of Karss.

Jonar Tamh suffers two major curses. Firstly, although he now has the ability to mentally control large numbers of people at once, he experiences all of the pain and misery of those he is controlling. Secondly, the vengeful spirit of Zet has become bound to Jonar's sword; if Jonar inflicts 12 or more damage with it against a single foe, Zet gains the abilities of a rank 2 ghost for one hour, allowing him to attack his former best friend.

The aasimar darklord cannot close the borders of Karss.

===Kasselheim Blightlyng===
Darklord of Vulnara. This [[gnome]] [[vampire]] had the misfortune to be born a gnome with no sense of humor. Whilst other gnomes were happily running round, playing stupid pranks and making silly illusions, Kasselheim was stuck fuming over how non-gnomish races didn't treat them with the slightest respect, all whilst the other gnomes reacted to his pleas for them to just try and be a little more serious by pranking him worse than ever. Eventually, he became a [[Transmuter]], bitterly thumbing his nose at a centuries old family radition, and withdrew to the deepest depths of their underground home. Then a few years later, a great flood washed through the gnome community and drove them up onto the surface, and the survivors counted Kasselheim as one of the dead.

They didn't know that Kasselheim had severely blinded and deafened himself in an alchemical explosion during his period of isolation. Nor could they know that many of those presumed dead in the flood were actually kidnapped by Kasselheim, who began experimenting in dark magic to steal their senses for himself, ultimately transforming them into warped monsters called "tactyles". But when they finally began moving back into the tunnels years later, they found out.

They formed a great war party with the aid of [elf]], [[dwarf]] and [[human]] adventurers from communities who had also suffered Kasselheim's depredations, and tracked him down to his underground fortress... only to be all but wiped out. Even though former friends (well, ''they'' considered themselves to be his friends, at least) and family were amongst the party, Kasselheim killed or captured them all. The last survivor was one of his sisters, a [[cleric]] of the gnome gods who threw herself to her death over a cliff whilst cursing him. An earthquake, and Kasselheim was knocked unconscious, rising to discover he had become a unique form of gnomish [[vampire]].

Kasselheim's curse is that he must ''constantly'' feed; his stolen senses of sight, hearing, scent and taste dwindle rapidly after feeding, until all that he has left is enough of a sense of touch to register pain. However, because of how fast his senses fade, and the isolated nature of his lair, he is effectively confined to a small part of his domain, and thus must go long, terrible intervals between feedings.

Killing Kasselheim can be done in two ways. First, if he is exposed to sunlight, he becomes incorporeal; if he is kept from fleeing back to his lair for two hours whilst in this form, he dissipates into nothing. Secondly, one can complete a complicated ritual, slightly altered from the traditional gnomish vampire. To achieve his permanent destruction, Kasselheim must first be immobilized by staking him with a silver spike through the heart. Then his hands must be cut off and boiled in a volcanic hot spring for 24 hours, after which his eyes must be gouged out and replaced with precious gems (100gp value minimum for each eye). Finally, his inert body must be carried to some place where it can be exposed to direct sunlight for an hour - but this will revive him in his incorporeal form, so the would-be vampire killer will need to use some method to trap him in the light for the full hour.

===General Martin Jose Maconda===
Darklord of Maconda. This charismatic male human was, from his earliest days, both adept at manipulating others with his natural charm and good looks, prone to surprising moments of generosity, and feared for his grudge-holding, horrifying fits of temper, and trait for cold-blooded manipulation. It came a great surprise to him when he discovered that there were people he could not dominate at will - and worse still, his mixed heritage would forever prevent him from joining the upepr echelon of Manzanillan society.

Thus, out of a mixture of pride and genuine interest, he became involved in the growing revolutionary movement, and ultimately he became the leader of the guerilla forces fighting against the brutal suppressionist forces of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez. When Maconda's beloved wife Isabel died in her childbed as a result of of Don Santiago's cruelty, Maconda went in search of the fearsome Warlok of the Peak, determined to have the power to triumph over his enemies.

And he returned with that power. Only to find, to Maconda's fury, that Don Santiago had died of fever in his sickbed mere hours before the last Royalist troops were defeated. Enraged, he ordered the Royalists massacred, cutting down a priest who dared argue against this behavior, and once the bloodshed was over, he left Resistencia for the mainland of Libertad, vowing never to return - a vow the [[Dark Powers]] were happy to fulfill for him.

A year later, he became the president of the Republic, and he soon established himself as a brutal tyrant as bad as the royalists he had overthrown.

The Warlock of the Peak transformed Maconda into a powerful [[wereanaconda]], and despite the many powers his state gives him, Maconda loathes this form, in part because he believes Isabel would be disgusted by it, and also in part because he is compellede to transform into a giant anaconda and feed on human flesh on the night of the new moon. Unusually, he cannot create other wereanacondas with his biter, but those who drink or touch his blood, even if they are spattered with it in combat, risk being turn into either were-fer-de-lanes or were-bushmasters, species of [[weresnake]] (treat as Neutral Evil [[werecobra]]s) native to Libertad and compelled to be loyal to him.

Maconda's curse is that he desperately yearns to be loved and adored, but his insistence upon doing so by repressing and removing all opposition or dissent merely stokes the hatred and fear of those he rules over.

He can be wounded by weapons made of silver or the wood of the caobo tree, and is sickened by both the smell and taste of guavas. If defeated in battle, Maconda doesn't die but instead assumes anaconda form and slithers off into the jungle, unable to regain his human form until the next new moon. There is no known way to permanently destroy him.

Maconda can close the domain borders of his island by causing the jungles and seas to become engulfed in massive swarms of lethally poisonous snakes.

===Miles Havelocke===
Darklord of the Eternal Torture. Born in a coastal city, Miles was pressganged at the age of 15, which ruined his life; he suffered from incurable seasickness, for which his fellows tormented him mercilessly and the bullying captain only made it worse by assigning him to the worst tasks possible for somebody with his condition, ordering him severely beaten when, inevitably, he threw up. With no aptitude for mathematics, Miles couldn't master the art of navigation, and so couldn't hope to progress to the higher ranks of the navy.

Twenty years of this treatment turned Miles into a bitter, miserable bully who loathed the sea and used what little authority he could get to exact vengeance upon those few below him on the ship's pecking order. Why he never simply fled during his first shore leave, nobody knows.

Eventually, Miles' captain was chosen to make a voyage into the uncharted western ocean, to Miles' dismay. But when the captain continued in pressing on in pursuit of ever-richer islands to the west, it led to the ship becoming lost in the waters and supplies running low. Miles seized this opportunity for revenge and began spreading rumors about the ship's officers hoarding food for themselves, ultimately leading a successful mutiny. When his ineptitude at seamanship led to them being becalmed, he led his mutineers to cannibalize the captured officers, gleefully rubbing their faces in their past abuse of him and coming to relish human flesh.

And then, as this supply of food began to run low, they finally spotted land... but, as they rowed frantcially to reach it, the Mists arose and swallowed the ship. When they cleared, the mutineers found themselves in the middle of a sea in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Overwhelmed by misery, they sat down and waited for death... and then, a fortnight later, they arose as [[ghoul]]s under the command of Miles Havelock, a Ghoul Lord, and began searching for food and land.

Miles Havelock suffers multiple curses. Firstly, he can never reach land, no matter how desperately he tries - at best, he can get a brief glimpse of the coast before the Mists immediately rise and teleport his ship elsewhere. Secondly, his seasickness has not only survived undeath, but intensified; he is '''perpetually''' seasick and also starving hungry, and these twin pains are why he has rechristened his ship "The Eternal Torture". If destroyed, his essence will inhabit the body of a living prisoner in the ship's hold and consume them from the inside out; the only way to end his curse is to kill him, rescue all of the prisoners, and sink the Eternal Torture, then make for land at full speed.

===Rafe Ungard===
Darklord of Callista. This male [[Half-Vistani]] [[Bard]] used his natural charm (and a complexion that allowed him to hide his hated Vistani blood) to swindle innocent women into marriage scams, start feuds amongst noble families for his own amusement, and delve into increasingly cruel and lethal manipulation. The backstory of poor Susannah Joson from [[Children of the Night]]: [[Ghost]]s is but one example of his misdeeds. When a party of [[adventurer]]s tried to bring him to justice, he continually slipped away, leaving the bodies of victims in his wake to torment them, and ultimately murdered his pursuers by burning down the inn they were staying in as they slept, which is when the Mists took him.

Rafe now possesses a strange form of immortality; he will ''always'' die once per day, no matter what steps he takes to try and avoid it, only to spontaneously return to life the next day. There is no known method to stop him from returning.

When he closes the domain, Callista's borders become a ring of boiling geysers that will kill anyone who passes through them, and which extend as high into the sky as needed to reach anyone trying to fly through.

===Sean Mako & Alice/Alison Marjory===
Darklords of Carcharodon Isle. Sort of a combination of Ladyhawke and the Little Mermaid. Over a century ago, a male human fisherman named Sean Marko lived in the village of Mistlington. One day, he discovered an injured [[merfolk|mermaid]] washed up on the isle's northwest shore, unconscious and bleeding from several wounds, including a severed left hand. Unable to turn away from someone in need, he brought her to his home and nursed her back to health. The mermaid, whose name translated into Common as "Alice", explained that she was the only survivor of a tribe that had been slaughtered by [[sahuagin]].

The two fell in love, much to the displeasure of the locals; the fishermen thought Sean was foolish for pining over a mermaid, and their wives were jealous of Alice's beauty, leading to them slandering her and Sean's relationship as "unnatural". Ultimately, a bunch of the village's men took it upon themselves to "repatriate" Alice; they came to Sean's house in the night, bludgeoned him unconscious, and carried Alice away. When Sean regained consciousness, he rowed desperately to catch up to them, but by the time he did so, they'd thrown the still-bound mermaid overboard.

Enraged, Sean snatched up a boathook and attacked the men who had assaulted him and the woman he loved, butchering them. When the carnage was over, he dove into the water after Alice, and then begged the full moon above for a fins and a tail so he might never be separated from his love.

Naturally, the [[Dark Powers]] chose to be dicks about granting this wish...

Both Sean and the revived Alice, now a human calling herself Alison Marjory, have become maledictive [[therianthrope]]s.

Sean is a giant [[wereshark]] who spends most of the month as an intelligent megalodon, unaware that he ''can'' transform and remembering nothing of his human life; only during the nights of the full moon and those nights directly before and after it does he return to his human form... which remembers everything he did as a giant killer shark. Because of his curse-spawned ignorance, the only way that shark!Sean can transform is if he is magically compelled to do so, such as by an Amulet of the Beast. He spends his days asleep and his nights hunting for food.

In contrast, Alison is a [[seawolf]] who spends most of the month as a human, but assumes her seawolf form on the nights before, during and after the full moon - the same nights when Sean regains his humanity. Like Sean, as a seawolf, she is completely ignorant of her human life. She keeps to herself, for the people of the isle still distrust and dislike her, gladly telling the nastiest stories they can think of about her to anyone who'll listen.

Neither darklord can be slain permanently through violence; they fully heal and return to life 1 round after being defeated. They also can't close the domain's borders, although since the only local vessels are small fishing boats that are no match for a giant shark or a massive seafaring wolf, they don't need to do much more than patrol the borders themselves.

Curing them simply requires breaking the curse by getting them to touch as humans, but doing so is tough; aside from the fact that they alternate human and monster forms, neither is aware of the fact that the other survives. Whichever of them is in beast form also refuses to get within 10 feet of the other one. They also won't willingly get within 5 feet of an Amulet of the Beast. So players are going to have to get creative to break their curse.

===Serenissa D'Aubliet===
Darklord of Romagna. Serenissa (female human spectre) was born an orphan; her father, a miller's son, was killed soon after her conception, and her peasant girl mother died in birthing her. She was taken in the local lord to serve as companion to his two daughters, but their initial friendship soured as they came of age and Serenissa realized the social gap between them. At the age of twelve, she was sent to the family of a neighboring lord to become a nursemaid to that lord's newly born twin children; Serenissa doted upon the children, and happily threw herself into their care.

However, she also became increasingly obsessed with fanciful daydreams about her origins, fixating on the belief that she was actually of noble birth and that her parents were both alive and desperately seeking her. She loved to tell these stories to her two charges... until the eve of their fourth birthdays, when, at the top of the Eagle's Tower, the two young children scolded her for lying and corrected her that she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a simpleton and a millerboy, both of whom had died. Mad with rage, especially when the twins revealed that everyone in the castle claimed that this was so, she pushed them off of the tower to their deaths.

Her skill at lying allowed her to escape being blamed for what she described as a terrible accident. For two weeks she festered on the idea that people were "slandering her" behind her back, and finally, two months after the day she had murdered the twins, she set a fire in the Great Hall that night, killing everyone in the castle.

Slinking away from the carnage, she made her way to the barony of Romagna, where she seduced her way into both a respectable position as lady's maid to the younger sister of Baron Etain and into the arms of Baron Etain himself. After several months of dalliance, he gifted her with a gemstone brooch... and then announced his upcoming marriage to the Lady Fialle, daughter of a neighboring lord, the very next day.

This pushed Serenissa over the edge and soon thereafter, she drew Baron Etain to a high tower, where she grabbed him and leapt off the edge, intending that they die together so she would not live alone.

But this time, with the interference of the [[Dark Powers]], her scheme failed. Serenissa hit the ground and was killed on impact, but her body cushioned Etain's fall, and so he lived. The madwoman's spirit rose from its grave as a ghost, trapped in an endless time loop; Romagna experiences only a single year, constantly recycling itself. It starts one week before the equinox Spring Festival, when Fialle arrives in Romagna for her upcoming wedding to Baron Etain. That week is spent in feasts and celebrations, capped off by a three-day non-stop revelry for the weding proper. Then, six months later, Fialle conceives Etain's child. And then, one week before the first anniversary of the wedding, time looks back and it is the week before the Spring Festival again.

Furthering Serenissa's torment, she is completely incapable of physically interacting with the people of Romagna, although she can manipulate their emotions despite the fact they cannot see, hear or touch her. She uses her emotional control to turn them into her agents of retribution, although she can't turn them against Etain or Fialle. This ability is defined vaguely, because she herself hasn't really studied her full capabilities with it.

Only visitors to Romagna are in true danger from Serenissa, because she is fully visible and audible to them, although still intangible. She invariably attempts to seduce the handsome male visitors to the domain, luring them away if they prove receptive to try and embrace them - doing so, however, results in her draining 1 level per 2 rounds, causing them to disintegrate... but if they break free, she attacks.

Serenissa is vulnerable to holy water, +2 or stronger magic weapons, and functional weapons made of gold. She is impervious to holy symbols, but can be turned with symbols of true love and matrimony - for example, the wedding rings of people who are actually married. If destroyed, she can reform at Etain and Fialle's wedding. Exactly ho to destroy her permanently is left vague, with her entry in the Book of Sorrows concluding with this paragraph:
::''Weapons forged from symbols of love (such as rings, charms, wooden wands, or ceremonial ropes used to bind a man and woman together at their wedding) may have greater effect, rendering her helpless or immobile. Her final death is likely to involve elements of her first experience; rejection, a long fall, and/or a noble lover. Heroes should beware, though—the dark powers may look with interest upon anyone who willingly transforms a symbol of love into a weapon of war.''

===Urdogen "The Red"===
Darklord of The Raging Tears. Male Human Spectre. In life, Urdogen (who first appeared in the [[Forgotten Realms]] splat "Pirates of the Fallen Stars") was basically Faerun's version of Blackbeard - if Blackbeard was a redhead. He terrorized the Inner Sea so badly that the nations of that region united to defeat his fleet, whereupon Urdogen fled and found himself spirited away by the Mists into the Sea of Sorrows... where he promptly hit a hidden reef and sank his ship, drowning.

Ever since then, Urdogen's ghostly vessel has sailed all the seas of the Misty Realm, cursed to never be able to come within sight of land and only able to rise from his watery grave during the nocturnal hours. Further stymying his desperate desire to reclaim his former reputation as a fearsome pirate lord, any who encounter Urdogen and live to tell the tale are cursed to forget his name.

To put an end to Urdogen, the ruin of the Raging Tears must be hauled up from the seafloor and carried inland, where it must then be burned completely to ash in a funeral pyre.

Interestingly, Urdogen's ghostly ship is actually able to return to the Inner Sea of Faerun on moonless, foggy nights in his homeworld, although he must return to the Misty Realms upon dawn.

If Urdogen chooses to close the borders of his traveling domain, the waters around his ship become rough and infested with a feeding frenzy of sharks; those who try to fly away will instead find themselves sinking into the water.

==5e Darklords==
As part of its general overhaul of the [[Demiplane of Dread]], 5th edition added a significant number of new darklords - some to replace former darklords, others ruling over brand new domains. Darklords who simply got retconned backstories and other traits have those details added to their entries above. Quite a few of these characters don't have much info on them due to being only mentioned in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book, most of which only have a single paragraph dedicated to their domain and darklord.

One unique trait common to all 5e darklords is that the personalized domain border closures of the past are largely gone; there might be cosmetic tweaks, but in general most 5e Domains of Dread all function the same when a person tries to escape through a closed border.

===Chakuna===
The replacement Darklord of Valachan, and one of the few 5e darklords to explicitly continue on in some fashion from the setting as it existed before. A female [[werepanther]], Chakuna belongs to a tribe of [[werecat]]s (specifically panthers and ocelots) called the Oselo, whom were hunted to the brink of extinction by Baron Urik von Kharkov, as he had come to fixate upon them as the most intriguing and challenging quarry. (Nevermind that Urik was originally "Blacula Strahd" with no real interest in "hunting the most dangerous game".) To save her people, she went to the literal heart of the domain and performed an unholy rite, cutting out her own heart and offering it to the land as sacrifice in exchange for the power to defeat Urik. Long story short, it worked; she ripped out his heart, tore him to pieces, and buried his still-living and curse-spewing head in the ruins of his castle before building her own treetop hunting lodge atop the ruins. Which is actually kind of badass. But now the jungle has become hungrier than ever, and she must regularly sacrifice human hearts to the land to keep the plants and animals from slaughtering all the Valachani (shades of the Wildlands, there), which she obtains through the "Trials of the Heart" - ceremonially hunting down designated victims with the aid of trained [[Displacer Beast]]s. She won't touch a fellow Oselo, but everybody else is fair game.

Chakuna can only be killed if her heart is found in the secret grove where she performed her dark rite and destroyed, but unless somebody assumes her mantle in the process, then the jungle will be free to kill everyone.
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===Flimira Vhage===
Currently very little is known about Flimira Vhage other than that their domain is the office of a detective agency which is actually is an extension of their own broken mind.

===Jacqueline Renier===
While this character is really just a reimagining of Jaqueline Renier, her marginally different name means she's techincally a new character and gets her own section here. Besides being a wererat she has almost nothing in common with the original Jaqueline anyway.

A century ago, the Richemulot was a prosperous nation with a growing middle class. As the commoners began to gain more wealth and power, it caused the influence of the nobility to wane, a fact that Jacqueline Renier did not like. As her family seemed oblivious to the threat this posed, she began to look allies and heard of the Trueblood Council, a secret society of Richemulot’s eldest and most esteemed families. She spent a fortune finding a way to attain membership to the council, but discovered they were not actually nobles, but wererats. That same night, she was inducted into their ranks.

Renier swiftly accepted her new life as a wererat, her scorn for commoners expanding to include all non-wererats. Her first major act consisted of conferring the gift of lycanthropy upon her family. Only her twin, Louise, resisted, for which Jacqueline disfigured her and cast her out. Within the sewers of Pont-a-Museau, the wererats concocted a roiling pestilence known as the Gnawing Plague, which swept through the population. The disease wiped the nation's rulers and all other nobles save for the Reniers, and eventually Jacqueline stood as the highest-born noble in the land, and the nation’s de facto leader.

Though the people begged her to help them, she let them all die, deeming them unworthy due to their poverty and low birth. As the last human soul expired in Pont-a-Museau, the Mists rose, drawing Richemulot into the Domains of Dread.

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===The Inheritors of Darkon===
Similar to what happened during [[Grim Harvest]], Darkon currently has multiple Darklords while Azalin is missing. Specificly, there's only three of them this time.

'''"Baron" Alcio Metus''' is a female vampire, and the sister of Baron Metus - the vampire who got [[Van Richten]] started on his monster-killing path. Having risen to rule the criminal underworld of the Jagged Coast region, driving out her former Kargat masters in the process, Alcio burns with the desire for revenge against Van Richten for killing her brother. Not helping is that she's occupied Van Richten's ancestral home of Richten House and found that Van Richten's wife Ingrid still lingers as a [[ghost]] - but one who refuses to help Alcio in her quest for vengeance.

'''Cardinna Artazas''', the thrice-reincarnated leader of an elfin mystery cult in Nevuchar Springs, has damned her soul in the name of good: desperate to preserve Darkon, she has striven to revive the spirit of Darcalus Rex, the king who reigned over Darkon prior to the coming of Azalin. Unfortunately, all she has called forth is a necrichor, and she must constantly weigh her belief that what she is doing serves "the greater good" against the very real demands that the undead tyrant makes for ever-greater magical reagents and sacrifices.

Finally, '''Madame Talisveri Eris''' is an elderly but vibrant and intelligent aristocrat who accidentally made herself permanently invisible whilst seeking to make herself look younger. She uses her invisibility to her advantage, having created an array of different identities that she assumes through costumes and cosmetics. She's currently built up a cult amongst the younger members of Il Aluk's nobility, offering them an elixir on the night of the new moon that makes them invisible until dawn and then sending them out to commit crimes and mayhem that advance her cause.

Because none of them are true darklords yet, none of them have specific curses.

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===Isolde & Nepenthe===
Like the original Isolde, the 5e Isolde is an [[eladrin]] [[paladin]], though this one was an [[adventurer]] who battled [[dragon]]s and [[demon]]s that threatened the [[Feywild]]. This unknowingly led her into the machinations of Zybilna, an evil [[archfey]] who had lost a number of [[fiend]]ish allies to Isolde and her companions. Zybilna called upon her remaining pacts to arrange for a powerful [[incubus]] called "The Caller" (5e's retconned version of the Gentleman Caller) to corrupt and slaughter Isolde's companions; once that was done, the archfey stepped in and exploited Isolde's vulnerable state to become her "new best friend". She arranged for Isolde to become the guardian of a traveling fey carnival that also concealed a portal to Zybilna's realm... then, when Isolde began to tire of this role and their relationship grew strained, she secretly warped Isolde's mind with magic to ensure that Isolde would always prioritize the needs of the Carnival over her own wants. Even so, this wasn't enough to keep Isolde bound to Zybilna's reins. When Isolde encountered a traveling carnival from the [[Shadowfell]] managed by [[shadar-kai]], she made a pact with its twin managers to trade ownership of their carnivals, but only until next the two carnivals met. The shadar-kai agreed, and gave her the magical sword Nepenthe as symbol of her new status as owner and champion - but that wasn't enough for Zybilna. She used her magic to erase Isolde's memories of all things relating to Zybilna, and also sent fey creatures to forever follow and harass Isolde's new carnival.

To make things worse, Nepenthe was a cursed blade; an intelligent Holy Avenger used to executed thousands of criminals, not all of whom were actually guilty, the blade had developed a deep craving for bloodshed in the name of justice. In Isolde, it found an easily manipulated host; it awoke her memories of the Caller, and stoked her desire for retribution. In many ways, it could be considered the "true" darklord of the Carnival, especially given how Isolde constantly struggles to resist its naked, insatiable need to kill.

Isolde's curse, then, is to wrestle with both the imperatives of Zybilna and those of Nepenthe; she craves vengeance, but finds herself forever stymied by her need to tend to the ever-growing Carnival's need, as well as fearing that she may one day encounter the Carnival's true owners and be forced to relinquish it back to them. Explicitly, she could be saved if Nepenthe was taken from her, but its grip on her mind means she would refuse to abandon it.

===Klorr===
Darklord of Klorr. We know nothing about this darklord, but the name is taken from a character who appeared in the original Red Box; a clockwork-obsessed [[planeswalker]] [[mage]] who was infuriated that he couldn't synchronize and control his heart the way he could his clockwork creations. He made assorted dark bargains and ultimately came to rest in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], where he produced four cursed timepieces: the Water Clock of Klorr, the Moondial of Klorr, the Hourglass of Klorr, and his final work: the Timepiece of Klorr. This cursed pocketwatch gave Klorr extended life and increased arcane power, but required him to regularly charge it with murder, an impulse he succumbed to. It ultimately killed him when he failed to sacrifice a life to it on time.

The Timepiece of Klorr is given mechanical stats in the "Forbidden Lore" boxed set. Klorr's other works are statted in "Forged of Darknes":
* The Water Clock lets the user transform into a water [[elemental]], but might kill them in the process and also might leave them permanently trapped in elemental form.
* The Moondial grants powers based on the phase of the moon, but slowly transforms the user into a light-averse monster.
* The Hourglass can grant the user Improved Haste for 1 hour, but will age them 1d10 years and might also leave them under the effects of Slow for 24 hours after being used.

===The Last Passenger===
Darklord of The Mourning Rail. Nothing is known about this Darklord other than they were a VIP that delayed a train escaping from The Mourning, and threw out a bunch of passengers to make room for their self and their retinue, dooming the train, and they are now an undead being of some kind trapped on the train with the rest of the undead passengers.

===Myar Hiregaard===
Mentioned only in passing as the Darklord of the revised Nova Vaasa, She's basically a female Genghis Khan with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde; she was originally a female chieftain who united the nomadic plains-dwelling tribes of Nova Vaasa into a single culture, but she proved to be a terrible peacetime leader because she craved bloodshed and excitement. She tried to stave off her boredom with, quote, "brutal games" for a time, but ultimately she couldn't resist the thrill of war: she began fostering disputes amongst her vassal tribes so she had an excuse to lead her forces to crush both sides. This eventually got her claimed by the mists, and now she switches between two personas and possibly two bodies: as Mya Hiregaard, she rules with "strict fairness", but when she gets too bloodlusty, she transforms into her alter-ego of Malken and "sows discord across the plains".

...Whatever else you may think of it, at least it's more justified than Tristren "My dad got cursed and died, so I inherited his curse and became a Darklord without ever having to do anything to actually earn it" Hiregaard.

===Pietra van Riese===
A gender-swapped version of Pieter van Riese and the darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Not much is known about her due to being in the "Other Domains of Dread" section, and therefore only getting one paragraph to herself. She was a ruthless pirate with a fondness for keelhauling her victims, and now she's a ruthless ''zombie'' pirate who speaks through the mouths of her undead crew.

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===Ramya Vasavadan===
Darklord of Kalakeri. Ramya was hand-picked by her father, the last ruler of Kalkeri, to succeed him, but when he died, her brother Arijani contested her claim, leading to a brief civil war. Ramya would have killed Arijani then and there, but their sister Reeva counseled mercy, and Ramya conceded, not really wanting to kill her brother anyway. She enjoyed a brief period of unchallenged leadership, bringing a golden age to Kalakeri, but all the while Reeva was working behind her back to build up support for Arijani, culminating in her freeing Arijani and launching a second civil war. Enraged, Ramya suppressed the rebellion with brutal methods, executing captured rebel ranas and executing them in horrifically inventive methods that only made the people distrust her more and furthered the fighting. At the second war's climax, Arijani and Reeva sued for peace and Ramya agreed... only to be captured by her treacherous siblings and murdered. Before the court strangler garotted her in the central courtyard of her own palace, Ramya cursed her siblings as bloodthirsty beasts.

Once it was done, Arijani and Reeva further disrespected their sister by throwing her body into the ocean... an act that resulted in a terrible monsoon lashing Kalakeri for weeks. And then, when it was done, Ramya rose from her watery grave and marched on her former siblings, followed by an ever-swelling army of undead soldiers made up of all her loyal warriors who had fought and died for her. This time, Ramya showed no mercy, capturing her siblings and having them crushed to death by undead elephants.

...And then they came back as fiends - Arijani as a [[rakshasa]] and Reeva as an [[arcanoloth]] - and the civil war has raged ever since.

This civil war is the primary curse that Ramya experiences, with two secondary elements. Firstly, despite knowing better, Ramya ''always'' remains vulnerable to their lies and deceptions, which prevents her from truly ending the war. Secondly, Ramya's direct control over the domain is tied to her being seated in the Sapphire Throne, the symbol of Kalakeri's ruler; if the rebels oust her from the Cerulean Citadel, then her dominion diminishes until she can reclaim it. A second curse she labors under is the fact that, despite being shrouded in an illusion of life, Ramya ''knows'' that she's actually [[undead]], and this is apparent in her reflection, so she bans mirrors from her presence.
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===Saidra d'Honaire===
The future darklord Saidra grew up on a tiny farm, raised by her widower father, who filled her head with stories of her noble bloodline - he claimed to be a duke that had been ousted from his rightful throne by a vicious younger brother. Life was hard, especially as Saidra's sincere belief in her father's stories meant she alienated her peers, and only got worse when Saidra's father married a prosperous merchant woman with two daughters from her previous marriage, all of whom tormented Saidra and forced her to work as their personal servant, ala Cinderella. One day, a nearby duke perished, and when Saidra wondered if it had been her father's evil little brother, she was forced to confront the cruel truth: her father's stories had all been a pack of lies, and he was nothing more than a common-born servant who had fled to save his neck after trying to nick silverware from the duke's kitchen.

Saidra went to her mom's grave to beg her mother's spirit for help, which was when a "kind, grandmotherly figure" appeared and granted Saidra her wish, clothing her in a magnificent gown and fine jewelry before conjuring a stately carriage to carry her to the masquerade ball that was being held to celebrate the coronation of the new duke. We don't know who this figure was, but it's interesting to note that Saidra's version of Dementlieu contains a [[hag]] coven who basically love to pretend to be Fairy Godmother figures so they can mess with people. Anyway, off Saidra went to the ball, plotting to kill the new duke and claim his title. When she got there, she swiftly seduced the new duke, so successfully that she began contemplating if it mightn't be better to wed the duke instead. Things were going smashingly... until the clock chimed midnight and the whole party began dropping dead of a sudden, fast-acting plague, which rather put a downer on things. The kicker, for Saidra, was as she and the duke lay dying in each other's arms and he confessed that he ''wasn't'' noble-born, but instead a commoner who had been adopted by the previous duke. In fact, he was actually Saidra's long-lost brother.

Enraged at this second "betrayal", Saidra stabbed her brother in the heart with the last of her strength and then tried to stagger away from the corpse, only to collapse dead on the stairs leading into the palace.

And then she woke up as a [[wraith]], the new spectral queen of Dementlieu, a shabby and impoverished town whose populace struggle to fake the appearance of being more important than they truly are, all the while risking Saidra's deadly wrath: she '''hates''' pompous fools who pretend to be what they aren't, aspire to higher station than they deserve, and fail to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

...Well, yeah, she wouldn't be a ''darklord'' if she wasn't at least a little bit of a hypocrite, now would she?

Saidra is a wraith who has the ability to launch free Disintegrates at anyone who reveals themselves to be lying about who they are in her presence - we don't know much more than that, mechanically. She lives in constant terror of being exposed as a fraud herself, and in fact she can only be killed permanently if she is revealed to be a fraud first. Related to that, she lives in terror that her hated stepmother and stepsisters are still alive somewhere in Dementlieu. Finally, almost tangentially, her status as a wraith means her beloved masquerade balls are a complete waste of time, as she can't enjoy any of the physical pleasures associated with them.

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===Sarthak===
Darklord of the Ashram of Niranjan, Sarthak is an evil bronze dragon who poses as a mystic named Niranjan. He send agents into the Mists bearing his philosophical writings, which promise escape, peace, and enlightenment to any who adopt their teachings. Anyone who comes to his monastery is told that they must divest themselves of worldly goods, which are added to Sarthak’s hidden hoard. Sarthak then helps his victim enter a blissful trance that causes their soul to slip away from their body over the course of days. Sarthak consumes this soul and replaces it with a shadow, leaving the victim’s body under his control.

There's no indication of what his curse might be, since he's in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book and as such only gets a single paragraph to himself.

===Teresa Bleysmith===

===Viktra Mordenheim===
Basically, she's Victor Mordenheim but a woman... what, that's not good enough? Alright...

Viktra Mordenheim was born the daughter of a minor noble family, as well as a natural prodigy in medicine - she taught herself anatomy as a child, and by the time she was a teenager she held a doctorate ''and'' had been appointed as a preeminent researcher at a local university. For all her genius, however, Viktra was arrogant, not to mention completely lacking in empathy, compassion and moral qualms. To her, medicine was just a way to sate her burning curiosity about the secrets of life. Also, she hated magic, regarding it as as "stealing the powers of otherworldly beings and cheating the laws of nature", and thus inferior to '''SCIENCE!'''

In the best Frankenstein tradition, she grew obsessed with the idea that she could not merely mend the sick, but actively create and even improve upon life. So she began hiring the services of bodysnatchers to provide her with fresh human cadavers for her research. This is how she met Elise; amazingly, the cold, aloof methodical surgeon and the beautiful but reckless and spontaneous body snatcher became infatuated with each other, and the two women's relationship swiftly changed from professional to personal. When Elise contracted an incurable wasting disease, Mordenheim became obsessed with saving her, and her experiments increased in numbers - she also began having living victims actively kidnapped for her experiments. Through countless murders, resurrections and remurders, Viktra honed her knowledege. Finally, as Elise fell into the deep sleep that marked the final stages of the disease, Viktra poured everything she had learned from a thousand deaths into saving a single life, crafting and installing the Unbreakable Heart: an artificial super-organ.

But just as she was stitching the fabulous device into place, constables burst into her lab, accusing her of being behind the recent string of kidnappings and murders. In the struggle, the lab caught fire and flooded with acrid chemical smoke: Mordenheim's last vision was of Elise rising from her table, a golden light glowing in her chest where the Unbreakable Heart had been installed.

When Mordenheim came to, she was in a strange, icy realm called "Lamordia", where she was hailed as the greatest genius ever, but there was no sign of Elise.

Viktra's torments largely center around Elise and the Unbreakable Heart; she can neither recreate the Heart on her own, but nor can she find Elise to study it again. Secondary to this curse is that she is showered with the love, respect and attention of Lamordia, whose people view her as a luminary savior; to Mordenheim, they are incomprehensible, and she loathes their constant distractions from her work.
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===Vladeska Drakov===
In a nameless world, in a land torn between myriad bitterly feuding royal families, the woman named Vladeska Drakov was a skilled fighter and general, a mercenary who came to be known as the Crimson Falcon, the leader of a well-regarded mercenary army called the Falcon's Talons. Business was profitable, and Vladeska was raking in the loot, with dreams of retiring young, cashing in her wealth and reputation to buy land and a title. Then came the sacking of Veivere, where the Talons accidentally killed a very important figure. So important that the entirety of the aristocracy took up arms against the Talons, determined to kill them all for it. Well, Vladeska had no intention of just rolling over and dying, and she launched a bloody counter-attack that soon turned into a crushing campaign of conquest; her forces swept through the land, replenishing themselves with conscripted peasants and wiping out everyone stupid enough to stand against them. Vladeska made a point of impaling ''everybody'' with even the slightest drop of aristocratic blood that she caught alive. Through years of bloody effort, she became the ruler of an empire that stretched over the former patchwork nation, but as she crushed the last defiant village, the smoke engulfed Vladeska and her most elite warriors.

They found themselves in a new realm, and after swiftly conquering its capital city, Vladeska declared herself Empress of Falkovnia. Which was when she found the downside of her rule... namely, the armies of [[zombie]]s that would attack her new kingdom every month with the rising of the new moon.

Vladeska's curse, obviously, is the zombie attacks, which press her to her limit as she struggles to throw back the dead and preserve what she has, but it goes deeper than that. Firstly, she suffers a horrible sensation of recognition; every zombie, to her, seems to be the animate corpse of one of her victims or her fallen soldiers, filling her with the gnawing belief that the dead are coming for ''her'' specifically. Secondly, no matter what scheme or ploy she tries, the result is always Phyrric; her people haven't been wiped out yet, but there's a big difference between 'survival' and 'winning'. Finally, she '''knows''' that her efforts doomed - there is ''no way'' to hold Falkovnia against the dead, not with the forces that she has, and the only chance she has for survival is to take her people and flee during the peaceful period after the dead are repulsed for the month. But she's too stubborn to run, and so she keeps fighting her bloody, futile war.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Ravenloft]]

Field Kit Inspection

2021-05-24T02:21:16Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* KIA */

'''Field Kit Inspection''' is a bout of autistic crack-infused roleplay that follows the near-heretical misadventures of the almost always loyal "Unknown Regiment" and its efforts to destroy the enemies of Mankind, in the grim-darkness of the far future.
[[Image:fieldkitinspection.jpg|frame|An average inspection, pictured moments before going horribly wrong.]]

Each thread typically starts with <strike>Commissar Knochenmus</strike> <strike>Colonel Matthias</strike> whoever is available bringing together the regiment, under the premise of something happening, before quickly divulging into utter Chaos and heresy.

FKI has been semi-resurrected in the [[Penal Regiment]] threads on /qst/

==Characters==
===Active Duty===
No regiment, no matter how loyal or astounding, can get anywhere without men and women to grease the wheels and fill the body bags. This section describes those who have yet to meet their obligation of dying for the Emperor.

*'''Magos Gelt''' The totally non heretek from the Cyclothrathe daemon forge world. Has been exposing Mur to as much Tzeentchian stuff as he can get his hands on as part of a science experiment. Has a seemingly endless supply of Tachyon arrows. Was once an interrogator under Inquisitor Quixos. Still has the =][= symbol even if its no longer valid, because no one ever checks.

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Name:'''|| Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Magos Gelt:''' || 70 || 6" || 3+ || 2+ || 4 || 4 || 5 || 3 || 8 || 3+
|-
|}<br><br><br><br>

*'''Company Sergeant Major van Kleez''' Vox operator for the Commissar's unit, Van Kleez was assigned to the regiment after being 'promoted' from his posting on Armageddon with the Savlar Chem-Dogs. He's long since stopped trying to understand what various heretical, chaotic and/or xenos bullshit is going on within the unit, and spends a large proportion of his time off his tits on whatever substances happen to be to hand. He's never seen without his bulky respirator, which is dotted with a number of ports and intakes to better allow him to consume various chemicals. He was recently awarded the Eagle Ordinary, which he probably didn't deserve. Due to a strange twist of fate, he is one of the finest non-Astartes swordsmen in the Imperium, following private tuition from a certain Primarch.
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Name:'''|| Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Company Sergeant Major van Kleez''' || 18 || 6" || 2+ || 4+ || 3|| 4 || 1 || 2 || 7 || 5+
|-
|}<br><br><br><br>

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Weapon''' || Range || Type || S || AP || D || Abilities
|-
| '''Hot-shot Laspistol''' || 12" || Pistol 1 || 3 || -2 || 1 || N/A
|-
| '''Vox-caster''' || If a friendly '''Officer''' is within 3" of Van Kleez when using their Voice of Command ability, you may extend the range of the order to 18" if the target unit also contains a vox-caster.
|-
| '''Stolen Ice Pick''' || Melee || Melee || User || -3 || 1 || N/A
|-
|}<br><br><br><br><br><br><br>

*'''Viktor Morvos''' An adept of the Adeptus Administratum, he was accidentally shipped into the hangar of the Eagle's Fury instead of the war torn hive world he was needed at. Within 5 minutes, he had been drugged by an infiltrator, and within 6 hours he had been subjected to a beating that would make the most jaded of prison shankers cringe, resulting in 90% of his body being replaced with cybernetics. Off to a good start already. Awarded the Eagle Ordinary for not being that much of a bitch and the Medallion Crimson for getting the everloving fuck beaten out of him. Might be a mafioso now, and potentially the source of all those funny bottles of stuff that make you trip balls. Recently became gold plated when a tank full of unlicensed cripples knocked over a vat of molten gold.

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Name''':|| Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Viktor Morvos''' || 10|| 6" || 2+ || 2+ || 4|| 4 || 2 || 2 || 6 || 4+
|}<br><br><br><br>

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Weapon''' || Range || Type || S || AP || D || Abilities
|-
| '''Sharpened Letter Opener''' || Melee || Melee || User || -3 || 1 || N/A
|-
| '''Ornate Laspistol''' || 18" || Pistol 1 || 3 || -2 || 1 || N/A
|-
|'''Snubnose Revolver''' || 12" || Pistol 1 || 3 || -2 || 1 || N/A
|-
|
|}<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>

*'''Priest Michael''' A loyal priest of the regiment, Michael leads the regiment to adventure and greatness under the watchful eye of the emperor! He has an obsession with sticking absurd amounts of purity seals on everything he deems heretical and is largely responsible to rooting out chaotic taint. Michael now has 4 eviscerators and is also swole
<br><br><br><br>

*'''Barrington Von Gladstone''' A praetorian who was retired after his service, but decided to return as life after military service was boring to him, so he decided to join the Unknown regiment. A friendly, upbeat and optimistic sort of man who enjoys the "Thrill of the hunt". So far his greatest achievment in the regiment was taking out three traitor terminators and taking their heads before Michael would attempt to steal the trophies and making copies for fireplace...also pictures, but no worries, he gave of them to some unnamed techpriest. Recently got promoted to the rank of lieutenant...again

*'''Fulgrim''' Papa Fulgrim is the last known operating loyalist primarch and he is one of the most incredible being to ever exist. Fulgrim is most noted for teaching Van Kleez how to properly use a sword, elevating him to become one of the greatest swordsmen in the entire galaxy. Keeps on calling him 'son', to his slight discomfort.

*'''Jefferson''' An ex-pianist-turned grotesque by the dark eldar haemonculi named Renfar. Joined the regiment when they went to a mission ot get some fuel from the station(They failed)as he was stuck there in a cage as a sort of joke. Dreams of once again pursuing his career and becoming a galaxy-renowned pianist. Joined the regiment officialy as an Ogryn Bone'ed. Recently found a piano and is starting to practice again. Recently got a new "cleaver"(Necron Hyperphase Sword. Recently got a heavy bolter and a modified, black penitent engine, which can support his weight, has frontal armour and doesn't cause suffering

*'''Joannes Valern''' A mysterious Leper with a giant broken sword and a slightly miserable or maybe edgy look on life. He's basically a Leper from darkest dungeon rip off. Recently gained a squad of sickly conscripts armed with sticks who are about as depressing as he is. He now commands a Macharius Vanquisher, with a crew of fellow cripples

[[File: Magos Luciena Valance.jpg|120px|thumb|Right|Don't let the picture fool you, This bitch has the female equivalent of a hard-on when it comes to launching Deathstrikes at her allies]]
*'''Magos Dominus Luciena Valance''' <strike>A 25 year old Magos Dominus of the Cult Mechanicus. Luciena is an expert when it comes to repairing and maintaining mechanical machinery of all kinds due to her upbringing as the child prodigy of two Tech-priests. Unfortunately for her, while stationed aboard an Exploritor ship, she began an unsanctioned upgrading to many of the ship's various systems in an effort further improve upon them. Rather than wasting the energy in killing her, they instead dropped her off at the nearest planet. Hoping that whatever wildlife was there would kill her for them. Sadly, this was done a mere twenty minutes and eighteen point seven-two seconds before a crusade fleet arrived under orders from Ultima Segmentum Command to rid the planet of its Xeno presence. With nowhere left to go, Luciena has made the foolish mistake of joining up with Penal regiment Theta Gamma as one of its Tech-Priest Engineers.</strike> These days she stays at the back line looking for excuses to launch Nukes near her fellow soldiers, Seductively washing Ordinance to show her fleshy bits and shutting people out then complaining when people get pissed at her for basically firing a votex bomb a few meters away from them instead of noticing said fleshy bits. <strike>She's probably just really lonely</strike>

*'''Sargeant Han'zo''' <strike>I don't actually know jack shit about him</strike> Apperantly he's a Tau infiltrator.

=== Reserve ===
Sometimes soldiers just aren't able to go to the front lines and are held back. This list is for people who's players may be active but who's character doesn't appear regularly

*'''3rd Company Captain "MUR" the World Eater''' The captain of the Unknown Legion, he has only recently joined this suicide mission, surprisingly of his own volition. After following the Commissar [puny man] into battle with a few knife ears he was gifted "Axei" and "Mel", two possessed weapons containing two daemons of Tzeentch, by Magos Gelt [Cog man]. Was captured by Dark Eldar, and has become a pit fighter in the arenas of Commoragh. He has been listed as KIA. Appeared to have been brought back to life in one thread if only to rip some tanks open with his hands after getting three fourths of his limbs blown off.

*'''Sorcerer Krux the Destroyer''' A 9 foot tall Catachan monster, now corrupted to Tzeentch, that might as well be chaos crocodile dundee. Has fucking HUGE muscles that make him capable of lifting a Primarch, although as of now he has been weakened.. Aided the team at the Battle of Dracolese, and made a quick escape as the entire planet was about to be exterminatus'd. Swears by his fuckhueg machete, and his custom autocannon he calls "Light's out", mainly because they are loaded with explosive shells capable of destroying a leman russ. He has since lost this Autocannon.. His machete, (he claims) Is better than any other melee weapon ever created, and can cut through solid titanium like butter. You probably don't wanna get into a fight with him. Was recently corrupted by a bedlam staff, which activated his latent psychic powers. He is now a grand sorcerer of Tzeentch, but has a lot of training to go before he reaches his full potential. The Bedlam staff weakened him, but his mental power got increased significantly. He is now on a long path of power, and he intends to keep going up. He will no doubt get stronger, but as he gets stronger the more corrupted he becomes. There will soon be no turning back.
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Name''':|| Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| ''Sorcerer Krux the Destroyer''' ||150|| 7" || 2+ || +3 || 3 || 4 || 6 || 3 || 8 || 3+
|}<br><br><br><br>

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Weapon''' || Range || Type || S || AP || D || Abilities
|-
| '''Bedlam Staff''' || Melee || Melee || +2 || -2 || D3 || On a roll of a 6 to hit with this weapon, do not roll to wound. Instead, the target suffers d3 mortal wound. If the target is slain as a result of this, the target is turned into a Pink Horror
|-
|}<br><br><br><br><br><br><br>

*'''<strike>Private</strike> <strike>Corporal</strike> Sergeant Vu Chen''' A Trai Dat Guerrilla, Vu Chen is adept at scouting and laying traps for the enemies of man. His favorite is a pit with punji spikes covered by a layer of leaves, or a tripwire attached to a krak grenade. He was recently awarded with both the Eagle Ordinary, and Medallion Crimson medals, for valour and bravery, along with a promotion to Corporal.

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Corporal Vu Chen''':|| Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Private Vu Chen''' || 12|| 6" || 4+ || 4+ || 3|| 3 || 1 || 2 || 7 || 5+
|}<br><br><br><br>

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Weapon''' || Range || Type || S || AP || D || Abilities
|-
| '''Lasgun''' || 24" || Rapid Fire 1 || 3 || 0 || 1 || N/A
|-
| '''Frag Grenade''' || 6" || Grenade d6 || 3 || 0 || 1 || N/A
|-
| '''Krak Grenade''' || 6" || Grenade 1 || 6 || -1 || D3 || N/A
|-
|}<br><br><br><br><br><br><br>

*'''Brutus''' A true loyal soldier of the imperium dedicated to the fine art of construction. He sees perfection in ceramite and finds war to be the most glorious muse in his sturdy constructions. Also is a genestealer aberrant.

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Name:'''|| Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Brutus''' || 60 || 6" || 2+ || 6+ || 6 || 4 || 4 || 3 || 8 || 5+
|-
|}<br><br><br><br>
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"

! '''Weapon''' || Range || Type || S || AP || D || Abilities
|-
| '''Big Brutus''' || Melee || Melee || X2 || -3 || 3 || When attacking with this weapon you must subtract 1 from hit rolls made with it.
|-
| '''Little Brutus''' || Melee || Melee || User || -1 || 1 || Hit rolls of 6+ made using this weapon are resolved at an AP of -4.
|}<br><br><br><br><br>

===MIA===
Eventually, every regiment succumbs to it. Personnel occasionally go missing during combat, whether due to going AWOL, or being captured by the enemy. Sometimes, it's just because people aren't around enough, so the Munitorum lists then as MIA. This is a list of such people. Characters should only be put here, if their player hasn't been around for several months.

*'''Gobels Coque''' A private from Cadia who has a knack for finding various weapons and artifacts of varying importance and origin including but not limited to: the Commissar's personal Thunder Hammer, a suit of Ultramarine Tactical Dreadnought Armor, a Necron Hyperphase Sword, and The Emperor's Sword. Eventually he was "borrowed" by Trazyn the Infinite.

*'''Techpriest Rho''' A junior but earnest techpriest, inducted into the regiment after his homeworld was exterminatus'd. Has yet to become as full of cybernetics as his peers, and thus far is still mostly flesh and bone. Somewhat nervous of all the various horrible things that seem to happen around the regiment, but calms down when back to simple technology and skulls everywhere. Terrible at fighting and prefers to hide away plinking with a pistol at most. Even more terrible at biologis work, but has a talent for dealing with machine spirits. Probably has a technology fetish, but come on he's a techpriest what did you expect? Vanished mysteriously after being taken on a magical pirate adventure.

===KIA===
All regiments have their losses whether at the hands of the enemy or as a result of in field summary execution. Here is a list of those lost during the missions. Lost, but not forgotten.

*'''Imperial Knight Godfrey Maxon''' Inexplicably appeared on a paradise world thinking it was an active war zone and joined the Unknown Regiment. Died to chaos AA guns while trying to drop onto a Mechanicus planet. His Knight was then dragged through several miles of forest before being abducted by the Mechanicus along with the rest of the regiment.

*'''Corporal Hamounds''' Literally the swarmlord. Seems to have inexplicably appeared aboard the space hulk and donned the worst disguise ever, yet it was good enough for the Commissar to not bat an eye. Goes through about 5 different names per kit inspection and causes huge catastrophes every time he is involved in anything, even if it's fucking karaoke. Died multiple times but regenerated himself instantly for no reason. Promoted by the Commissar for reasons that cannot be explained. After an intense battle with one of the regiment's Tech-priests. He was vented out of the ship, and into the Warp, where he was consumed by Daemons.

*'''Private Notas Pawn''' A thing that shall not be named pretending to be a guardsman and can communicate only by SCREEECHing, was killed by praetorian guards because tech priest failed to hack the cameras.

*'''Bone 'ead Rogg''' The greatest and bravest ogryn to ever live (or so he thinks). Previously a regular run of the mill ogryn, this ogryn generated insane conspiracy theroies about messages hidden in a word search after tasked to solve it by the commissar. This drove the weak-minded being almost insane and convinced him that ratlings had taken over the imperium of man and the only way to stop them was to kill a ratling by the name of gland. Talked in an incredibly thick slurring of words that made it almost impossible to dechiper what he had said. This instance of rogg was soon lost after taking a sniper wound to the head from a ratling sniper rifle. After some of the least impressive surgery ever, Rogga woke up and started shit-talking everyone while talking about bullying the poor. Eventually rogga would become a necron and in an alternate universe destroy the entirety of praetoria. In the current timeline he would smash his head into a rock and reawaken rogg who would then get his arms blasted off by a morkanaut. After having one of his legs ripped off accidentally by a Rak'gol pirate he would be exectuted by medicinal incompetence but mostly the hospitaliers bolt pistol.

*'''Techpriest Vaithilingham Vanderdelgus''' Hailing from the pleasure world of Reth, Vanderdelgus managed to combine the laziness of a Rethillian with the borderline heresy of a techpriest into an amalgamation of lethargy and idiocy. He was inducted into the Regiment after falling asleep in the lower levels of the Eagle's Fury, and due to a combination of laser blasts and car crashes, lost enough brain cells to decide to stay. Achievements include shooting himself in the eye the first time he fired a laspistol, crashing a limousine worth more than most men would see in 100 lifetimes within 5 seconds of driving it, and staying as pale as a sheet of paper despite coming from a planet where it's sunny literally all year round. Died when the titan he was piloting (poorly) was destroyed due to being corrupted by Nurgle, whilst listening to Cyndi Lauper and being useless.

*'''Rag'alen the Rusty''' A Rak'Gol pirate who's much less bloodthirsty than his bretheren and may be the only one of his kind capable of speaking low gothic. He uses word's "Arr", "Yarr" and "Harr" in every sentence and has access to a lot of rum and alien drugs he smuggled abroad. He was subsequently killed when a Titan(which he found on an ork ship) blew up near him. The shrapnel from its destoryed body, cutting his head in half

*'''Chief Telepathica Psyker Halls''' A new Psyker into the regiment. Most notably dealt the final blow to an incoming Patriarch using smite on him. Is known for his humbleness and kindness to his peers. He often ponders on his existence and sometimes questions everything he knows but that doesn't stop him from helping his team. Is capable of everything but casting powers reliably and making people happy. Is probably one of the main reasons the entire regiment hasn't died yet. Recently got promoted to Chief Telepathica Psyker, and continues to fight through the hordes of chaos and xenos undesirables alike. His body and soul were consumed by the Perils of the warp.

*'''Corsair Prince Osiros''' A corsair prince that is not technically part of the regiment but nobody cares. Is a complete lightweight when it comes to alcohol and sometimes fails to remember if he is drunk. Is skilled in divination and telepathy. Achievements include breaking all laws in the imperial book of judgement, selling rocks in place of soul stones to the dark eldar and losing a collection of legendary relics to some grots. After a series of retarded events, namely the purchase and subsequent use of a vampire raider transport, the evacuation of said transport as soon as it was hit, flying down towards the ground and exploding an entire building while in freefall with telekinesis, the summoning of an army of giant insects, the making of one of those insects invisible, the making of one of those insects levitate, he was forced to leave the regiment due to breaking any sense of danger the regiment could ever encounter and also being retarded. He then mysteriously disappeared. Never to be seen again.

*'''Ars'andog''' A Stryx merchant who joined the regiment in the name of profit. As any known stryx he can sell anything short of a titan, his most expensive transaction to date was selling an eldar Vampire Raider to Osiros(which he then crashed immediatly), whom he hates because he's an eldar. He also lost an eye in his first engagement. His notable behavior in the battlefield is fleeing wherever things go south and using his pet bug to fight for him when they aren't going south. His biggest achievment of heroism is evacuating 20 civilians and, unwillingly, saving the third company, which he was forced to do because of a very annoying priest, this ended with his shuttle ending up very damaged. But guards come and go, and the risk to join the regiment for profit was a fatal one, as he was devoured by mawloc, but after a little struggle, he decided to deny the beast it's meal by blowing himself up...except he was cloned by his lawyer and now works in a nice office in a pact fleet

*'''Astropath Grov''' Resident Astropath and an odd addition to the regiment. Tends to hide rather than fight, and is reluctant to do his actual job. Has an odd habit of complimenting people for their attire or hairstyle (most often with heavy dose of sarcasm mixed in) despite being blind. Good at dodging certain death. Thus far his greatest achievement was surviving a tankard of Gorsk White Gyn. In his last days, showed odd, pseudo-Heretical behavior. His true loyalties, motives and allegiances were lost with his death during the exterminatus of Dracolese. All that remained to prove he had once been in the regiment, was a lone package of Nutri-Slurry with his name taped on it.

*'''Commissar Arthur Knochenmus''' The new Commissar in town. Knochenmus was assigned to the regiment shortly after its creation, and mere hours after its commanding Officer Colonel Erigs died in an unfortunate suicidal accident. He is considered (mostly by himself) to be a tactical genius of incredible proportions, and sees loyalty and purity in even the most heretical of men. Often leading to confusion from the actual loyalists in the regiment. Was killed during the evacuation of Televus IV

*'''Belasya''' An eldar corsairess who lost bet to Osiros and was forced to join the regiment for three months as a result. Quite a bit of her was replaced with prosthetics after the battle with terminators and <strike>she is also a sororitas cheerleader sent to the regiment to raise morale</strike> she also pretends to be a cheerleader to get Michael off her back. Now she left the regiment after three months and kicked Osiros in his family jewels. After that Osiras tried(and failed) to use his <strike>bullshit</strike> warp powers to have revenge, he mostly failed. It ended up with him covering both of them in compost.

*'''Sergeant Wolfe''' Having not risen to prominence until recently, Wolfe began seemingly only existing as a mere Conscript, however, despite the low life expectancy of his rank, rose above to Sergeant due to acts of Valor, potential for command, and risking his life for his fellow Guardsmen. Close friends with Sergeant van Kleez, he seems to be the only one to treat him decently. Oddly, he never seems to speak unless it is important. When he does, however, people tend to <strike>sometimes</strike> listen. Ended up committing suicide. Likely due to an undiagnosed mental illness.

*'''<strike>Lieutenant</strike> <strike>Captain</strike> <strike>Major</strike> Lieutenant Colonel Mattias Wyvern''' Formerly the commander of the Unknown Regiment. Matthias originally started as the CO of second platoon, for the regiment's fourth infantry company, before gradually making his way up to Lieutenant Colonel. A proud Praetorian, and a cheerful man by nature. Matthias has been with the regiment since day one, when he was accidentally (much to his dismay), shipped to the regiment, with no way of returning to his own regiment, and an outright refusal of any request to send him back. After a series of rather strange events and occurrences that not even an Inquisitor could pry from him, both Matthias and Rias Greymane, began dating, before eventually getting married during the regiment's stay on Praetoria. Recent events have seen him be awarded with the honour of the Macharian Cross, for his recent uses of the Tactica Imperialius.He also recently got kids with Rias...somehow. After some time in the regiment, he decided that raising them near overly zealous priests, drug addicts, pianist crimes against nature and such, was not a good idea, so he bought his way out of the regiment(somehow) and is now living with his wife and children on Praetoria, in his mansion. Or maybe he just slipped on a banana peel and fell down an elevator shaft. Eh, it’s more likely. So he's now listed as KIA.

*'''<strike>Gunnery Sergeant</strike> Lieutenant Rias 'Scarlet' Greymane Wyvern''' Supposedly a guardswoman of Cadian descent. Yet no one can seem to find any information on her in the Regiment's archives... Her case isn't helped by the fact that she often keeps her face and long hair hidden behind a Krieg style skull gasmask and helmet. She was promoted to the Regiment's Quartermaster by the Commissar, after the last one died from a heart attack due to paperwork related stress issues. She was gifted a Necron Gauss rifle disguised as a Plasma gun by the Magos and a Ultramarine powerfist by a lucky trooper. She has recently started wearing a silver ring, in addition to her usual kit. She and Matthias Wyvern were recently united in the holy bonds on matrimony. Turns out to be a Daemonette but would likely be better suited being a Daemon of Khorne. She got pregnant somehow. She left regiment with Matthias to raise their kids properly on Praetoria

=Mission Log=
A collection of mission reports filed away by the men women and assorted xenos of the Unknown Regiment.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/53593459 Mission 1]===

The regiment receives its first shipment of recruits and is sent to investigate an ork incursion near a local hive.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/53611915 Mission 2]===

After the discovery of looted Eldar tech from the orks, the regiment (after some deliberation and many conflicting orders) strikes an Eldar encampment to great effect, before being unexpectedly picked up by a shuttle for redeployment. The new recruits get stranger.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/53727323 Mission 3]===

The regiment is shocked by reports of a traitor in their midst. Much infighting ensues between the various traitors and heretics within the regiment. The investigation is inconclusive.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/53744849 Mission 4]===

We go to a fucking space hulk, we don't get paid enough for this shit. Anywho, while we are there we kill a filthy xeno that infiltrated our ranks and blow the hulk to kingdom come. Let's hope next time is better..... HAHAHAHAHA NOPE

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/53852848 Mission 5]===
NOBODY EXPECTS THE INQUISITION and that's what happens, and it turns out there are more Inquisitors in the regiment than just the Ordo Malleus agent that's shown up...

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/53869249 Mission 6]===

The Unknown Regiment arrives on a deserted penal mining world to investigate where everyone has gone. Turns out there were Dark Eldar and some pests the Magos had to fix - boy, did he look sour when he came out of the sewers. But anywho, the Lieutenant Wyvern called in the location of some Dark Eldar raiders that had captured the governor's palace, and the regiment went on the attack. The fighting was fierce and many were laid low, exacting a heavy toll on the enemy, but as the battle closed the [dice] gods decided to have a laugh at the World Eater MUR and he was captured. Who knows what will happen next?

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/53982536 Mission 7]===

Beach vacation fuck yeah! The Unknown Regiment takes a day off, an Imperial Knight arrives and gets bored, many sand castles are built and karaoke breaks the laws of physics. Nobody knows what's really happening but nobody cares either.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/53998291 Mission 8]===

The regiment are deployed on a Mechanicus world recently fallen to Chaos hands and gloriously reclaim it for the Imperium.
Except they don't and instead crash almost immediately, get their Imperial Knight blown up by Chaos marines worshipping a mysterious god named 'Criticus', and a three way Magos war ends with a Tyranid bioship obliterating the camp. The entire regiment is then abducted by Skitarii.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54102434 Mission 9]===

A thief is loose in the regiment, and has raided the Commissar's liquor supply. Soon enough, the culprit is found: a certain loyal trooper who just so happens to be a Swarmlord, that the Commissar had somehow failed to notice. He is summarily executed, which causes an eruption of genestealers from the kitchen basement. After a tense battle, the Patriarch is slain, but not before the Swarmlord's corpse is dragged into the dark below...

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54117829 Mission 10]===

Our mighty Strike Cruiser, "The Eagle's Fury" is incapacitated and stuck drifting in the void due to a damaged warp drive. The regiment is tasked to retrieve the replacement parts from a nearby Space hulk. Of course, things immediately go wrong. With Senior Magos Szarek insulting the intelligence of "Not Corporal Hamounds". This leads to him being challenged to a game of Paradox Billiards Vostroyan Roulette 4th Dimensional Hypercube Chess Strip poker, for the honour of the tyranids MINUTES BEFORE DEPLOYMENT ON A CRUCIAL MISSION. After the Swarmlord resets the game twice by abusing fibre jar, he is defeated and then banished to Ultramar. Meanwhile the rest of the regiment decides to actually start the mission and run into a shitton of Orks.

The regiment beats the Orks with no losses, and our resident Psyker gets mopey due to not getting the respect he deserves. The Orks set the air on fire and then vent the majority of the hulk, before everyone gets depressed and Techpriest Rho has awkward pity sex with a wall socket. The Ork Warboss, T'umb Krush'ah, is eventually defeated and the warp drive, along with an entire spa, is looted and taken back to the Ship.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54216336 Mission 11]===

The "Eagle's Fury", despite being a relatively 'new' ship, is deemed to be a disaster in the making. The various beings of the regiment are ordered to clean and repair the ship before an inspection. A DJing dreadnought awakens on board for a time, as well as a first appearance of an exceptionally lewd hospitalier. A fight between Szarek and Hamounds goes horrifically wrong however and causes a breach in the hull, causing both their deaths and the destruction of a ruststalker.

As well as causing a Gellar Field failure, resulting in just about every chaos god's followers to show up including Ahriman and Lucius themselves. Presumably from the TTSD-verse, as they were shortly savaged by a warp spawn and shot until forced to flee respectively without causing much damage. From being ordered to clean up the ship, the Regiment caused even more damage and mess with mass casualties. Did anyone really expect anything else?

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54232518 Mission 12]===

The regiment is towed into orbit around the hive world of Praetoria after the heavy damage that the Eagle's Fury sustained en-route to its next campaign. From there, a Praetorian General boards and inspects the ship, before offering to let the regiment stay at his guest house due to his son being a company commander.
But the regiment's surprise vacation isn't all fun and games as they had hoped it to be: a dastardly assassination attempt upon the Wyvern family occurs, only to have been narrowly thwarted by the actions of a handful of of the regiment's finest.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54351447 Mission 13]===

After their leave on Praetoria, the regiment is sent to purge an ice world of the Ork menace. Nobody dresses appropriately, everyone is cold and miserable and Rogg becomes a popsicle. A horde of Orks on makeshift snowmobiles attacks the regiment, and only retreats after abducting some hapless guardsmen through the use of tow cables. People narrowly avoid death, receive horrible injuries and a mysterious talking sword is found then promptly ignored and used to throw snowballs. The snowball fight is interrupted by the appearance of a Mork(or maybe Gork)anaut on the horizon. The Commissar Cadet is turned into soup and Rogg loses most of his limbs before being shot, but eventually the Morkanaut is destroyed in a fiery explosion. The regiment retires to the mess hall where various flavours of xeno pirates appear, and everyone eats stew while getting very drunk and high. Van Kleez receives traumatic chest surgery on a mess table, with the help of ORK MAGIKZ, then relentlessly bullies the person who just saved his life.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54462662 Mission 14]===

The regiment is still on hoth and needs to purge the orks after taking serious losses against them. This difficult task is not aided by most of the regiment deciding to not do their job and instead go on a pirate adventure. The gang, lead by an eldar corsair, invades an ork ship and starts shooting up the place. Once they start looting the ship the corsair finds some sponge pipes and the actual pirate finds a reaver titan in the closet. After inexplicably taking it back to the planet the corsair; who is still on board; got into a fight with a perpetual and decides to just crash the ship into the planet and teleport off.
Back on hoth the day had already been won and the reaver titan gets corrupted by a daemon host. Both are destroyed and the gang escapes just in time for the eldar pirate to be molested by a hrud.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54479953 Mission 15]===
Part 1 of the garbage fire chronicles

Interrupting the regiment from going to the casino world Nevida, the regiment was called to dracolese, which was recently invaded by the arch enemy, chaos. After Illya giving Viktor PTSD, the regiment was about ready to fight on Dracolese. After getting into the dropships, dropping, and many teeth smashing, the regiment was finally on Dracolese. Primaris Psyker Halls would get promoted by the Astra Telepathica to Chief Telepathica Psyker Halls, zapping away at the cultists mercilessly. Suddenly, the regiment came under fire by the Black Legion. After much warp lightning, bullets, and blood, the black legion would be defeated... for now... After merciless murders by Illya while doing surgery, the regiment would get a long desired rest.

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54586886 Mission 16]===
Part 2 of the garbage fire chronicles

The corsair gets an entire vampire raider delivered to him which goes as well as it sounds as many long surviving members of the regiment are promoted.
The siege of dracolese continues as many bombers get shot down whilst the eldar somewhat retardedly decides to fly his raider directly into the city.
It is of course immediately shot down and as the eldar falls to the ground he destroys an entire building.

Meanwhile the rest of the regiment is doing something vaguely useful and fighting the enemy directly whilst an inquisitor is completely useless. The fighting gets tense as many soldiers fall but eventually a magic giant bug is summoned out of thin air and is given the ability to levitate.
Soon a closet is found and the regiment is given the task of opening it. It takes ages but eventually some sort of bureaucrat is found inside before orks invade.

The regiment mostly falls back to city limits and regroups at the shopkeeper.

The hospitalier soon claims another victim as an ill fated rescue attempt ends in ambiguity and confusion, with the corsair ruining everything once again

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54605588 Mission 17]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54711435 Mission 18]===
There was only one Warp-route back to Terra from here. Just a straight out high speed burn through Segmentums Obscurus and Solar. Then onto the Terran Spaceroute, straight into frantic oblivion. Just another madman, in the Empire of Madness. We'd gone in search of the Imperial Dream. It was a lame fuckaround, a waste of time. There was no point in looking back, fuck no, not today, thank you kindly. My heart was filled with joy, I felt like a monster reincarnation of a primarch. A man on the move, just sick enough to be totally confident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT72CgEJQNQ

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54729425 Mission 19]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54837245 Mission 20]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54855103 Mission 21]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54953897 Mission 22]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/54969960 Mission 23]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/55072699 Mission 24]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/55087551 Mission 25]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/55186206 Mission 26]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/55202575 Mission 27]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/55302884 Mission 28]===

===[http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/55318987 Mission 29]===

Spores of Madness

2021-05-24T02:18:42Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381:

{{Infobox Spess Mahreen Chapter
|Name = Spores of Madness
|Heraldry = Black skull on a white field over three black goblets(Yet to be drawn)
|Battle Cry = ''Plague and Plunder me Hearties!''
|Number = Unknown
|Founding = 40th Millennium Founding
|Successors of = [[White Scars]]
|Successor Chapters = None
|Chaos Champion = Captain Boil Beard
|Primarch = [[Jaghatai Khan]]
|Homeworld = Fleet based
|Strength = About a Companies worth of marines(100?)
|Specialty = Drop pod Assaults/Boarding action
|Allegiance = [[Chaos]]: [[Nurgle]]
|Colors = Skull white, Scab red and Snot green detail
}}

[[File:Spores of madness.jpg|thumb|270px|right|Fucking demon space pirates. It's like everything, but better.]]

Another example of [[/tg/|fa/tg/uys]] messing with creation tables, the '''Spores of Madness''' are a Chaos Warband that enjoys space sea shanties, plague grog, and spreading the gifts of [[Nurgle|Papa Nurgle]].

== The Spores of Madness ==
The Spores of Madness are an interesting bunch of loonies to say the least. By now, their original chapter name has been forgotten or simply removed from the Administratum records, and if you asked one of them to tell you they'd probably spit and tell you it's "Bad luck, mate", before promptly disemboweling and/or infecting you with some awful combination of Warp Scurvy and Space AIDS.

Created in the 40th millennium from the [[gene seed]] of the [[White Scars]], the Spores of Madness' loyalist streak didn't last long. But a scant few decades after their founding, a horrible flaw (yet unspecified) was discovered in their gene seed, a mutation so vile that the Inquisition was immediately dispatched to purge the unclean chapter. The force did its job... well, most of it, at least. They managed to destroy 90% of the chapter (including their Chapter Master). By the end of it, only the first company was left, holed up in their fortress monastery. When the Inquisitors came a'calling, the Spores answered. Rather than remaining in their fortress, the first company boarded their ships, and took the fight to their new enemies. Opening with quite a few daring boarding actions, not only did they escape, but stole several of the attacking ships while they were at it.

It is unknown how or when this first company came under the influence of good old [[Nurgle]] or how they came to their current hunting grounds in the Ghoul stars, all that is known is that these fanatics care about looting and thieving nearly as much as Papa Nurgle.

== Notable Incidents ==

'''Siege of Hadrofax''': Raiding action against the Hadrofax Drift Station is cut off from the Warp by an approaching Tyranid force. After three weeks of repelling Tyranid vanguard forces, techmarines and Sorcerers manage to send the entire station and surrounding space directly into the Warp.

'''The Corruption of Valeten IX:''' Spores of Madness operatives corrupt the few human overseers of the largely automated agri-world Valeten IX. Widespread simultaneous introduction of infectious agents sees an entire years worth of output as vector for mundane and warp-tainted illness before detection. Widespread ramifications include induced famines across nine systems, the halt of the Rovonus sector expansion, and the collapse of the Atrion Purging resulting the demotion to chaos spawn of chapter master Zyrus of the renegade Steel Devourers SM chapter.

'''The Cywren Incident:''' Faulty intelligence sees six Spores of Madness ships raid the minor Craftworld Cyrwren only to be caught unaware by the Path of the Warrior dominated craftworld. A complete rout, the superior firepower and craftworld-specific Flaming Winds Aspect Warriors sees the loss of over a dozen Marines, thousands of cultists, and the destruction of the vessels Hellspite, Bloody Throne, and Vitae Tenebrous.

'''Ekraor:''' Spores of Madness vessels deployed three decommissioned drop pods on the mostly uninhabited pleasure world of Ekraor. An outbreak of Nurgle's Rot among the royalty of Shandus led the Inquisition to discover a daemonic infestation hiding in the remote and untouched wilderness of the planet. Inducing an extinction level event through orbital bombardment, the planet was quarantined and handed over to the Ordos Malleus for study.

== A note on Drop pods ==
Aside from the ship to ship boarding actions the Spores Have become acustomed to, they have another style of war when dealing with worlds, space stations, or particularly large ships like Craftworlds and space hulks. It involves [[Drop Pod]]s, which in and of itself seems like pretty standard Space Marine procedure aye? WELL, the Spores aren't all for them regular or 'sane' tactics, so they decided to... ''improve'' on their drop pods design.

How you ask? Well that's simple really, what would any intelligent, sane and rational person do? No I'm seriously asking because whatever the answer to that question is, the Spores did the EXACT opposite. They decided to do something no-one else had tried yet, and rounded up some [[Daemons]] and shoved them into their drop pods. No, not they drop Daemons in drop pods the Daemons ARE the drop pods. The warpsmiths and Hereteks of the warband turned their many drop pods into Daemon engines, how does this improve them you may ask? Well, for one, they can move after landing now, as part of the process of shoving Nurgle Daemons into drop pods seemed to the big metal pods grow some big, plauge ridden, thick spidery legs for locomotion. It also gave them an appetite... they eat people. The Daemons LITERALLY pick up Guardsmen, cultists, marines who aren't Spores and generally anything they feel hungry for at the time. They absorb these poor bastards mind, body and soul.

This also means that Marines who drop in them don't hang out there too long, and those that have are still sitting in there. More than a few fanatical marines upon learning anyone who remained in the pods too long would forever become a part of them, basically sat in there until they were absorbed. Now, their rotting, petrified, still smiling and armored corpses are permanently enthroned in whatever seat they took, and serve a similar purpose to the pilot crew of a Helldrake, assisting with firing the Drop pods few weapons, keeping the Daemon on task and most importantly making sure they don't eat any of the Spores who don't stay in them too long.

Being filled with Nurgle Daemons, these pods are also basically hotboxes for whatever awful diseases Grand Papa [[Nurgle]] can cook up. Sometimes the Spores don't even deploy in them, just firing the pods at a planet or ship and letting the diseases and walking murder machines do their jobs for them, often with a rather scary amount of effeciency. It is these unique engines of death and destruction(along with the Spores intense hatred of the Inquisiton and surviving a purge) that put them in the good graces of [[Failbaddon]] the Harmless. Well that, and the fact Captain Boil Beard thinks Abby is one of the best Nurgle worshippers around as he has done NOTHING in 10,000 years but maintain the staus quo.

== Notable Members ==

=== Captain Boil Beard ===
'Captain' Boil Beard is the Chaos Champion and leader of the Spores of Madness. He has lead the Piratical Warband for nearly two Millenia, ever since shortly after their escape from the Imperial Inquisition. Originally Veteran Sergeant Florent Yierik, he was one of the 8 or so Veteran Sergeants who survived the flight from their fortress monastery. Originally, the renegade Sergeants worked together in a sort of council following the death of the First company captain in the escape. Together they decided the nearest area of the galaxy where they could hide was within the confines of the Ghoul Stars.

About a decade into their voyage, Florent began to feel the ever present fear of his own mortality, confronting the fact that like the rest of his chapter he may soon face death. These thoughts haunted the veteran for a long stretch throughtout the Ghoul Stars, until a voice gave him a way out. It may be Florrent had latent psyker abilities awakened by the proximity of the supernatural xenos within the Ghoul Stars, or perhaps he was just lucky, either way he heard a kind and fatherly voice in his dreams telling him the true secret to everlasting life, everlasting stagnancy. Florent took these lessons to heart, and followed the directions of his new, and mysterious patron.

It revealed to him that one of the ships captured from the inquisiton in their flight carried a very rare and unique payload, virus bombs. With his own squad as his first followers, Florent secretly moved over half the payload onto the Company's Battle Barge, and spreading his new teachings to others in the company, even a few of the other sergeants. In the end, the new faithful and those who would not heed him were gathered together, ostensibly to celebrate their survival as a company. At this gathering, with all in attendance, Florent unleashed the virus bombs.

It was found that those that had resisted him, and held to their own beleiefs, were killed by the voracious plauge within the bombs as it rotted through their armor and flesh, destroying them utterly. But, Florent and his faithful, a full two thirds of the company, did not die. Instead, the symptoms of the plauge did not kill them, but only strengthened them. As the smoke cleared, Florent took for himself a new name, and christened his new warband 'The Spores of Madness', and the rest is history.

He raided and pillaged and plauged the Ghoul stars and other nearby sectors, becoming a major threat to the Death Spectres and their mission.

Recently, Captain Boil Beard has gone through a drastic few changes in his faith. After the false and incomplete information and augurys that lead to the Cywren incident, he lost faith in his Sorcerer's abilities to predict future events. He became obsessed with divination, future telling, any way to gain an informational edge. And so it was that when he came across the Belle Dame he believed Papa Nurgle had sent him an answer. Trusting in her womb far more than his sorcerer's, Captain Boil Beard has a strange and some would say... unhealthy infatuation with the Belle Dame. Thoug he still revels with his mates and plunders with his crew it has become a normal occurence to find him in the Belle Dame's chamber speaking with her, praying before her, and sometimes simply staring into her ever changing womb, watching the currents and edies within. He believes that one day, some year soon, the Belle Dame will give birth, birth to the one true son of Nurgle. It is his belief that Papa Nurgle has deemed him worthy to protect and raise his son, a prospect that excites the Captain to no end. Though unlike several other Spores he has never seen the child, he claims it is a test of his devotion to the Belle Dame and Papa Nurgle.

=== Ol' Ironsides ===

Imagine if you took [[Bjorn the Fell-handed]], made him stop pretending to be senile (as in ''actually senile''), turned the crazy up to 11, and stuck him in a boat with a bunch of rotting space pirates. Welcome to Ol' Ironsides. This mad bastard consistently forgets things, blasts sea shanties through speakers that would make the [[Noise Marines]] weep, and does something he likes to call a "rot keg," in which he screams at the lesser hands on the ship to fill his sarcophagus with plague grog.

When they don't he just continues screaming, ranting about how he should feed them to the drop pods. He usually does.

=== Arkus Name-Taker ===

If you're one of those guys in the 40k universe that deals in the market of men, you're probably one of Arkus Name-Taker's customers.

Sorcerer captain of the blockade runner Bonnie Whore's Kisses, Arkus Name-Taker is one of the most prolific slavers in the galaxy. Most notable was his enslavement of the entirety of the noble children of Delcitus Maxim and their replacement with nurglings, an action that led to the formation of the Delcitus Crusade Fleet and the blood vendetta of it's commander, Commodore Tabeatha Haddaway Ngatha.

A preening, egotistical man, Captain Name-Taker surrounds himself with a cadre of slaves who endlessly polish, paint, and replace his armor as it succumbs to Nurgle's designs. Preferring his ship to be crewed with psykers, Name-Taker's mancatcher squads have been known to fill their slave cages by compelling the weak of mind to walk into their servitude.

He's probably the cleanest follower of [[Nurgle]]. Ever.

=== Bolg'Shav ===

One of the oldest members of the Spores of Madness, the marine now known as Bolg'Shav is one of the Possessed, willingly having is mind obliterated and surrendering his body to the control of a daemon of Nurgle. His terminator armor now living amalgamation of insect and fungi, he ambushes his enemies by teleporting in their midst while lashing out with claws that can age flesh and steel to dust and fangs that infect his victims with fungal growth that bypasses their nervous system and slaves their bodies to Bolg'Shav's commands.

=== Tektus The Dense ===

Tektus the Dense is a feared but still respected leader over his six man bike squad "The Vile Riders". Besides being efficient on the battlefield, they are also tasked with either stealing something quickly, or delivering dangerous cargo for the Captain.

Contrary to popular belief, Tektus is not called "the Dense" because he's stupid. Actually, compared to the other Spores of Madness, he's pretty damn brilliant. However, his body is absolutely wracked with tumors that have burst his armor asunder and added a half a foot to his flesh. On top of that, the collective mass of fucked up cells makes him weigh a half ton unarmored. It's like Deadpool, but more vomit inducing.

Ol' Ironsides got pissed at him once and tried to throw him into the Warp.

It didn't work.

=== The Belle Dame ===

When the Spores of Madness sacked the stellar wind-swept planet of Robartes and its great subterranean cities, they discovered a lone tower standing in the inhospitable desert of the surface. Standing more than a kilometer in height, the thin, gleaming spire appeared in no records. The Spores of Madness found only a solitary woman chained in the room at the top of the spire, unguarded. Appearing heavily pregnant, the Spores of Madness took the seven chains binding her as a good omen and brought her back to their ship unmolested.

Ostensibly an anemic, listless human woman of indeterminate age with a full term pregnancy, the Belle Dame's humanity is undermined by not only her great height, standing taller than all but a handful of Space Marines, but also her absolute refusal to eat. Most curious is the fact that her abdomen, swollen with child, is nearly transparent, with ribs and organs visible. Her womb appears as a swirling mass of contrasting liquids, with many of the Spores believing that the future can be divined from interpreting the patterns formed by the currents and eddies. A few of the Spores claim to have seen the child she is carrying, but, when pressed, the details given are vague. However, all who have seen the child describe it as giving them an unsettling sense of familiarity.

Most of the Marines see her as legitimate, or at the very least equal to the augury of the Sorcerers. The cultists, who rarely interact with her, have far more mixed reactions, ranging from outright worship as a kind of holy figure to believing she's a deceiver, come to lead them astray from the path of Papa Nurgle. The cultists do not express these distasteful opinions to the Captain.

Because of the Cyrwyn Incident, Captain Boil Beard has lost more and more faith in his sorcerers, and has become more and more obsessive and superstitious over fortune telling and divination, meaning he has developed an infatuation with the Belle Dame. He has taken two of his most trusted [[Plague Marines]] and designated them as her "Pale Guard." They guard her night and day without rest.

Captain Boil Beard keeps her close, in her own private chamber on the ''Pieces of Eight''. Whenever she is seen on the vessel, she is usually accompanied by Boil Beard and her Pale Guard.

=== "The Magos" ===

<blockquote>

''"Excuse me, Magos, I was overlooking the schematics you sent me and I'm confused. This is some sort of artillery cannon with an articulated barrel, correct?''"

''"Correct."''

''"Won't this explode violently when fired?''

''"Yes."''

''"If you don't mind me asking, why?"''

''"Because the coxswain of the Ark Defilement got his right leg blown off and wanted a cannon for its replacement."''

''"But to mount this thing would require removing his other leg, pelvis, and most of his lower abdomen and the recoil from firing the cannon would wrench it free from any anchoring."''

''"Yes."''

''"Did you tell him that would happen?"''

''"No."''

''"Sir, with all due respect..."''

''"I had dreams once. Simple, easy dreams of respect, authority, and beautiful women retaining at least 43% of their flesh. And now, now I get to make artillery cannons into legs for drunken oafs. Every day I wake up, point a plasma torch at my brain case, and flip a coin. It will be my lucky day one of these days, but until then, I need a 155mm cannon, a cutting torch, and a door hinge."''

</blockquote>

"The Magos" is a bitter, unpleasant man shackled by his freedom through loyalty owed to the Spores of Madness. What little enjoyment that seeps through his ahedonia comes from watching their failures and his passive-aggressive lashing out.

He is at the head of the [[Dark Mechanicus]] contingent (those that bent the knee to the Spores ''and'' newcomers).

None of the Spores of Madness have ever bothered to learn his name.

=== Lesser Members ===

==== Bloaterbud ====
<blockquote>
''Hate, joy, sadness, love and.....nothing. That is what the chaos spawn Bloaterbud felt when it was roaming the empty corridors in one of many forgotten decks onboard the Traitor Battleship Crimson Shell.''

''Every once in a while a slave have tried to escape its masters and fallen victim to Bloaterbuds many mouths and claws. Bloaterbud felt...something when it feasted upon the scrawny slaves...but it didn't care.''

''After many years Bloaterbud could hear voices and footsteps. They didn't sound like slaves, so Bloaterbud hid. As he watched with his many eyes and eyestalks a trio of armour clad giants that ceared out rubble and forced many doors open. When seeing this Bloaterbud had an....idea...something it hasn't had in a long time; "Maybe some of them will die, then I could feast!"''

''With the idea in Bloaterbud soon found himself in pursuit of the giants. And after many twists and turns it finnaly found them. But they where all looking at Bloaterbud, and not the other way around.''

''Bloaterbud was prepared to run, but stopped when one of the giants yelled out: "OUR GREAT FATHER HAS GIVEN US A GIFT. A SPAWN TO SEND OUT INTO BATTLE!"''

''And thus, began a new chapter in the (un)fortunate life of Bloaterbud.''
</blockquote>

Bloaterbud is a Chaos Spawn. At some undetermined time, the Spores of Madness found and took him as a gift from Papa Nurgle.

==== Brother Jacobin ====
<blockquote>
''"Brother Jacobin stood at the edge of the small stage and bowed his head in quiet reflection for a moment as his servants finished handing out bread to the gathering crowd, his speech reciting itself in his head. The damp, dank air of the underhive smelling cloyingly acrid and sweet as it stung his lungs, sending him momentarily into a memory of his childhood and the harsh incense of the temple. He surveyed the crowd, less than a hundred souls, all standing apart and wary of cutpurses; sticking around mostly out of a base politeness or the hope for more food than any actual interest. Prophets, rabblerousers, and agitators were more common than rats in the underhives, and Jacobin knew he was but another rodent scurrying in the dark. He didn't wear his armor when making speeches, at best it made his audience fearful, at worst, in a land where life was meaningless and violence cheap, it made his audience think he was fearful. So he stood there, loosely clothed with his shirt open so that the audience might find him relatable to their own tumors and wounds, and his feet bare. He didn't know why going barefoot seemed to make people more apt to believe what he was saying, but he wasn't going to quibble over results. His servants had finished their barking and it was time for his speech. The crowd murmured as he stepped out and he smiled inwardly as some pointed to his bare feet. And there, on a rotting stage, on a rotten street, in front of a rotting crowd, Brother Jacobin opened his mouth and sang the praises of decay."''
</blockquote>

Brother Jacobin is the [[Dark Apostle]] who interacts the most with the cultists. A priest of sorts, he preaches the word of [[Nurgle]] to the rotting, diseased masses who follow him.

<blockquote>
''"All have their place in Nurgle's garden, to tend, to grow, to cultivate, to harvest, and to cull. What role one plays might change many times in one's life and what is desired is rarely what comes to be. "'' - ''Brother Jacobin''
</blockquote>

Brother Jacobin doesn't see any difference between interpreting the Belle Dame's womb or interpreting a slave's entrails. However, he is less than ecstatic about the trouble she's caused in the varying cultist beliefs due to how difficult it has made his life.

On a personal level, Jacobin thinks the Belle Dame is a bore, and rather dim-witted.

==== Markus Mordecai ====

Markus Mordecai is an enforcer for the many groups of cultists that serve under Captain Boil Beard. Once, he was a man of pride and respect as an Arbite in the Hive Radatoon on the planet Knasta. However, after seeing how corrupt the Adeptus Arbites on Knasta were, he began to look for a way to crush them all.

His wishes came into being when the Spores of Madness invaded the planet. With his knowledge from being an Arbite, he quickly rallied a hoard of cultists from the lower hive. When the battle was done, he and the surviving cultists found themselves aboard the "Pieces of Eight". And through wits, skills and a few bullets into a few people's heads, he became an enforcer for what he likes to call "The Boil's Bravest".

== [Insert Fleet Name Here] ==

=== ''Pieces of Eight'' ===

The flagship of the fleet of the Spores of Madness, this hulking Battle Barge is going to be replaced as flagship once The Tumor is complete.

=== ''Ark Defilement'' ===

<blockquote>

'''+++DISTRESS CALL FROM ADEPTUS MECHANICUS FACTORY VESSEL [#731/B9]+++'''

''"This is techpriest Reduktus Bata, calling out to any Imperial or Mechanicus ships in this sector, by the machine god, even Xenos would do! We are under attack, I repeat, we are under attack. We have a 90% chance of the attackers being heretics and traitors. They ambushed us when our ship entered the Gorvium system to collect ores from the asteroid belt. Clever bastards, they hid in the outer layer of a gas giant."''

''"Before we knew it, our frigates were blown to smithereens and our ship was boarded. As far as I know I am the only surviving Magos in this section. Please send assistance!"''

''"By the Omnissiah, they are melting the bulkhead! Please, send hel-"''

'''+++END OF DISTRESS CALL+++'''

</blockquote>

The stolen factory ship known as ''Ark Defilement'' is barren. Kind of. Its halls are wandered by the crew, Heretechs who bent the knee to Nurgle, and "The Magos". The rest of the population of the factory ship consists of a horrible amalgamation of Nurgle hive mind and unwilling techpriests ''fused to the goddamn walls''. The poor bastards were taken and fused into the horrid ship, and now all they can do is rot and make arms and ammo.

"The Magos" and his personal little retinue were linked to a separate hive mind, and now maintain the gear of the Warband. This includes first mate Ironsides.

==== The Think Tank ====

Deep inside the Ark Defilement is an area called "the think tank". Do not confuse this area with a place for research. Its purpose is much darker than that.

In that room are rows upon rows of vat tanks that have one single use: to grow experimental cultists and dark servitors for the fleet. The think tank's overseer is a former Magos Biologis called Erodas Vea. He managed to escape the forge world he was conducting his experiments on when the Techpriests found out about his "studies".

So far none of the clones have been able to be a fully capable and thinking human. The things that have come out have always been lifeless and soulless humans. However, following an accident involving a mug of Ol' Ironsides' brew and a exposed vat tank, some sort of cognitive motion has developed in the clones.

At the present date, the once sterile and clean vat tanks are now filthy, and the water that the clones now grow in has turned into a green and black sludge.

Both Erodas and Boil Beard are interested in what will come of the new batch of clones.

=== ''Bonnie Whore's Kisses'' ===

=== ''The Tumor'' ===

=== ''Oozing Wound'' ===
The ''Oozing Wound'' is a ship in orbit around a green sun. No one knows what happened to the crew, and those that try to explore it don't return. For many Imperials in the nearby region, it is considered bad luck to use the star when traveling in the Warp

===''The Rabhas''===
If one was to examine the Spores of Maddness when the fleet is at rest the the Rabhas would be slightly to one side, not far enough away to be separate, but enough for it to be clearly apart from the others. This is because while the vast majority of the Spores praise Nurgle alone the crew of the Rabhas worship Khorne just as much as Nurgle. Though this technically makes them undivided it's clear where the vast majority of there praise goes and as such there deviance is tolerated by Boil Beard since Khorne and Nurgle don't hate each other to the degree Nurgle does Tzeentch. Due to there joint Loyalties the crew of the Rabhas are infected a disease Nurgle created as 'joint project' with Khorne during a rare time when the gods where working in joint purpose, a sickness that among the infected cause great rage, fury, pain resistant and, oddly a fear of water which the crew of the Rabhas get around by drinking enough grog to drown a Hive World. Another reason Boil Beard allows the split loyalties of the Rabhas is that enemy's who expect the slow and methodical advance of Nurgle forces can frequently be thrown off guard by a charge of berzerkers firing plasma pistols and swinging power cutlass's.

===''Pox Imperium''===

== Allies with the Spores of Madness==

=== Failbaddon the Harmless ===

[[Abbadon]], also known as '''Abaddon the Armless''', '''Failbaddon the Armless''', or '''Failbaddon the Harmless''',

=== Klobb'ead da Freeboota ===
Klobb'ead is an Ork freeboota that the Spores of Madness came in contact with when they where chasing down a convoy of imperial supply ships. Klobb'ead's battle krooza had by chance stumbled upon the convoy and the spores of madness by pure chance just as the Spores had began to board and pillage the ships. Naturally, for being Orks they opend fire with every shoota, lobba and launcha they had. And almost every shot missed, mainly because the boys manning the guns didn't really aim, they just liked the sound the guns made in space (Ork logic, don't question it).
Klobb'ead, being a very kunnin Ork looked at the imperial ships, and "da smelly 'umies" ships and had an idea. He smacked the closest Mekboy to open a channul so they could speak with "da biggest and da strongest".

And while the Spores of madness could easily destory the krooza they still needed time to haul and unram/dock thier ships. When Boil Beard answers the call via a pict network link the two captains saw each other face to face.
Klobb'ead was amused to see another "almost orky" captain. He was probably referring to Boil's green, vile and infested beard and face. After a brief conversation Klobb'ead and Boilbeard came to an agreement so that both sides wouldn't lose anything. The Orks could take the ships so they can "Make em Orkier and make Klobb'ead stronger" and the Spores would get the cargo they where after.

It happens from time to time that the two fleets come across with eachother, sometimes they ask the ork to "soften" up a planet's defenses in exchange for all they loot they can carry from the planet.
Boil Beard and Klobb'ead has a very, peculiar friendship

== Enemies of the Spores of Madness==

=== Inquisitor Spotswood ===

Inquisitor Spotswood, Archibald Endecott Spotswood, or "'''A RIGHT PRICK'''," is one of the most prominent foes of the Spores of Madness.

Archibald is a thin, older man who looks to be in his late 60s. He is bald except for a ring of white hair going from ear to ear, and his eyes are replaced by cybernetics.

He is an absolute douchebag.

Seriously, even for Inquisitors he's a douchebag.

Spotswood demands immediate obedience to his authority and throws his rosette around like it's a credit card.

He is insanely distrusting. Rather than a standard retinue, he's always flanked by a attache of mindscrubbed Inquisition stormtroopers bearing his custom uniform and insignia.

===Commodore Tabeatha Haddaway Ngatha===
Commodore Tabeatha Haddaway Ngatha has proven to be an infected, and not the good kind, thorn in the side of the Spores of Madness ever since Arkus Name-Taker enslaved the noble children of Delcitus Maxim, including her younger sister. For this act the Commodore has chased the Spores across the Ghoul stars and has proven to be quite effective in hunting down other pirates almost as a byproduct. Compounding her dogged persistence the Commodore has proven to be a one of the greatest tactical naval commanders in the history of the Imperium simply because she unlike that vast majority of commanders except maybe the Tau Air cast, can think in three dimension. Even those captains who spend there whole life on a ship the artifact gravity and layout of the halls accommodates a 2 dimensional view of the world, while for what ever reason she does not and is able to attack the Spores from six directions at once giving even the former marines a run for there money, if she can keep them from boarding.

==External Links==
*Origin Thread:
http://boards.4chan.org/tg/thread/45234434#p45306984

*second thread:
http://boards.4chan.org/tg/thread/45314880#p45321984

Wulfrik the Wanderer

2021-05-24T02:01:58Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* The Gotrek of the Dark Gods */

[[File:Download_(1).jpg|500px|right|thumb|MY CHALLENGE? UNDENIABLE!!!!]]
{{Topquote|Face me if you dare, stunted whelp, or do you lack even an Elven maid's courage? I thought the Sons of Grungni were great warriors, but perhaps you are no true Dwarf. Indeed, maybe you are instead some breed of bearded goblin, though in truth, I have seen a finer beard on a Troll's back-side.|Wulfrik, roasting some stuntie welp so hard it literally set their beard on fire.}}
{{Topquote|You favour birds, Zarnath? Since you like birds so much, traitor, I will make you one.|Wulfrik, about to rape Zarnath with the torture death of Blood Raven}}
{{Topquote|We seek the monsters that you fear the most. We chase the nightmares that haunt your cowardly dreams. The deadlier the prey, the more we exult in the hunt! The more we honour our Gods! This harsh land breeds the savage; and we revel in it. The Old World calls, ripe for our taking. We fought monsters, and we became them...|Wulfrik, during the trailer for the Norsca faction of [[Total War: WARHAMMER]]}}

Wulfrik the Wanderer, also known as the Eternal Challenger, the Inescapable One and the World Walker, is the ultimate sea-faring warrior as well as the Chaos Gods' most favorite and deadly executioner.
He was cursed some time ago to forever kill scary beasts or champions of distant lands by the chaos gods for being too damn yappy after a long night of drinking with the lads. The curse stated that, should he fail or fall in battle, his soul would be damned forever to be viciously ravaged by Slaaneshi daemons, unable to enter the halls of Khorne.

In addition to being a warrior of immense skill, he is also a roast-master, able to burn the unholy ''''FUCK'''' out of anyone in the Warhammer world. His curse grants him the ability to speak and understood Khazalid, Eltharin, Queekish, Reikspiel, and even forgotten language like ancient Nehekharan, or untranslatable brute language growl used by beasts like Yeti, with the fluency of a born native. This ability shouldn't be underestmated however, for it makes it easiler for Wulfrik to force his opponent into offense mode by roasting their sorry asses charcoal black, forces them to enter a state of blind rage that they disregarded all of their advantageous tools of war (their comrades, range/black powder weaponry, magic, etc...) and just charge into Wulfrik while leaving themselves open to any attacks.

He is not to be confused with a similar character who also has the same red hair, a massive sword and the ability to pull a long 1 minute insult from [[Samurai Jack]].

It is a shame that he did not duel [[Gotrek & Felix|Gotrek]] or feature in any of their novels, despite the fact that both kill monsters and champions on weekly basis.

It is also a shame that he never fought [[Nakai the Wanderer]] on any occasion since both shared the same nickname.

==The [[Gotrek & Felix|Gotrek]] of the Dark Gods==
'''Wulfrik''' was born into the Norscan clan of '''Sarl''', bearing the mark of chaos upon his birth. He would grow to become a skilled, if somewhat arrogant warrior. After a particularly glorious victory from a battle known as the "Battle of Thousand Skulls" (the prizes of which were the hand of a beautiful princess named '''Hjordis''', a well known beautiful blondie with an arse everyone wants to bang and the crown of chieftain), Wulfrik attended a celebration held in honor of his clan's victory over their enemies, known as the '''Aeslings'''. Wulfrik, after having chugged eight barrels of mead and more than a few shots of Jägermeister, declared loud and for all to hear that he and he alone could best every warrior in the world, because he was the greatest and even the gods could not train a more formidable warrior.

Insulted beyond compare, the Chaos gods sent an emissary to Wulfrik as he lay sleeping. The daemon emissary came to Wulfrik's dream and carried him into the warp before proceeding to give him a tour of the world from the "[[warp|heavens]]" above. They visited the realms of the Elves, and the dark domains of the [[Skaven]]. They went to the woodland realms of the Wood Elves, the strongholds of the Dwarves, the quiet dead halls of Nagashizzar and the gleaming cities of the Empire and everywhere they went would drown in a great tide of blood. The daemon then informed Wulfrik that the gods had decided to impose upon his arrogance, the terms of which state that he is to wander the world and claim the skulls of dreadful monsters and powerful champions. If he succeeds, he will be counted as an honored servant of the gods. If he fails (read, dies) well... [[Slaanesh]] gets to decide what happens then.

Wulfrik woke up the next morning with a crippling hangover and more importantly, "the gift of tongues." This "gift" manifested itself as a mutation that twisted his tongue into the shape of a bird's and made it so that he could speak foreign languages as if he’d been born to each as well as understood foreign tongue when he listen by focusing his mind. A side effect is that he may shout random insults at people at completely inopportune times (no doubt Tzeentch was pissing himself after he came up with that one). Another "gift" was that he could now hear the gods in his head. From their whisper, they implore Wulfrik to go out and defeat a Tomb King named '''Khareops''' and offer up his rotten entrails to Nurgle. The voices began driving Wulfrik mad and so, between searching for a cure to his "gifts" and being a bad ass, he started searching for some way to get to Khemri.

Understood that the hot climate in the Southlands was no joke (most Norscans just don’t like it because it's hot... and because everyone's favorite desert daddy fucking pwned them the last time they landed, [[Settra the Imperishable #Return|see Settra's crown thief.]]) He learned from his trusted mentor '''Sigvtar''' that there is a certain powerful magical ship that can transport anyone anywhere in an instant (or close enough), crafted and held in a mighty stronghold by a Skaeling witch, <s>Baba Yaga</s> Baga Yar. Wulfrik uses pretty much all of his life's savings buying an army to lay siege to this fucking thing, and after he finally manages to get inside, he hacks the witch to pieces out of sheer spite. The witch doesn't die (TIS BUT A FLESH WOUND) so he drops her old ass in a pot to boil to death while he goes down to claim his new ride. With ship, sword, bird-shaped tongue and a bloodthirsty crew, Wulfrik sets out in his journey of slaughtering anything with red blood, a pulse or [[undead|able to move]]. Seriously. Giants, abominations, undead beasts, famous champions and noble heroes-- fucking ''no one'' is safe.

===Treachery===
Despite the fame coming from his various deeds completed for the gods, Wulfrik found no enjoyment, for he only wish to rule his clan and wed Hjordis. Logically, his wishes should've been granted for slaying Aeslings' King '''Torgald''', but the chieftain '''Viglundr''', a devout follower and chosen of Tzeentch (he has the mark of Tzeentch on his heart) rejects it due to the sudden curse Wulfrik received (or so whatever bullshit a Tzeentch follower could spew). Viglundr believes a man who is cursed by the gods to hunt their preys for eternity is too busy to rule and adore his daughter that he would rather have Sveinbjorn, his son-in-law and an Aesling prince to received that privilege, also another way to forge a new alliance with the Aeslings (the same tribe Wulfrik pwned the night he received his “gifts”) as part of his scheme.

At some point during his adventure, Wulfrik meets '''Zarnath of Tokmars''', a '''Kurgan''' shaman. He claimed that he knew a way to remove the gods' "gifts", but he would only do so if noble and oh so heroic Wulfrik could do a quick RPG fetch quest and get a certain artefact called the "Smile of Sardiss" from the infamous [[Chaos Dwarves]] for him. Wulfrik did just that, flew his ship to the dark land (a barren wasteland with little water source and is impossible to travel through sea and river mind you) with his companions, risking their lives being shot at by a fuck tons of chaos stunties armed with Blundbuss (shotgun), hacked through uncountable amount of hobo goblins sentinels, killed a bull lord (it was enraged by Wulfrik's insult and left an opening for Wulfrik to put his blade in) and battling the chaos stunties' foul machinery (it was a chaos dwarf lord armed with power armor and flamethrower, but Wulfrik managed to burn him alive with his own weapon). The fight was so intense that Zarnath had to help with his magic (which he had constantly made excuses and insisted to not lend a hand), but is no different than surviving daily battles in Norsca and Wulfrik triumph like the fucking beast he is. He gets the artifact at the cost of his dear friend Sigvatr (died to the blades of two traitor comrades beside him), one of the few people he actually cared about in this war torn world. The fight also killed Zarnath except he's shown up again back on the ship because magic.

In the mean time however, Viglundr's scheme with the Aesling alliance isn't going well since Wulfrik is the one that killed the Aesling king and the relationship between the clans is a bit tattered even with their new chieftain, Sveinbjorn, and it will remain that way so long as Wulfrik lives. Viglundr decides then that the red haired badass must take a snowy dirt nap if his dreams of power and prestige are to have any chance of coming true.

As soon as Wulfrik and Co. returned, Wulfrik was welcomed with the news of his lovely princess's marriage to prince Sveinbjorn. The prospect of being cucked by Sveinbjorn angered Wulfrik to no end and led him to challenging Sveinbjorn to a duel. Going along with the flow, Sveinbjorn was ordered by his father to put Wulfrik’s little victory streak to an end. They would settle their score in the Wolf Forest, an private arena owned by Wulfrik (often he used that place for many things: recruitment, celebrations and duels) where they would do glorious battle in the name of the gods. However, to Wulfrik's surprise, the combatant wasn't Sveinbjorn, but rather a huge (about as tall as a troll), bloated chaos champion that Sveinbjorn’s daddy had hired. Note that the champion was a famous Aeslings hero known throughout the Norsca by the name '''Fraener''', whom the gods has abandoned and its now but a Forsaken. Thanks to his own huge [[Plot Armor|balls of titanium]], Wulfrik beat the champion to sludge in a battle (even with the champion's [[Chaos Spawn|transformation]] midway into the battle, Wulfrik fought savagely and pounded the abomination down below the spike-filled arena pit), thus earning the respect of several hundred warriors and increasing the size of his horde significantly.

Having had their plan fail like a typical [[Abbadon|Saturday morning]] [[Nagash|Cartoon Villian]], Viglundr decided to have Sveinbjorn bribe one of Wulfrik's men, Broendulf, into betraying him. As for the second part of Zarnath's quest, he told Wulfrik and his gang to go to Ulthuan (also known as Alfheim in Norscan, nice Norse myth reference there Gee-dubs) in order to obtain the cure for Wulfrik's curse gift by having the magic of that place absorbed into the artefact he got before. Turns out, Zarnath is a treacherous asshole who had been plotting Wulfrik's demise from the beginning, meaning the quest to obtain chaos dwarves' artifact was naught but an excuse to get Wulfrik killed. After the gang landed on '''Cothique''', climbed its cliff shore and traveled down its prairie. There, the sorcerer fooled Wulfrik and his merry band of merry savages into killing a group of Elven maidens praying at a shrine, telling them that they were vile witches preparing to unleash havoc on the Norscans with foul elven magic. Turns out, they were the wives of Elven nobles, praying for fertility and healthy babies if they were already pregnant (oh boy Khorne's gonna be pissed, slaughter of the weak? Big no no. Tiny skulls do make good necklaces tho, but Khaine? He should be the one killing these Elf feotuses!)

Zarnath then revealed his true nature, presumably twirling a cartoonish mustache, before disappearing into a cloud of smoke (because it was but his magic hologram which he controlled from Norsca), alerting nearly every warrior on the bloody continent of Ulthuan while doing it. The Elves and Wulfrik's gang then had a massive battle that caused Khorne to violently ejaculate molten brass all over the place (Slaanesh was indeed pleased, before you ask).

The Elves were vengeful, filled with determined hatred toward these barbarians, to the point Wulfrik could hear "panic" from their conversations: fear of letting them get away without torturing them! Not only do the Elves outnumbered the gang with high numbers of Silver Helms and Elven bowman, some of them were experienced veterans from when Erik Redaxe invaded (which he was defeated by [[Tyrion]]'s army) meaning the Elves are damn good at dealing with Norscans.

Despite all the odds, the Norscan gang fought to the very end, especially Wulfrik, who was fairly lucky the whole time (The Smile of Sardiss he bought contained some kind of Daemon, which it kept away Elf phantoms that tried to rot them) and so pissed off at the betrayal that he injured a great pale [[Merwyrm]] while fighting his way back to the sea. Still, the battle ended up killing everyone involved and destroyed the Seafang (leaving only the figurehead which was, conveniently, the only part that mattered as it held all the magic in it), except Wulfrik and a warrior named '''Broendulf'''. The two warriors escaped using just Seafang's figurehead, strapped to the front of an Elven galley.

While trespassing the warp in a fashion related to 40k, Broendulf confessed to Wulfrik about Viglundr's plotting against him as well as his part of the plan. Hilariously, the reason for Broendulf's betrayal is so he could have Hjordis for himself since Sveinbjorn himself claimed to him that he has [[FATAL|erectile dysfunction]] and is not interested in the princess the slightest. The statement was later rebuked by Wulfrik by him calling him twice the fool for believing them and said that [[derp|most of the tribesman were actually Sveinbjorn's bastard sons, as well as those of the nearby tribe]]. Whatever the misunderstanding, Broendulf was unable to turn on Wulfrik who had saved his life so many times during the battle. Despite his part in the treachery, Wulfrik partnered up with Broendulf, with Broendulf vowing to remain by Wulfrik's side until their enemies had been dealt with.

===Vengeance===
The two later found themselves in Reikland, near the Empire city of Wisborg. After killing some weak Southling riverwarden and soldiers, Wulfrik came to a conclusion that Zarnath is but a Southling wizard since it was he that willed the ship to fly to where Zarnath lives, and yet the ship carries them to a Southling city. Planning to exact his vengeance on this traitorous Southling dog, Wulfrik traveled back to Norsca and his clan to muster himself up a massive army. To do that, he went for the higher-ups (also known as Viglundr and Sveinbjorn). Broendulf had to stay at the Southling city to watch for Zarnath's movement.

As he slaughtered his way into the tower where Sveinbjorn's quarter located, Wulfrik in all his anger caught Sveinbjorn and Hjordis naked in the bed. Apparently, after done tricked Wulfrik and his gang, Zarnath told everyone in the tribe about Wulfrik's death (or he thought) then said he is going back to his homeland far north (or scramble back to the further south where he and the weak Southling lives). Wulfrik angrily bitch slapped the ever loving shit out Sveinbjorn for trying to have someone kill him rather the trying to do it himself, before continuing to bitchslap him Deadpool style (HE LOVES ME. HE LOVES ME NOT.). He also called Hjordis a cheating slut for immediately sleeping with another man shortly the rumor of his demise. The memory of Zarnath's treason and Sigvatr's death made him all the more angry and he pounded Sveinbjorn even harder. The beating stops when Viglundr showed up. Not wanting the Aesling to attack due to the death of their puppet lord, Viglundr beseeches Wulfrik to spare Sveinbjorn's cowardly ass, offering him the support he required to muster enough troops to siege the city (even offering Hjordis to him, except she is but "damaged goods" to Wulfrik now), but only if Wulfrik abandoned any lord status in the clan and vowed never to try at claiming the crown again. Wulfrik did just that, abandoning his desire for power and embracing his new role as the Gods' Executioner. He then repaired the Seafang with wood from an ancient and dangerous troll tree monster (most likely a chaotic brother to the [[Athel Loren|Oak of Ages]]) living in the Norscan tundra and prepared his troops to attack the Empire city.

It turns out Zarnath was an Imperial named '''Ludwig Stossel of the Celestial Order'''. The real reason why "Zarnath" tried to kill Wulfrik was because he had foresaw his death at Wulfrik's hands from his crystal orb. He tried to prevent it by killing Wulfrik early on but failed, and he can't killed him directly because he knew Wulfrik's curse would transfer to him. Perhaps if Ludwig hadn't given the man who he had foreseen to kill him a reason to want him dead, he would have lived longer, oh well.

Either way, Ludwig was doomed from the start anyway since it was Tzeentch who had request Wulfrik in a dream to retrieve the "last breath" of a town. That last breath actually belongs to the wizard, except Wulfrik didn't know back then, nor did Tzeentch reveal the bounty's name (the god of change likes his complicated riddles) and it was way before Wulfrik had met Zarnath.

In the siege of Wisborg, Wulfrik defeated a powerful warrior priest ([[troll|whom Wulfrik insulted by comparing the twin-tailed comet symbol to that of Slaanesh, mocking he has seen similar hammer from his father which he assume he got from the priest's father, and that his hammer is but kitchen tool used to tenderize pork]]), the baron of Wisborg (whom Wulfrik makes fall from his horse and stabs after the baron killed his war hound), the baron's wife (whom was used as part of the insult for Wulfrik to force the baron's army out of the gate, claiming he [[troll|only came to see his "wife and children"]]), and then ordered the entire city stripped of its valuables... Norscan style (translation:they looted and pillaged the FUCK out of it and maybe raised a few idols of their dark gods and all).

Broendulf was later found in a torture cage with his eyes dug out (he was caught because of a tavern brawl where he injured no less than 7 people (2 Morr priests and 5 healers) while posing as a Middenlander). Despite the pact he had made with Broendulf, Wulfrik thought of it but a hollow mockery like the dreams his gods shown to him, something that is not worth winning. Despite Broendulf's constant chaotic pleading to die fighting in his state of blindness, Wulfrik did not gave him an honorable battle, but a stab in his brain while mocking him as a Southling in front of his helmsman friend, as if they've never met before.

Zarnath or rather Ludwig was by this point hiding in the last safe place in the town: the castle's tower where his laboratory resided. He was in fact having quite the guilt trip. He regretted the death of many innocents that died in the town and the Elves that were killed on Clothique (but not the Chaos Dwarf or the Norscans because chaos is bad, but he has no right to judge since he was even '''WORSE'''). In the last act to redeem himself, he decided to kill Wulfrik by any means necessary. He resorted to dark magic to power a statue, an automaton he made based on the designs of the Tomb King's '''Ushabti'''. Now that he had tainted his soul with dark magic, even if he were to survive, he would either be hunted down by witch hunters or vigilant agents from his own order (the dark gods gets to have his soul all the same). Ludwig is. In. Every. Possible. Way. '''FUCKED'''.

In the final confrontation with the wizard, Wulfrik fought his Ushabti on a spiral stairway leading to his lab. The Ushabti's material body shows strong resistance to Wulfrik's blade, and its gigantic blades are capable of cutting down Norsii warriors like butter. The tide turned when he notices a [[Tzeentch|black bird cawing at a flask on the floor]]. The flask's leaking, floor-melting content and its smell was enough for Norscans like Wulfrik to realized it was troll vomit; he threw the damn thing at the Ushabti, melting its inner components and thus shutting it down.

For Ludwig's treason, he was subjugated to one of the most torturous deaths imaginable... the Blood Eagle, a popular [[Khorne|Khornate]] sacrifice ritual ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_eagle as well as a reference to the alleged viking sacrificial ritual - but let's pretend it's real]) done only by the Norsii to their most hated enemies. [[grimdark|The performer must cut open and dig out their victim's lungs while they are still alive, then place both lungs over their shoulders to give the appearance of blood soaked wings, hence the name "blood eagle"]]. With Ludwig letting go of his last dying breath, the bounty was fulfilled. [[Just as Planned|Tzeentch is pleased]].

With the death of Stossel and Broendulf, Sveinbjorn was next. Sveinbjorn, being treacherous scum like his father, had already schemed to take over Seafang by smuggling more than a dozen of his men onto the ship and bribing the crewman to hoard all the loot onto the Seafang, planning a hasty escape. Wulfrik of course saw through the snake's scheme and out-bribed Sveinbjorn. He promised his crewman with every bit of Sveinbjorn's possessions: coin, beer, his hold and his thrall if they've captured him, whereas Sveinbjorn only promised a quarter of the loot from the raid.

Wulfrik then proceed to humiliate Sveinbjorn by stripping him naked, and then had his army's long ship fly Sveinbjorn's flag, for Wulfrik had plans to damn Sveinbjorn's honor to all eternity. To do that, he first released the warrior priest that was defeated and captured earlier. The priest was mounted on Sveinbjorn's steed to deliver Wulfrik's message to the Emperor, which the priest agreed due to vengeful intent to see the Norscans' destruction, because the Emperor would respond by sending a fleet after them. Just before Seafang used its warp teleportation to send Wulfrik and his allies' fleet back home, Wulfrik cut the chain, stranding his allies in the Southling land as the target of the Southling's fleet sent by their Emperor. Since the Seafang flew Sveinbjorn's banner at the time, both the Southlings and the Norscan allies blamed Sveinbjorn. Any Norscans who made it back would tell everyone that Sveinbjorn had betrayed them to the Southlings, causing everyone to brand him a worse traitor than '''Dletch Ogrefeeder'''! (Note: Dletch is known for allowing an Ogre tribe called the '''Blackgut''' into his Chaos host and paying them by letting each ogre eat one of his soldiers everyday). Sveinbjorn of course was horrified by what was coming to him and begged Wulfrik for mercy. Too late bitch!

Wulfrik then shoved a pipe in Sveinbjorn's mouth and through it a venomous snake down his throat, promising him that as the cherry on the sundae of his humiliation Sveinbjorn's body would be sent back to his father's hall with the name [[troll|"Sveinbjorn Snakebelly"]].

After that, Wulfrik returned to Viglundr with news of his son's passing and misbehaving. With Aesling's chief dead and the hope of peace destroyed plus the betrayed Norscans from the raid after him, Viglundr could only sit in his throne and weep softly as Wulfrik turned and left the hall of the Sarls, knowing as he did that though Wulfrik never raised his sword, he had killed the entire tribe.

===The Eternal Executioner of the Dark Gods===
In the end, Wulfrik realized that his curse was more of a blessing then he gave it credit for, a true gift from the gods. Without the power of the Seafang, he could not have appeased the gods by collecting the skulls and hearts of their enemies. Without his fame as the '''Worldwalker''', he could not have gained the loyalty of his men, and without the lies of Zarnath, Viglundr, and Sveinbjorn, the pieces would never have come together. The Gods had ultimately helped him exact vengeance and gain glory, if in a really dickish and convoluted way.

Once he was alone on the ship, Wulfrik brought a silk sheet out of his cabin to make a sacrifice to the Chaos Gods-- the remains of Hjordis, who he had killed, dismembered and wrapped in the sheet, throwing the pieces over the side one-by-one:

First, her pale face skin for Khorne, a face he would kissed.

Second, her heart for Slaanesh, which he would've cherished.

Third, her belly for Nurgle, which would've held his sons and daughters when pregnant.

Then finally her golden hair to Tzeentch, the last hope of his love.

With his faith restored, his old tribe gone, his enemies slain, his forces replenished and his unfaithful lover screaming in the hands of the gods, Wulfrik set out on his quest once more, embracing his destiny as the Wanderer.

==The End times==
According to Josh Reynolds, Wulfrik was first seen with his flying ship in Ind. The gods probably told him to offer the skulls of the thousand gods, fitting for an executioner like him. Other champions like Galrauch, Arbaal and Dechala were there as well.

After that, his super convenient ship carried him back to the siege of Middenland where Archaon's army resided. He got bored waiting for Valten so he decided to duel Valnir to pass the time (What a great guy), with Sigvald inviting himself to watch. When Valten got there, Wulfrik was still dueling and Sigvald was bitching at Valten on how he deserved to fight the real Sigmar (what a prick), using that excuse to leave. As soon as Sigvald left, Wulfrik happened to finish off Valnir and went straight for Valten. It is said that Wulfrik put up the strongest fight out of anyone against Valten (aside from Archaon) but he still got a decent helping of sacred warhammer straight to the face. Just before then, with his dying breath, Wulfrik said to Valten "gg" before his soul was torn from his body to be tortured by the demons of the warp forever for failing in his impossibly difficult task. The dark gods might resurrect him in the Age of Sigmar, but one can only guess, and hope that one day, the wanderer will wander his way back.

==On the tabletop==
Wulfric is an incredibly powerful unit in the tabletop. He has 8 weapon skill, 5 strength, 4 toughness, and 2 wounds. This is nothing too incredible (besides his overwhelming strength) and since he is a bit flimsy he could potentially get taken out by a stray arrow or two. However, the thing that really makes him terrifying is his Gift of Tongues special ability. This ability allows him to challenge any unit in the opponent's army to battle, and guess what? Your opponent can't say no. See a flimsy general? Dead. Irritating caster? Dead. Keystone model, like a Packmaster? Dead. [[THIN YOUR PAINTS|Paint job so horrible]] you can't help but [[rage]] at it? Ziggity Zed, they're FUCKING DEAD.

==Total War: WARHAMMER==
He was a DLC lord, serving as the faction leader of Norsca (later changed into World Walkers in the Potion of Speed update) in an original Chaos sub-faction as the last DLC for the 1st game. The difference between the tabletop is that he is now able to ride a mammoth and summon his magic boat in battle to wreck Empire fools in a straight line (on the tabletop, Seafang is a special rule that allow Wulfrik and his marauders to ambush their enemies using their magic ship). While his Gift of Tongues ability is missing due to the absence of duel challenge system, he does have another ability from the tabletop called the "Hunter of Champions", which is an extremely powerful debuff that decreases the armor, melee defense and the speed of an opponent, as if Wulfrik is hexing them like a wizard instead of challenging them since it also benefits other units into attacking said weakened character.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:Wulfrik the wanderer.png|NEED MORE SKULLS FOR THE DARK GODS!!!!! ESPECIALLY KHORNE!!!! (And he's not even a Khornate)
File:Wulfrik ttw.jpg|Prepare your anus, Old World mortals!
File:Wulfrik_Gif.jpg.gif|BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION!!!
</gallery>

{{Chaos-Champions}}

Seven Sisters

2021-05-24T01:37:50Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* Conception */

{{dnd-stub}}

The '''Seven Sisters''' are a set of... well, seven sisters who are highly important to the [[Forgotten Realms]]. At least, they were prior to [[Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition]]. They are the result of the goddess [[Mystra]] specially engineering the birth of seven girl-children from a possessed mortal host to serve as her Chosen, since she'd had very bad luck with picking adults to fill the role, as they tended to either go crazy or be more independently minded than Mystra wanted. [[Elminster]] played a big role in their lives.

The Seven Sisters had their own dedicated [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] [[splatbook]], titled, simply, "The Seven Sisters".

==Conception==
Mystra possessed a she-wizard named Elué and seduced a [[ranger]] named Dornal Silverhand, whom had been in love with Elué, to conceive seven children in turn. But a mortal host couldn't sustain a god's essence for the years it took, and towards the end of the 7th and final pregnancy, Elué's body was basically a spectacularly well-preserved [[lich]]. Dornal grew suspicious of why his wife was so weird and managed to figure out that she had been possessed; confronting her, he forced Mystra to reveal the truth, and was so disgusted by the revelation that he turned his back on both arcane magic and his seven daughters, walking away and avoiding them for the rest of his life.

==Anastra Syluné Silverhand==
More commonly known as "Syluné", she was a founder of the [[Harpers]] and spent many years as the kindly Witch of Shadowdale before being slain by a [[Chromatic Dragon|Red Dragon]]. She existed as a unique [[ghost]] called a Spectral Harpist for a long time after that, but was ultimately destroyed by agents of [[Shar]].

==Alustriel Silverhand==
The Lady of Silverymoon, founder of the nation known as the Silver Marches.

==Dove Falconhand==
A towering giantess of a woman who, ironically, disdained her natural talent for magic and instead preferred to focus on swordplay and wilderness lore; she served as a [[ranger]] in an adventuring company known as the Knights of Myth Drannor, marrying a fellow Knight named Florin Falconhand.

==Storm Silverhand==
The only other of the Seven Sisters raised by [[Elminster]] who stayed with him in Shadowdale, alongside Anastra; a co-founder of the [[Harpers]], she was known as the Bard of Shadowdale.

==Laeral Silverhand Arunsun==
Married the wizard-lord Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun of [[Waterdeep]] and became his beloved consort. Spent a long time being mind-controlled by an evil crown possessed by a sliver of a dead god.

==The Simbul==
Birth name "Alassra Silverhand". Raised by [[Elminster]], grew up to become his lover. Founder of the kingdom of Aglarond, a self-titled "friend of the [[fey]]" and an interfering self-righteous busybody who secretly dreamed of shattering all human nations into small, rural communes that would be forced to live in harmony with the fey and [[demihuman]] races. Incredibly powerful, more than a little mad, and a bitter enemy of [[Thay]].

==Qilué Veladorn==
Arguably the most [[Mary Sue]] of all the Seven Sisters. When Mystra was forced to reveal herself to Dornal Silverhand, it proved more than her host-body could stand. Desperate to save her seventh daughter, she made a bargain with a pregnant [[drow]] priestess of [[Eilistraee]] who had led a congregation of renegade drow away from the major cities of the [[Underdark]], inadvertently killing her own baby in the womb through the stress. With the agreement of the priestess and Eilistraee, Mystra swapped the drow's dead child for her own living one, and Qilué was thusly born as a drow who grew up to be both a powerful wizard ''and'' a priestess of both Mystra and Eilistraee simultaneously.

[[Category: Forgotten Realms]]

Kiltzi

2021-05-24T01:33:16Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381:

{{Infobox Deity
|Name = Kiltzi
|Symbol = [[File:Kiltzi symbol.png|150px]]<br>Flower in bloom
|Alignment = Chaotic Good
|Divine Rank = Greater Goddess
|Pantheon = Maztican
|Portfolio = Fertility, health, life
|Domains = '''Major:''' Charm, Creation, Guardian, Healing, Protection<br>'''Minor:''' Animal, Plant, Pluma, Weather
|Home Plane = ''Teotecan'' ([[Arborea]])
|Worshippers = Mazticans
|Favoured Weapon =
}}
'''Kiltzi, the Giver of Health, Growth, Nourishment, and Love''', is the [[Maztica]]n goddess of life, fertility, and health.

==Lore==
Kiltzi was the first daughter to be born to [[Kukul]] and [[Maztica (Goddess)|Maztica, the goddess]]. Her gift to [[human]]ity after their creation was love. She, alongside her sisters took [[Qotal]]'s side when he and [[Zaltec]] begun fighting. After the fighting was over, and humanity flourished, Qotal pursued Kiltzi and made love to her (read: [[rape]]d her). She, of course, ran away after Qotal fell asleep, and went to Zaltec for protection, and in the process stopped granting spells to her [[cleric]]s. Qotal woke up a decade later and left Maztica, causing Kiltzi to return and give spells once more.

==Appearance==
Kiltzi appears as beautiful, smooth-skinned, pregnant woman. Her hair is long enough to touch the ground, and she uses it to clothe herself, and her eyes are akin to deep, placid pools.

==Worshippers==
Kiltzi is invoked most often during weddings, pregnancies, and childbirth, and occasionally in the more erotic circumstances. Her clerics are renowned healers, tending the physical and emotional well-being of others. Unlike most gods, no sacrifices are made to her, though occasionally a bundle of corn or a bag of seeds is burnt at her altar. Her most favored form of devotion was [[Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position|sex]].

{{D&D-Maztica-Deities}}

Werebunny

2021-05-24T01:31:17Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381:

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'''Werebunnies''' are a species of fanmade [[therianthrope]] created by fans of the [[Planescape]] setting in the late 1990s for [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] 2nd edition, alongside the [[Peganthrope]], [[Werestag]] and [[Werefox]]: [[Kitsune]] variant. It can still be found in the [[netbook]] "Planescape Creature Compendium".

Native to Amoria, the first layer of [[Elysium]], these Neutral Good therianthropes may be tied to the [[guardinal]]s, and possibly be manifest spirits of fertility and motherhood. Why is this a theory? Well, for starters, all werebunnies are female, able to assume the form of a hot woman with a, quote, "highly developed body" ([[Charisma]] 19), a rabbit, or a hybrid form, which is described in the "official" lore as adding a rabbit's tail, rabbit ears, and a full-body pelt to the human form. Secondly, any kid around the age of 6 or younger will find a werebunny absolutely fascinating. Finally, they are ''obsessed'' with making and then rearing babies; whilst they often find work as waitresses or wet nurses, really what every werebunny wants is to be a stay-at-home barefoot 'n' preggers mom. If you doubt us, read the entirety of their official Habitat/Society writeup:
::''It is thought that werebunnies exist for motherhood, they live to bear and raise children; their character is totally structured around family and being nurturing and supportive. The only communities known to include significant numbers of Bunnies are on the first layer of Elysium; elsewhere, they are very rare at best.

Truth be told, werebunnies aren't much good outside of being eye-candy and baby factories. The average [[Intelligence]] score of a werebunny is a jaw-dropping ''5-7'' - for those of you only familiar with [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]], this was even '''worse''' back in 2nd edition. In comparison, their [[Wisdom]] is better than average, averaging about 13-14. So they're great at caring for things and being empathic, but otherwise dumb as a stump.

To reproduce, werebunnies turn to the aid of humanoid males - usually humans, always giving birth to twins; a female werebunny and a male of the father's race. Of course, if you wanted to make them more rabbit-like, you could have them produce litters that consist of 1 son of the father's race and 2d8 werebunny daughters (rabbits average 7 kits in a litter, and can have over 15). A werebunny is born in its hybrid form and doesn't gain the ability to change shapes until the age of 7 years old.

You're unlikely to get into a fight with a werebunny. They're not aggressive, preferring to run and hide rather than fight, and attacking one is formally considered an Evil Act by the rules. If they do get into a scrap, they are considered to have 20 [[Constitution]], which makes them immune to nonmagical diseases and lets them [[Regeneration|regenerate]] 1 hit point per hour, and have the standard therianthrope immunity of being impossible to hurt without using silver or +1-or-better magic weapons. But before you think about bullying the bunny, keep in mind that they ''can'' bite, and they ''can'' spread a form of werebunny therianthropy with their bites. Infected werebunnies turn into sex-crazed bunnygirls on the nights of the full moon and are compelled to find a hot guy to shag senseless for the duration of the night, typically gravitating towards a guy that the infectee already has strong emotional bonds with, whether this is attraction or loathing. The infectee will snap back to normal in the morning, with only hazy memories of what they did.

...Don't snicker, guys; ''men'' can become infected werebunnies too, and yes, that '''includes''' the whole "turn into a horny bunnygirl and find a dude to shag" thing.

The werebunny's official lore doesn't describe what happens if an infected werebunny's escapades leave her pregnant. Presumably she gives birth to true werebunnies. Whether a guy infected with the werebunny curse can get pregnant depends on your DM's [[Magical Realm]].

[[Category: Furry]] [[Category: Planescape]]

Darklord

2021-05-23T20:44:35Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* Illithid God-Brain */

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{{Topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

The '''Darklords''' are the rulers ''and'' prisoners of the plane of [[Ravenloft]], from the D&D setting of the same name.

You might be wondering "How are they both rulers and prisoners at the same time?" The reason for this is simple: each Darklord was pulled into the plane by the nebulous forces known only as the Dark Powers after an especially heinous deed (known in-universe as a "Act of Ultimate Darkness"), which reshapes a part of the plane into [[Demiplane of Dread|a realm tailored to each Darklord's defining crime]]. In its own realm a Darklord is a BBEG to rule over all other BBEGs, with absolute power over everything except whatever they desire most - whatever thing that might be, it is always dangled ever so slightly out of their reach by the Dark Powers to amplify their torment further. They have no mouth, and they must scream. (Thus the common description of the setting as "Hell, but not for you".)

=Common Characteristics of Darklords=
The exact abilities and backstories of Ravenloft's Darklords have varied from edition to edition, but almost all exert considerable control over their individual domains, and many Darklords also rule their domains (assuming the domain has a population to rule), either openly or behind the scenes. Many Darklords are also extremely dangerous to confront in open combat, or otherwise have hidden powers up their sleeves that can neutralize entire groups of player characters even without combat.

Keeping in line with the Gothic Horror theme of Ravenloft, the presence and persistence of insidious evil on this plane is the rule and not the exception. By contrast, lasting triumphs of good are vanishingly rare possibilities. As such, PCs aren't really supposed to go toe-to-toe with Darklords and expect to come out on top like your average group of [[murderhobos]] in other D&D settings. Trying to storm through Castle Ravenloft or Castle Avernus (not the Avernus of [[Baator]]) and expecting to put Strahd's or Azalin's skulls on a pike by the end of the play session will most likely either end in a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|total party kill]] or a fate worse than death, assuming the Dungeon Master is at all trying to run the game in a thematically appropriate way. At most, the PCs' efforts might preserve a bit of light in the ever-present mists and hope their activities stay beneath the local Darklord's notice. [[Grimdark|Heroes in this benighted plane are not guaranteed a peaceful death in bed surrounded by family and friends, or a life of glory and deeds well remembered.]] Openly going up against a Darklord is one of the surest ways of ending your character's life and career for good.

A few things about Darklords have remained constant throughout Ravenloft's editions, however. First, unless the Dark Powers will it, Darklords are completely unable to leave their own domains (note that certain "pocket domains" are in fact mobile and can travel between larger domains, but the Darklord within is still powerless to leave its own pocket domain as any other). If PCs manage to leave a Darklord's domain, that specific Darklord is usually powerless to personally come after them (but see "Closing the Borders" below). Second, almost every Darklord has a weakness, usually in the form of something or someone they desire above all else that they would risk anything and everything for, or a personal vulnerability tied to its curse that is usually well-hidden and hard to figure out. Discovering and exploiting these weaknesses are one of the only ways to accomplish some good in spite of a Darklord's efforts, but if it comes to that you've likely already attracted (or will very soon attract) a Darklord's attention and are in deep trouble. A couple other abilities common to Darklords are discussed below.

===Closing the Borders===
The vast majority of Darklords have the ability to force others to share in their imprisonment by supernaturally closing the borders of their domains, usually leaving no way out even with the aid of magic. Trying to leave a closed domain border will just result in a grisly death or automatic failure, and teleportation magic won't work past a closed domain border either. As Ravenloft was an early AD&D product, the designers gave this handy tool to DMs so as to stop players from just up and leaving without going through the DM's plot. Improperly used it can smack of railroading, but it fits well within the Gothic Horror genre convention of having characters get trapped in sinister and dangerous locales with no safe passage out, until a situation is resolved (or the Darklord opens the borders again, as in the case of Ravenloft).

The few Darklords who cannot supernaturally close their borders either lack that ability as part of their curse, or are unable to do so as part of their nature. Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia for instance disdains magic and the supernatural, and in line with this attitude gained no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders upon becoming a Darklord. However, even these Darklords have more mundane ways of barring escape from their domains, such as sending their numerous lackeys to patrol the borders, though thankfully this doesn't impede magical methods of escape. An even smaller number of Darklords are completely unable to close their domain borders in any way, such as Haki Shinpi of Rokushima Taiyoo who was cursed to become a powerless geist upon becoming Darklord (rather than becoming a Death Knight as he originally planned) and was doomed to watch everything he built in his life's conquest literally sink into ruin through the squabbling of his sons.

===Immortality===
Another reason to avoid going up against Darklords is that many of them have ways of returning from death, rendering all of your hard work moot. Even those who don't have explicitly mentioned methods of cheating death, like Strahd, generally have many contingency plans to avoid ever being at risk of getting truly destroyed. To make a bad situation worse, the Dark Powers appear to get occasionally "attached" to their playthings, and frown harshly upon attempts to take their toys away. In game terms, this means that certain Darklords are truly indestructible and can ever only be put out of commission temporarily, and even the attempt at doing so may end up drawing the Dark Powers' attention to whoever tries such a feat. Mercifully, these individuals are the exception, not the rule.

By contrast, some Darklords are fairly ordinary people with no significant combat skills and no more resistance to being killed off for real than their subjects. However, as mentioned above, even these seemingly vulnerable BBEGs often still have the means or minions to deal with a bunch of murderhobos, and most of these non-combat-focused Darklords are still savvy enough to be wary of any potential threats to their survival, and to nip those threats in the bud via underhanded means.

Outside of these extremes, permanently destroying most Darklords requires either killing one in a very specific manner and/or destroying a Darklord's means of cheating death (which in some cases might be nigh-impossible, such as killing every specimen of a very numerous type of creature in a domain before confronting the Darklord). Finding out this information is likely to require a good deal of questing and research to find out, but can make for a great campaign if properly handled. However, even accomplishing all this does nothing to stop the Dark Powers from "promoting" someone in the realm evil enough to assume the mantle of Darklord, possibly leaving the realm and its inhabitants in [[Not as planned|a worse situation than before]]. In fact, not a few of the "current" Darklords assumed their positions by killing the previous ones. In other cases, the title and sometimes even the personality of the Darklord is immediately passed down to another being on the moment of the Darklord's death, thus ensuring that their position is never lost.

===What happens if you permanently destroy a Darklord somehow?===
It's likely that some of you action-oriented elegan/tg/entleman reading this are just champing at the bit to claim a Darklord's skull for your trophy rooms, but as noted above, the odds and the themes of the setting itself are decidedly against you. Or maybe you're a DM who wants to run a Ravenloft campaign where good really can make a difference and want to know what happens when these Gothic Horror BBEGs finally bite the dust for real and no one takes their place.

Unfortunately, the rulebooks have historically been rather ambivalent and lacking in detail about the answer to this question and the resulting implications. Some Ravenloft rulebooks say that once a Darklord is permanently destroyed and no successor is forthcoming, the destroyed Darklord's associated domain might simply disappear, leaving open the question of what happens to all the people who were living there. If the people there simply disappear as well, were they never real in the first place, instead being undispellable illusions made up whole-cloth by the Dark Powers to torment the Darklord? That might work out just fine if your group stuck to playing [[Weekend in Hell]] style adventures in Ravenloft, but what would it say about PCs native to Ravenloft, or even native to the domain now without a Darklord? Or were the people in the Darklord-less domain no more real (and therefore no more morally troubling to harm in any way) than characters in a video game, making the whole "Powers Check" mechanic moot with regards to harming innocents? Is there now a gaping misty void where the previous domain used to be?

Canonically, the answer might be found in how two domains (Arkandale and Gundarak) where the Darklords lost their darklordship were absorbed by neighbouring ones, essentially meaning the people inside those domains just exchanged one insidious tyrant for another. This solution is probably the smoothest way to incorporate the plot element of Darklords being permanently destroyed in your campaign. On the other hand, geographically isolated domains (such as one of the numerous "Islands of Terror" that are completely surrounded by the Mists), or mobile pocket domains with no notable population of sentients can just disappear back into the mists with no larger consequences to other domains upon the permanent death of their Darklords. It still leaves open the question of what happens to the population of sentients in domains situated in the middle of nowhere that suffer a sudden lack of a Darklord, though.

Strahd himself is explicitly mentioned to be a special case with regards to permanent destruction, most probably due to his status as the posterboy of the entire Ravenloft setting (even in universe, it's noted that the Demi-Plane of Dread didn't seem to exist until Strahd's damnation). In 5e's Curse of Strahd module, it is said that in the absurdly unlikely event he is permanently killed with all of his failsafes destroyed or deactivated, the Dark Powers will intervene to resurrect him within a month [[Grimdark|because they refuse to allow the possibility of ending his torment]]. They're "possessive" about their favourite playthings like that.

Players crying foul about this should note that the Dark Powers are mighty enough to bar the gods themselves from coming to Ravenloft. In light of that, something like bringing a Darklord back to life looks like a trivial feat by comparison.

5e Overhall of some domains of Dreads gives some more definitive insight, either hinted at or explicit With some of the newer darklords stealing rulership from older ones. Darklordship Darkon is a prime example of a missing Darklord, as, without Azalin Rex, the domains is slowly dissolving.

Bottom line? Hash it out with your DM beforehand, or if you're a DM yourself, make sure you have a sensible plot thread lined up if you choose to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords, while keeping in mind how important Darklords are to the themes of Ravenloft.

=Notable Darklords=

==The "Hammer Horror" Darklords==
With the horror films by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions Hammer Film Productions] officially cited as a major source of inspiration for the setting of Ravenloft, the Darklords who are patterned after the horror monster archetypes featured in those films will be listed here.

===Strahd von Zarovich===
{{main|Strahd von Zarovich}}
Darklord of Barovia, and the first Darklord to be introduced to the setting--in fact, it's named after his own castle. He is the archetypal vampire darklord in the setting, though by no means the only one, and his appearance is clearly based off of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula in the 1958 ''Dracula'' film by Hammer Film Productions.

Originally the conqueror of a region called Barovia that he claims was the ancestral home of his family, Strahd came to lust after a woman called Tatyana who rejected him in favor of his younger brother Sergei. Strahd took this very badly; badly enough that at some point he made what he called "a pact with Death" that turned him into a [[vampire]] in a desperate attempt to restore his youth. This too failed to win her over, and on the day Tatyana was to be married to Sergei, Strahd killed him and drove her to suicide.

His realm is a copy of Barovia from the Prime Material plane (the original apparently still exists but nothing is said about its current condition or even which D&D setting it originated from), which he has absolute power over to the point where he can enter any private home uninvited in spite of the fact most vampires are unable to do so (since as he boasts, "I am the land"), and he can ignore the standard vampiric weaknesses to mirrors, garlic or holy symbols, none of which ordinary vampires can do. He isn't even "killed" when staked through the heart like ordinary vampires are (though he is effectively paralyzed while staked) and can resist up to ten rounds of sunlight exposure before being destroyed, though he has always a contingency spell cast on himself that will teleport him away to a hidden mountain sanctuary should he ever be exposed to sunlight or staked by a prepared party, much like Bram Stoker's own Dracula had many coffins to sleep in to make his final destruction more difficult. However, Strahd's curse is to have the events leading to his damnation repeat themselves forever--once every generation he will encounter a woman who he believes to be Tatyana's reincarnation, only to be rejected by her in spite of all his vampiric mind control powers, and become responsible for her death once more, all while being unable to simply give up on trying to win her love.

===Ankhtepot===
Darklord of Har'Akir, partially based on the monster from the 1959 film ''The Mummy'' by Hammer Film Productions. He is the archetypal Mummy-based Darklord in the setting, but he is not the only "Ancient Dead" (i.e., a preserved corpse animated into undeath) who happens to be a Darklord.

Ankhtepot in life was a hubristic ruler of a land also named Har'Akir, patterned after Ancient Egypt and sharing the same pantheon of gods. As the head priest of the sun god Ra, the chief god of his land, Ankhtepot was [[Nagash|obsessed with death and became consumed with the desire to live forever]]. Despite sparing no expense (nor quite a few lives, for that matter) his efforts were in vain, and in his rage he razed several temples, stormed into the greatest one and cursed the gods for withholding his heart's desire. For this blasphemy, Ra contacted Ankhtepot directly and said that Ankhtepot would indeed live after death, though he might wish otherwise. Anhktepot was confused about this, but later discovered that he had received a dire curse (making him one of the few outlander Darklords to have received the majority of his curse ''before'' being taken into Ravenloft); anyone he touched was dead by nightfall, and those he killed in this fashion rose from their tombs to serve him absolutely as undead mummies, because apparently Ra considers having mindless servants a punishment. Taking this in stride despite killing many of his relatives, he used his new undead servants to tighten his grip over Har'Akir, but his fellow priests rebelled, killed Ankhtepot in his sleep, and mummified him, little knowing he was still conscious and going insane inside his sarcophagus during his month-long funeral. After being entombed in a remote area with one small village named Mudar, the mists of Ravenloft claimed Ankhtepot, his tomb, and the nearby village, leaving no trace of them in Ankhtepot's home plane.

As Darklord, Ankhtepot spends most of his time in a deathless dream of better days in his tomb, but he can be roused from this state in a few ways, such as if his tomb is disturbed, or if the people of Mudar are anxious or otherwise distressed. His hubris and pride followed him into undeath, and similarly his greatest torment is his desire to be human again, as the god-king of a great empire he once was, while in reality he "rules" over a barren patch of desert with naught but a small mud-hut village. To frustrate him further, the Dark Powers granted Ankhtepot the ability to regain his human form and mortality by draining a human of moisture and life force in a dread sunrise ceremony, but this reversion to mortality lasts only from dawn to nightfall, and during those few daylight hours "under Ra's gaze" he loses all his supernatural powers, once again becoming a normal human with no appreciable abilities until nightfall, whereupon the transformation is undone. Knowing that he would face an eternity of solitude were he to sacrifice everyone in his domain to fleetingly experience mortality again, Ankhtepot generally prefers to wait and dream until he might rule a larger population, a time he seems unaware will never come.

With respect to his crunch, Ankhtepot can be an unholy terror in his Greater Mummy form. He retains much of the high-level spellcasting ability he had in life, his touch-delivered Mummy Rot is both more virulent and harder to cure than almost any other Ravenloft Mummy's, and those who become infected and are mummified alive become Greater Mummies under his total control. Other aces up his sleeve (or rather, his bandages) are the fact that he commands virtually every mummy in his domain, so if sufficiently provoked he can summon up an entire shambling army of mummies to do his bidding, and the fact that a certain item on his person allows him to heal lost hitpoints very quickly, even if reduced below zero, unless that item is removed from him or his downed "corpse." Ankhtepot can, however, easily be killed during his bouts of mortality (even though doing so might attract the attention of the Dark Powers since he poses no real threat during these times), but if he is killed while an ordinary human he can reanimate if he is mummified and entombed again. As a result of a possible oversight by the writers, no mention is made of how Ankhtepot might be able to return to unlife should he be defeated in his Greater Mummy form nor how he might be permanently destroyed, though he can simply reform in his tomb in the case of the former and the latter might simply require that both his tomb and his physical body be completely destroyed, resulting in the village of Mudar returning to its home plane and Ankhtepot's desert joining an adjacent domain.

Given the relative lack of sex appeal for mummies compared to the far more famous vampires and werewolves (unless you're a fan of the [[Tomb Kings]] or [[Mummy: The Curse]]), Ankhtepot and his domain more or less dropped off the face of Ravenloft canon after the AD&D version, and even in AD&D he was fairly passive. Even so, he did affect Ravenloft and D&D at large in one way by creating the first Greater Mummies (AKA "Children of Ankhtepot") to ever exist in a D&D system, though they have since significantly changed from their original incarnation. Ankhtepot has also been known to send his Mummy and Greater Mummy servants outside of his domain to track and kill grave robbers who defile his tomb and other unfortunates who incur his wrath.

Ankhtepot and his domain made his first appearance as the star villain of the classic ''Touch of Death'' Ravenloft module in 1991.

Despite not having shown up since AD&D, he was re-introduced to the setting in 5e, albeit with some significant retcons.

In an ancient country the inhabitants called the Land of Reeds and Lotuses, Ankhtepot served three generations of pharaohs as high priest. When the second pharaoh died, her unworthy son ascended to the throne. The new pharaoh quickly became unpopular among the people and priests, and Ankhtepot came to believe that the gods wanted himself to take the pharaoh's place. On the day of the pharaoh's coronation, Ankhtepot rallied his loyal priests and murdered their liege. Unfortunately he had misjudged both the people's loyalty and the gods' wills. The people rose up and killed him and his fellow priests, and when he died the gods forsook him and barred him from the afterlife. The gods returned him to the world, but stripped away a piece of his soul called the ka -- the vital essence that inspires all living beings.

He awoke immobilized and trapped in his sarcophagus, during which he felt the pain of every cut and every organ removed as if he were alive. One day, after untold years of this suffering, he a voice asking if he still felt he was worthy to rule. Still arrogant after all he had been through, he answered with certainty, and thus emerged from his crypt into the domain of Har’Akir. In this new land, Ankhtepot found a pious people devoted to the same gods he once served, and immediately set to wiping that religion out and replacing their gods with false idols of his own invention. Using blasphemous rites, Ankhtepot resurrected the priests once buried alongside him as powerful mummies, replacing their heads with those of beasts holy to his new faith. These Children of Ankhtepot served him as they did in life, and together the dead conquered the souls of Har’Akir.

Since then he has seen much, and known many things, but now he seeks one thing only: to be reconnected with his lost Ka, which he believes will allow him to finally die. Where and what his Ka is now is left up to the DM to decide, as is what happens when he is reunited with it. All of the suggested results are pretty grim, ranging from him being reborn as a living tyrant far more decadent and sadistic than he was as an undead, to discovering that he cannot be returned to mortality and deciding to wipe out all life in his domain out of spite.

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===Alfred Timothy===
Darklord of Verbrek, and the archetypal werewolf Darklord of the setting, though by no means the only lycanthrope Darklord in Ravenloft. Alfred Timothy was born to Nathan Timothy (former werewolf Darklord of Arkandale) and an unknown mother. Disdained by Nathan for being frail and sickly in his human form, Alfred in turn disdained his father for his "overly human" interest in ferrying cargo and passengers with his paddleboat (in truth, Nathan was cursed as Darklord of Arkandale to become cripplingly nauseous with "land sickness" anytime he tried to set foot on dry land, but instead of suffering from this curse, Nathan grew so accustomed to boating and the company of his human passengers that he unknowingly lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction, despite still being confined to river waters and remaining an unrepentant serial killer).

Leaving to find his own way and to escape the perpetual treatment as the runt of the litter, Alfred happened upon villagers in his father's domain who regularly made sacrifices to appease a savage being they called [[the Wolf God]] in the hopes of relief from continual attacks by bloodthirsty wolves. Taking inspiration from the sight of humans propitiating a lupine deity and perhaps indulging more than a little megalomania at the prospect of being an object of worship or leading a werewolf-centric religion, Alfred wandered the domains and interrogated clerics he met, sometimes lethally, on how he could become a cleric of this "Wolf God" and use its granted powers to inaugurate a werewolf-led reign of terror over humans. Unfortunately, his efforts and sacrifices were fruitless in provoking any response from this "deity," and he began to take out his frustrations on any clerics and religious buildings he could find whenever his latest interrogation target failed to provide the missing ingredient to contacting and receiving spells from the Wolf God. After [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=425913 one such iconoclastic rampage], Alfred incautiously fell asleep near the mutilated corpses and smouldering wreckage of his latest failure. Not content to "let sleeping dogs lie," Alfred was discovered, chained, and about to be burned at the stake by vengeful villagers, were it not for a mother-daughter pair of prescient Vistani who purchased his freedom and told Nathan that for this stay of execution, he must allow all Vistani safe passage in the future. Enraged at the possibility of being bound by a bargain struck with "mere" humans, Alfred promptly killed the Vistani mother, and the mists of Ravenloft claimed him for this betrayal, leaving him within his new domain of Verbrek, which eventually grew to encompass his father's former domain of Arkandale.

Now a Darklord, Alfred was initially delighted at having truly become a cleric of the Wolf God, receiving divine spells and being able to "converse" with it (assuming it exists, but if you decide to play with a nonexistent Wolf God, Ravenloft's Dark Powers have been known to grant divine spells and Alfred might just be hearing voices in his head). The price, as ever with Darklords, was an insidious curse. Alfred wants nothing more than to revel in the bestial fury and passion he once enjoyed as a werewolf, but as Darklord he is forced to transform back into his human form should he ever succumb to any kind of base passion: fear, rage, or lust. Having built a cult of savagery, wanton bloodshed, and debauchery among a large pack of werewolves as the chief priest of the Wolf God, his uncharacteristic unwillingness to practice what he preaches by frequently refraining from hunts and hesitance at finding a mate means his position is growing increasingly precarious. Realizing that widespread knowledge of his weakness would spell his doom (because [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=262657 "being an alpha means proving it every full moon"]), Alfred is trying to divest himself of his humanity by commanding and occasionally participating in ever-greater acts of slaughter, dedicating and offering them to his god who has remained silent on this one pressing issue, with the only exceptions to his wrath being the Vistani as he still remembers what happened the last time he killed one.

Crunch-wise, Alfred is rather conventional as lycanthrope BBEGs go, aside from his cleric levels and being forced to fight in a calculating and tactical manner unlike most werewolves lest he be forced to return to his much weaker human form. He doesn't cast a shadow (since his domain is effectively the shadow he casts on Ravenloft), and can even teleport from shadow to shadow within his domain whenever the moon is visible. As an ironic reminder from the Dark Powers of his fundamental weakness, Alfred cannot even supernaturally close the borders of his own domain, short of sending his dire wolf and werewolf minions to patrol them, though the true nature of this additional curse is likely lost on him, since he probably doesn't know about other Darklords and their ability to close their domain's borders supernaturally. Though not specifically mentioned, Alfred's fluff implies that even ''[https://youtu.be/ZxcljnLb95M?t=1m8s harsh language]'' might be one of the most potent weapons against him; if PCs can recognize him in either his wolf or hybrid forms and manage to enrage him through taunts, he will be forced to return to human form and at a minimum be robbed of the natural weapons of his alternate forms, or even be forced to kill any wolf or werewolf witnesses to his weakness with his clerical powers before turning his attentions to the PCs. However, even if Alfred is killed (and his crunch does not mention any method through which he could cheat death), it is likely the Darklordship (and possibly even Alfred's curse) will simply pass to whichever werewolf in his domain is evil enough for the Dark Powers' liking, preserving Verbrek as a separate domain unless every werewolf in the domain is killed or driven out before the current Darklord's death. Even then, the Dark Powers can always make more Darklordship candidates, though a more darkly ironic postmortem fate for Alfred's cult and domain might be for the Wolf God cult to scatter to the winds after Alfred's death, in essence metastasizing and spreading its cell members and evil elsewhere, while Alfred's father returns to Arkandale just in time to resume his old Darklordship and hear about his son's death, saying only ''"So that self-righteous runt finally bit off more than he could chew. No matter. Runts have always thought themselves to be bigger than they are."''

On a side note, players who want to play a Ravenloft campaign set in Verbrek, but who also want to use [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition|D&D 5e]] rules instead of relying on older books, might opt to use the official Magic-the-Gathering-to-D&D-5e conversion [[Innistrad|''Plane Shift: Innistrad'']] book, using its rules to play a campaign set in Innistrad's Kessig province. Kessig is thematically similar to Ravenloft's Verbrek as both are "werewolf country" locations, minus Darklords and other Ravenloft-exclusive mechanics. Until the Ravenloft setting is more fully adapted for D&D 5e, the Innistrad conversion is probably the best foundation for playing Verbrek in 5e.

===Dr. Victor Mordenheim/Adam===
Co-Darklords of Lamordia, of a sort. Like the character of Victor Frankenstein (best known for creating Frankenstein's monster) he was based on, Dr. Victor Mordenheim sought to create life and was certain that a soul was not necessary for it to exist. To show him the error of his ways, the gods saw fit to endow the doctor's creation with a soul--specifically, an irredeemably evil soul. The newly created dread flesh [[golem]] was dubbed Adam, and he soon grew jealous of the love that his maker's wife Elise and adopted daughter Eva had for him. Adam's plan to kidnap Elise failed, and instead he killed Eva and wounded Elise so badly she went into a vegetative state. It was at that time that the doctor and his creation were taken together into Ravenloft.

The doctor himself resides in his own mansion, Schloss Mordenheim, spending most of his time obsessively trying to revive his comatose-but-alive wife (who has herself long since gone mad due to her life support system causing her constant pain simply by being active), up to the point of continually constructing new bodies out of exhumed or painlessly-killed female corpses for her, but is cursed to never succeed and to never stop trying. Note that this is not out of love, though Mordenheim still believes that it is--it has become nothing more than a compulsion that has become his only reason for living. Meanwhile, Adam is now the "ruler" of an inhospitable island aptly dubbed the Isle of Agony in the middle of Lamordia inhabited solely by himself, forever cut off from the acceptance that he sought, cursed to feel the doctor's pain as his own, and rejected by the very land that he supposedly controls (as it is influenced by Mordenheim and not Adam). Adam's only form of solace comes from sabotaging Dr. Mordenheim's attempts at reviving Elise just to spite him. Player characters who meet Adam and treat him without pity or revulsion may be able to get some useful information out of him or even get him to open the borders of Lamordia, but he is very prone to anger and is virtually unstoppable once enraged.

So strong is Mordenheim's disbelief in magic that his own domain also (potentially) interferes with divine magic of any kind, making it unreliable, and may even block any magical attempts to heal Elise. Worse still, Mordenheim's attempts at training apprentices over the years in the vain hope that they might just achieve the necessary breakthrough to restoring Elise has unleashed quite a few mad scientist villains, or monsters born of mad science (such as the Living Brain, a disembodied brain in a life-support jar that uses its psionic powers to direct and dominate a major organized crime ring), onto Ravenloft at large.

In a curious twist, Adam is the Darklord and is the one with the power to close Lamordia's borders, but both Adam and his creator are effectively immortal and ageless, and Mordenheim even shares his creation's immunities and regenerative properties. If either is killed and their corpse completely destroyed by fire, acid, or even disintegration, either will simply reincarnate into the nearest most recently deceased male corpse (for Mordenheim) or flesh golem corpse (for Adam, and there are a quite a number of these running around Lamordia, made either by Mordenheim as failed bodies for Elise and futile attempts to recreate Adam's "success," or Adam's frustrated attempts at making sympathetic company for himself), and will shortly thereafter shape their new bodies into looking just like their previous selves. The only way to destroy Adam and Mordenheim for good is to destroy them together at the same time. If DMs decide to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords (see above), then the fate of Elise and Lamordia itself is up to them; one appropriate denouement could be that the permanent deaths of Adam and Mordenheim might just be the spark Mordenheim's machinery needs to briefly restore Elise long enough to rise up and forgive their long-suffering spirits before leading both to their afterlives, just before the land suddenly twists and shifts to reflect the curse and nature of its new Darklord.

Adam and Dr. Mordenheim first appeared in the one-shot adventure in a 1994 boxed set named "Adam's Wrath," intended for outlander PCs to undertake a [[Weekend in Hell]] adventure.

===Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken===
The "Jekyll & Hyde" Darklord of Nova Vaasa. Sir Hiregaard is a staunch, gruff but sincerely righteous man who is dedicated to his people and his land. However, he also plays host to Malken- an alternate personality that takes over Tristen's body, warping it into [[Caliban (Ravenloft)|a form so hideously ugly one can't recognize they're the same person]] and who delights in killing anyone who stands in the way of Hiregaard's repressed desires.

Strangely, Tristen did nothing at all to earn the position of Darklord; Malken is an entity born from a curse that was placed on Tristen's ''father'' by Tristen's mother Romir that compelled him to kill every woman he loved and any man who crossed him; Hiregaard Senior was an intensely jealous man and killed his wife and the man teaching her how to waltz in a fit of rage, thinking she was having an affair with him. When he killed himself to escape the curse, the curse passed to Tristen instead. Six years and nine killings after the curse first manifested itself in him, Tristen was taken into the mists and the secret jealousies and angers born from the curse coalesced into the being known as Malken. Tristen is only partially aware of Malken's existence, just enough to have his guards lock him into his personal chambers when he feels a fit of jealousy or anger coming on. For years he has assumed this has kept Malken in check, but as of late he is starting to suspect that Malken is too clever to be thwarted by mundane confinement despite the latter's attempts at keeping his influence a secret. Were he to discover the whole truth, he would be willing to do anything to end the curse.

This curse is the key to Malken's immortality; if Tristen is killed, then Tristen's eldest living male descendant will be possessed - and Malken will keep going down the chain each time his host dies, meaning that unless you find "the right way" to kill him, Malken can only be stopped by massacring Tristen's entire family line... which the players could potentially belong to. However, if Malken's host is killed by a woman genuinely in love with that man, then Malken will be dragged screaming into whatever hell-hole awaits him. And given that this would be a massive act of betrayal on that woman's part, she would likely end up becoming the new Darklord herself.

It should also be noted for DMs that "the struggle within his soul" prevents Malken from achieving the proper focus to Close the Borders of his domain, so if you want to run a session or campaign focussed around Nova Vaasa, you had better have a compelling in-universe reason to keep the PCs from simply up and leaving, since canonically DMs can't force the issue and simply lock the PCs into Nova Vaasa like they can with most other Darklords. It's possible that if Malken possesses a more evil host, he might just be able to Close the Borders then, but the form such a closed border would take has never been revealed in canon.

==Other Darklords==

===Addar===
{{main|Addar}}
The father of [[Shadow Unicorn]]s and a Darklord of questionable canon. More info on his page.

===Azalin Rex===
Darklord of Darkon. A powerful mage who inherited the rule of the city-state of Knurl, his draconian rule culminated in the execution of his son when he was caught freeing political prisoners. Soon afterward, Azalin became a [[lich]] and devoted himself to searching for a spell that could resurrect the dead; he believed that his son's sense of compassion was due to a mistake in his upbringing and assumed that if he could be revived that mistake could be fixed.

As soon as he was taken into Ravenloft he lost the ability to learn any new magic at all- a terrible thing for any magic user, and even worse for a lich like him who became undead for the sole purpose of gaining more knowledge. This power over memory affects anyone else who enters Darkon as well; staying there for more than three months at a time causes a visitor's memories to be erased and replaced with false ones of spending one's whole life in Darkon. Originally an ally of Strahd when he first entered the mists, their relationship soured quickly after a failed attempt at escaping the Demi-plane of Dread temporarily split the former into two separate beings and they've remained enemies ever since. Another ill-fated attempt at breaking free in which he planned to become a demilich backfired even more spectacularly. Instead of allowing his essence to be freed from Ravenloft, it dispersed his essence across Darkon and destroyed the domain's capital. It took five years for him to reassume a corporeal form and take control of his realm again.

In 5th edition, Azalin has mysteriously gone missing. Did he finally outsmart the Dark Powers and escape? The only clue about where he went is that when he vanished a strange golden star or starlike thing called The King's Tear appeared in the sky and hasn't moved since and the sun and moon pass ''behind'' it instead of in front of it every day.

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===Baron Urik von Kharkov===
Considered one of the goofier Darklords, albeit not as bad as Tristen ApBlanc, and with a much more usable domain in Valachan. Baron Kharkov is basically half-Blacula and half-Werepanther; he was a black panther that a Red Wizard of Thay turned into a human being to use as an assassin. The Red Wizard arranged for him to fall in love with his rival, and then undid the transfiguration spell on him while they were together so he would tear her apart as a panther. When he was turned back into a human, he freaked out and ran off into the Mists. He found himself in Darkon, where he spent 20 years as a member of Azalin's secret police (turning into a Nosferatu in the process). He later escaped and subsequently became the Darklord of Valachan after entering the Mists again. We don't know what he did that turned him into a Darklord, in part due to his own fuzzy memories of what happened during that time, but he claims he killed many people while in the mists, including the Red Wizard that transformed him the first time.

Anyway, he's a blood-drinking black vampire cursed with yellow eyes (that turn into cat's eyes when he's pissed off) and with hands that resemble paws, being covered in fur and bearing retractile claws. He can still turn into a panther, in which state his bite turns people into werepanthers, and controls panthers instead of the normal wolves. His curse is to basically relive his most traumatizing event over and over again; he's constantly seeking a human bride, but once he has one, he can never trust her not to find out that he's not human, and inevitably murders her in a fit of paranoid fury. (He should try dating a [[Furry]] fan or Jaqueline Reiner, that would solve it.)

In 5th edition he has been killed and succeeded by Chakuna.

===Bluebeard===
A rare darklord actually ''liked'' by his subjects, Bluebeard rules over Blaustein (German: "Blue Stone"), a small nation from an unknown world. His rule was considered just and fair, and as a ruler he was considered to be quite generous. Unfortunately for him, he was an incredibly ugly man -- a blue-tinted beard and all -- which to his credit, he overcame with his own charms... and being incredibly wealthy didn't hurt either. Despite all of his good qualities, however, Bluebeard could not achieve a lasting marriage.

He would find a woman to marry, and soon after the wedding he would leave the castle for a time, handing its care over to his new wife. He would give her a set of keys to every door in the castle, and pointing out the one special golden key which opened a room at the very top floor. His instruction was to never open that particular door, with vague consequences. So far none of his wives have been able to overcome this temptation; and when they did open the door they found his grisly collection of former wives, hung up by meat-hooks with their throats slit. By opening the door, the key -- which was magical in nature -- would have a bloody mark that would appear that could not be removed except by Bluebeard himself. He would return to the castle soon after, and demand to see the keys. If the woman had given into temptation (which each invariably did), she would then share the fate as the other women in the room. Marcella was his fourth wife and victim. Her death was not the final, but eventually Bluebeard's repeated murders brought Blaustein into Ravenloft.

After becoming a darklord, Bluebeard was gifted by the Dark Powers with a minor charisma increase, which does not make him handsome by any means but does not leave him as ugly as he once was. He is also able to perfectly detect any lie. Even after the Mists took hold, Bluebeard is still the de facto leader of Blaustein, although his rule was twisted to be even more sadistic. Simply displeasing him is a death sentence, yet the populace still holds him in incredibly high regard. This is because he also has complete control over their memories, and freely erases or rewrites their recollections of his atrocities.

He is unable to marry any woman native to Blaustein, as their visages always twist to the posthumous appearance of one of his dead wives. This curse does not affect women who were born foreign of Blaustein, and Bluebeard along with his subjects are always on the constant lookout for any attractive women who fit this criteria. Lorel, an outlander he grabbed through the Mists, was his latest wife (and victim).

Bluebeard is also haunted by the ghosts of the wives he killed. Every third night must be spent in his castle in order to sleep, and he always awakes to the frightening caress of the specters of his murdered wives. Like his subjects, they are utterly devoted to him, yet in the most twisted way possible. While he considers this distressing, it has not stopped him from sending another wife to the same fate.

It is currently unknown if he has any dealings with any other nation or darklord, at least beyond welcoming in his harbour ships including those engaged in piracy.

He's mentioned in a single sentence in 5e, which states that apparently his spectral wives overthrew him and now endlessly torment him. Exactly how this happened or what this entails is not elaborated upon.

===Captain Alain Monette===

Darklord of L'ile de la Tempete. A violent and cruel privateer and captain of the ''Ouragan''. Eventually his crew snapped from his vicious temper and regular abuse and mutinied against him, keelhauling him thrice before throwing him into the sea. This was meant to be an execution- keelhauling, or dragging a sailor around the keel of a ship to be cut by the barnacles growing on it and hit against the ship's hull, is traumatic even when it's only done once and the victim is taken on board the ship afterward. But Alain survived, and washed up on the shores of a small island in the mists. Vampire bats came to drink the blood from his wounds, and Alain survived in turn by eating them- which turned him into a werebat.

Alain thus recovered from his keelhauling, but physical health was a cold comfort as he soon found that even with the flight he gained as a werebat, he could not leave his lonesome island. Driven mad by the isolation and cut off from the sea, he now vents his frustrations on those who sail as he no longer can. His island contains a lighthouse, but as with many things in Ravenloft, it's a trap in the guise of something helpful. Anyone, even outside the Mists, who investigates the light is drawn to the hazardous waters near his lighthouse, where most are shipwrecked. If any survivors somehow make it to shore, Alain will greet them. He'll be quite friendly, at first- he's starved for company and news of the outside world. But he's even more starved for flesh, and within a few days at most he will attack and kill them.

===Captain Pieter van Riese===
Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Originally from Gothic Earth's version of the Netherlands, Pieter was a ship's captain obsessed with finding the legendary Northwest Passage. When his ship was sunk in an encounter with an iceberg, he offered his own life along with the lives of his crew to any being who could help them forward, and the Dark Powers answered him. Naturally, they didn't actually give him what he wanted.

Pieter is now a ghost, and the captain of the ghost ship ''The Relentless''. He has the power to summon the ghosts of those who killed others and then were killed in the Sea of Sorrows to crew his ship, and can sail anywhere in his domain. However, he can no longer explore as he wishes, since the island domains in the Sea of Sorrows move around and he can only sail to land that he's chartered to go to.

Pieter is Ravenloft's answer to the legends of the ''Flying Dutchman'', a ghost ship that is unable to make port and sails the seas forever. Most versions say that the curse is because of her captain, Hendrick van der Decken, refusing to go to port while crossing the Cape of Good Hope, declaring that he would not make port "though I should beat about here till the day of judgment". He got shipwrecked in a storm, and the ghost of his ship is now bound by his curse to never be able to rest at port.

===Councilor Dominic d'Honaire===
The darklord of Dementlieu. Originally born in Mordentshire, Dominic led his nanny to suicide at age 7 and then manipulated his family to move away to avoid the Mordentshire police, with the mists giving him the domain of Dementlieu. Dominic is not the domain's temporal leader but does serve as an adviser for Marcel Guignol, Dementlieu's head of state. However, Dominic has much more power than his official position would suggest. The darklord's power is domination over the minds of other people on a prodigious scale. A great many in the land, including its recognized head, are his obedients and through this network he knows whatever goes on in his land.

His personal curse is that any woman he woos sees him as more repulsive the more he is attracted to her. Also, for some time his rule is challenged by an entity who is called (and virtually is) the Living Brain (re: ''Sherlock Holmes''' Moriarty), the last remains of Rudolph von Aubrecker, the youngest son of Lamordia's political ruler.

in 5e, the domain was revamped and the Darklord is now Saidra d’Honaire, though there is a plot hook that hints he's still around and trying to get his position back (then again Dementlieu is now a place where everyone pretends).

==="Death"===
Darklord of Necropolis (formerly Il-Aluk, the capital of Darkon). He is one of several minor Darklords that took over pieces of Darkon in Azalin's absence during the [[Grim Harvest]] and the only one of them to become a full Darklord after Azalin came back. Originally a clone of Azalin made by him as part of a convoluted scheme to bypass his curse, he was transformed into a negative energy elemental by the prototype version of the "Doomsday Device" Azalin thought would make him into a demilich. When it backfired, the massive surge of negative energy it released killed the whole of Il-Aluk's population. "Death" then claimed the ruined capital and its remaining undead inhabitants as its own, and after Azalin reconstituted himself Necropolis became its own domain. A shroud of negative energy still remains over Necropolis, which instantly kills all non-undead which attempt to enter its borders.

===Draga Salt-Biter===

Darklord of Saragoss, a watery domain where the only analogue to 'land' is 'places where the seaweed is clumped particularly tight'. Draga is a [[Therianthrope|wereshark]] pirate [[Cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] with a deep-rooted fear of sharks. Yes, it's ironic that he hates sharks while being able to turn into one. He knows. He got both his wereshark infection and his fear of sharks in the same incident; as a child, he was captured by a crew of pirates, who stuck a hook into one of his calves and dangled him into shark-infested waters, understandably traumatizing the kid. And after his own piracy and terrorism of the seas in Umberlee's name caught the Dark Powers' attention, they saw no reason to mess with a perfectly good case of irony and gave him a neat selection of new powers... all of which were shark-themed. He controls sharks, can only breathe underwater (though he also has a ring of air-breathing that allows him to surface for a few hours at a time), and his resurrection method involves his spirit being reborn via sharks. He's also becoming increasingly shark-like in mentality as time passes, a prospect which terrifies him.

===Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth===

Darklord of Dominia. Reknowned throughout the Demiplane of Dread as an expert on mental illness, few know the dark secret behind his knowledge. Terrified of falling victim to the heredity madness that plagued his family, Heinfroth conducted horrific experiments on his mental patients to deepen his understanding of insanity. One of these experiments turned him into the first cerebral vampire, a vampire subspecies that feeds on cerebral fluid instead of blood.

===Dr. Frantisek Markov===
Darklord of Markovia. Originally a pig farmer from Barovia, he grew increasingly obsessed with the anatomy of the pigs he butchered and began to perform bizarre experiments on them that wouldn't be out of place in a [[Haemonculus]]' laboratory. When his "subjects" inevitably died, he simply sold the meat without telling anyone what he had done to it first. Eventually his wife discovered his gruesome hobby and threatened to expose him, at which time she ended up becoming one of his experiments as well. After three days of vivisection, she finally expired- her corpse was so horrifically mangled that when it was first discovered it was mistaken for the remains of a monster. When Markov's involvement in her death became clear, the mists claimed him and made him a Darklord.

Fittingly, Markov's curse allows him to shapeshift into any animal form he wishes (save for his head, which remains human), but is incapable of assuming his original human form. As a result, he normally takes the shape of a gorilla in order to continue his increasingly deranged experiments without being impeded by a lack of thumbs. Said experiments culminated in the creation of the "[[Broken One]]s"- animals (and the occasional unlucky human) that have been surgically mutilated into a human-animal hybrid form and given a semblance of intellect, similar to the Beast Folk of ''The Island of Dr. Moreau''. Like said Beast Folk, they too are highly prone to reverting to their primal instincts and bestial appearance after only a few days.

===Easan the Mad===
Darklord and ruler of Vechor. Easan has the power to reshape the land, and even reality itself, within his domain. Combined with his capricious whims, his power makes the realm a place of constant change.

Easan is a short wood elf and former agitator for a war against Iuz the Evil. For his efforts, he was seemingly driven mad by the possession of a fiend. Now Easan only looks for a cure to his madness, but he is willing to tear many innocent lives apart, and maybe even reality itself, to find a cure. His vile research has focused on souls and soul transference. Among other monstrosities, his research created the dread mechanical golem from fellow outlander Ahmi Vanjuko.

It all started on the outlander world of Oerth. Easan argued the cause for war to his colleagues among the rulers of a tiny elf kingdom bordering Iuz's empire. To make an example of the upstart elf, Iuz ordered his agents to kidnap Easan. With Easan rendered helpless before him, Iuz bound a fiend to Easan.

The presence of the fiend within Easan began eating away at his mind. Many magical means of expulsion failed, including the divine magic of [[St. Cuthbert]]'s followers. In an effort to find a way to free himself from the fiend, Easan visited a far-off island of mystics. They managed to suppress the fiend for a time, but eventually the monks and their island were rent asunder by a disaster of mysterious circumstances. Only Easan came out of it alive. The cause of the incident was Iuz's visit to the island and his ensuing frustration at Easan's seeming mastery over the fiendish spirit within. Iuz brought about the magical destruction that wiped out the entire island.

Whereas Easan emerged from the disaster with his body intact, his mind had only deteriorated further. The fiend had returned, but Easan did not give up hope. Where religion had failed, Easan resolved to find a way to banish the fiend with perverse experiments. Easan sacrificed many lives in his pursuit for a cure before he was taken in by the Mists.

Eventually, Easan noticed he was in a foreign, if familiar, land where he was viewed as a god. Indeed, he now had the power to warp reality (albeit slowly) within his own domain. Although he enjoys this from time to time, for the most part he remains obsessed with finding secrets of the soul. For all his power, he cannot seem to best his own inner demons, for he has all but forgotten the reasons why he began his foul research.

In truth, Easan never had a fiend implanted in him at all. It was all merely a deception to throw him off balance. Still, Easan's mind locked onto it, and when others couldn't detect the nonexistent affliction, Easan turned to his own methods for finding a cure.

===Ebonbane===
First introduced in the Darklords sourcebook, Ebonbane is a villainous character strongly associated with the mythos surrounding the Shadowborn Family and the Shadowlands cluster. In universe, Ebonbane is a source of horrific evil that has been opposed by Lady Kateri Shadowborn and her kin for almost two centuries, going back to the Heretical Wars on the Prime Material Plane. Once a powerful fiend known as Lussimar, Ebonbane was conjured and trapped inside a sword by mortal spellcasters. Ebonbane struck back at its summoners and enslaved them. After Ebonbane killed Kateri Shadowborn, it became darklord of Shadowborn Manor, the former residence of its nemesis.

===Elena Faith-Hold===
Darklord of Nidala. Elena was a [[Paladin]] of the god [[Belenus]] that acted as a guardian of a land also called Nidala, but her devotion to Belenus was tainted by her fondness for the adoration of the masses. Following a great crusade against the forces of evil, the people began to scorn those who did not worship Belenus. The more zealous members of the clergy appealed to her vanity and drive to please Belenus, and soon she grew so fanatical that after the "non-believers" were wiped out, she turned on followers that she deemed unworthy, always finding some new target for her purges. For this, Belenus withdrew his support, but Elena never realized that she fell because her formerly [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies had blossomed into full-fledged self-righteousness- thus leaving her incapable of even considering that she might have gone astray from her god's teachings.

Believing her fall to be only a test of faith, she grew ever more ruthless in purging those who she deemed unclean, until she was eventually drawn by the Mists into the Demiplane of Dread. She didn't actually become a Darklord until later, when she started slaughtering entire villages because she saw more evil than good in them (not knowing that she was only looking at the worst parts of each town). At that point, she was given the domain of Nidala, which she runs as a dour police state, forbidding all practices she sees as evil while allowing her cult of personality to reach new heights. When she considers a town to be too corrupted, she and her followers destroy it, blaming the deed on the fictional [[dragon]] Banemaw. Ironically enough, in her domain the true dogma of Belenus is considered [[Heresy]], and her servant/"spiritual guide" Theokos (a fiend-like entity masquerading as a [[Cleric]] of Belenus) strives to wipe it out entirely.

As a Darklord, Elena has her paladin powers back, except they're from the Dark Powers, so they're warped in ways that Elena is in severe denial about (to the point where she's a straight [[Blackguard]] in some writeups). Her unicorn steed is now fiendish, she commands undead instead of turning them, her Aura of Courage is an Aura of Despair, she can only heal herself or her steed, and most notably her Detect Evil power instead detects strong emotions that others feel towards her (any emotion works, so someone who genuinely loves her will still be detected as "evil" with predictable results), leaving them vulnerable to her version of Smite Evil. Naturally, Elana refuses to believe that her Detect Evil power doesn't actually work as it's supposed to and insists that the inability of anyone else to use Detect Evil in the Demiplane of Dread is proof of their spiritual impurity. She is also able to "convert" foes to her side as loyal servants who will gladly die for her, which functions like an enhanced humanoid-only version of Charm Monster.

She is cursed with bouts of self-doubt, and once every week she must take a midnight ride as a chorus of voices denounce her for becoming one of the forces of evil she once fought against.

===Eli Van Hassen===

Darklord of the Endless Road, and a creation of the 4th edition to replace the infamously-dubious Headless Horseman and his Winding Road domain. Eli, unlike the Horseman, has an actual known reason to be Darklord, with the Horseman being downgraded to part of Eli's curse.

Eli was once a minor nobleman who ruled over a hamlet called Tranquility, despite having much grander ambitions. When his lands were ravaged by a hydra, a wandering horseman came by and slew the beast, being lauded as a hero. Eli was filled with envy as the huntsman received praise and admiration that he didn't, and his daughter falling in love with the man was the last straw. He forced the girl to claim that the Horseman had raped her, whipped the denizens of Tranquility into a frenzied mob, and executed the innocent man. Drawn to the Demiplane of Dread for this crime, Eli is now trapped on his estate, for the Headless Horseman, the spectre of the hero he murdered, wanders the road outside and will kill Eli if he ever steps beyond his estate's boundaries.

===Gabrielle Aderre===
Darklord of Invidia. A [[half-Vistani]] whose mother was raped by Drakov and was rejected by her fellow Vistani, she had always fantasized about her father's identity and resented her mother's unwillingness to speak of him, as well as her warning that if she bore a child it would end in disaster for everyone around her. When her mother was attacked by a werewolf, Gabrielle refused to aid her until she revealed the truth about her father. But when her mother did so, Gabrielle refused to believe it and left her to die. The mists took her after that, and she came to be cursed with an inability to cause direct harm to the [[Vistani]], either physically or magically. Soon afterward she came to become the temporal leader of Invidia as well as its darklord, an opportunity that allowed her to begin persecuting the Vistani in spite of her curse.

She took many lovers as Invidia's ruler, though she only truly loved one of them, a wolfwere called Matton Blanchard. However, she was later seduced by the incubus calling himself "The Gentleman Caller" and left pregnant by him. Her son Malocchio soon proved to be one of the Dukkar- one of the rare males of Vistani blood with The Sight. On its own this would be a cause for concern among the Vistani, as the Dukkar is effectively the Vistani equivalent of the Antichrist; however, Gabrielle went even further and taught him to hate the Vistani as much as she did. Ultimately she taught him too well, as Malocchio betrayed Gabrielle and took the position of Invidia's temporal ruler for himself. She survived due to the intervention of Blanchard, but since then Malocchio has been the ruler of Invidia, persecuting the Vistani far more effectively than Gabrielle ever could have done. The only reason he has yet to kill her is because he knows that if she dies, he will inevitably inherit her title of Darklord, which he has no interest in gaining.

===Gregor Zolnik===

Darklord of Vorostokov. The only known Darklord from [[Birthright]], Gregor is descended from Azrai, and lives down to the bloodline's negative reputation. Gregor was an excellent hunter, and back in Cerilia, his skills saved his village during an exceptionally harsh winter. Gregor loved being a hero to the people, but his talent for hunting couldn't work so well every winter. And so, to keep bringing back meat, he started hunting humans. This drew Vorostokov into Ravenloft, where the winter has continued ever since (though recently it has shown some signs of abatement). Gregor still "hunts" for his people, although they've started to cotton on to Gregor's lies and resent their dependence on him, they have no other choice, for Gregor forbids anyone else from hunting.

Gregor is a [[Loup du Noir]], and the boyarsky who support him are the same, as he infected them. His two sons are also nascent Loup du Noir, but the younger, Mikhail, wishes to escape him.

===Gwydion the Sorceror-Fiend===
Darklord of the Shadow Rift, and such an asshole that even the ''Shadow Fey'' think he's a monster. He is also responsible for their current state, as prior to Ravenloft, he was a powerful warlord on the Plane of Shadow, and to sate his ambitions, he kidnapped a bunch of normal fey, turned them into the Shadow Fey, and told them to create an interdimensional portal so he could use them as an army to conquer other planes. This worked as well as could be expected [[Derp|considering he had no mental domination of his creations]]. The Shadow Fey made a portal, alright... but it wasn't to the Prime Material and the armies that marched through it were actually a mass exodus of the Shadow Fey, hidden by illusions.

Gwydion eventually discovered the Shadow Fey's treachery, but it was too late, and by the time he got to the portal to stop them, the exodus was almost complete. The Shadow Fey king, Arak, held Gwydion back long enough for the Shadow Fey to all escape and seal the portal while Gwydion was going through it, trapping the Sorceror-Fiend. The other side of the portal led to the Demiplane of Dread, where the Dark Powers created the Shadow Rift to contain Gwydion further.

And that's pretty much how it remains. Aside from a failed escape attempt during the Grand Conjunction, Gwydion has remained stuck in that portal, unable to do anything but watch and send Shadow Fey an occasional bad dream.

===Haki Shinpi===
Darklord of Rokushima Táiyoo. He's a powerless [[Geist]] that, in life, was a powerful [[samurai]] and clan leader that forged a big and powerful empire. He felt pride in the fact that his clan and lands held together while others fell to discord, despair, and war, which he helped to instigate via manipulation and betrayal. Haki Shinpi somewhat lived by the code of Bushido but abused and exploited it to manipulate his nemeses, play them against each other, and run their hopes into the ground.

Shortly prior to Haki's death, he made it known that each of his six sons would inherit part of his conquered lands evenly. As expected, this went swimmingly for everyone involved. After his death, his children turned to bickering and then all out war against each other. Two of his children met their doom, and their islands were leveled by earthquakes before Rokushima Taiyoo was brought into the Demiplane of Dread.

Far from the influential and powerful man he was in life, Haki Shinpi can now do little to keep his sons from tearing his land apart in civil war.

===Harkon Lukas===
Darklord of Kartakass. A [[wolfwere]] bard from the [[Forgotten Realms]] unusual among his kind for his highly social nature, as most wolfweres are lone predators who only come together temporarily to breed. Seeing as how he couldn't get other wolfweres to agree to hang around together, he started focusing more on integrating into human society. He still hunted and ate humans, but he also gained a genuine love of human culture and of the idea of being somebody important. One day, for no reason since he'd basically been doing the same stuff any wolfwere does, just spending a bit more time in town in between kills, the Dark Powers grabbed his ass and yanked him into Barovia. At which point he went on an anti-wolf killing spree for, again, no particular reason. This attracted Strahd's attention, and he nearly killed Lukas, forcing the wolfwere to flee into the Mists, which gave him his own domain of Kartakass. Which, much to his frustration, is a tiny, rustic place where the most power he'll ever have is being mayor of a small town, so he's got the letter of what he wanted but not the spirit, making for a hollow victory.

The 5th edition version of Harkon Lukas is a [[Loup-garou]] instead of a wolfwere, and it changes some of the other details about him. As in the original, he had dreams of a [[werewolf]] society - an empire of werewolves, in fact - but that dream was dashed by the werewolf indifference to gathering in large numbers. So he tried to forge an empire amongst [[human]]s, this time actually directly getting involved; ultimately, he led a revolution against a king by faking his own death as a martyr to stir up riots, then using these to get him close enough to the king that he could burst out of the coffin his followers were carrying him around in, rip the king to shreds, and take the king's crown for himself... which was when the mists swallowed him and he found himself in Kartakass. His curse is also tweaked slightly as well; rather than being doomed to never rise above the position of mayor, he's doomed to never rise above the even less prestigious position of nearly-forgotten, washed-up performer.
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===Hazlik===
Darklord of Hazlan. A gay [[Forgotten Realms|Red Wizard of Thay]] who was publicly humiliated and stripped of his status by his female rival and her boyfriend, the latter of which he lusted after. As revenge, he murdered the guy, made his girlfriend eat his corpse, then tortured her to death as well, at which time he was then swept up by the mists. His curse is to suffer from nightmares of his now-inaccessible rivals defeating him with impunity and generally humiliating him every night, which has made him even more fixated on getting revenge against the Red Wizards. So he's crafting plans to cast a spell that will genocide all members of his race, the Mulan, throughout the multiverse. To escape being killed by said genocide spell himself, he's prepared to bodysnatch his female Rashemani apprentice when he's ready to use it.

The 5e version retcons him quite a bit. Once an ambitious Red Wizard with a habit of horribly scarring his rivals, Hazlik came to believe that his lover/rival, a man named Indreficus, was planning to betray him. In retribution, he captured Indreficus and subjected him to a nightmarish experiment that left him permanently transformed into a pain-wracked living portal. Hazlik presented what had become of his former lover as to the zulkirs with hopes to impress them, only to be told Indreficus did not betray him and he had merely been manipulated by the zulkirs into thinking so as a way to halt the ambitious pair's ascent. They then declared Hazlik’s transformation of Indreficus an abomination, and that as punishment, every rival Hazlik had defeated could exact a penance of their choosing upon him. In desperation, Hazlik fled through the twisted portal that had been Indreficus and found himself in the demiplane of dread, where he eventually found his way to a realm that knew nothing of magic.

As well as his old nightmares (which are now of Indreficus taunting him for his failures), he also has a new curse borrowed from the now-absent Azalin Rex, making him unable to learn any new magic. On top of no longer being able to advance the magical research that used to drive his life, he's also absolutely terrified that anyone will learn of his limitations.

===Hive Queen===
Darklord of the sewer domain of Timor that lies beneath Paridon, and a half-Marikith because somebody thought it was time to rip off the Aliens franchise. She wasn't always a monster, though. She was originally a spoiled princess who decided one day to scare her mother to death. To do this, she seduced a wizard into casting an illusion of her transforming into a half-Marikith, but when said wizard saw her with her real lover, he decided to spice up the spell a bit by removing the 'illusion' bit and ''actually'' transforming her. She now lurks in the sewers as the Queen of the Marikiths, regularly laying more Marikith eggs. But she fears being usurped even from what little power she has, so if any of those eggs hatches another Marikith Queen, the Hive Queen kills the hatchling.

===Illithid God-Brain===
The darklord of Bluetspur is an [[illithid]] [[Elder Brain]], a massive conglomeration of the brain of every dead illithid, merged together into a new, living, entirely alien entity. It's the reason using psionic powers in Ravenloft is a dicey proposition, as the God-Brain might notice and attempt to integrate you into itself. It's notable for having '''no''' attempt to justify its position in Ravenloft whatsoever, with the original writeup in the Red Box, the original Ravenloft campaign setting collection, literally saying that nobody knows why it's in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], what crime it committed to end up here, or even how it's actually being tormented by its stay here!

The ''Book of Sacrifices'' gives it a backstory and reason for its Darklordship. Its core persona was once a human psion named Seldrid, whose people were at war with the Illithids. Eventually, they began to win for good once the Illithid Elder Brain started to die, but unfortunately for them, Seldrid had come to admire the Illithids' power and discipline, and merged with the Elder Brain to revive it. This act of betraying his people to such a great evil caught the Dark Powers' attention, and as the Illithids sacked his home city, they drew the country into the Demiplane of Dread as Bluetspur, with the Seldrid-brain as Darklord. Seldrid's curse is an inability to transfer his consciousness as he once did or to integrate any new consciousnesses into himself. Now trapped as a giant brain in a pool with nothing but Illithid tadpoles for company, unable to make himself more mobile or gain any outside experiences, Seldrid has gone quite insane.

5th edition has its own take on the idea. In a nutshell, the God-Brain hails from the era when the Illithid empire was at its peak, performing whatever blasphemous experiments took its fancy until it literally thought something that was unthinkable. That is, it had a thought so blasphemous, so utterly inimical to reality itself, that even an Elder Brain couldn't actually think it. Becoming obsessed with this ineffable thought, the God-Brain began cannibalizing other Elder Brains to try and upgrade itself to the point where it could finally contemplate this mysterious thought-form. Instead, it just gave itself a kind of aggressive psychic cancer, which began fatally necrotizing the God-Brain's neural tissues. Aghast at its behavior and terrified of catching the disease themselves, the other Elder Brains pooled their powers and tried to erase the God-Brain from existence; thanks to the meddling of the [[Dark Powers]], they only succeeded in banishing the God-Brain to the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Now the God-Brain struggles endlessly to both find a cure for its disease and to manifest the alien thought-form still gestating inside of it, all the while subconsciously aware that there is '''nothing''' it can do to achieve either goal, but desperate to fight for every last moment of life.

===Inza Magdova Kulchevitch===

The current Darklord of Sithicus, replacing Lord Soth. She was born in Gundarak, on the night Duke Gundar was assassinated, and two years later, her caravan wandered into Sithicus, where they were trapped, although her mother Magda managed to bargain for protection with Soth.

Inza's dark mindset showed from a very early age. Even as a child she loved thieving and manipulating the giorgio of Sithicus, and for the most part stood aside from her tribe. Her only friend was Piotr, a boy 1 year her senior, and this wasn't such a good thing as Inza pushed him to join her in both emnity to the giorgios and bullying a boy named Nikolas for his kindness towards non-Vistani. Their friendship eventually came to an end when Inza allowed Nikolas to be brutally beaten and pinned the blame on Piotr. Inza also hated animals, since they were not fooled by her facade of innocence, and would torture and kill them on the sly. None of this disturbing behavior ever reached Magda, who doted on her daughter, but by adulthood her rampant kleptomania and unlikeable personality had alienated most of the other Vistani.

Inza became Darklord of Sithicus after betraying her mother and caravan to Malocchio Aderre, breaking the caravan's oath to Lord Soth in the process. She attempted to usurp Soth's power, but was foiled and as the surviving members of her caravan hunted her down, she leapt into a chasm to escape. The darkness within the chasm surrounded and embraced her, turning her into the new Darklord.

As Darklord, Inza exists as a force of corruption. Her curse is twofold- first, her form has become a mass of shadow, and she has to concentrate to look human. Second, she stole, manipulated, and was a general bitch because of her philosophy that everyone was as evil as her at heart. The presence of true heroes in her domain (to say nothing of the redeemed spirit of Lord Soth himself) has shaken her to the core, and despite all her efforts to stomp out the forces of good in her domain, they still exist as thorns in her side.

===Ivana Bortisi===

Darklord of Borca, and a reference to the titular character of ''Rappaccini's Daughter''. Ivana inherited the domain by poisoning her lover for cheating with her mother Camille (who she also poisoned). Thus, Ivana inherited Camille's domain, along with immunity and power over poison. This, of course, came with a curse- Ivana cannot turn her lethally poisonous touch ''off'', and thus will never be able to take a lover.

Ivana is best known for the creation of Ermordenung, humans infused with poison to make them super-assassins. The first of these was Nostalia Romaine, Ivana's childhood friend and the one to actually do the dirty work of killing Camille.

5e retcons her a bit, though not nearly as much as Borca's other Darklord. While the whole thing with her mother seducing her lover did still happen, there's no mention of her poisoning her lover and it's not the only reason she kills her mother. Rather, she murdered her brothers and mother in an attempt to force her father to name her his heir, and she murdered him and all of their servants with poison gas when he still refused to do so, insisting that her cousin Ivan Dilisnya would be his sole inheritor instead. She's still terrified of the possibility of her father's will being found, as that would mean that the business she's worked so hard to grow would go to her childish and depraved cousin.

Her poisonous touch is gone, with her curse now being the more mundane and psychological torments of boredom due to feeling like no one around her is her intellectual peer, and the fact that she is never given the respect she feels she is owed, always being doubted, second-guessed, and looked down upon just like her father did.

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===Ivan Dilisnya===

Co-Darklord of Borca, and former darklord of Dorvinia. He's a cousin to Ivana Bortisi, and shares many similarities with her, most notably his love of poisoning people who draw his ire. After he poisoned his sister (who he lusted after) and her husband, he became a Darklord. His curse is simple but effective; his greatest pleasure aside from killing was fine food and drink, so he lost his sense of taste, rendering all the luxury around him hollow and unenjoyable.

His similar nature and modus operandi to his cousin caused their domains to fuse together under the name of Borca during the Grand Conjunction. Both he and Ivana are immune to poison and can create any toxin they can imagine, but Ivana has one more gift- agelessness. Ivan is desperate to learn the secret to her immortality, and refuses to believe she has no idea how she came by the gift (the Dark Powers granted it). Unlike Ivana, Ivan doesn't create Ermordenung, but he does have one nasty trick up his sleeve: Borrowed Time, a poison that only he can create. It stays in one's bloodstream for life and causes lethal convulsions every sunset unless you've ingested the antidote, 'Mercy', which is also something only Ivan can create, that day. Most of his minions are thus held hostage, knowing that Ivan holds the key to each day of their lives.

5e retcons him heavily. While he's still the cousin of Ivana and co-darklord of Borca who envies his cousin's immortality, that's pretty much all that stays the same. Ivan was groomed from a young age to be the head of a noble family, but despite all the opportunity in the world he instead took to wallowing in childish depravity, his family ignoring and enabling his worst and strangest impulses as they hoped he would grow out of it. He of course did not grow out of it, only becoming more violent and immature as he aged. On the same night that Ivana Boritsi poisoned her family, Ivan learned of his parents’ intention to send his beloved sister Kristina to a prestigious boarding school, and murdered his entire family for it.

He now resides in the Dilisnya family estate, a twisted funhouse that he lures people to to torment. Those unable to escape are eventually forced to don the colorful uniforms of the Dilisnya household staff and become Ivan’s new servants. He rarely leaves the estate, instead communicating through letters and acting through his "toys," animate creatures of clockwork or cloth provided to him by the Dark Powers.

===Jaqueline Reiner===

Darklord of Richemulot. Appropriately to the name, she's a natural wererat, born to a wererat branch of the Reiner family. The Reiners followed their patriarch Claude into the mists, where he reigned as Richemulot's original Darklord, but eventually Jaqueline had enough of his abuse and killed him, taking on his title of Darklord in the process. And while that title came with neat perks like control over Richemulot, it also came with a pair of curses.

First, Jaqueline suffers from intense monophobia. She hates nothing worse than being alone, but her entire family is made up of evil wererats whom she ''also'' really hates, so being in their company is not that much better. Second, while Jaqueline falls in love easily, she will involuntarily shift into rat form whenever she's alone with someone she truly loves. And while that love is as genuine as anything Jaqueline has experienced, she can never muster up the trust that her lover will accept her as a wererat, and she almost invariably then kills him. She might make a good pair with Urik von Kharkov, but Darklords can never leave their domains and it's uncertain if she knows about him.

===King Crocodile===
Yes, Ravenloft even has Darklords that are talking animals! No, you cannot [[Furry|play as one yourself]].

King Crocodile is the savage and bestial Darklord of the equally savage and bestial Wildlands, which is based on Rudyard Kipling's ''Just-So Stories'' and ''The Jungle Book''. This talking crocodile was so bloodthirsty and ferocious to his fellow talking animals in the jungle, they begged the hairless apes (i.e. humans) to come and kill him, but instead of holding up their end of the bargain, the hairless apes just started destroying the jungle for resources and colonizing it. This drove the other talking animals into pleading for King Crocodile to kill the hairless apes, and he agreed on the condition that the other animals all loan him their powers, which they did with the exception of the Python (the "wisest of the animals") and the Fly (whom King Crocodile thought was too insignificant to matter).

King Crocodile did slake his bloodthirsty appetite on the hairless apes and drove them out, but instead of returning the other animals' powers when he was finished as he had promised, he instead returned to his old ways of gorging himself on the animal population even more wantonly and gluttonously than before. It was at this point that the Python told King Crocodile a prophecy, which was that King Crocodile would either be killed by one of the hairless apes or by something he thought was pathetic and beneath him. With this done, the Python and his fellow snakes left King Crocodile's jungle to its fate at the hands of Ravenloft's Dark Powers, who quickly claimed the land as their own.

True to the Python's words, King Crocodile is slowly dying of the sleeping sickness spread by the flies, and the only thing that might help him are the hairless apes. But he is unable to keep himself from attacking any who might cure his affliction, and might attack them even if they do help him. The other talking animals still live in fear of King Crocodile and will implore any player characters they meet to dispose of him, but the cycle of betrayal in this land is only doomed to repeat itself. As a result, even if the player characters succeed in killing King Crocodile none of the talking animals will honour their words and the other crocodiles will fight to the death to assume King Crocodile's crown (and his cursed fate), as "''gratitude is not a quality well-known in the jungle.''"

===Kas===
Darklord of Tovag. The infamous vampire who betrayed [[Vecna]] and cut off his hand and eye. Was drawn into the mists at the same time as Vecna and the two of them were at constant war with each other until Vecna escaped. It is confirmed in 5th edition that Kas is still in the Demiplane of Dread and also is unaware that Vecna is gone. He repeatedly sends out armies to attack Vecna which never return, leaving him increasingly frustrated.

In the [[World Axis]] cosmology from 4th edition, he's not a Darklord, but he ''does'' hang out in the Domain of Dread called Monadhan; because he's figured out how to freely leave the domain whenever he wishes, he's turned it into his own personal base under the nose of its [[dracolich]] Darklord.

===Lemot Sediam Juste===
Darklord of Scaena, one of the few Domains capable of traveling through the mists. Scaena is a theater house, and one that Juste worked at as a playwright prior to his becoming a Darklord. Juste was a well-known and talented writer of comedies and dramas, but this never satisfied him, as he wished to write tragedies. Unfortunately for him, his [[Grimdark]] always came out as grimderp, and the actors invariably played his tragic works as farces, since they weren't good for much else. Driven to a deep bitterness by his failure to fulfill his obsession with tragedy, he wrote one last play- this one designed to be a real-life tragedy that killed all of his actors, and when the audience booed this one too, he locked up the house and burned it down with them inside.

Now, as a Darklord, Lemot has ultimate control of his theater, allowing him to trap people in his plays and alter reality for these press-ganged performers, but all this is undercut because he can't believe any of it; for his Darklord curse, the Dark Powers have taken away his suspension of disbelief, forcing him to always see actors, props, and scenery for what they truly are instead of what he wants them to be.

===Lord Wilfred Godefroy===
Darklord of Mordent (the same place from the old Ravenloft II module). A nobleman who murdered his wife when she was unable to produce a son for him as an heir and then murdered his daughter for trying to stop him, and then framed their deaths as an accident. Their ghosts came back to haunt him for a year until he killed himself to make it stop, and when Azalin and Strahd inadvertently drew Mordent into the mists Godefroy (now a ghost himself) became its darklord. His curse is to be continually tormented by the ghosts of his wife and daughter just as he was in life, who tear him apart every night as they curse him for murdering them.

While he was formerly known to be rather passive as a Darklord, in recent times he has taken to enslaving other ghosts to do his bidding. In particular, he's had the mayor of Mordentshire under his thumb for years by holding the ghost of his wife hostage.
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===Maharaja Arijani===
[[Rakshasa]] darklord of Sri Raji, Arijani attained his position after betraying both his kind and his father, Ravana (or rather, the Avatar of Ravana), having received the scorn of the rakshasa for most of his life. Although Ravana is a deity venerated by the rakshasa, Arijani's mother was Mahiji, then high priest of the hated goddess Kali and a leader of the Dark Sisters. To compound things, the Avatar of Kali delivered Arijanni to a home of low caste rank. He lived as a pariah shunned by his fellow rakshasa and languished in a position of low social importance. This alienated Arijani from his own kind, such that he arranged the death of many rakshasa in the conflict with humans. Gradually, Arijani's manipulations became so great that the people of Bahru began hunting their former hunters.

Arijani's depredations climaxed with rakshasa retaliatory siege against Bahru. Although the city fell, the cost was massive casualties on both sides and the city left in ruins. Angered and disgusted by Arijani's actions, Ravana sent his avatar to dispatch his prodigal son. However, Arijani conspired with Mahiji and lured the avatar into a trap. Thus rendered helpless, Ravana offered Arijani a wish in return for his release. Ravana accepted the offer, wishing to become immune to the attacks of rakshasas. The wish was granted, but Arijani slew the avatar anyway. Such was the level of his treachery that the Mists brought Sri Raji into the Demiplane of Dread.

The Maharaja's curse is that, although he is a talented illusionist, Arijani cannot disguise himself in a pleasing form, as most rakshasa do. Instead, he can only assume despicable aspects, such as that of the viewer's worst enemy. Maharaja Arijani resides in Mahakala, in Bahru. There, he is served by the Dark Sisters, whom through him, must provide to Kali daily human sacrifice.

Beyond the threat of an all weretiger cult called "The Stalkers" that were huge fans of his dad trying to kill him, Arijani's greatest fear is the very weapon he used to kill the avatar with, knowing full well it's somewhere in the jungle and very likely to be used on him just like Ravana.

===Maligno===
Darklord of Odiare, and originally from Gothic Earth's version of Italy. In the same vein as Pinocchio, he was originally a marionette brought to life through his toymaker "father" Giuseppe's wishes for a son. Though beloved by the children of Odiare, the adults of the village did not consider him to be a "real" boy. He soon grew bitter over the discovery that he wasn't truly alive, and after terrorizing Guiseppe into making more [[carrionette]]s like himself he had them kill every adult at one of his performances. It was this act that drew Odiare into the Mists as an Island of Terror.

Later on, he planned to have the carrionettes steal the bodies of every surviving adult there so they would be forced to love him, but due to the intervention of the PCs in the module "The Created" he was forced to simply kill the adults off instead. The children now adore him only out of fear, and as they grow older they wonder when Maligno will come for them as well.

Maligno's curse is that he can never be human as he craves, as he alone among the carrionettes is unable to steal the bodies of others. Furthermore, he cannot kill Guiseppe because any injury he suffers is inflicted on Maligno himself. Instead, the old toymaker was driven insane and now exists solely to create more toys for his "son" to command. Should Maligno's body be totally destroyed, Guiseppe is compelled to rebuild it, with the foul puppet's spirit claiming the new body as its own.

In 5e, Maligno was originally called ''Figlio'', which at least is an actual Italian name and not literally calling him "Evil" from the start.

===Marquis Stezen d'Polarno===
Darklord of Ghastria. As Strahd is for Dracula, Dr. Mordenheim for Dr. Frankenstein, and Tristren/Malken for Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so is Stezen to Dorian Grey, of ''The Picture of Dorian Grey''. But unlike Dorian, Stezen was a piece of work before his cursed painting came into play. As a noble in an unknown land, he enjoyed sowing chaos and rebellion and assassinated many people, but his charismatic nature meant that he hung on to a good reputation. But after one particular attempted coup went too far, his king had enough. Consulting with his mistress, a master of dark arts, he laid a curse upon d'Polarno that would do the Dark Powers proud; trapping a good chunk of Stezen's soul in a painting, he robbed him of all his charisma, vibrance, and capacity for enjoyment.

In retaliation, Stezen poisoned the king and his family, which drew the land into the mists. But he wasn't yet its Darklord. That happened when he realized that, once per season, he could temporarily reclaim his soul from the painting- at the cost of up to 50 other souls, each granting him one hour of rejuvenation. Now, once per season, he'll invite every stranger in Ghastria to a party (he'll grab some peasants if not enough foreigners answer). The party is for him, and him alone. With the exception of a few guests that he debauches himself with/upon, all guests are exposed to the painting, giving him up to 50 hours of being able to enjoy himself again before he returns to his normal drab state. While this is when he's at his most dangerous, it's also when he's most vulnerable- when his soul is still in the painting, he's essentially immortal, but when he's whole, he is as vulnerable as any other (And ''unlike'' the original Dorian, killing the painting won't work until Stezen is dead).

===Prince Ladislav Mircea===
Darklord of Sanguinia. Ladislav's story is a ripoff of the Edgar Allan Poe classic ''The Masque of the Red Death'', with the prince abandoning his people to a lethal plague, and retreating to a closed castle with his friends. And like in the original story, the plague entered the castle anyway. When Ladislav caught the plague, he turned to alchemy in a desperate attempt to cure himself. This failed and he died, only to rise as a Vrykolaka (usually mindless plague-carrier vampires that feed on bodily humors) and become Darklord of Sanguinia. He still experiments with alchemy to cure himself of his undeath, but this is unlikely to ever succeed.

===Sisters Mindefisk===
The three [[Hag]] co-Darklords of Tepest, and based the "the three wicked witches" from folkloric stories. Three sisters who were left as babies for a humble farm wife who wished for daughters, but from their birth displayed mysterious traits. Most notably, after their mother died from the strain of caring for the three sickly girls (or possibly because they drained her life), their father (who had often voiced his dislike of "weakling daughters") tried to leave the three 2-year olds for dead repeatedly, but they always came back. Eventually he let them stay as long as they cooked for him and his sons. Growing up dissatisfied with their surroundings, they took to seducing, murdering, and eating travelers to build up a stockpile of money so they could ultimately leave the farm. This worked until one final traveler tried to turn them against each other, only to be murdered so none of the sisters could claim him as theirs. This was what ultimately led to their being taken into the Mists and stuck in the depths of a forest full of [[goblin]]s and witch-burning, faerie-chasing bumpkins. They still lure in any unwary travelers to their cottage, taking advantage of the locals' blaming the goblins for their victims' deaths, but otherwise have little influence on their domain.

The sisters consist of Laveeda, an Annis Hag, Leticia, a Sea Hag, and Lorinda, a Green Hag. Though they can shapeshift, they are cursed to always see themselves and each other as their true forms no matter which shape they take.

====Mother Lorina====
In the 5e version of Tepest, only Lorinda is the darklord, having imprisoned her sisters when they refused to let her make and rear a child despite how badly she wanted to be a mom. Which ignores the complete and utter lack of maternal feelings they had in past editions, but whatever. She desperately yearns to have a family, but is thwarted by both her own inherently controlling, murderous nature, her inability to trust that her offspring genuinely love her (and the subsequent smothering, demanding, overbearing way that this makes her act), and the curse that any child she magics up for herself is a short-lived, ravenous monster; she can only make [[hexblood]]s for other people.
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===Sodo===
Darklord of Paridon. A low-ranked dread [[Doppelganger]] who resented being born into a lowly clan and thus being prevented from rising through the ranks by merit. After acquiring a magical Hat of Disguise, he fulfilled this previously-thwarted ambition by killing the elders who ruled over the clans and impersonating them, while also offing anyone else who questioned him. For managing the impressive feat of committing a betrayal egregious even by doppelganger standards, he was claimed by the Mists and given Darklordship of Paridon, and nailed with three separate curses: inability to control his shapeshifting, a healing touch (which wouldn't be much of a curse to anyone else, [[Dark Eldar|but Sodo's a sadist]] and this along with the previous curse renders him unable to effectively torture people), and an extra dose of paranoia for flavor.

===Thakok-An===
Darklord of Kalidnay, formerly from Athas. She was a templar of Kalidnay's sorceror-king, Kalid-Ma. To help him ascend to dragonhood, she sacrificed her family for the ascension ritual- an act which, ironically, would ruin it, as the Dark Powers took notice and drew Kalidnay into Ravenloft, in one of the few occasions in which being in the Demiplane of Dread was an improvement for most people. But not for Thakok-An nor Kalid-Ma, as the failed ritual put Kalid-Ma into a coma. Thakok-An remains active, ruling the realm as a theocracy of Kalid-Ma, despite said lord being comatose and all her efforts being for naught.

===Tsien Chiang===
Originally from the continent of Kara-Tur on the world of Toril, Tsien Chiang was beautiful and powerful wizard, who hated all men due to her father's dismissal of her abilities. After killing him and disabling her relatives, she seized control of her family lands. She used her charm and position to marry a total of four men, each of whom fathered a child with her before she killed him and moved on to the next. Three of the daughters so produced were evil, with the fourth, Nightingale, being truly good-hearted and adored by the gods. Tsien Chang would go on to commit various evil acts, including the desecration of four sacred bells and four sacred trees, but her mistreatment of Nightingale is what ultimately led to her being taken by the mists. On the fourth time that Nightingale objected to her family's atrocities, Tsien Chang decided to do far worse than merely beat her as they had the last three times, and she and her evil daughters were taken by the mists as the torture began. Tsien Chiang imprisoned the living remains of Nightingale in the Tower of Broken Promises as the Mists tore I'Cath from Kara-Tur forever.

If you're wondering why the number four is mentioned so much, it's because it's homophonous with "death" in most Chinese languages and is considered bad luck in many east-Asian cultures.

Her 5e incarnation gives her such a radically different backstory that pretty much the only things that remain are the four daughters and a magic bell.

When Tsien Chiang was a child, her home was destroyed by invaders, forcing her to flee into frozen mountains where she expected to die. Luckily for her, she was found and taken in by a gold dragon who took pity on her, and she served him as an attendant in thanks for saving her life. While serving the dragon, she learned much of magic and medicine, growing to become an accomplished wizard. The dragon refused to teach her any truly dangerous or powerful magic though, knowing that she would only use it for revenge. In her studies, she learned of the Nightingale bell, an artifact that could make its ringer’s dreams come true -- but creating the bell required the scale of a gold dragon. Knowing her mentor would never provide a scale she attempted to drug him so she could steal a scale while he slept, but got the mixture wrong and not only killed him, but caused his entire hoard to be destroyed, with all that remained being a single scale. Chiang crafted the bell and took it to her home, where she used it to wish away the invaders, which instantly vanished. In awe and gratitude, the people elevated her to royalty and she became their queen.

She ruled well for years, enacting vast reforms and strict but sensible laws in pursuit of creating the perfect empire. She had a family, taking particular pride in her four beloved daughters. Though her kingdom was prosperous, her people eventually began to chafe under her strict laws and demanding orders and revolted. Chiang was swift and merciless in her attempts to quell the rebellion, but her ruthlessness only caused the resistance against her to grow. When she ordered her armies to kill the families of all insurrectionists, assassins struck Tsien Chiang’s palace and killed her family. Distraught, Chiang climbed to the highest tower of her palace, looked out over her burning dreams, and struck the Nightingale Bell. Rather than granting her vengeful wish, the bell cracked and spilled a golden mist across the land. When the mist cleared, Tsien Chiang’s perfect city was gone, replaced by the unreal prison-city of I’Cath.

I'Cath is a city divided in two: The true I'Cath of the waking world, and Tsien Chiang's impossible, perfect dream. In the waking world the city is a silent and chaotic labyrinth composed of surreal, knotted streets and citizens trapped in eternal slumber. In the dream the city is vibrant and living, a place of ultimate beauty and efficiency where all things move according to Tsien Chiang's design, and a nightmare of constant drudgery for her people. Every twilight, Tsien Chiang climbs the spirit-infested Ping’On Tower and tolls the Nightingale Bell. This renews the magic of her dream world and keeps her citizens asleep, but it also calls forth a legion of jiangshi, which emerge from their tombs to reshape the waking city’s mazelike streets in a fruitless attempt to match Tsien Chiang’s perfectionist vision.

Her curse is that while the dream is near-perfection in her eyes, that only makes the imperfections of the waking world all the more obvious and inescapable. No matter how many times she tries to bring the same order and beauty she sees in her dream to the waking world, I'Cath's streets grow only more twisted and labyrinthine. She spends as much time as she can with the dream-versions of her daughters though she knows they aren't real, and in the waking world she actively avoids the twisted reflections of her daughters that wander the true I'Cath's streets.

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===Tristen ApBlanc===
Darklord of Forlorn. A Vampyre (living vampire) born when his dad was turned into a vampire but refused to leave his wife, which resulted in their son being born a vampyre. Tristen's parents were killed by fearful peasantfolk, but not before his mom gave him to the druid Rual to be raised. By all accounts, Rual was a pretty good foster mom, but when he was fifteen years old, Rual caught him drinking the blood of a deer. Believing she had betrayed him when he saw her talking to other druids, he attacked her- only to get his ass impaled by a blessed deer antler she was carrying, and when he drank her blood, he was both poisoned and partially cured of his vampyrism by the holy water she'd just drank. As she died, Rual cursed Tristen to be trapped in the sacred grove where he killed her, and to (agonizingly) die and become a ghost each night, and rise as a vampyre each morning. This makes him one of the few Darklords to receive most of his curse prior to Darklordship, as Forlorn was only pulled into Ravenloft centuries later, when Tristen engineered a bloody civil war to take control of the land.

As it is now, Forlorn really lives down to its name; there's little there except savage goblyns, a few beleagured Druids, and Castle Tristenoira, where Tristen is stuck, along with the ghosts of his family. The castle is split between three separate time periods that adventurers can shift between, thought to be because of all the ghostly shenanigans. Because there's really not much to do in Forlorn besides exploring Castle Tristenoira and trying not to get eaten by goblyns, it has no real political importance and is ignored by basically everyone, despite being most likely the second-oldest domain after Barovia.

He gets some very minor retcons in 5e, but since he only gets a single paragraph there's not much in the way of details. Seemingly the only changes are that he's now a dhampir (which is really more-or-less the same thing as a vampyre) and that he was taken by the mists almost immediately after killing the druids.

===Vlad Drakov===
Darklord of Falkovnia. He was originally the leader of a mercenary band called the Talons of the Hawk in [[Dragonlance|Krynn]]. For their wanton brutality and bloodlust, they were taken into Ravenloft and claimed Falkovia for themselves (after a failed invasion of Darkon that was repulsed by Azalin's undead).[[Berserk|If this seems familiar]] then good, you're paying attention.

This rivalry with Azalin has since become part of Drakov's curse, though he seems unaware of it. While four other countries (that have themselves agreed to an alliance should Falkovnia ever attack one of them) surround him, Drakov considers them "women and fops" not worth the effort of invasion, obsesses over an enemy he has no way of defeating, and is forever unable to gain the approval and respect of the great military leaders that he has sought all his life. And even if he did somehow conquer Darkon, [[fail|no Darklord can ever leave his own realm]] so he would never actually get to conquer it himself. Another factor in his defeats is that his way of doing war is distinctly and doggedly medieval (no gunpowder, no magic), so on the rare occasions he decides to try his luck at conquering other neighbouring domains than Darkon (all of which are at a higher technological level than Falkovnia) his forces almost always get shot to pieces by firearms or, more rarely, blown to pieces with magic. Oddly enough, his realm may in fact be, on the whole, a net ''benefit'' to the other domains of the Core, as his penchant for overworking his peasantry/slaves (when he's not busy having them impaled for his entertainment, of course) means that his realm produces large amounts of grain and foodstuffs which he sells for funds to equip and train his forces, unintentionally making Falkovnia "the breadbasket of the Core."

In addition, Drakov may be unique as the one of the most "conventional" Darklords in Ravenloft in the sense that he is statted like a run-of-the-mill fighter-class BBEG, and much like this archetype he has no magical abilities aside from a few magical weapons and armour at his disposal, coupled with no ability to cheat death, and no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders (all of which are in line with his disdain for magic and the supernatural), except for a good amount of inherent magic resistance that will also work against beneficial spells (so if he's ever in a tight enough bind to require magical healing, he's screwed). However, PCs and DMs shouldn't mistake his one-dimensional combat abilities as a sign that Falkovnia would be easy to liberate from his iron-fisted rule via a [[Raven Guard|simple decapitation raid]]; the totalitarian and thoroughly abusive nature of his rule means that those he trusts enough to carry out his orders are all likely evil enough and think enough like him to instantly assume his mantle of Darklord should Drakov ever be killed, just like similar totalitarian regimes in real life can survive the deaths of multiple successive leaders. Truly liberating Falkovnia in a thematically appropriate way would require the PCs to either engineer a full-scale revolution, or otherwise ensure the complete destruction of his regime, much like truly destroying a cancerous tumour in real life requires removing or destroying every last cancer cell. And all of this says nothing about which neighbouring realm would end up absorbing Falkovnia on the off-chance it ever gets truly liberated, though at this point even Azalin would be a better ruler than Drakov given that the lich dispenses harsh but fair justice and otherwise leaves his subjects alone to continue his arcane pursuits.

5th edition got rid of him, since the developers found him redundant. He's replaced by Ledeska Drakov, and Falkovnia was reskinned with a zombie apocalypse vibe.

===Yagno Petrovna===
Darklord of G'Henna. The Petrovna family was one of those taken by the Mists when Barovia was absorbed into Ravenloft, and although they avoided Strahd's attention by hiding away in the mountains this in turn led to inbreeding. As Yagno grew up, it became clear to all that he was insane- he conversed with imaginary people and cowered from beasts that weren't there. One day, he was locked out of his family's home and had to take shelter in a cave for the night. When he woke up, he saw the name "[[Zhakata]]" scrawled on a wall.

Yagno concluded that Zhakata was the name of the god that had protected him when he slept that night and created a shrine to his savior. (In reality, the name was written by his brother as a prank and meant absolutely nothing.) At first he merely sacrificed animals to Zhakata, but then he moved on to sacrificing people. When he was caught trying to offer his sister's newborn baby to Zhakata, he was chased out of Barovia by his family. The Mists welcomed him to the domain of G'henna, where he became the Darklord.

Yagno is cursed to constantly suffer doubts about whether or not Zhakata is real. No matter how many sacrifices he makes or how many people he commands to starve themselves in the name of Zhakata, he can never quite get rid of his nagging disbelief and the worry that all his devotion has been directed towards a lie. This eventually led Yagno to call upon a wizard who claimed he could summon Zhakata; as he could not summon a nonexistent god, a nalfeshnee by the name of Malistroi answered the summons instead and told Yagno that Zhakata was just a figment of his imagination. The Darklord immediately flew into a rage and killed the wizard, while Malistroi later escaped to ravage G'Henna. Since then, he has merely redoubled his fanaticism in a futile attempt to dispel his doubts.

==Former Darklords==
You remember that section where the permanent death of Darklords is discussed? Well, it's actually happened in the past, though never yet to a band of plucky adventurers, and the results usually haven't been good. These Darklords for whatever reason no longer rule their domain, usually because some asshole killed them and was promptly saddled with their domain as the new Darklord.

===Bakholis===
Former Darklord of Invidia, and formerly a tyrannical king whose kingdom was claimed by the mists when he was spurned by a woman named Marta, and in return had her lover killed and eaten in front of her and Marta herself raped to death by his soldiers. As she died, Marta cursed him to be the beast he was inside and never be free of the blood of loved ones on his hands, which manifested as turning him into a werewolf. Unlike most Darklords, Bakholis said 'fuck this' to angst and [[Dark Eldar|embraced his curse]], descending to ever-greater depths of savagery until, to everyone's relief, the half-Vistani Gabrielle Aderre showed up and promptly murdered his ass, succeeding him as Darklord of Invidia.

===Camille Boritsi===
The mother of Ivana Boritsi and the first Darklord of Borca, who earned her position by poisoning her husband and his lover. She was cursed to be betrayed by any man she trusted, which left her with serious issues relating to men and a blindspot towards scheming women, which ultimately proved her downfall when her daughter Ivana turned the poison tables by killing ''her'' for sleeping with Ivana's lover. She was succeeded as Darklord by her daughter and murderer, Ivana Boritsi.

===Claude Reiner===
The first darklord of Richemulot. The patriarch of a family of wererats who lead his family into the mists to escape hunters, gaining his domain when his monstrous cruelty caught the attention of the Dark Powers. He was eventually killed when his granddaughter Jaqueline had enough of his abuse, making her the new Darklord of Richemulot.

===Duke Nharov Gundar===
Former Darklord of Gundarak, prior to being betrayed and usurped by Daclaud Heinfroth, who would later gain his own, separate domain. As Darklord of Gundarak, he enforced the worship of the malevolent trickster-god [[Erlin]] and taxed basically everything he could think of (with a special emphasis on the birth of girls), but little else is known of his rule. During the Grand Conjunction, Gundarak was absorbed by Barovia and Invidia.

But that wasn't the end of Nharov Gundar. He was a vampire, and though Heinfroth had staked him, he remained alive, but dormant. His skeletal remains somehow found their way to the traveling curio show of Professor Arcanus, where some complete berk went and yanked the stake out. This brought him back to life, though his time spent as a skeleton has reduced him to a near-bestial state, only vaguely remembering Heinfroth's betrayal.

===Lord Soth===
{{main|Lord Soth}}
The infamous Death Knight of Krynn was for a time the Darklord of Sithicus. More details can be found on his page, but suffice to say that the Dark Powers grew tired of him, and he was succeeded as Darklord by the [[Vistani]] Inza Kulchevitch.

===Nathan Timothy===
Darklord of Arkendale. There are more details on him in the section for his more important son Alfred, but suffice to say that Nathan was possessed of a deep-seated wanderlust, which the Dark Powers curtailed by cursing him such that he couldn't leave the river Musarde, lest he be crippled by land sickness. Nathan rolled with the curse and adapted so well to being a boatman that he outright lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction. He's still confined to river waters, but Arkendale has been absorbed into Alfred's domain of Verbrek.

===Vecna===
{{main|Vecna}}
Yes, THAT Vecna, the Maimed God; the guy whose eye and hand are still around for PCs to mess (and ''be'' messed) with.

The whole tale of Vecna's ascension to godhood is complicated, but at one point where he was 'merely' a demigod, he and Kas were pulled into the Mists after a bunch of meddlesome adventurers thwarted one of his plans. Not one to be contained for long, Vecna has the dubious honor of being the only Darklord to force his way out of the Demi-Plane of Dread after being drawn in by the Mists. On top of that, he managed to get himself 'promoted' to full-fledged minor God in the process, which is how he got the Dark Powers to kick him out due to their ban on allowing gods to influence Ravenloft. (The full story is recounted in the modules ''Vecna Lives!'', ''Vecna Reborn'' and ''Die Vecna Die!''.)

==Netbook Darklords==
These darklords represent the rulers of fan-made domains from [[netbook]]s such as the [[Books of S]], the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]], [[Quoth the Raven]], and other projects from the [[Fraternity of Shadows]].

===Ahasveros===
Darklord of Incitatus. Once, Ahasveros (male human) was the greatest scientist of his civilization, until the day his homeland was drawn into a great war against a rival nation. He invented the Adamas theory, a device that could be used to generate a mighty tidal wave to devaste the enemy's fleets and harbors.

But that wasn't enough for Ahasveros; he became obsessed with improving the device, banishing his assistants when they protested the potential dangers of doing so, cutting off all contact with those who might challenge his beliefs, and reducing the time he spent running his calculations.

The result was, when the device was used, Ahasveros lost control of it and the tidal wave annihilated ''his'' homeland as well, drowning him in the tower from whence he'd launched it.

Ever since then, the bussengeist he became has lingered in his tower, unable to decide whose fault the mess was, alternating between blaming his associates and himself. Honestly, he's not much of a darklord, and this is reflected by how empty and meaningless Incitatus is. He currently occupies a limbo; too dull to be truly absorbed into the [[Demiplane of Dread]], but still too evil and in denial of what he did to be released, either.

Ahasveros' existence is completely tied to the remnants of the Adamas machine. Only by destroying it, which will unshackle his spirit, and performing a brief rite to the long-forgotten sea god of ruined Misenos, which requires lighting the lanterns in the temple and praying for both Misenos and Ahasveros, will his torment end.

If Ahasveros wishes to seal his domain's borders, those attempting to cross it are overwhelmed by misery and the urge to seek comfort, which only those outside of the border can give them.

===The Barons Gustav===
Darklords of Gustavstan.

Baron Gustav the Elder is a male human ghost who once ruled a small kingdom in his homeland. Though he had intended to pass his holdings on to his younger brother Klaus, the younger sibling had no interest in ruling, so the elderly Gustav took a wife and fathered a son, Gustav the Younger. Then, when his son was fifteen, Gustav the Elder stepped on a snake in his garden and was fatally bitten.

Gustav the Younger (male human [[Fighter]]) was inconsolable, his mind fracturing under the sudden death of his beloved father. In his grief, he refused to take up the throne, forcing his uncle Klaus to become Baron in his place - as well as to wed Ingrid, Gustav the Elder's widow and Gustav the Younger's mother, to secure the Younger's inheritance. Unfortunately, this gesture was misunderstood by ''both'' Gustavs; the Younger began to despise his uncle and mother for their apparent disloyalty, whilst the Elder's restless spirit also became incensed at Klaus's apparent betrayal. He seized upon the idea of exploiting his son's fractured mind to both weaponize him against Klaus and to make him vulnerable, so the Elder could live again by stealing his son's body.

This domain is basically [[grimdark]] Hamlet, in case it's not obvious already.

So Gustav the Elder manifests to his son, lies that he was murdered by Klaus, and convinces his half-crazed son that Klaus wants to steal the throne for himself. Klaus the Younger swallows this bullshit hook, line and sinker, and pretending to be even madder than he actually was, he began preparing to kill his uncle and his mother both - ignoring that Gustav the Elder wanted Ingrid spared, having figured that once he stole his son's body, [[/d/|he could reclaim her as his wife]].

This led to Gustav the Younger murdering the father of Elaine, the woman he loved, and driving her so insane that she ended up committing suicide by throwing herself off the battlements of the castle - which didn't do Gustav Junior's sanity any great shakes. Instead, it provoked him into finally battling his uncle, killing Klaus and his mother in the process. Which was when Gustav the Eldler showed up and, horrified at his wife's death, he revealed the truth about how he'd played his son for a fool. Enraged, the son attacked his father's ghost, and that was when Gustavstan was snatched up by the mists.

Gustav the Younger now burns with the urge to hunt his father's spirit down and destroy him, a task not helped by his paranoia. Every night, he is haunted by the angry ghosts of Elaine and Klaus, who spend the night cursing him out for their murders.

Gustav the Elder now spends his days haunting the local insane asylum, where Ingrid - who actually survived her son's attack, but was left a raving madwoman - is now kept. At night, he strives to manipulate others into killing his son.

Neither darklord can be permanently destroyed by violence; they regenerate and revive from destruction. Only by killing Ingrid will their resurrective regeneration cease... but doing this will cause the killer to immediately suffer a failed [[Powers Check]], whilst those who watch get to roll one.

===Benada Nameless===
Darklord of Vin'Ejal. Conceived when the Eye of Toldun, the fake prophet of a phony goddess called Appissa (actually a powerful half-breed [[yuan-ti]] [[psion]] magically held in stasis), used a potion given to him by his goddess to drug and rape a woman named Dillura Ogfenhauer, Benada's mother despised her daughter from the moment she was born. Only Benada's uncle, Dillura's 12-year-old brother Ekkim, cared for her, and he raised her throughout her life, even taking her off with him to be his squire when he went to war after discovering her nature as a [[psion]]icist [[weresnake]]. Even when they returned, however, Dillura wanted nothing to do with her bastard daughter.

Finally, the enraged Benada sought to confront her mother one evening, only to track her to the Shrine of the Eye. When she saw Dillura embracing the Eye, she realized that this man was her father. Filled with hatred, she grabbed a bone knife and fatally stabbed her mother, before psionically torturing her father to death. As she turned to leave, she found herself confronted by her uncle Ekkim, who had seen everything. Realizing she couldn't let him live now, a weeping Benada killed the only person to ever show her love, transporting Vin'Ejal to the Misty Realm.

Benada's curse seems to be an insatiable hunger that only human flesh can sate; she only gives in to its demands once per month, however, as she fears depleting her domain's population. If she wishes to close the domain, the waters around Vin'Ejal decrease in temperature to the point that would-be swimmers will freeze solid, whilst hail begins savagely pelting down from above.

===Baroness Ilsabet Obour===
Darklord of Kislova. This female human [[alchemist]] was born the youngest daughter and favored child of Baron Janosk Obour of Kislova, and remained loyal and obedient to him even as he descended into brutal tyranny and made a failed attempt to conquer a neighboring barony, only to be crushed, captured and executed. Before he died, Janosk commanded each of his three children to take steps to both preserve their family and avenge the loss of their power.

Of the three, Ilsabet was the most loyal to her father, honing her alchemical skills and delving into dark alchemical practices, focusing on hideous poisons and the creation of alchemical undead. She crippled and maimed many prisoners who had dared to rebel against her father's rule before his conquest by Baron Peto, created a unique strain of alchemical vampires, fatally poisoned her elder siblings for perceived disloyalty to their father's dying wishes, and finally married Baron Peto herself and bore him a son in order to gain the opportunity to poison him with a paralytic venom. It was only as she administered what she intended to be the final, fatal dose, killing her mentor (and true love) to do so, that the Mists finally claimed her.

Ilsabet currently suffers two curses. Her most direct darklord-related curse is that her desire for power and revenge are thwarted; though her husband, Baron Peto, remains incurably paralyzed, he also remains unkillable - no matter what she does, he always returns to life. As a result, she remains forever his regent, rather than the true Baroness of Kislova, which she regards as unacceptable; she yearns to resume the interrupted reign of her own family. Secondly, Ilsabet has become a vampire-like creature that feeds on pain, and must have one person killed every day in order to survive.

Unlike many Darklords, Ilsabet has no particular powers of supernatural survival. If you can beat an 11th level [[wizard]] protected by her guard of alchemical vampires, you can kill her.

When Ilsabet closes the borders, a poisonous green mist surrounds Kislova, inflicting irresistable damage per round until the would-be escapee returns to Kislova.

===Bethany Stone===
Darklord of Stonewall. A sad, broken, bitter woman, Bethany was born the daughter of a family of puritans, self-righteous and obsessed with sin. When her father discovered the child Bethany, a cheerful, whimsical young girl, had dreams of leaving the family home to become a dollmaker, he destroyed the dolls she had painstakingly constructed over years of work and beat her within an inch of her life. Later, when she came of age, he arranged her marriage to a man of high standing.

After long years of often-lonely marriage, pregnant with her sixth child, Bethany's father and husband were caught in a terrible accident, with the former dying and the latter being left in a coma. That was hardship enough, but as she cared for her husband, Bethany discovered his diary, in which he revealed he had only wed her to cover up his "sinful" nature as a homosexual. Enraged, Bethany began tampering with her husband's medicine to ensure he remained comatose, and then launched her own moral crusade, something aided by the fact she established her charismatic but broken-willed son Clarence as the town's minister.

When the Salem Witch trials broke out, Bethany eagerly spread their madness to Stonewall. But the tenth victim was the friend of Bethany's youngest daughter, Katherine, who unearthed evidence that this was really a way for Bethany to resolve a land-dispute between their families in the Stone's favor. When Katherine tried to intervene, she called out her mother for the cold, twisted monster that she was. Bethany promptly stabbed Katherine in the heart, and that was when the Mists took the town.

Bethany Stone is now a [[harpy]], although she has limited shapeshifting abilities that let her masquerade as a human. Her curse is that she will be forever doomed to lose her children before they are fully ready, whether by death, betrayal or abandonment. Though she doesn't know it yet, as part of this curse, she will become spontaneously pregnant and give birth to a human child every 5 years. Both of her arms are permanently blood-red from the elbow down, although she considers it a sign of her righteousness and so doesn't hide it.

The borders of Stonewall are permanently closed; unless the departee has the approval of either Bethany or Clarence to leave, they will be struck by lightning bolts until they turn back. It's unknown if lightning immunity will nullify this border, but it's not explicitly countered.

Nothing explicitly says that Bethany cannot just be killed in a fight (and, frankly, Stonewall is described as the kind of place where wiping out everybody is actually the heroic thing to do), but she ''does'' have an explicit method of redemption. If the party can find one of the dolls she made as a child, as one survived her father's wrath, and present it to her, she will break down in tears. If consoled and successfully reminded of her long-lost dreams, the rest of the town will break down weeping with her, and then Stonewall will slide out of the Mists and back to the prime material. On the other hand, if they fail, then she'll destroy the doll herself and become even more fanatical.

===Caleb Wicks===
Darklord of Wayward on the Bone Sands. Even at the age of 10, Caleb was a fearless, stubborn, trouble-making brat. The only thing able to scare him into obedience were stories of a local boogeyman: Black Hat the Swordslinger.

Caleb's transformation from mere brat to full-blown Darklord came when his family were hired by the lord of the distant Hangingshire, which required a long trek that passed through a desert region known as the Bone Sands. During this leg of the journey, Caleb's family were seperated from the caravan and veered their wagon over a tall, steep dune as a result of a sudden sandstorm. The wagon was destroyed, their horses killed, and Caleb's elder brother Horatio was severely injured. Though they initially settled in to wait for the caravan to send a rescue party after them, their food swiftly ran out and they realized they would have to try and walk out of the desert on foot... a journey that Horatio couldn't make.

The senior Wicks came to a grim realization: Horatio wasn't going to live much longer anyway, so when he died, the family would eat his body for sustenane before making their trek towards safety. They were content to wait... but Caleb found out about their plans, and taunted his brother with this fact; when Horatio began to scream and cry, Caleb panicked and stabbed him to death with a cooking knife. Caleb's parents were horrified, but ultimately decided there was nothing left to do. They ate their dead son, and then broke camp the next morning.

As they were traveling, Caleb found himself separated from his family by another sandstorm, wandering on his own for days before he stumbled across a small town called "Wayward". Mad with hunger, he murdered the first townsman who tried to offer him help, devouring as much of the man's flesh as he could before fleeing into the night. The next morning, he revealed himself to the horrified townsfolk and claimed that he had witnessed Black Hat kill and eat the man. Unable to believe a youngster like Caleb could be responsible for so monstrous a crime, the townsfolk believed him, and opened their homes to the young cannibal.

Caleb became a beloved fixture of the community... and then, the neighboring [[gnome]] community of Rumbleton was destroyed in an earthquake that crushed the subterranean village like an egg. They begged Wayward for shelter whilst they tried to rebuild, and the humans took them in. But rebuilding a new gnomish settlement wasn't easy, as Rumbleton had already been built in what was considered the most stable, accessible ground for miles around. With little choice, the gnomes began to put down roots in Wayward.

Which was a problem: Wayward already had troubles supporting its own population before the gnomes came in, and now things were worse than ever. The population increase led to a famine, known as "The Lean Times" by the locals, and tensions began to grow between humans and gnomes... tensions only fanned by Caleb, who began advocating the humans of Wayward should eat the baby gnomes born after the refugees settled in their village. Whilst initially this proposal was rejected, the gnomes took affront when they learned of its proposal at all, and relations only continued to deteriorate... especially because Caleb was continuing to egg things on, pushing his cannibalistic plan in secret.

Finally, it all came to a head; on the first night of the full moon, the Waywarders, driven mad with hunger, descended on the gnome shantytown and abducted as many gnomish children as they could, cannibalizing them in a disgusting, bloody orgy. Over the next two days they massacred the surviving gnomes and ate them as well, then they ate the few Waywarders who had protested "The Feast", as it was dubbed. And on that final full moon night, as the cannibal villagers slept off their full bellies, Wayward on the Bone Sands was pulled into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Caleb and the other villagers are now [[quevari]]. They spend most of their time in an enchanted slumber, only waking when visitors come to town. Like all quevari, they are peaceful and innocent-seeming during the day, but revert to bloodthirsty cannibals at night, as the first three nights after outsiders arrive are all full moons - after those three nights, they fall back into slumber until disturbed again. It's unclear what happens if a survivor somehow avoids being killed on that third night.

Wayward itself has a couple of curses. Firstly, there are no children here; all of their youths were left behind when the village was pulled into the Misty Realms, and none of the women ever fall pregnant, save when Caleb is killed (we'll get to that). Secondly, all food and drink in the domain is inherently inedible - even foods brought in from outside instantly spoil, although the look and smell perfectly fine. Finally, none of the villagers will ever age beyond the day they were when they committed their sins.

Caleb himself is a 5th level [[quevari]] [[thief]] who wields an enchanted knife +3 of bleeding. He can Charm Person 1/day by speaking to them, and still carries the Triangle of the Feast - the triangular dinner bell he played before the cannibalism of the gnomes. This can function as a Chime of Hunger that only affects non-Waywarders 3/day, and can also summon 2d6 Waywarders to his aid at will. The other quevari only openly recognize him as their lord and master during the night, but still are fiercely protective of him during the day. He can potentially be driven away in fear by forcefully invoking Black Hat - this requires something like disguising yourself ''as'' the boogeyman or telling a Black Hat story, simply saying the name won't scare him.

If killed, one of the Wayward women will find herself pregnant within a week, and give birth to Caleb's reincarnation a month later. Caleb will resume his true form as an elven year old a month after being born. The only way to kill Caleb for good is to wipe out the entire town of Wayward, which frankly you should be wanting to do anyway.

Caleb can close the borders by summoning tornadoes that lash all around the domain's periphery, kicking up lethal sandstorms and making it impossible to flee.

===Cassandre Desesprits===
Darklord of Miseria. Born to a humble farmer's family, Cassandre was gifted with the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, which also made her a very effective seer. When this was revealed to her village, she became an immediate celebrity, and this situation - never permitted time to herself or any true friends, but also showered in displays of good will and thanks - twisted her heart. She became completely self-centered, egotistical and immoral, regarding all others as nothing more than things to use for her own amusement and gratification.

When a war broke out amongst the local villages over the ability to use her seer powers, Cassandre exploited this to become a veritable queen, feeding just the right predictions to all factions to keep the war dragging on perpetually for over two years, wallowing in opulence whilst others bled, died and starved over her. Inevitably, the war drew to its climax, with both factions preparing to launch a decisive blow with a super-spell; Cassandre manipulated them into both acting at the exact same time, figuring that this would cause the spells to negate each other and stalemate, thus preserving the war and her power. Instead, they magnified each other, resulting in the annihilation of the warring armies and Cassandre being literally blown into Miseria.

Cassandre's curse is, fundamentally, that she will never again enjoy the lifestyle she once enjoyed. Although surrounded by people who genuinely like and care for her rather than her gifts, she pines for the days when people doted upon her every wish and resents being forced to work for a living as a barmaid. Her [[diviner]] powers have dwindled and become almost useless, but her spiritual powers have expanded; she now commands incorporeal [[undead]] with the proficiency of a master [[necromancer]], and her life is supplement with the years drained by her [[ghost]]ly minions. None of her schemes to regain her "royal" status will ever work, and so she seems doomed to an eternity as a beloved but otherwise unremarkable barmaid.

When she closes the borders, Miseria is surrounded by thick red fog that causes those who try to leave to age and eventually crumble to dust, whereupon they become ghosts under her command.

If slain, Cassandre becomes a ghost herself, but then resurrects 2d4 days later. Only if she is confronted in ghost form by an exorcist of the local deity Saint-Ambroise who can denounce her for her crimes in life will she be banished from the world of the living forever.

===Coyote===
Darklord of Yatehcaa. Once, this animal god aided the First Man in protecting his American Aboriginal-flavored world from powerful monsters. But his greed, malice and cruelty led to him committing many dark acts, and so the gods declared him unfit to remain amongst their ranks. First Man took back Coyote's cloak of stars, condemning him to stay forever on the world and be vulnerable to the monsters he had once battled. But Coyote showed no regret, no compassion, no willingness to learn from his mistakes or to try and make amends, and so he found himself trapped in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Ever since, he has continued his old ways, playing cruel, malicious tricks on the people of Yatehcaa, all the while trying to distract himself from how afraid he is that some day, he might be caught and killed by "The Dark Watchers", the antediluvian monsters whom he once battled alongside First Man.

Technically, nothing protects Coyote from death, but between his lack of shame and utter cowardice combined with his powerful magical abilities, actually killing him in a fight is easier said than done.

===Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez===
Darklord of Resistencia. Born the son of a once-great noble family in the Holy Republic of Aragona, Santiago's family had fallen in stature to such a degree that the impoverished patricians had mortaged their lands to the hilt and lived a life barely above that of their peasant tenats. They scrimped and saved to send Santiago to court, but the Don of Quijada found himself a laughing stock, regarded as little better than a jumped up hayseed peasant. This only fueled a lifelong hatred for those lacking in noble blood.

Desperate to try and reclaim the respect he had been taught from birth his family name deserved, Santiago bought a commission in the army. He proved little better here than he had in the court; poor of health, average at best with the sword, and no genius in the command of men or the intricacies of tactics and strategy. His only saving grace was his thoroughness and dedication... but even this went sour, breeding in him an obsession with discipline, cleanliness and presentation, and a love of punishment so extreme that even the Aragonan army considered him a draconian tyrant.

Though Santiago managed to win a few fairly creditable actions early in his career, his faults quickly stole away what his successes had won him, sending him into a self-inflicted downward spiral of ever-worsening behavior and failures as a result. He was appointed as the governor a rebellious backwater province, and only made things worse as he extended the same tyrannical, brutal law he held over his military forces to the population.

Then he was offered the chance to take up governship in a minor overseas colony called Neuva Aragona, which was also currently rebelling. Despite recognizing that this was intended to be a sentence of exile, Santiago accepted, dreaming of reversing his fortunes. Instead, he proved the absolute ''worst'' choice for the role; a born-and-bred monarchist with no sympathy for the lot of the peasants, he ignored the legitimate grievances of the rebels and remained fundamentally convinced that the isle of Manzanilla - renamed "Resistencia" by the rebels - was home to a silent majority of good, loyal followers of the kings. Ignoring all opportunities efor a diplomatic solution, he launched into his trademark brutality, which only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the natives.

Among his many atrocities, he took captive the pregnant wife of the rebel leader Martin Jose Maconda, one Isabel de Maconda. Simultaneously smitten with her and repulsed by her loyalty to the rebel's cause, he alternatively cajoled her and brutalized her, culminating in his ordering that she would be permitted no midwife when she went into labor. The birth went bad, and both mother and child died.

All his atrocities were for nothing, ineptitude and his habit of overworking his never-great health led to him dying in his sickbed, on the very day the last of his depleted forced were overwhelmed and Neuva Aragona formally seceded independence. But even as he died, he cursed that the rebels must be defeated at any cost.

Santiago now exists as a ghost, cursed to forever mentally relieve every battle he lost on Resistencia and see with perfect clarity how he could have won. And, of course, he's also cursed that no matter how he schemes and plots, on those rare moments he tears himself away from his biter memories and dreams of glory to actually try and do something, his plans to re-conquer Manzanilla are doomed to fail.

If defeated in battle, Santiago reforms in his burial chamber below Castillo Ascension, although he remains trapped there until the next full moon. The only way he can be destroyed is if his personal sword is stolen from this chamber and used to deliver the death blow in combat.

When he closes the borders, the sea surrounding Resistencia takes on an eerie, unnatural calm; sailing ships cannot move, and rowers will find that they simply can't get more than a half-mile away from the coast.

===Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll===
Darklord of Immerabt. This female human alchemist could in many ways be considered a mirror to Dr. Mordenheim of Lamordia. Like him, she was born a scientific prodigy who had neither time nor patience for religions and matters of faith. When she was twelve, Dorothy's mother died in childbirth giving birth to a son, something Dorothy blamed upon both the local priest - for he had both refused to allow Dorothy to be present at the birth, despite her knowledge of herbs and medicines, for her lack of faith, and proven unable to save Lady Hemphyll's life with his limited divine magic - and her father, for he had listened to the priest.

This became the cornerstone of Dorothy's growing loathing for religion, something that grew ever stronger as she aged. She went abroad to study medical sciencies, [[transmuter|transmutation magic]] and [[alchemist|philosophical alchemy]], always seeking to refine her medical skills. She also visited the dark, seedy corners of society: brothels, dog-fighting arenas, drug-fueled parties and other such realms that further convinced her of the absence of divine intervention.

The kicker was when she met and fell in love with another medical student of noble ancestry; Hermann Leawly. Despite her feelings, she refused to marry him, for that would require submitting to a religious ceremony she wanted nothing to do with. But he bent under the pressure from his traditional family and returned to their home, something that enraged Dorothy, who now derided him as a weakling.

After a long, bloody war, a terrible plague gripped her homeland, and Dorothy came up with an idea for a new method to care for the terminally ill. She purchased an abandoned penitentiary on a small rocky island and converted it into a sickbay, hiring the best healers she could find (so long as they weren't divine spellcasters). One of those she hired was Hermann. She became ever-more obsessive, pushing her followers brutally, and gaining the first attention of the [[Dark Powers]]. When she perfected her prototype life support mechanisms and began abducting the terminally ill from her hospice to install them in the devices, trapping them at the brink of life and death in a state of constant, unrelenting pain, they grew anticipatory. But it wasn't until she got drunk at a party celebrating her newly produced plague vaccine, and revealed to Hermann her monstrous experiments, injecting him with concentrated plague serum and deliberately waiting for him to reach the still-incurable terminal stage of the disease before strapping him into one of her hideous living death machines that they seized her and transformed goal island into Immerabt.

Dorothy's curse is three-fold, and could be a considered a blend of Mordenheim's and Azalin's. Though she is well-aware of the fact that the local industries of Immerabt are poisoning the population, her attempts to plan and execute social projects to counter the pollution invariably fail due to being rejected or ignored. Secondly, she is kept so busy working her daily job that she cannot devote the time to furthering her understandings of magic and alchemy, preventing her from attaining the greater power she needs to pursue her goal of the ultimate curatives. Finally, she is unable to invent a vaccine to cure those suffering from the terminal effects of the plague, which means she cannot cure Hermann, who remains bound and suffering in his life-support in the depths of her sanitarium.

Unlike many darklords, Dorothy has no inherent abilities that make her unkillable, although her disease-bearing touch and biomechanical golem guards make her a force to be reckoned with in combat. She can regenerate, but she's vulnerable to fire.

If she wishes to close the borders of Immerabt, violent storms with strong winds and heavy rain surround the archipelago, whilst the waters boil with mutated [[shark]]s and other aquatic predators.

===Elizabeth Michelle Cole III===
Darklord of Hibernate. This female human [[vampire]] was born to the noble family of the Coles in the land of Hybernaya on Boram'ith. Despite her aristocratic lineage, she did not believe in the inherent superiority of her bloodline, and fell in love with a peasant boy, whom her parents had executed on trumped-up charges. This engendered a deep hatred for her parents in Elizabeth's heart, and at the age of 28, she left home to "think about things".

In her wanderings, she met and fell in love with a man named Alexander Berzinski, a [[vampire]] who converted her into one as well. They traveled together for seven years before parting, whereupon Elizaeth returned home, murdered her parents, and ruled their lands with an iron first for a decade.

During this time, she became a high priestess of [[Thanatos]], and attempted to lure a prophesied warrior known as "The Son of the Black Moon" into Thanatos' service. A task she delighted in, for she fell in love with him when she met him - a one-sided love, for he was devoted to his [[half-elf]] girlfriend. When he died escaping from his contract with the dark god, Elizabeth had him resurrected and attempted to lure him through a portal to the [[Lower Planes]], only to find herself alone in Darkon. Here, she fell afoul of the Kargat and fled to the Sea of Sorrows, only to find herself bound to the newly formed isle of Hibernate when she set foot there.

She has risen to power as the madame of the most well-respected brothel in Hibernate, leading a force of twenty eight call girls, all of whom she has turned into [[vampire]]s. Her curse is that she yearns to find the Son of the Black Moon and claim him for herself, but he has never materialized in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Elizabeth is unaffected by Hibernatian holy symbols, due to the combined facts that they represent a non-existant god and the lack of true faith endemic in Hibernate's people, but can be slain by a pine wood stake, or paralyzed with any other kind of stake. If Elizabeth is killed, one of her vampire prostitutes will fall into a month-long coma, during which she will physically and mentally be subsumed and transformed into a new incarnation of Elizabeth. It's unclear how this can be prevented.

When she wishes to close the domain, Hibernate's borders are choked by a thick fog that is impossible to navigate; those who try only find themselves circling back to Hibernate, no matter how hard they try.

The [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002 version of Elizabeth emphasizes her fundamental selfishness and cruelty, and also notes that her Undying Soul will allow her to possess any woman in Hibernate should all of her prostitutes be killed.

===Gatwe and Mr. Klein===
The domain of Nzari is home to two darklords, struggling for dominance.

'''Gatwe''' is the original Darklord; an Mwele man who was forever questioning the traditions of his people even from a youth and who burned to hold power. He apprenticed himself to the tribal shaman, whom he perceived held the true power, but his ambitions remained unchecked. When the most beautiful woman in the village chose to marry a respected hunter, that was the last straw; he forsook all the traditional limits on the shaman and began practicing sorcery. He used curses to sicken and kill those he hated, and goad the tribe into war, slowly building an empire from the scattered tribes of the Mwele. When suspicion began to fall upon him, he murdered his own family to try and throw it off, assuming the form of a leopard to plant a curse-bundle that would kill them all slowly and painfully. When he began to resume his human form, that was when the [[Dark Powers]] struck, trapping him in a twisted [[Broken One|nightmarish conglomerate form]], incapable of wielding his former magic, and launching Nzari into the Misty Realm.

'''Mr. Klein''' came to Nzari after its appearance in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. A fanatical devotee of [[Ezra]], he yearned to be a missionary, but found that goal stymied during the initial rush to explore the Sea of Sorrows; the merchants who controlled the expedition wanted profits, not proselytizing. Only when Nzari was discovered, with its savage cannibal tribes and vast wealth of ivory, did Mr. Klein finally find his desire within his grasp. He founded the Dementlieur Exploration Company, and led its first expedition to Nzari. The Mwele naturally resisted this foreign invasion, but Klein had the zeal of a fanatic and pressed on, resorting to ever-more brutal tactics as months of battle and disease took its toll on his followers. Eventually, he caught the attention of Gatwe, but managed to fight the feared "leopard-devil" off - an act that won him inroads amongst the Mwele. His followers swelled in numbers, and he seemed to make real progress in "civilizing" Nzari... until he realized that his followers were not worshipping Ezra, but Klein himself, and that those he conquered were merely paying lip service to his commands. Furious, he resorted to to ever-more draconian methods to "stamp out the heathenism", but succeeded only in pushing the Mwele to rebel. Klein counter-attacked viciously with his own forces, and responded by flaying every last one of them alive before he had them beheaded, their bodies cast into the river, and their heads impaled on stakes around his house.

In the face of such brutality, the Dark Powers aren't sure ''which'' of the two better deserves the title of Darklord.

Gatwe's curse is simple: he is forever cut off from the adoration and power he changes. No Mwele will have anything to do with one so obviously marked as a sorcerer, and he cannot change or disguise his form regardless of what artifice he tries. Mr. Klein, on the other hand, is cursed that when he sleeps, he sees the world through Gatwe's eyes, experiencing the broken one's life as he lives it. Both, ironically, share the curse of wanting to change the Mwele culture, but being completely incapable of doing so.

The two Darklords ''despise'' each other. Gatwe has become convinced that if he can kill Klein, his full powers will be restored to him. Klein, on the other hand, believes that Gatwe is a literal demon, a symbol of the savagery hidden in humanity's heart, and that only by "civilizing" the Mwele will the nightmarish dream-visions cease.

Unusually for co-darklords, they can both close Nzari's borders; Gatwe surrounds the domain an impenetrable thicket of vegetation, whilst those trying to flee against Klein's wishes find themselves lost in thick fog and eventually attacked by an endless hail of arrows.

Both darklords also have their own unique forms of immortality. If Gatwe is killed, one of the leopards of Nzari will become his reincarnation a day later. Klein, on the other hand, is simply impervious to all attacks not dealt with an ivory weapon (a ''blessed'' ivory weapon deals double damage!) and will not return if slain.

===Geren Horstadt===
Darklord of Seradan. Born the favored son of a minor noble family, Geren was a bullying braggart in private, but a charming and idolized peer in public. All that changed when, at the age of 17, he was struck by a strange wasting disease that crippled him irreversibly; he lost use of his legs, his muscles withered, and all his senses faded. Though his family bankrupted themselves to try and cure him, nothing worked. He spent fifteen years in his own personal hell, watching and envying those with normal lives, and resenting his family despite the love and care they still showered him with.

His true descent into damnation came when one of his brothers brought down a trunk full of books from the attack, and Geren learned one of his great-grandfathers had been a powerful [[wizard]] - one with considerable experience in summoning beings from the [[Lower Planes]]. When his family refused to hire a wizard to tutor Geren in magic, he decided to try summoning a [[fiend]] on his own. He called forth a [[yugoloth]], who was so surprised by the venomous manner in which Geren pleaded his case that he offered Geren a trade: the souls of Geren's families in exchange for the ability to "help Geren feel what others feel".

It was a bargain Geren made without hesitation. He hired an [[assassin]] to kill every last member of his family, other than his mother. In exchange, the yugoloth gifted him with the ability to possess others, which allowed him to vicariously experience life as a normal person again. He slowly began to rebuild the family's fortunes by using possessed thralls to commit acts of murder and theft... then the townsfolk began to suspect his mother was involved, and she in turn wondered if Geren was responsible. When she confronted him, however, Geren petuantly seized control of her mind and made her kill herself. But some of the townsfolk had just arrived to question her again, and they discovered her slumping over the infamous and now-hated cripple. Realizing that Geren had been responsible, they beat him with clubs and then dragged him into the streets, where the mob lynched him; hanging him from a tree and beating him to death as they burned his family's home and himself.

Such was Geren's rage at this fate that he returned from the grave as a powerful haunt - a [[Ravenloft]] strain of [[ghost]]. With his possession abilities enhanced, he used them to massacre the entire population of the village... which was when the Mists rolled in and claimed him for Seradan.

Geren's darklord status brings with it a cocktail of curses. The standard Darklord curse of being unable to leave his domain chafes him particularly, being that he yearns to explore and experience the world. Making matters worse is that he is now trapped in a realm of dullards, so docile, unimaginative and unfeeling that possessing them is little better than staying a ghost. For further insult, Geren can now only possess hosts for short periods of time, or else they die of a supernaturally induced fever, forcing him to largely avoid using his possession abilities.

Geren always reforms one week after being destroyed. Only if he is allowed to kill Wilhelm Braugh, the only survivor of Geren's hometown and the inspector who gave him over to the mob, will he cease to exist, having decided that there is nothing left to live for. If he closes the borders, supernatural exhaustion claims any who try to leave the domain, sapping their strength until they are left helpless.

===Henry Arlington===
Darklord of Arlington Farm. Henry Arlington was a farmer who obsessed about success. Inheriting his farm after the tragic death of his parents in a house fire, he killed his own elder brothers in a duel to secure his inheritance. He proved to be a demanding, overbearing farmer, and obsessed with successful crops; when an unexpected New Year's late frost resulted in damage to a significant portion of the crops, Henry flew into a rage, even though he had more than enough funds to weather this less-than-perfect year. In his rage, he murdered one of his farmhands, concealing the crime by cutting up his body and hiding it amongst the scarecrows on the property. That year, the farm bloomed with a record-breaking bounty.

The next year saw a similar pattern: the crops failed early in the year, but when Henry killed (in this case a stray dog), they suddenly reversed fortune and flourished. Henry became convinced that his farm would reward him with bounty only in exchange for blood sacrifices, and he began a yearly ritual of murdering some human victim and stuffing their dismembered body into the scarecrows. Over a decade of this grisly work, he soon had no farmhands left to sacrifice, and so instead he slaughtered his entire family for the sake of his farm.

That was the last straw. The grisly, corpse-stuffed scarecrows came to life and burned down all his crops, then dragged Henry out into the field and mutilated him, turning him into a fleshy scarecrow like themselves. That was when the Mists swallowed the farm.

In the present, Henry still tends to his farm as an animate corpse [[scarecrow]], only to find his labors undone whatever he achieves. In addition, every harvest moon, he finds himself human once more - and subsequently butchered by his vengeful scarecrow "workers".

Henry can close the border for up to an hour at a time by summoning a vast murder of crows that attack whoever tries to leave. After an hour, however, Henry is exhausted and must rest for 3 rounds before he can resummon the swarm. If slain, Henry remains dead until the next full moon or blue moon, whereupon he will possess one of the scarecrows in his domain and return to life. Theoretically, he can be destroyed forever by destroying all of the scarecrows.

===Hercules===
Darklord of Olympus. Born the son of the High Priest of [[Zeus]] in a theocratic nation ruled over by a collective of seven temples to the Greek Gods - Zeus, [[Athena]], [[Aphrodite]], [[Hermes]], [[Ares]], [[Apollo]] and [[Hades]], the man now known only as Hercules earned great fame in his youth by speaking up against the brutal repression of the priest-lords and championing the rights of the oppressed commoners. Although originally he sought peace, the overwhelming corruption opposing him led him first to delving into the murky depths of politics, and finally into leading a full-blown revolution.

This angered the realm's rulers, the conclave of High Priests known as the Council of Seven, who came up with three plans to ruin Hercules. The High Priest of Zeus sent his son cursed gauntlets that would drive him into bloodthirsty rages under false pretence of truce. The High Priestess of Athena sought to summon a daemonic entity that would grant the Council magical powers that would allow them to crush the rebels and prove themselves the true "Voices of the Gods". Finally, the High Priestess of Aphrodite arranged for one of her serving girls to be sent to seduce Hercules, with the ultimate plan of disgracing him by tempting him into committing the blasphemous act of making love in the holy ground of the temple of Zeus.

They couldn't have expected that Dejanira, the girl chosen by the Voice of Aphrodite, would fall in love with Hercules and reveal the ploy to him. Any more than she could have expected for him to revile her as a traitorous seductress, but hide his loathing and use her to deliver a strike against the Council as they performed the summoning ritual. At the height of battle and ritual both, Hercules turned on Dejanira and stabbed her to death before throwing her into the center of the Council, then beating his father to death as he was paralyzed by the sudden influx of magical energies from the rite.

The Seven Voices of the Gods were transformed into quasi-daemons in their own right, and Hercules became the Darklord of the realm now called simply "Olympus".

Hercules is cursed both with the erratic and dangerous rages from his braces, and in that he is haunted by the terrifying spectre of Dejanira, who still loves him even in death. Worse still, his reputation continually sours due to his berserk rages.

The only way to kill Hercules for good is to force him, the six "Living Gods" of Olympus and the Forsaken One (the half-daemonic ghost of the High Priest of Zeus) to meet in the abandoned temple of Zeus and perform the fiend summoning ritual again. Only if Hercules allows himself to be sacrificed as part of the ritual will his curse be ended - which will also strip the Living Gods of their powers and make them mortal as well.

If Hercules wishes to seal the borders of Olympus, a titanic lightning storm envelops the domain, striking down any who attempt to escape.

===Heresa Heri, The Vulture King===
Darklord of Tsuu-Y-Teke. Long ago, Heresa Heri was one of the great animal lords, powerful spirits subordinate to the greater animal gods, but he betrayed his master's wishes after being named ruler over the skies: when given the ability to create permanent light from enchanted crystals, rather than sharing this light with the world, he selfishly kept them for himself, turning them into a shining feathered headdress. But his treachery was uncovered by a human hero-shaman named Kanaciwe, who captured Heresa Heri and tore out the golden and silver feathers, turning them into the sun, moon and stars. But the appearance of the sun dazed Kanaciwe, allowing Heresa Heri to break free of the shaman's grip and kill him.

This act enraged his rival, the newly empowered Haloe-Tsuu (Sun Puma), who cursed Heresa Heri; never again would he be allowed to face the sunlight, or else it would destroy him. Though the Vulture King fled into the deepest cave, he was mortally wounded, and summoned his underlings to ceremonially preserve his body and spirit. As he died, he cursed all those who had robbed him of "his" treasure, from the humans whose shaman had taken his headdress of shining light to the skies themselves for being home to the sun and moon. Thus was the domain of Tsuu-Y-Teke born.

In appearance, the Vulture King is a white-feathered giant vulture with a dark red bonnet of dried blood on his head, sickly yellow eyes that glow in the dark, and a jagged, uneven beak that gives him the appearance of fanged teeth. He is an [[undead]] creature with powers similar to those of a [[mummy]], althoug he looks like a living bird.

As Darklord, Heresa Heri is trapped in his cavern lair except during True Night, the one period of darkness that comes to Tsuu-Y-Teke once per month. He has become obsessed with the idea that if he can amass a sufficient number of gems, he can reimprison the light and restore the endless Night that the world once knew... but he knows that to do so, he needs the ''exact'' number of gems as there are stars in the sky, and he no longer remembers how many that is!

In combat, Heresa Heri is a powerhouse and all but impossible to destroy without the use of sunlight or powerful magical light. Even then, if destroyed, his spirit will possess any giant vulture within a 13 mile radius, which will transform into the Vulture King 1 week later.

When the Vulture King seeks to seal Tsuu-Y-Teke, then impenetrable magical darkness gathers on the borders; those who try to escape instead get lost in the utter blackness and stumble right back out into the domain.

===Jarl Gravstein Hansen===
Darklord of the Northlands. This male human was born to the Gand tribe, son of the man who had founded the trade guild known as the Key, which was bringing much-needed prosperity to the realm. He railed against the tradition by which the Gand and Kosti tribes alternated ownership of the capital city of Miklaheim every five years, and was determined to keep ownership of the city for himself.

To do so, he launched a brutal campaign against the Gand tribe, taxing his own people into famine and ruin to do so. When they were devastated, he turned his back on the traditional religion of the seidmen, secretly siphoning away funds from the church who thought he was supporting them. Finally, he began taxing the trade guild to borderline ruin itself. Through his short-sighted greed and selfishness, the realm was drawn into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Secretly, Gravstein yearns to be respected and loved, but he cannot attain it - only if he returns all the land of the Gand to them will this curse be broken, which mechanically manifests as an automatic failure on any Charisma check other than Intimidation. He doesn't have any magical powers to preserve his life, but whoever takes up the mantle of leadership should he die will be cursed in the same manner.

Closing the borders results in a vast army of warrior spirits descending from the heavens and physically blocking passage.

===Captain Jacobi Robertsonn===
Darklord of Whal. Born a fisherman's son on an unnamed world, Jacobi grew up in seas that were plentiful with a father who loved him and loved his life on the sea. Then, when Jacobi was young, he and his father were caught in a terrible storm whilst fishing, during which the youth spotted a giant whale - a ''leviathan'' - playing in the rough surf. Play that ended with the breaching whale crashing right on top of the small fishing boat; Jacobi awoke washed ashore, scarred, surrounded by debris, and with his father missing.

Years later, Jacobi was commanding a trading galleon called the Sailor's Blessing with his beloved only son Abram when the ship was caught in a tropical storm. On the fourth day, the ship hit something in the water and began to sink, and during the scramble to escape, Abram was swept over the side and vanished. Spotting a leviathan in the storm, Jacobi blamed his son's apparent death on the creature, and in fact convinced himself it was the same whale that had killed his father.

Returning to port, he purchased a new ship, the Retribution, and became a whaler, venting his wrath on whales indiscriminately for the next decade. He was beginning to lose all hope of ever attaining vengeance when he finally encountered the biggest whale he'd ever seen - what he was sure was the leviathan that had killed his father and son. He personally led the hunt and harpooned the beast, only for it turn and smash his boat to pieces. Driven by rage, the wounded Jacobi hauled himself onto the beast by climbing the rope of the embedded harpoon; even as the surviving crew fled, he stabbed the whale over and over again, all the while cursing it, himself and his crew with all his soul... until everything went black.

Then he awoke and found himself on a strange, yet vaguely familiar, island; the land of Whal. A place of whalers who, to his surprise, deferred to him with their problems. He has since figured out he rules Whal, but is cursed to never leave it.

As a Darklord, Jacobi's curse is that he has become a rare oceanic [[therianthrope]]: a [[wereorca]]. He has distinctly mixed feelings about this form; he acknowledges the appropriateness of it, but he loathes being associated with a whale. He's also been cursed to suffer from intense sea-sickness if he ever sets foot upon a water-borne vessel, so whilst he does enjoy the freedom offered by his alterante form, the fact he can only hunt as an orca means he misses the thrill of commanding his own ship. Whilst normally he has control over this changes, he is forced to assume orca form on the days of his father's and son's deaths, days that are also marked by intense storms.

Perhaps his true curse, however, is that despite his obsession with killing the leviathan he blames for ruining his life, the creature never appears in the waters off of Whal.

When Jacobi closes his borders, the sea parts down to the sea floor, creating a 300ft wide chasm between the two bodies of water. Flight is, of course, impossible. Nothing explicitly prevents you from walking across the chasm and then using water-breathing magic to escape through the water on the other side, though.

Jacobi has no life-preserving powers outside of his immunity to any weapon that isn't +1 or made from whalebone. He is a 16th level [[Avenger]], however, which combined with the aquatic capabilities of his form makes him more dangerous than you'd think.

===Jinx===
Darklord of the Lost Wizard's Tower. This male black cat was once the [[familiar]] of a [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale, a caring and heroic individual, but a slightly neglectful owner, and also too hubristic for her own good. Jinx's journey into damnation began when she decided to use the cat as the test subject for an experiment in increasing the intelligence of animals.

It worked... but it also made Jinx smart enough to realize just how much more there was to Margaret's life than him. He became convinced that she had chosen him as her test subject because she simply didn't ''care'' if he lived or died, developing a burning resentment for it. Worse, he became mentally human enough to become convinced that he was in love with Margaret, and to be consumed with jealousy that she had other interests in her life.

When the region where they lived was attacked by [[barbarian]]s, Jinx went out of his way to assist Margaret, hoping to prove his worth in the hopes that she would come to reciprocate his jealous, obsessive love. She did not. Instead, she fell in love with a young warrior under her command. When she announced their upcoming marriage, he devised and enacted a plan to lead the man Margaret had fallen for to his death in battle. With no spellcasters in the region powerful enough to revive the fallen, Jinx was sure that this would be the end of his "competition".

To Jinx's fury, the death of her betrothed only filled Margaret with rage and suicidal grief. She prepared a super-powerful alchemical explosive, and made a personal assault on the horde's camp. Blind with fury, she waded through the ranks of the enemy, surviving many attacks only because Jinx fought like a hellcat to save her - to the familiar's growing rage as he realized she didn't even notice her efforts. Finally, Margaret planted the explosive, only to be attacked by the horde's leader. Though she defeated him, she was badly hurt in the process, leaving her helpless in the face of the coming explosion.

Jinx tried to pull her to safety, but was too weak to do so. Margaret told him to flee to safety, and expressed her happiness that in dying, she would meet her beloved fiancee in the afterlife. At that, the cat flew into a rage and revealed how ''he'' had arranged the warrior's death, blaming his actions on Margaret's decision to give him the curse of reason. Finally, he vowed that Margaret would neither see Jinx's death nor her beloved, raking her eyes with his claws and then fleeing his master, whose screams of pain were swiftly cut off by the explosion.

Unrepentant, yet fearful, Jinx fled all the way back to the tower where he and Margaret once lived, only to find it mysteriously deserted. He has remained there ever since.

Jinx waits endlessly now for people to visit the lost tower, hoping to claim a new master. His first preference is a female [[wizard]], then a female [[sorcerer]], then a female [[bard]] or any other arcane spellcasting clas, and then finally a male arcanist. He will do whatever he can to first persuade them to accept his presence, and then separate his chosen master from their former companions. His curse, of course, is that he will always destroy any relationship he establishes - if nothing else, he will end up killing the would-be master when they fail to meet his standards for loving and doting upon him. He prefers to use his retained spells ability, which allows him to cast Flesh to Stone one per day, to "immortalize" failed masters by petrifying them.

Jinx has no specific powers keeping him alive, so if you can kill the little beast, he's done for. He can't even close the borders properly, but instead just summons the Mists; those who flee will find themselves emerging from the mist elsewhere in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

===Warden Jonar Tamh===
Darklord of Karss. This [[Harmonium]]-sworn male [[aasimar]] [[Fighter]] joined the Harmonium at a young age, and very quickly moved up the ranks, attaining the position of Mover One at the age of 25. When he was selected to lead the experimental Great Prison of Ortho, a reformation-focused alternative to the [[Mercykiller]]-run prison of [[Sigil]], he saw it as a great honor... until it became apparent that the majority of the cynical Sigil-originated prisoners were unwilling to cooperate with the project.

Fearful for his reputation, Jonar Tamh resorted to increasingly brutal and draconian punishments, covering up the ongoing breakdown from his superiors and replacing subordinates who dared to question him. Growing convinced that some force - the [[Mercykiller]]s, the [[Revolutionary League]], or the agents of evil - was sabotaging the Great Prison, he descended ever-deeper into brutality. Finally, his best friend, the deputy warden Zet Keffen, tried to convince Jonar to return to the Great Prison's original premise; when Jonar refused, he declared he would bring this matter to the Factol of the Harmonium.

Jonar panicked and killed Zet right then and there, covering it up by blaming the murder on two particularly troublesome prisoners and executing them for it.

But Jonar couldn't cover it up forever. Hearing that his superiors were on their way to investigate the prison, and also that there were plans for a mass uprisiong, Jonar gathered 28 of the most outspoken and problematic inmates and hanged them all, one by one. As the last expired, a great hurricane arose from nowhere, forcing the Harmonium guards indoors. When the storm ended, the Great Prison now sat on the barren island of Karss.

Jonar Tamh suffers two major curses. Firstly, although he now has the ability to mentally control large numbers of people at once, he experiences all of the pain and misery of those he is controlling. Secondly, the vengeful spirit of Zet has become bound to Jonar's sword; if Jonar inflicts 12 or more damage with it against a single foe, Zet gains the abilities of a rank 2 ghost for one hour, allowing him to attack his former best friend.

The aasimar darklord cannot close the borders of Karss.

===Kasselheim Blightlyng===
Darklord of Vulnara. This [[gnome]] [[vampire]] had the misfortune to be born a gnome with no sense of humor. Whilst other gnomes were happily running round, playing stupid pranks and making silly illusions, Kasselheim was stuck fuming over how non-gnomish races didn't treat them with the slightest respect, all whilst the other gnomes reacted to his pleas for them to just try and be a little more serious by pranking him worse than ever. Eventually, he became a [[Transmuter]], bitterly thumbing his nose at a centuries old family radition, and withdrew to the deepest depths of their underground home. Then a few years later, a great flood washed through the gnome community and drove them up onto the surface, and the survivors counted Kasselheim as one of the dead.

They didn't know that Kasselheim had severely blinded and deafened himself in an alchemical explosion during his period of isolation. Nor could they know that many of those presumed dead in the flood were actually kidnapped by Kasselheim, who began experimenting in dark magic to steal their senses for himself, ultimately transforming them into warped monsters called "tactyles". But when they finally began moving back into the tunnels years later, they found out.

They formed a great war party with the aid of [elf]], [[dwarf]] and [[human]] adventurers from communities who had also suffered Kasselheim's depredations, and tracked him down to his underground fortress... only to be all but wiped out. Even though former friends (well, ''they'' considered themselves to be his friends, at least) and family were amongst the party, Kasselheim killed or captured them all. The last survivor was one of his sisters, a [[cleric]] of the gnome gods who threw herself to her death over a cliff whilst cursing him. An earthquake, and Kasselheim was knocked unconscious, rising to discover he had become a unique form of gnomish [[vampire]].

Kasselheim's curse is that he must ''constantly'' feed; his stolen senses of sight, hearing, scent and taste dwindle rapidly after feeding, until all that he has left is enough of a sense of touch to register pain. However, because of how fast his senses fade, and the isolated nature of his lair, he is effectively confined to a small part of his domain, and thus must go long, terrible intervals between feedings.

Killing Kasselheim can be done in two ways. First, if he is exposed to sunlight, he becomes incorporeal; if he is kept from fleeing back to his lair for two hours whilst in this form, he dissipates into nothing. Secondly, one can complete a complicated ritual, slightly altered from the traditional gnomish vampire. To achieve his permanent destruction, Kasselheim must first be immobilized by staking him with a silver spike through the heart. Then his hands must be cut off and boiled in a volcanic hot spring for 24 hours, after which his eyes must be gouged out and replaced with precious gems (100gp value minimum for each eye). Finally, his inert body must be carried to some place where it can be exposed to direct sunlight for an hour - but this will revive him in his incorporeal form, so the would-be vampire killer will need to use some method to trap him in the light for the full hour.

===General Martin Jose Maconda===
Darklord of Maconda. This charismatic male human was, from his earliest days, both adept at manipulating others with his natural charm and good looks, prone to surprising moments of generosity, and feared for his grudge-holding, horrifying fits of temper, and trait for cold-blooded manipulation. It came a great surprise to him when he discovered that there were people he could not dominate at will - and worse still, his mixed heritage would forever prevent him from joining the upepr echelon of Manzanillan society.

Thus, out of a mixture of pride and genuine interest, he became involved in the growing revolutionary movement, and ultimately he became the leader of the guerilla forces fighting against the brutal suppressionist forces of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez. When Maconda's beloved wife Isabel died in her childbed as a result of of Don Santiago's cruelty, Maconda went in search of the fearsome Warlok of the Peak, determined to have the power to triumph over his enemies.

And he returned with that power. Only to find, to Maconda's fury, that Don Santiago had died of fever in his sickbed mere hours before the last Royalist troops were defeated. Enraged, he ordered the Royalists massacred, cutting down a priest who dared argue against this behavior, and once the bloodshed was over, he left Resistencia for the mainland of Libertad, vowing never to return - a vow the [[Dark Powers]] were happy to fulfill for him.

A year later, he became the president of the Republic, and he soon established himself as a brutal tyrant as bad as the royalists he had overthrown.

The Warlock of the Peak transformed Maconda into a powerful [[wereanaconda]], and despite the many powers his state gives him, Maconda loathes this form, in part because he believes Isabel would be disgusted by it, and also in part because he is compellede to transform into a giant anaconda and feed on human flesh on the night of the new moon. Unusually, he cannot create other wereanacondas with his biter, but those who drink or touch his blood, even if they are spattered with it in combat, risk being turn into either were-fer-de-lanes or were-bushmasters, species of [[weresnake]] (treat as Neutral Evil [[werecobra]]s) native to Libertad and compelled to be loyal to him.

Maconda's curse is that he desperately yearns to be loved and adored, but his insistence upon doing so by repressing and removing all opposition or dissent merely stokes the hatred and fear of those he rules over.

He can be wounded by weapons made of silver or the wood of the caobo tree, and is sickened by both the smell and taste of guavas. If defeated in battle, Maconda doesn't die but instead assumes anaconda form and slithers off into the jungle, unable to regain his human form until the next new moon. There is no known way to permanently destroy him.

Maconda can close the domain borders of his island by causing the jungles and seas to become engulfed in massive swarms of lethally poisonous snakes.

===Miles Havelocke===
Darklord of the Eternal Torture. Born in a coastal city, Miles was pressganged at the age of 15, which ruined his life; he suffered from incurable seasickness, for which his fellows tormented him mercilessly and the bullying captain only made it worse by assigning him to the worst tasks possible for somebody with his condition, ordering him severely beaten when, inevitably, he threw up. With no aptitude for mathematics, Miles couldn't master the art of navigation, and so couldn't hope to progress to the higher ranks of the navy.

Twenty years of this treatment turned Miles into a bitter, miserable bully who loathed the sea and used what little authority he could get to exact vengeance upon those few below him on the ship's pecking order. Why he never simply fled during his first shore leave, nobody knows.

Eventually, Miles' captain was chosen to make a voyage into the uncharted western ocean, to Miles' dismay. But when the captain continued in pressing on in pursuit of ever-richer islands to the west, it led to the ship becoming lost in the waters and supplies running low. Miles seized this opportunity for revenge and began spreading rumors about the ship's officers hoarding food for themselves, ultimately leading a successful mutiny. When his ineptitude at seamanship led to them being becalmed, he led his mutineers to cannibalize the captured officers, gleefully rubbing their faces in their past abuse of him and coming to relish human flesh.

And then, as this supply of food began to run low, they finally spotted land... but, as they rowed frantcially to reach it, the Mists arose and swallowed the ship. When they cleared, the mutineers found themselves in the middle of a sea in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Overwhelmed by misery, they sat down and waited for death... and then, a fortnight later, they arose as [[ghoul]]s under the command of Miles Havelock, a Ghoul Lord, and began searching for food and land.

Miles Havelock suffers multiple curses. Firstly, he can never reach land, no matter how desperately he tries - at best, he can get a brief glimpse of the coast before the Mists immediately rise and teleport his ship elsewhere. Secondly, his seasickness has not only survived undeath, but intensified; he is '''perpetually''' seasick and also starving hungry, and these twin pains are why he has rechristened his ship "The Eternal Torture". If destroyed, his essence will inhabit the body of a living prisoner in the ship's hold and consume them from the inside out; the only way to end his curse is to kill him, rescue all of the prisoners, and sink the Eternal Torture, then make for land at full speed.

===Rafe Ungard===
Darklord of Callista. This male [[Half-Vistani]] [[Bard]] used his natural charm (and a complexion that allowed him to hide his hated Vistani blood) to swindle innocent women into marriage scams, start feuds amongst noble families for his own amusement, and delve into increasingly cruel and lethal manipulation. The backstory of poor Susannah Joson from [[Children of the Night]]: [[Ghost]]s is but one example of his misdeeds. When a party of [[adventurer]]s tried to bring him to justice, he continually slipped away, leaving the bodies of victims in his wake to torment them, and ultimately murdered his pursuers by burning down the inn they were staying in as they slept, which is when the Mists took him.

Rafe now possesses a strange form of immortality; he will ''always'' die once per day, no matter what steps he takes to try and avoid it, only to spontaneously return to life the next day. There is no known method to stop him from returning.

When he closes the domain, Callista's borders become a ring of boiling geysers that will kill anyone who passes through them, and which extend as high into the sky as needed to reach anyone trying to fly through.

===Sean Mako & Alice/Alison Marjory===
Darklords of Carcharodon Isle. Sort of a combination of Ladyhawke and the Little Mermaid. Over a century ago, a male human fisherman named Sean Marko lived in the village of Mistlington. One day, he discovered an injured [[merfolk|mermaid]] washed up on the isle's northwest shore, unconscious and bleeding from several wounds, including a severed left hand. Unable to turn away from someone in need, he brought her to his home and nursed her back to health. The mermaid, whose name translated into Common as "Alice", explained that she was the only survivor of a tribe that had been slaughtered by [[sahuagin]].

The two fell in love, much to the displeasure of the locals; the fishermen thought Sean was foolish for pining over a mermaid, and their wives were jealous of Alice's beauty, leading to them slandering her and Sean's relationship as "unnatural". Ultimately, a bunch of the village's men took it upon themselves to "repatriate" Alice; they came to Sean's house in the night, bludgeoned him unconscious, and carried Alice away. When Sean regained consciousness, he rowed desperately to catch up to them, but by the time he did so, they'd thrown the still-bound mermaid overboard.

Enraged, Sean snatched up a boathook and attacked the men who had assaulted him and the woman he loved, butchering them. When the carnage was over, he dove into the water after Alice, and then begged the full moon above for a fins and a tail so he might never be separated from his love.

Naturally, the [[Dark Powers]] chose to be dicks about granting this wish...

Both Sean and the revived Alice, now a human calling herself Alison Marjory, have become maledictive [[therianthrope]]s.

Sean is a giant [[wereshark]] who spends most of the month as an intelligent megalodon, unaware that he ''can'' transform and remembering nothing of his human life; only during the nights of the full moon and those nights directly before and after it does he return to his human form... which remembers everything he did as a giant killer shark. Because of his curse-spawned ignorance, the only way that shark!Sean can transform is if he is magically compelled to do so, such as by an Amulet of the Beast. He spends his days asleep and his nights hunting for food.

In contrast, Alison is a [[seawolf]] who spends most of the month as a human, but assumes her seawolf form on the nights before, during and after the full moon - the same nights when Sean regains his humanity. Like Sean, as a seawolf, she is completely ignorant of her human life. She keeps to herself, for the people of the isle still distrust and dislike her, gladly telling the nastiest stories they can think of about her to anyone who'll listen.

Neither darklord can be slain permanently through violence; they fully heal and return to life 1 round after being defeated. They also can't close the domain's borders, although since the only local vessels are small fishing boats that are no match for a giant shark or a massive seafaring wolf, they don't need to do much more than patrol the borders themselves.

Curing them simply requires breaking the curse by getting them to touch as humans, but doing so is tough; aside from the fact that they alternate human and monster forms, neither is aware of the fact that the other survives. Whichever of them is in beast form also refuses to get within 10 feet of the other one. They also won't willingly get within 5 feet of an Amulet of the Beast. So players are going to have to get creative to break their curse.

===Serenissa D'Aubliet===
Darklord of Romagna. Serenissa (female human spectre) was born an orphan; her father, a miller's son, was killed soon after her conception, and her peasant girl mother died in birthing her. She was taken in the local lord to serve as companion to his two daughters, but their initial friendship soured as they came of age and Serenissa realized the social gap between them. At the age of twelve, she was sent to the family of a neighboring lord to become a nursemaid to that lord's newly born twin children; Serenissa doted upon the children, and happily threw herself into their care.

However, she also became increasingly obsessed with fanciful daydreams about her origins, fixating on the belief that she was actually of noble birth and that her parents were both alive and desperately seeking her. She loved to tell these stories to her two charges... until the eve of their fourth birthdays, when, at the top of the Eagle's Tower, the two young children scolded her for lying and corrected her that she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a simpleton and a millerboy, both of whom had died. Mad with rage, especially when the twins revealed that everyone in the castle claimed that this was so, she pushed them off of the tower to their deaths.

Her skill at lying allowed her to escape being blamed for what she described as a terrible accident. For two weeks she festered on the idea that people were "slandering her" behind her back, and finally, two months after the day she had murdered the twins, she set a fire in the Great Hall that night, killing everyone in the castle.

Slinking away from the carnage, she made her way to the barony of Romagna, where she seduced her way into both a respectable position as lady's maid to the younger sister of Baron Etain and into the arms of Baron Etain himself. After several months of dalliance, he gifted her with a gemstone brooch... and then announced his upcoming marriage to the Lady Fialle, daughter of a neighboring lord, the very next day.

This pushed Serenissa over the edge and soon thereafter, she drew Baron Etain to a high tower, where she grabbed him and leapt off the edge, intending that they die together so she would not live alone.

But this time, with the interference of the [[Dark Powers]], her scheme failed. Serenissa hit the ground and was killed on impact, but her body cushioned Etain's fall, and so he lived. The madwoman's spirit rose from its grave as a ghost, trapped in an endless time loop; Romagna experiences only a single year, constantly recycling itself. It starts one week before the equinox Spring Festival, when Fialle arrives in Romagna for her upcoming wedding to Baron Etain. That week is spent in feasts and celebrations, capped off by a three-day non-stop revelry for the weding proper. Then, six months later, Fialle conceives Etain's child. And then, one week before the first anniversary of the wedding, time looks back and it is the week before the Spring Festival again.

Furthering Serenissa's torment, she is completely incapable of physically interacting with the people of Romagna, although she can manipulate their emotions despite the fact they cannot see, hear or touch her. She uses her emotional control to turn them into her agents of retribution, although she can't turn them against Etain or Fialle. This ability is defined vaguely, because she herself hasn't really studied her full capabilities with it.

Only visitors to Romagna are in true danger from Serenissa, because she is fully visible and audible to them, although still intangible. She invariably attempts to seduce the handsome male visitors to the domain, luring them away if they prove receptive to try and embrace them - doing so, however, results in her draining 1 level per 2 rounds, causing them to disintegrate... but if they break free, she attacks.

Serenissa is vulnerable to holy water, +2 or stronger magic weapons, and functional weapons made of gold. She is impervious to holy symbols, but can be turned with symbols of true love and matrimony - for example, the wedding rings of people who are actually married. If destroyed, she can reform at Etain and Fialle's wedding. Exactly ho to destroy her permanently is left vague, with her entry in the Book of Sorrows concluding with this paragraph:
::''Weapons forged from symbols of love (such as rings, charms, wooden wands, or ceremonial ropes used to bind a man and woman together at their wedding) may have greater effect, rendering her helpless or immobile. Her final death is likely to involve elements of her first experience; rejection, a long fall, and/or a noble lover. Heroes should beware, though—the dark powers may look with interest upon anyone who willingly transforms a symbol of love into a weapon of war.''

===Urdogen "The Red"===
Darklord of The Raging Tears. Male Human Spectre. In life, Urdogen (who first appeared in the [[Forgotten Realms]] splat "Pirates of the Fallen Stars") was basically Faerun's version of Blackbeard - if Blackbeard was a redhead. He terrorized the Inner Sea so badly that the nations of that region united to defeat his fleet, whereupon Urdogen fled and found himself spirited away by the Mists into the Sea of Sorrows... where he promptly hit a hidden reef and sank his ship, drowning.

Ever since then, Urdogen's ghostly vessel has sailed all the seas of the Misty Realm, cursed to never be able to come within sight of land and only able to rise from his watery grave during the nocturnal hours. Further stymying his desperate desire to reclaim his former reputation as a fearsome pirate lord, any who encounter Urdogen and live to tell the tale are cursed to forget his name.

To put an end to Urdogen, the ruin of the Raging Tears must be hauled up from the seafloor and carried inland, where it must then be burned completely to ash in a funeral pyre.

Interestingly, Urdogen's ghostly ship is actually able to return to the Inner Sea of Faerun on moonless, foggy nights in his homeworld, although he must return to the Misty Realms upon dawn.

If Urdogen chooses to close the borders of his traveling domain, the waters around his ship become rough and infested with a feeding frenzy of sharks; those who try to fly away will instead find themselves sinking into the water.

==5e Darklords==
As part of its general overhaul of the [[Demiplane of Dread]], 5th edition added a significant number of new darklords - some to replace former darklords, others ruling over brand new domains. Darklords who simply got retconned backstories and other traits have those details added to their entries above. Quite a few of these characters don't have much info on them due to being only mentioned in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book, most of which only have a single paragraph dedicated to their domain and darklord.

One unique trait common to all 5e darklords is that the personalizad domain border closures of the past are largely gone; there might be cosmetic tweaks, but in general most 5e Domains of Dread all function the same when a person tries to escape through a closed border.

===Chakuna===
The replacement Darklord of Valachan, and one of the few 5e darklords to explicitly continue on in some fashion from the setting as it existed before. A female [[werepanther]], Chakuna belongs to a tribe of [[werecat]]s (specifically panthers and ocelots) called the Oselo, whom were hunted to the brink of extinction by Baron Urik von Kharkov, as he had come to fixate upon them as the most intriguing and challenging quarry. (Nevermind that Urik was originally "Blacula Strahd" with no real interest in "hunting the most dangerous game".) To save her people, she went to the literal heart of the domain and performed an unholy rite, cutting out her own heart and offering it to the land as sacrifice in exchange for the power to defeat Urik. Long story short, it worked; she ripped out his heart, tore him to pieces, and buried his still-living and curse-spewing head in the ruins of his castle before building her own treetop hunting lodge atop the ruins. Which is actually kind of badass. But now the jungle has become hungrier than ever, and she must regularly sacrifice human hearts to the land to keep the plants and animals from slaughtering all the Valachani (shades of the Wildlands, there), which she obtains through the "Trials of the Heart" - ceremonially hunting down designated victims with the aid of trained [[Displacer Beast]]s. She won't touch a fellow Oselo, but everybody else is fair game.

Chakuna can only be killed if her heart is found in the secret grove where she performed her dark rite and destroyed, but unless somebody assumes her mantle in the process, then the jungle will be free to kill everyone.
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===Flimira Vhage===
Currently very little is known about Flimira Vhage other than that their domain is the office of a detective agency which is actually is an extension of their own broken mind.

===Jacqueline Renier===
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===The Inheritors of Darkon===
Similar to what happened during [[Grim Harvest]], Darkon currently has multiple Darklords while Azalin is missing. Specificly, there's only three of them this time.

'''"Baron" Alcio Metus''' is a female vampire, and the sister of Baron Metus - the vampire who got [[Van Richten]] started on his monster-killing path. Having risen to rule the criminal underworld of the Jagged Coast region, driving out her former Kargat masters in the process, Alcio burns with the desire for revenge against Van Richten for killing her brother. Not helping is that she's occupied Van Richten's ancestral home of Richten House and found that Van Richten's wife Ingrid still lingers as a [[ghost]] - but one who refuses to help Alcio in her quest for vengeance.

'''Cardinna Artazas''', the thrice-reincarnated leader of an elfin mystery cult in Nevuchar Springs, has damned her soul in the name of good: desperate to preserve Darkon, she has striven to revive the spirit of Darcalus Rex, the king who reigned over Darkon prior to the coming of Azalin. Unfortunately, all she has called forth is a necrichor, and she must constantly weigh her belief that what she is doing serves "the greater good" against the very real demands that the undead tyrant makes for ever-greater magical reagents and sacrifices.

Finally, '''Madame Talisveri Eris''' is an elderly but vibrant and intelligent aristocrat who accidentally made herself permanently invisible whilst seeking to make herself look younger. She uses her invisibility to her advantage, having created an array of different identities that she assumes through costumes and cosmetics. She's currently built up a cult amongst the younger members of Il Aluk's nobility, offering them an elixir on the night of the new moon that makes them invisible until dawn and then sending them out to commit crimes and mayhem that advance her cause.

Because none of them are true darklords yet, none of them have specific curses.

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===Isolde & Nepenthe===
Like the original Isolde, the 5e Isolde is an [[eladrin]] [[paladin]], though this one was an [[adventurer]] who battled [[dragon]]s and [[demon]]s that threatened the [[Feywild]]. This unknowingly led her into the machinations of Zybilna, an evil [[archfey]] who had lost a number of [[fiend]]ish allies to Isolde and her companions. Zybilna called upon her remaining pacts to arrange for a powerful [[incubus]] called "The Caller" (5e's retconned version of the Gentleman Caller) to corrupt and slaughter Isolde's companions; once that was done, the archfey stepped in and exploited Isolde's vulnerable state to become her "new best friend". She arranged for Isolde to become the guardian of a traveling fey carnival that also concealed a portal to Zybilna's realm... then, when Isolde began to tire of this role and their relationship grew strained, she secretly warped Isolde's mind with magic to ensure that Isolde would always prioritize the needs of the Carnival over her own wants. Even so, this wasn't enough to keep Isolde bound to Zybilna's reins. When Isolde encountered a traveling carnival from the [[Shadowfell]] managed by [[shadar-kai]], she made a pact with its twin managers to trade ownership of their carnivals, but only until next the two carnivals met. The shadar-kai agreed, and gave her the magical sword Nepenthe as symbol of her new status as owner and champion - but that wasn't enough for Zybilna. She used her magic to erase Isolde's memories of all things relating to Zybilna, and also sent fey creatures to forever follow and harass Isolde's new carnival.

To make things worse, Nepenthe was a cursed blade; an intelligent Holy Avenger used to executed thousands of criminals, not all of whom were actually guilty, the blade had developed a deep craving for bloodshed in the name of justice. In Isolde, it found an easily manipulated host; it awoke her memories of the Caller, and stoked her desire for retribution. In many ways, it could be considered the "true" darklord of the Carnival, especially given how Isolde constantly struggles to resist its naked, insatiable need to kill.

Isolde's curse, then, is to wrestle with both the imperatives of Zybilna and those of Nepenthe; she craves vengeance, but finds herself forever stymied by her need to tend to the ever-growing Carnival's need, as well as fearing that she may one day encounter the Carnival's true owners and be forced to relinquish it back to them. Explicitly, she could be saved if Nepenthe was taken from her, but its grip on her mind means she would refuse to abandon it.

===Klorr===
Darklord of Klorr. We know nothing about this darklord, but the name is taken from a character who appeared in the original Red Box; a clockwork-obsessed [[planeswalker]] [[mage]] who was infuriated that he couldn't synchronize and control his heart the way he could his clockwork creations. He made assorted dark bargains and ultimately came to rest in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], where he produced four cursed timepieces: the Water Clock of Klorr, the Moondial of Klorr, the Hourglass of Klorr, and his final work: the Timepiece of Klorr. This cursed pocketwatch gave Klorr extended life and increased arcane power, but required him to regularly charge it with murder, an impulse he succumbed to. It ultimately killed him when he failed to sacrifice a life to it on time.

The Timepiece of Klorr is given mechanical stats in the "Forbidden Lore" boxed set. Klorr's other works are statted in "Forged of Darknes":
* The Water Clock lets the user transform into a water [[elemental]], but might kill them in the process and also might leave them permanently trapped in elemental form.
* The Moondial grants powers based on the phase of the moon, but slowly transforms the user into a light-averse monster.
* The Hourglass can grant the user Improved Haste for 1 hour, but will age them 1d10 years and might also leave them under the effects of Slow for 24 hours after being used.

===The Last Passenger===
Darklord of The Mourning Rail. Nothing is known about this Darklord other than they were a VIP that delayed a train escaping from The Mourning, and threw out a bunch of passengers to make room for their self and their retinue, dooming the train, and they are now an undead being of some kind trapped on the train with the rest of the undead passengers.

===Myar Hiregaard===
Mentioned only in passing as the Darklord of the revised Nova Vaasa, She's basically a female Genghis Khan with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde; she was originally a female chieftain who united the nomadic plains-dwelling tribes of Nova Vaasa into a single culture, but she proved to be a terrible peacetime leader because she craved bloodshed and excitement. She tried to stave off her boredom with, quote, "brutal games" for a time, but ultimately she couldn't resist the thrill of war: she began fostering disputes amongst her vassal tribes so she had an excuse to lead her forces to crush both sides. This eventually got her claimed by the mists, and now she switches between two personas and possibly two bodies: as Mya Hiregaard, she rules with "strict fairness", but when she gets too bloodlusty, she transforms into her alter-ego of Malken and "sows discord across the plains".

...Whatever else you may think of it, at least it's more justified than Tristren "My dad got cursed and died, so I inherited his curse and became a Darklord without ever having to do anything to actually earn it" Hiregaard.

===Pietra van Riese===
A gender-swapped version of Pieter van Riese and the darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Not much is known about her due to being in the "Other Domains of Dread" section, and therefore only getting one paragraph to herself. She was a ruthless pirate with a fondness for keelhauling her victims, and now she's a ruthless ''zombie'' pirate who speaks through the mouths of her undead crew.

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===Ramya Vasavadan===
Darklord of Kalakeri. Ramya was hand-picked by her father, the last ruler of Kalkeri, to succeed him, but when he died, her brother Arijani contested her claim, leading to a brief civil war. Ramya would have killed Arijani then and there, but their sister Reeva counseled mercy, and Ramya conceded, not really wanting to kill her brother anyway. She enjoyed a brief period of unchallenged leadership, bringing a golden age to Kalakeri, but all the while Reeva was working behind her back to build up support for Arijani, culminating in her freeing Arijani and launching a second civil war. Enraged, Ramya suppressed the rebellion with brutal methods, executing captured rebel ranas and executing them in horrifically inventive methods that only made the people distrust her more and furthered the fighting. At the second war's climax, Arijani and Reeva sued for peace and Ramya agreed... only to be captured by her treacherous siblings and murdered. Before the court strangler garotted her in the central courtyard of her own palace, Ramya cursed her siblings as bloodthirsty beasts.

Once it was done, Arijani and Reeva further disrespected their sister by throwing her body into the ocean... an act that resulted in a terrible monsoon lashing Kalakeri for weeks. And then, when it was done, Ramya rose from her watery grave and marched on her former siblings, followed by an ever-swelling army of undead soldiers made up of all her loyal warriors who had fought and died for her. This time, Ramya showed no mercy, capturing her siblings and having them crushed to death by undead elephants.

...And then they came back as fiends - Arijani as a [[rakshasa]] and Reeva as an [[arcanoloth]] - and the civil war has raged ever since.

This civil war is the primary curse that Ramya experiences, with two secondary elements. Firstly, despite knowing better, Ramya ''always'' remains vulnerable to their lies and deceptions, which prevents her from truly ending the war. Secondly, Ramya's direct control over the domain is tied to her being seated in the Sapphire Throne, the symbol of Kalakeri's ruler; if the rebels oust her from the Cerulean Citadel, then her dominion diminishes until she can reclaim it. A second curse she labors under is the fact that, despite being shrouded in an illusion of life, Ramya ''knows'' that she's actually [[undead]], and this is apparent in her reflection, so she bans mirrors from her presence.
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===Saidra d'Honaire===
The future darklord Saidra grew up on a tiny farm, raised by her widower father, who filled her head with stories of her noble bloodline - he claimed to be a duke that had been ousted from his rightful throne by a vicious younger brother. Life was hard, especially as Saidra's sincere belief in her father's stories meant she alienated her peers, and only got worse when Saidra's father married a prosperous merchant woman with two daughters from her previous marriage, all of whom tormented Saidra and forced her to work as their personal servant, ala Cinderella. One day, a nearby duke perished, and when Saidra wondered if it had been her father's evil little brother, she was forced to confront the cruel truth: her father's stories had all been a pack of lies, and he was nothing more than a common-born servant who had fled to save his neck after trying to nick silverware from the duke's kitchen.

Saidra went to her mom's grave to beg her mother's spirit for help, which was when a "kind, grandmotherly figure" appeared and granted Saidra her wish, clothing her in a magnificent gown and fine jewelry before conjuring a stately carriage to carry her to the masquerade ball that was being held to celebrate the coronation of the new duke. We don't know who this figure was, but it's interesting to note that Saidra's version of Dementlieu contains a [[hag]] coven who basically love to pretend to be Fairy Godmother figures so they can mess with people. Anyway, off Saidra went to the ball, plotting to kill the new duke and claim his title. When she got there, she swiftly seduced the new duke, so successfully that she began contemplating if it mightn't be better to wed the duke instead. Things were going smashingly... until the clock chimed midnight and the whole party began dropping dead of a sudden, fast-acting plague, which rather put a downer on things. The kicker, for Saidra, was as she and the duke lay dying in each other's arms and he confessed that he ''wasn't'' noble-born, but instead a commoner who had been adopted by the previous duke. In fact, he was actually Saidra's long-lost brother.

Enraged at this second "betrayal", Saidra stabbed her brother in the heart with the last of her strength and then tried to stagger away from the corpse, only to collapse dead on the stairs leading into the palace.

And then she woke up as a [[wraith]], the new spectral queen of Dementlieu, a shabby and impoverished town whose populace struggle to fake the appearance of being more important than they truly are, all the while risking Saidra's deadly wrath: she '''hates''' pompous fools who pretend to be what they aren't, aspire to higher station than they deserve, and fail to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

...Well, yeah, she wouldn't be a ''darklord'' if she wasn't at least a little bit of a hypocrite, now would she?

Saidra is a wraith who has the ability to launch free Disintegrates at anyone who reveals themselves to be lying about who they are in her presence - we don't know much more than that, mechanically. She lives in constant terror of being exposed as a fraud herself, and in fact she can only be killed permanently if she is revealed to be a fraud first. Related to that, she lives in terror that her hated stepmother and stepsisters are still alive somewhere in Dementlieu. Finally, almost tangentially, her status as a wraith means her beloved masquerade balls are a complete waste of time, as she can't enjoy any of the physical pleasures associated with them.

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===Sarthak===
Darklord of the Ashram of Niranjan, Sarthak is an evil bronze dragon who poses as a mystic named Niranjan. He send agents into the Mists bearing his philosophical writings, which promise escape, peace, and enlightenment to any who adopt their teachings. Anyone who comes to his monastery is told that they must divest themselves of worldly goods, which are added to Sarthak’s hidden hoard. Sarthak then helps his victim enter a blissful trance that causes their soul to slip away from their body over the course of days. Sarthak consumes this soul and replaces it with a shadow, leaving the victim’s body under his control.

There's no indication of what his curse might be, since he's in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book and as such only gets a single paragraph to himself.

===Teresa Bleysmith===

===Viktra Mordenheim===
Basically, she's Victor Mordenheim but a woman... what, that's not good enough? Alright...

Viktra Mordenheim was born the daughter of a minor noble family, as well as a natural prodigy in medicine - she taught herself anatomy as a child, and by the time she was a teenager she held a doctorate ''and'' had been appointed as a preeminent researcher at a local university. For all her genius, however, Viktra was arrogant, not to mention completely lacking in empathy, compassion and moral qualms. To her, medicine was just a way to sate her burning curiosity about the secrets of life. Also, she hated magic, regarding it as as "stealing the powers of otherworldly beings and cheating the laws of nature", and thus inferior to '''SCIENCE!'''

In the best Frankenstein tradition, she grew obsessed with the idea that she could not merely mend the sick, but actively create and even improve upon life. So she began hiring the services of bodysnatchers to provide her with fresh human cadavers for her research. This is how she met Elise; amazingly, the cold, aloof methodical surgeon and the beautiful but reckless and spontaneous body snatcher became infatuated with each other, and the two women's relationship swiftly changed from professional to personal. When Elise contracted an incurable wasting disease, Mordenheim became obsessed with saving her, and her experiments increased in numbers - she also began having living victims actively kidnapped for her experiments. Through countless murders, resurrections and remurders, Viktra honed her knowledege. Finally, as Elise fell into the deep sleep that marked the final stages of the disease, Viktra poured everything she had learned from a thousand deaths into saving a single life, crafting and installing the Unbreakable Heart: an artificial super-organ.

But just as she was stitching the fabulous device into place, constables burst into her lab, accusing her of being behind the recent string of kidnappings and murders. In the struggle, the lab caught fire and flooded with acrid chemical smoke: Mordenheim's last vision was of Elise rising from her table, a golden light glowing in her chest where the Unbreakable Heart had been installed.

When Mordenheim came to, she was in a strange, icy realm called "Lamordia", where she was hailed as the greatest genius ever, but there was no sign of Elise.

Viktra's torments largely center around Elise and the Unbreakable Heart; she can neither recreate the Heart on her own, but nor can she find Elise to study it again. Secondary to this curse is that she is showered with the love, respect and attention of Lamordia, whose people view her as a luminary savior; to Mordenheim, they are incomprehensible, and she loathes their constant distractions from her work.
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===Vladeska Drakov===
In a nameless world, in a land torn between myriad bitterly feuding royal families, the woman named Vladeska Drakov was a skilled fighter and general, a mercenary who came to be known as the Crimson Falcon, the leader of a well-regarded mercenary army called the Falcon's Talons. Business was profitable, and Vladeska was raking in the loot, with dreams of retiring young, cashing in her wealth and reputation to buy land and a title. Then came the sacking of Veivere, where the Talons accidentally killed a very important figure. So important that the entirety of the aristocracy took up arms against the Talons, determined to kill them all for it. Well, Vladeska had no intention of just rolling over and dying, and she launched a bloody counter-attack that soon turned into a crushing campaign of conquest; her forces swept through the land, replenishing themselves with conscripted peasants and wiping out everyone stupid enough to stand against them. Vladeska made a point of impaling ''everybody'' with even the slightest drop of aristocratic blood that she caught alive. Through years of bloody effort, she became the ruler of an empire that stretched over the former patchwork nation, but as she crushed the last defiant village, the smoke engulfed Vladeska and her most elite warriors.

They found themselves in a new realm, and after swiftly conquering its capital city, Vladeska declared herself Empress of Falkovnia. Which was when she found the downside of her rule... namely, the armies of [[zombie]]s that would attack her new kingdom every month with the rising of the new moon.

Vladeska's curse, obviously, is the zombie attacks, which press her to her limit as she struggles to throw back the dead and preserve what she has, but it goes deeper than that. Firstly, she suffers a horrible sensation of recognition; every zombie, to her, seems to be the animate corpse of one of her victims or her fallen soldiers, filling her with the gnawing belief that the dead are coming for ''her'' specifically. Secondly, no matter what scheme or ploy she tries, the result is always Phyrric; her people haven't been wiped out yet, but there's a big difference between 'survival' and 'winning'. Finally, she '''knows''' that her efforts doomed - there is ''no way'' to hold Falkovnia against the dead, not with the forces that she has, and the only chance she has for survival is to take her people and flee during the peaceful period after the dead are repulsed for the month. But she's too stubborn to run, and so she keeps fighting her bloody, futile war.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Ravenloft]]

Darklord

2021-05-23T20:41:02Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* Hazlik */

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{{Topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

The '''Darklords''' are the rulers ''and'' prisoners of the plane of [[Ravenloft]], from the D&D setting of the same name.

You might be wondering "How are they both rulers and prisoners at the same time?" The reason for this is simple: each Darklord was pulled into the plane by the nebulous forces known only as the Dark Powers after an especially heinous deed (known in-universe as a "Act of Ultimate Darkness"), which reshapes a part of the plane into [[Demiplane of Dread|a realm tailored to each Darklord's defining crime]]. In its own realm a Darklord is a BBEG to rule over all other BBEGs, with absolute power over everything except whatever they desire most - whatever thing that might be, it is always dangled ever so slightly out of their reach by the Dark Powers to amplify their torment further. They have no mouth, and they must scream. (Thus the common description of the setting as "Hell, but not for you".)

=Common Characteristics of Darklords=
The exact abilities and backstories of Ravenloft's Darklords have varied from edition to edition, but almost all exert considerable control over their individual domains, and many Darklords also rule their domains (assuming the domain has a population to rule), either openly or behind the scenes. Many Darklords are also extremely dangerous to confront in open combat, or otherwise have hidden powers up their sleeves that can neutralize entire groups of player characters even without combat.

Keeping in line with the Gothic Horror theme of Ravenloft, the presence and persistence of insidious evil on this plane is the rule and not the exception. By contrast, lasting triumphs of good are vanishingly rare possibilities. As such, PCs aren't really supposed to go toe-to-toe with Darklords and expect to come out on top like your average group of [[murderhobos]] in other D&D settings. Trying to storm through Castle Ravenloft or Castle Avernus (not the Avernus of [[Baator]]) and expecting to put Strahd's or Azalin's skulls on a pike by the end of the play session will most likely either end in a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|total party kill]] or a fate worse than death, assuming the Dungeon Master is at all trying to run the game in a thematically appropriate way. At most, the PCs' efforts might preserve a bit of light in the ever-present mists and hope their activities stay beneath the local Darklord's notice. [[Grimdark|Heroes in this benighted plane are not guaranteed a peaceful death in bed surrounded by family and friends, or a life of glory and deeds well remembered.]] Openly going up against a Darklord is one of the surest ways of ending your character's life and career for good.

A few things about Darklords have remained constant throughout Ravenloft's editions, however. First, unless the Dark Powers will it, Darklords are completely unable to leave their own domains (note that certain "pocket domains" are in fact mobile and can travel between larger domains, but the Darklord within is still powerless to leave its own pocket domain as any other). If PCs manage to leave a Darklord's domain, that specific Darklord is usually powerless to personally come after them (but see "Closing the Borders" below). Second, almost every Darklord has a weakness, usually in the form of something or someone they desire above all else that they would risk anything and everything for, or a personal vulnerability tied to its curse that is usually well-hidden and hard to figure out. Discovering and exploiting these weaknesses are one of the only ways to accomplish some good in spite of a Darklord's efforts, but if it comes to that you've likely already attracted (or will very soon attract) a Darklord's attention and are in deep trouble. A couple other abilities common to Darklords are discussed below.

===Closing the Borders===
The vast majority of Darklords have the ability to force others to share in their imprisonment by supernaturally closing the borders of their domains, usually leaving no way out even with the aid of magic. Trying to leave a closed domain border will just result in a grisly death or automatic failure, and teleportation magic won't work past a closed domain border either. As Ravenloft was an early AD&D product, the designers gave this handy tool to DMs so as to stop players from just up and leaving without going through the DM's plot. Improperly used it can smack of railroading, but it fits well within the Gothic Horror genre convention of having characters get trapped in sinister and dangerous locales with no safe passage out, until a situation is resolved (or the Darklord opens the borders again, as in the case of Ravenloft).

The few Darklords who cannot supernaturally close their borders either lack that ability as part of their curse, or are unable to do so as part of their nature. Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia for instance disdains magic and the supernatural, and in line with this attitude gained no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders upon becoming a Darklord. However, even these Darklords have more mundane ways of barring escape from their domains, such as sending their numerous lackeys to patrol the borders, though thankfully this doesn't impede magical methods of escape. An even smaller number of Darklords are completely unable to close their domain borders in any way, such as Haki Shinpi of Rokushima Taiyoo who was cursed to become a powerless geist upon becoming Darklord (rather than becoming a Death Knight as he originally planned) and was doomed to watch everything he built in his life's conquest literally sink into ruin through the squabbling of his sons.

===Immortality===
Another reason to avoid going up against Darklords is that many of them have ways of returning from death, rendering all of your hard work moot. Even those who don't have explicitly mentioned methods of cheating death, like Strahd, generally have many contingency plans to avoid ever being at risk of getting truly destroyed. To make a bad situation worse, the Dark Powers appear to get occasionally "attached" to their playthings, and frown harshly upon attempts to take their toys away. In game terms, this means that certain Darklords are truly indestructible and can ever only be put out of commission temporarily, and even the attempt at doing so may end up drawing the Dark Powers' attention to whoever tries such a feat. Mercifully, these individuals are the exception, not the rule.

By contrast, some Darklords are fairly ordinary people with no significant combat skills and no more resistance to being killed off for real than their subjects. However, as mentioned above, even these seemingly vulnerable BBEGs often still have the means or minions to deal with a bunch of murderhobos, and most of these non-combat-focused Darklords are still savvy enough to be wary of any potential threats to their survival, and to nip those threats in the bud via underhanded means.

Outside of these extremes, permanently destroying most Darklords requires either killing one in a very specific manner and/or destroying a Darklord's means of cheating death (which in some cases might be nigh-impossible, such as killing every specimen of a very numerous type of creature in a domain before confronting the Darklord). Finding out this information is likely to require a good deal of questing and research to find out, but can make for a great campaign if properly handled. However, even accomplishing all this does nothing to stop the Dark Powers from "promoting" someone in the realm evil enough to assume the mantle of Darklord, possibly leaving the realm and its inhabitants in [[Not as planned|a worse situation than before]]. In fact, not a few of the "current" Darklords assumed their positions by killing the previous ones. In other cases, the title and sometimes even the personality of the Darklord is immediately passed down to another being on the moment of the Darklord's death, thus ensuring that their position is never lost.

===What happens if you permanently destroy a Darklord somehow?===
It's likely that some of you action-oriented elegan/tg/entleman reading this are just champing at the bit to claim a Darklord's skull for your trophy rooms, but as noted above, the odds and the themes of the setting itself are decidedly against you. Or maybe you're a DM who wants to run a Ravenloft campaign where good really can make a difference and want to know what happens when these Gothic Horror BBEGs finally bite the dust for real and no one takes their place.

Unfortunately, the rulebooks have historically been rather ambivalent and lacking in detail about the answer to this question and the resulting implications. Some Ravenloft rulebooks say that once a Darklord is permanently destroyed and no successor is forthcoming, the destroyed Darklord's associated domain might simply disappear, leaving open the question of what happens to all the people who were living there. If the people there simply disappear as well, were they never real in the first place, instead being undispellable illusions made up whole-cloth by the Dark Powers to torment the Darklord? That might work out just fine if your group stuck to playing [[Weekend in Hell]] style adventures in Ravenloft, but what would it say about PCs native to Ravenloft, or even native to the domain now without a Darklord? Or were the people in the Darklord-less domain no more real (and therefore no more morally troubling to harm in any way) than characters in a video game, making the whole "Powers Check" mechanic moot with regards to harming innocents? Is there now a gaping misty void where the previous domain used to be?

Canonically, the answer might be found in how two domains (Arkandale and Gundarak) where the Darklords lost their darklordship were absorbed by neighbouring ones, essentially meaning the people inside those domains just exchanged one insidious tyrant for another. This solution is probably the smoothest way to incorporate the plot element of Darklords being permanently destroyed in your campaign. On the other hand, geographically isolated domains (such as one of the numerous "Islands of Terror" that are completely surrounded by the Mists), or mobile pocket domains with no notable population of sentients can just disappear back into the mists with no larger consequences to other domains upon the permanent death of their Darklords. It still leaves open the question of what happens to the population of sentients in domains situated in the middle of nowhere that suffer a sudden lack of a Darklord, though.

Strahd himself is explicitly mentioned to be a special case with regards to permanent destruction, most probably due to his status as the posterboy of the entire Ravenloft setting (even in universe, it's noted that the Demi-Plane of Dread didn't seem to exist until Strahd's damnation). In 5e's Curse of Strahd module, it is said that in the absurdly unlikely event he is permanently killed with all of his failsafes destroyed or deactivated, the Dark Powers will intervene to resurrect him within a month [[Grimdark|because they refuse to allow the possibility of ending his torment]]. They're "possessive" about their favourite playthings like that.

Players crying foul about this should note that the Dark Powers are mighty enough to bar the gods themselves from coming to Ravenloft. In light of that, something like bringing a Darklord back to life looks like a trivial feat by comparison.

5e Overhall of some domains of Dreads gives some more definitive insight, either hinted at or explicit With some of the newer darklords stealing rulership from older ones. Darklordship Darkon is a prime example of a missing Darklord, as, without Azalin Rex, the domains is slowly dissolving.

Bottom line? Hash it out with your DM beforehand, or if you're a DM yourself, make sure you have a sensible plot thread lined up if you choose to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords, while keeping in mind how important Darklords are to the themes of Ravenloft.

=Notable Darklords=

==The "Hammer Horror" Darklords==
With the horror films by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions Hammer Film Productions] officially cited as a major source of inspiration for the setting of Ravenloft, the Darklords who are patterned after the horror monster archetypes featured in those films will be listed here.

===Strahd von Zarovich===
{{main|Strahd von Zarovich}}
Darklord of Barovia, and the first Darklord to be introduced to the setting--in fact, it's named after his own castle. He is the archetypal vampire darklord in the setting, though by no means the only one, and his appearance is clearly based off of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula in the 1958 ''Dracula'' film by Hammer Film Productions.

Originally the conqueror of a region called Barovia that he claims was the ancestral home of his family, Strahd came to lust after a woman called Tatyana who rejected him in favor of his younger brother Sergei. Strahd took this very badly; badly enough that at some point he made what he called "a pact with Death" that turned him into a [[vampire]] in a desperate attempt to restore his youth. This too failed to win her over, and on the day Tatyana was to be married to Sergei, Strahd killed him and drove her to suicide.

His realm is a copy of Barovia from the Prime Material plane (the original apparently still exists but nothing is said about its current condition or even which D&D setting it originated from), which he has absolute power over to the point where he can enter any private home uninvited in spite of the fact most vampires are unable to do so (since as he boasts, "I am the land"), and he can ignore the standard vampiric weaknesses to mirrors, garlic or holy symbols, none of which ordinary vampires can do. He isn't even "killed" when staked through the heart like ordinary vampires are (though he is effectively paralyzed while staked) and can resist up to ten rounds of sunlight exposure before being destroyed, though he has always a contingency spell cast on himself that will teleport him away to a hidden mountain sanctuary should he ever be exposed to sunlight or staked by a prepared party, much like Bram Stoker's own Dracula had many coffins to sleep in to make his final destruction more difficult. However, Strahd's curse is to have the events leading to his damnation repeat themselves forever--once every generation he will encounter a woman who he believes to be Tatyana's reincarnation, only to be rejected by her in spite of all his vampiric mind control powers, and become responsible for her death once more, all while being unable to simply give up on trying to win her love.

===Ankhtepot===
Darklord of Har'Akir, partially based on the monster from the 1959 film ''The Mummy'' by Hammer Film Productions. He is the archetypal Mummy-based Darklord in the setting, but he is not the only "Ancient Dead" (i.e., a preserved corpse animated into undeath) who happens to be a Darklord.

Ankhtepot in life was a hubristic ruler of a land also named Har'Akir, patterned after Ancient Egypt and sharing the same pantheon of gods. As the head priest of the sun god Ra, the chief god of his land, Ankhtepot was [[Nagash|obsessed with death and became consumed with the desire to live forever]]. Despite sparing no expense (nor quite a few lives, for that matter) his efforts were in vain, and in his rage he razed several temples, stormed into the greatest one and cursed the gods for withholding his heart's desire. For this blasphemy, Ra contacted Ankhtepot directly and said that Ankhtepot would indeed live after death, though he might wish otherwise. Anhktepot was confused about this, but later discovered that he had received a dire curse (making him one of the few outlander Darklords to have received the majority of his curse ''before'' being taken into Ravenloft); anyone he touched was dead by nightfall, and those he killed in this fashion rose from their tombs to serve him absolutely as undead mummies, because apparently Ra considers having mindless servants a punishment. Taking this in stride despite killing many of his relatives, he used his new undead servants to tighten his grip over Har'Akir, but his fellow priests rebelled, killed Ankhtepot in his sleep, and mummified him, little knowing he was still conscious and going insane inside his sarcophagus during his month-long funeral. After being entombed in a remote area with one small village named Mudar, the mists of Ravenloft claimed Ankhtepot, his tomb, and the nearby village, leaving no trace of them in Ankhtepot's home plane.

As Darklord, Ankhtepot spends most of his time in a deathless dream of better days in his tomb, but he can be roused from this state in a few ways, such as if his tomb is disturbed, or if the people of Mudar are anxious or otherwise distressed. His hubris and pride followed him into undeath, and similarly his greatest torment is his desire to be human again, as the god-king of a great empire he once was, while in reality he "rules" over a barren patch of desert with naught but a small mud-hut village. To frustrate him further, the Dark Powers granted Ankhtepot the ability to regain his human form and mortality by draining a human of moisture and life force in a dread sunrise ceremony, but this reversion to mortality lasts only from dawn to nightfall, and during those few daylight hours "under Ra's gaze" he loses all his supernatural powers, once again becoming a normal human with no appreciable abilities until nightfall, whereupon the transformation is undone. Knowing that he would face an eternity of solitude were he to sacrifice everyone in his domain to fleetingly experience mortality again, Ankhtepot generally prefers to wait and dream until he might rule a larger population, a time he seems unaware will never come.

With respect to his crunch, Ankhtepot can be an unholy terror in his Greater Mummy form. He retains much of the high-level spellcasting ability he had in life, his touch-delivered Mummy Rot is both more virulent and harder to cure than almost any other Ravenloft Mummy's, and those who become infected and are mummified alive become Greater Mummies under his total control. Other aces up his sleeve (or rather, his bandages) are the fact that he commands virtually every mummy in his domain, so if sufficiently provoked he can summon up an entire shambling army of mummies to do his bidding, and the fact that a certain item on his person allows him to heal lost hitpoints very quickly, even if reduced below zero, unless that item is removed from him or his downed "corpse." Ankhtepot can, however, easily be killed during his bouts of mortality (even though doing so might attract the attention of the Dark Powers since he poses no real threat during these times), but if he is killed while an ordinary human he can reanimate if he is mummified and entombed again. As a result of a possible oversight by the writers, no mention is made of how Ankhtepot might be able to return to unlife should he be defeated in his Greater Mummy form nor how he might be permanently destroyed, though he can simply reform in his tomb in the case of the former and the latter might simply require that both his tomb and his physical body be completely destroyed, resulting in the village of Mudar returning to its home plane and Ankhtepot's desert joining an adjacent domain.

Given the relative lack of sex appeal for mummies compared to the far more famous vampires and werewolves (unless you're a fan of the [[Tomb Kings]] or [[Mummy: The Curse]]), Ankhtepot and his domain more or less dropped off the face of Ravenloft canon after the AD&D version, and even in AD&D he was fairly passive. Even so, he did affect Ravenloft and D&D at large in one way by creating the first Greater Mummies (AKA "Children of Ankhtepot") to ever exist in a D&D system, though they have since significantly changed from their original incarnation. Ankhtepot has also been known to send his Mummy and Greater Mummy servants outside of his domain to track and kill grave robbers who defile his tomb and other unfortunates who incur his wrath.

Ankhtepot and his domain made his first appearance as the star villain of the classic ''Touch of Death'' Ravenloft module in 1991.

Despite not having shown up since AD&D, he was re-introduced to the setting in 5e, albeit with some significant retcons.

In an ancient country the inhabitants called the Land of Reeds and Lotuses, Ankhtepot served three generations of pharaohs as high priest. When the second pharaoh died, her unworthy son ascended to the throne. The new pharaoh quickly became unpopular among the people and priests, and Ankhtepot came to believe that the gods wanted himself to take the pharaoh's place. On the day of the pharaoh's coronation, Ankhtepot rallied his loyal priests and murdered their liege. Unfortunately he had misjudged both the people's loyalty and the gods' wills. The people rose up and killed him and his fellow priests, and when he died the gods forsook him and barred him from the afterlife. The gods returned him to the world, but stripped away a piece of his soul called the ka -- the vital essence that inspires all living beings.

He awoke immobilized and trapped in his sarcophagus, during which he felt the pain of every cut and every organ removed as if he were alive. One day, after untold years of this suffering, he a voice asking if he still felt he was worthy to rule. Still arrogant after all he had been through, he answered with certainty, and thus emerged from his crypt into the domain of Har’Akir. In this new land, Ankhtepot found a pious people devoted to the same gods he once served, and immediately set to wiping that religion out and replacing their gods with false idols of his own invention. Using blasphemous rites, Ankhtepot resurrected the priests once buried alongside him as powerful mummies, replacing their heads with those of beasts holy to his new faith. These Children of Ankhtepot served him as they did in life, and together the dead conquered the souls of Har’Akir.

Since then he has seen much, and known many things, but now he seeks one thing only: to be reconnected with his lost Ka, which he believes will allow him to finally die. Where and what his Ka is now is left up to the DM to decide, as is what happens when he is reunited with it. All of the suggested results are pretty grim, ranging from him being reborn as a living tyrant far more decadent and sadistic than he was as an undead, to discovering that he cannot be returned to mortality and deciding to wipe out all life in his domain out of spite.

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===Alfred Timothy===
Darklord of Verbrek, and the archetypal werewolf Darklord of the setting, though by no means the only lycanthrope Darklord in Ravenloft. Alfred Timothy was born to Nathan Timothy (former werewolf Darklord of Arkandale) and an unknown mother. Disdained by Nathan for being frail and sickly in his human form, Alfred in turn disdained his father for his "overly human" interest in ferrying cargo and passengers with his paddleboat (in truth, Nathan was cursed as Darklord of Arkandale to become cripplingly nauseous with "land sickness" anytime he tried to set foot on dry land, but instead of suffering from this curse, Nathan grew so accustomed to boating and the company of his human passengers that he unknowingly lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction, despite still being confined to river waters and remaining an unrepentant serial killer).

Leaving to find his own way and to escape the perpetual treatment as the runt of the litter, Alfred happened upon villagers in his father's domain who regularly made sacrifices to appease a savage being they called [[the Wolf God]] in the hopes of relief from continual attacks by bloodthirsty wolves. Taking inspiration from the sight of humans propitiating a lupine deity and perhaps indulging more than a little megalomania at the prospect of being an object of worship or leading a werewolf-centric religion, Alfred wandered the domains and interrogated clerics he met, sometimes lethally, on how he could become a cleric of this "Wolf God" and use its granted powers to inaugurate a werewolf-led reign of terror over humans. Unfortunately, his efforts and sacrifices were fruitless in provoking any response from this "deity," and he began to take out his frustrations on any clerics and religious buildings he could find whenever his latest interrogation target failed to provide the missing ingredient to contacting and receiving spells from the Wolf God. After [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=425913 one such iconoclastic rampage], Alfred incautiously fell asleep near the mutilated corpses and smouldering wreckage of his latest failure. Not content to "let sleeping dogs lie," Alfred was discovered, chained, and about to be burned at the stake by vengeful villagers, were it not for a mother-daughter pair of prescient Vistani who purchased his freedom and told Nathan that for this stay of execution, he must allow all Vistani safe passage in the future. Enraged at the possibility of being bound by a bargain struck with "mere" humans, Alfred promptly killed the Vistani mother, and the mists of Ravenloft claimed him for this betrayal, leaving him within his new domain of Verbrek, which eventually grew to encompass his father's former domain of Arkandale.

Now a Darklord, Alfred was initially delighted at having truly become a cleric of the Wolf God, receiving divine spells and being able to "converse" with it (assuming it exists, but if you decide to play with a nonexistent Wolf God, Ravenloft's Dark Powers have been known to grant divine spells and Alfred might just be hearing voices in his head). The price, as ever with Darklords, was an insidious curse. Alfred wants nothing more than to revel in the bestial fury and passion he once enjoyed as a werewolf, but as Darklord he is forced to transform back into his human form should he ever succumb to any kind of base passion: fear, rage, or lust. Having built a cult of savagery, wanton bloodshed, and debauchery among a large pack of werewolves as the chief priest of the Wolf God, his uncharacteristic unwillingness to practice what he preaches by frequently refraining from hunts and hesitance at finding a mate means his position is growing increasingly precarious. Realizing that widespread knowledge of his weakness would spell his doom (because [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=262657 "being an alpha means proving it every full moon"]), Alfred is trying to divest himself of his humanity by commanding and occasionally participating in ever-greater acts of slaughter, dedicating and offering them to his god who has remained silent on this one pressing issue, with the only exceptions to his wrath being the Vistani as he still remembers what happened the last time he killed one.

Crunch-wise, Alfred is rather conventional as lycanthrope BBEGs go, aside from his cleric levels and being forced to fight in a calculating and tactical manner unlike most werewolves lest he be forced to return to his much weaker human form. He doesn't cast a shadow (since his domain is effectively the shadow he casts on Ravenloft), and can even teleport from shadow to shadow within his domain whenever the moon is visible. As an ironic reminder from the Dark Powers of his fundamental weakness, Alfred cannot even supernaturally close the borders of his own domain, short of sending his dire wolf and werewolf minions to patrol them, though the true nature of this additional curse is likely lost on him, since he probably doesn't know about other Darklords and their ability to close their domain's borders supernaturally. Though not specifically mentioned, Alfred's fluff implies that even ''[https://youtu.be/ZxcljnLb95M?t=1m8s harsh language]'' might be one of the most potent weapons against him; if PCs can recognize him in either his wolf or hybrid forms and manage to enrage him through taunts, he will be forced to return to human form and at a minimum be robbed of the natural weapons of his alternate forms, or even be forced to kill any wolf or werewolf witnesses to his weakness with his clerical powers before turning his attentions to the PCs. However, even if Alfred is killed (and his crunch does not mention any method through which he could cheat death), it is likely the Darklordship (and possibly even Alfred's curse) will simply pass to whichever werewolf in his domain is evil enough for the Dark Powers' liking, preserving Verbrek as a separate domain unless every werewolf in the domain is killed or driven out before the current Darklord's death. Even then, the Dark Powers can always make more Darklordship candidates, though a more darkly ironic postmortem fate for Alfred's cult and domain might be for the Wolf God cult to scatter to the winds after Alfred's death, in essence metastasizing and spreading its cell members and evil elsewhere, while Alfred's father returns to Arkandale just in time to resume his old Darklordship and hear about his son's death, saying only ''"So that self-righteous runt finally bit off more than he could chew. No matter. Runts have always thought themselves to be bigger than they are."''

On a side note, players who want to play a Ravenloft campaign set in Verbrek, but who also want to use [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition|D&D 5e]] rules instead of relying on older books, might opt to use the official Magic-the-Gathering-to-D&D-5e conversion [[Innistrad|''Plane Shift: Innistrad'']] book, using its rules to play a campaign set in Innistrad's Kessig province. Kessig is thematically similar to Ravenloft's Verbrek as both are "werewolf country" locations, minus Darklords and other Ravenloft-exclusive mechanics. Until the Ravenloft setting is more fully adapted for D&D 5e, the Innistrad conversion is probably the best foundation for playing Verbrek in 5e.

===Dr. Victor Mordenheim/Adam===
Co-Darklords of Lamordia, of a sort. Like the character of Victor Frankenstein (best known for creating Frankenstein's monster) he was based on, Dr. Victor Mordenheim sought to create life and was certain that a soul was not necessary for it to exist. To show him the error of his ways, the gods saw fit to endow the doctor's creation with a soul--specifically, an irredeemably evil soul. The newly created dread flesh [[golem]] was dubbed Adam, and he soon grew jealous of the love that his maker's wife Elise and adopted daughter Eva had for him. Adam's plan to kidnap Elise failed, and instead he killed Eva and wounded Elise so badly she went into a vegetative state. It was at that time that the doctor and his creation were taken together into Ravenloft.

The doctor himself resides in his own mansion, Schloss Mordenheim, spending most of his time obsessively trying to revive his comatose-but-alive wife (who has herself long since gone mad due to her life support system causing her constant pain simply by being active), up to the point of continually constructing new bodies out of exhumed or painlessly-killed female corpses for her, but is cursed to never succeed and to never stop trying. Note that this is not out of love, though Mordenheim still believes that it is--it has become nothing more than a compulsion that has become his only reason for living. Meanwhile, Adam is now the "ruler" of an inhospitable island aptly dubbed the Isle of Agony in the middle of Lamordia inhabited solely by himself, forever cut off from the acceptance that he sought, cursed to feel the doctor's pain as his own, and rejected by the very land that he supposedly controls (as it is influenced by Mordenheim and not Adam). Adam's only form of solace comes from sabotaging Dr. Mordenheim's attempts at reviving Elise just to spite him. Player characters who meet Adam and treat him without pity or revulsion may be able to get some useful information out of him or even get him to open the borders of Lamordia, but he is very prone to anger and is virtually unstoppable once enraged.

So strong is Mordenheim's disbelief in magic that his own domain also (potentially) interferes with divine magic of any kind, making it unreliable, and may even block any magical attempts to heal Elise. Worse still, Mordenheim's attempts at training apprentices over the years in the vain hope that they might just achieve the necessary breakthrough to restoring Elise has unleashed quite a few mad scientist villains, or monsters born of mad science (such as the Living Brain, a disembodied brain in a life-support jar that uses its psionic powers to direct and dominate a major organized crime ring), onto Ravenloft at large.

In a curious twist, Adam is the Darklord and is the one with the power to close Lamordia's borders, but both Adam and his creator are effectively immortal and ageless, and Mordenheim even shares his creation's immunities and regenerative properties. If either is killed and their corpse completely destroyed by fire, acid, or even disintegration, either will simply reincarnate into the nearest most recently deceased male corpse (for Mordenheim) or flesh golem corpse (for Adam, and there are a quite a number of these running around Lamordia, made either by Mordenheim as failed bodies for Elise and futile attempts to recreate Adam's "success," or Adam's frustrated attempts at making sympathetic company for himself), and will shortly thereafter shape their new bodies into looking just like their previous selves. The only way to destroy Adam and Mordenheim for good is to destroy them together at the same time. If DMs decide to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords (see above), then the fate of Elise and Lamordia itself is up to them; one appropriate denouement could be that the permanent deaths of Adam and Mordenheim might just be the spark Mordenheim's machinery needs to briefly restore Elise long enough to rise up and forgive their long-suffering spirits before leading both to their afterlives, just before the land suddenly twists and shifts to reflect the curse and nature of its new Darklord.

Adam and Dr. Mordenheim first appeared in the one-shot adventure in a 1994 boxed set named "Adam's Wrath," intended for outlander PCs to undertake a [[Weekend in Hell]] adventure.

===Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken===
The "Jekyll & Hyde" Darklord of Nova Vaasa. Sir Hiregaard is a staunch, gruff but sincerely righteous man who is dedicated to his people and his land. However, he also plays host to Malken- an alternate personality that takes over Tristen's body, warping it into [[Caliban (Ravenloft)|a form so hideously ugly one can't recognize they're the same person]] and who delights in killing anyone who stands in the way of Hiregaard's repressed desires.

Strangely, Tristen did nothing at all to earn the position of Darklord; Malken is an entity born from a curse that was placed on Tristen's ''father'' by Tristen's mother Romir that compelled him to kill every woman he loved and any man who crossed him; Hiregaard Senior was an intensely jealous man and killed his wife and the man teaching her how to waltz in a fit of rage, thinking she was having an affair with him. When he killed himself to escape the curse, the curse passed to Tristen instead. Six years and nine killings after the curse first manifested itself in him, Tristen was taken into the mists and the secret jealousies and angers born from the curse coalesced into the being known as Malken. Tristen is only partially aware of Malken's existence, just enough to have his guards lock him into his personal chambers when he feels a fit of jealousy or anger coming on. For years he has assumed this has kept Malken in check, but as of late he is starting to suspect that Malken is too clever to be thwarted by mundane confinement despite the latter's attempts at keeping his influence a secret. Were he to discover the whole truth, he would be willing to do anything to end the curse.

This curse is the key to Malken's immortality; if Tristen is killed, then Tristen's eldest living male descendant will be possessed - and Malken will keep going down the chain each time his host dies, meaning that unless you find "the right way" to kill him, Malken can only be stopped by massacring Tristen's entire family line... which the players could potentially belong to. However, if Malken's host is killed by a woman genuinely in love with that man, then Malken will be dragged screaming into whatever hell-hole awaits him. And given that this would be a massive act of betrayal on that woman's part, she would likely end up becoming the new Darklord herself.

It should also be noted for DMs that "the struggle within his soul" prevents Malken from achieving the proper focus to Close the Borders of his domain, so if you want to run a session or campaign focussed around Nova Vaasa, you had better have a compelling in-universe reason to keep the PCs from simply up and leaving, since canonically DMs can't force the issue and simply lock the PCs into Nova Vaasa like they can with most other Darklords. It's possible that if Malken possesses a more evil host, he might just be able to Close the Borders then, but the form such a closed border would take has never been revealed in canon.

==Other Darklords==

===Addar===
{{main|Addar}}
The father of [[Shadow Unicorn]]s and a Darklord of questionable canon. More info on his page.

===Azalin Rex===
Darklord of Darkon. A powerful mage who inherited the rule of the city-state of Knurl, his draconian rule culminated in the execution of his son when he was caught freeing political prisoners. Soon afterward, Azalin became a [[lich]] and devoted himself to searching for a spell that could resurrect the dead; he believed that his son's sense of compassion was due to a mistake in his upbringing and assumed that if he could be revived that mistake could be fixed.

As soon as he was taken into Ravenloft he lost the ability to learn any new magic at all- a terrible thing for any magic user, and even worse for a lich like him who became undead for the sole purpose of gaining more knowledge. This power over memory affects anyone else who enters Darkon as well; staying there for more than three months at a time causes a visitor's memories to be erased and replaced with false ones of spending one's whole life in Darkon. Originally an ally of Strahd when he first entered the mists, their relationship soured quickly after a failed attempt at escaping the Demi-plane of Dread temporarily split the former into two separate beings and they've remained enemies ever since. Another ill-fated attempt at breaking free in which he planned to become a demilich backfired even more spectacularly. Instead of allowing his essence to be freed from Ravenloft, it dispersed his essence across Darkon and destroyed the domain's capital. It took five years for him to reassume a corporeal form and take control of his realm again.

In 5th edition, Azalin has mysteriously gone missing. Did he finally outsmart the Dark Powers and escape? The only clue about where he went is that when he vanished a strange golden star or starlike thing called The King's Tear appeared in the sky and hasn't moved since and the sun and moon pass ''behind'' it instead of in front of it every day.

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===Baron Urik von Kharkov===
Considered one of the goofier Darklords, albeit not as bad as Tristen ApBlanc, and with a much more usable domain in Valachan. Baron Kharkov is basically half-Blacula and half-Werepanther; he was a black panther that a Red Wizard of Thay turned into a human being to use as an assassin. The Red Wizard arranged for him to fall in love with his rival, and then undid the transfiguration spell on him while they were together so he would tear her apart as a panther. When he was turned back into a human, he freaked out and ran off into the Mists. He found himself in Darkon, where he spent 20 years as a member of Azalin's secret police (turning into a Nosferatu in the process). He later escaped and subsequently became the Darklord of Valachan after entering the Mists again. We don't know what he did that turned him into a Darklord, in part due to his own fuzzy memories of what happened during that time, but he claims he killed many people while in the mists, including the Red Wizard that transformed him the first time.

Anyway, he's a blood-drinking black vampire cursed with yellow eyes (that turn into cat's eyes when he's pissed off) and with hands that resemble paws, being covered in fur and bearing retractile claws. He can still turn into a panther, in which state his bite turns people into werepanthers, and controls panthers instead of the normal wolves. His curse is to basically relive his most traumatizing event over and over again; he's constantly seeking a human bride, but once he has one, he can never trust her not to find out that he's not human, and inevitably murders her in a fit of paranoid fury. (He should try dating a [[Furry]] fan or Jaqueline Reiner, that would solve it.)

In 5th edition he has been killed and succeeded by Chakuna.

===Bluebeard===
A rare darklord actually ''liked'' by his subjects, Bluebeard rules over Blaustein (German: "Blue Stone"), a small nation from an unknown world. His rule was considered just and fair, and as a ruler he was considered to be quite generous. Unfortunately for him, he was an incredibly ugly man -- a blue-tinted beard and all -- which to his credit, he overcame with his own charms... and being incredibly wealthy didn't hurt either. Despite all of his good qualities, however, Bluebeard could not achieve a lasting marriage.

He would find a woman to marry, and soon after the wedding he would leave the castle for a time, handing its care over to his new wife. He would give her a set of keys to every door in the castle, and pointing out the one special golden key which opened a room at the very top floor. His instruction was to never open that particular door, with vague consequences. So far none of his wives have been able to overcome this temptation; and when they did open the door they found his grisly collection of former wives, hung up by meat-hooks with their throats slit. By opening the door, the key -- which was magical in nature -- would have a bloody mark that would appear that could not be removed except by Bluebeard himself. He would return to the castle soon after, and demand to see the keys. If the woman had given into temptation (which each invariably did), she would then share the fate as the other women in the room. Marcella was his fourth wife and victim. Her death was not the final, but eventually Bluebeard's repeated murders brought Blaustein into Ravenloft.

After becoming a darklord, Bluebeard was gifted by the Dark Powers with a minor charisma increase, which does not make him handsome by any means but does not leave him as ugly as he once was. He is also able to perfectly detect any lie. Even after the Mists took hold, Bluebeard is still the de facto leader of Blaustein, although his rule was twisted to be even more sadistic. Simply displeasing him is a death sentence, yet the populace still holds him in incredibly high regard. This is because he also has complete control over their memories, and freely erases or rewrites their recollections of his atrocities.

He is unable to marry any woman native to Blaustein, as their visages always twist to the posthumous appearance of one of his dead wives. This curse does not affect women who were born foreign of Blaustein, and Bluebeard along with his subjects are always on the constant lookout for any attractive women who fit this criteria. Lorel, an outlander he grabbed through the Mists, was his latest wife (and victim).

Bluebeard is also haunted by the ghosts of the wives he killed. Every third night must be spent in his castle in order to sleep, and he always awakes to the frightening caress of the specters of his murdered wives. Like his subjects, they are utterly devoted to him, yet in the most twisted way possible. While he considers this distressing, it has not stopped him from sending another wife to the same fate.

It is currently unknown if he has any dealings with any other nation or darklord, at least beyond welcoming in his harbour ships including those engaged in piracy.

He's mentioned in a single sentence in 5e, which states that apparently his spectral wives overthrew him and now endlessly torment him. Exactly how this happened or what this entails is not elaborated upon.

===Captain Alain Monette===

Darklord of L'ile de la Tempete. A violent and cruel privateer and captain of the ''Ouragan''. Eventually his crew snapped from his vicious temper and regular abuse and mutinied against him, keelhauling him thrice before throwing him into the sea. This was meant to be an execution- keelhauling, or dragging a sailor around the keel of a ship to be cut by the barnacles growing on it and hit against the ship's hull, is traumatic even when it's only done once and the victim is taken on board the ship afterward. But Alain survived, and washed up on the shores of a small island in the mists. Vampire bats came to drink the blood from his wounds, and Alain survived in turn by eating them- which turned him into a werebat.

Alain thus recovered from his keelhauling, but physical health was a cold comfort as he soon found that even with the flight he gained as a werebat, he could not leave his lonesome island. Driven mad by the isolation and cut off from the sea, he now vents his frustrations on those who sail as he no longer can. His island contains a lighthouse, but as with many things in Ravenloft, it's a trap in the guise of something helpful. Anyone, even outside the Mists, who investigates the light is drawn to the hazardous waters near his lighthouse, where most are shipwrecked. If any survivors somehow make it to shore, Alain will greet them. He'll be quite friendly, at first- he's starved for company and news of the outside world. But he's even more starved for flesh, and within a few days at most he will attack and kill them.

===Captain Pieter van Riese===
Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Originally from Gothic Earth's version of the Netherlands, Pieter was a ship's captain obsessed with finding the legendary Northwest Passage. When his ship was sunk in an encounter with an iceberg, he offered his own life along with the lives of his crew to any being who could help them forward, and the Dark Powers answered him. Naturally, they didn't actually give him what he wanted.

Pieter is now a ghost, and the captain of the ghost ship ''The Relentless''. He has the power to summon the ghosts of those who killed others and then were killed in the Sea of Sorrows to crew his ship, and can sail anywhere in his domain. However, he can no longer explore as he wishes, since the island domains in the Sea of Sorrows move around and he can only sail to land that he's chartered to go to.

Pieter is Ravenloft's answer to the legends of the ''Flying Dutchman'', a ghost ship that is unable to make port and sails the seas forever. Most versions say that the curse is because of her captain, Hendrick van der Decken, refusing to go to port while crossing the Cape of Good Hope, declaring that he would not make port "though I should beat about here till the day of judgment". He got shipwrecked in a storm, and the ghost of his ship is now bound by his curse to never be able to rest at port.

===Councilor Dominic d'Honaire===
The darklord of Dementlieu. Originally born in Mordentshire, Dominic led his nanny to suicide at age 7 and then manipulated his family to move away to avoid the Mordentshire police, with the mists giving him the domain of Dementlieu. Dominic is not the domain's temporal leader but does serve as an adviser for Marcel Guignol, Dementlieu's head of state. However, Dominic has much more power than his official position would suggest. The darklord's power is domination over the minds of other people on a prodigious scale. A great many in the land, including its recognized head, are his obedients and through this network he knows whatever goes on in his land.

His personal curse is that any woman he woos sees him as more repulsive the more he is attracted to her. Also, for some time his rule is challenged by an entity who is called (and virtually is) the Living Brain (re: ''Sherlock Holmes''' Moriarty), the last remains of Rudolph von Aubrecker, the youngest son of Lamordia's political ruler.

in 5e, the domain was revamped and the Darklord is now Saidra d’Honaire, though there is a plot hook that hints he's still around and trying to get his position back (then again Dementlieu is now a place where everyone pretends).

==="Death"===
Darklord of Necropolis (formerly Il-Aluk, the capital of Darkon). He is one of several minor Darklords that took over pieces of Darkon in Azalin's absence during the [[Grim Harvest]] and the only one of them to become a full Darklord after Azalin came back. Originally a clone of Azalin made by him as part of a convoluted scheme to bypass his curse, he was transformed into a negative energy elemental by the prototype version of the "Doomsday Device" Azalin thought would make him into a demilich. When it backfired, the massive surge of negative energy it released killed the whole of Il-Aluk's population. "Death" then claimed the ruined capital and its remaining undead inhabitants as its own, and after Azalin reconstituted himself Necropolis became its own domain. A shroud of negative energy still remains over Necropolis, which instantly kills all non-undead which attempt to enter its borders.

===Draga Salt-Biter===

Darklord of Saragoss, a watery domain where the only analogue to 'land' is 'places where the seaweed is clumped particularly tight'. Draga is a [[Therianthrope|wereshark]] pirate [[Cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] with a deep-rooted fear of sharks. Yes, it's ironic that he hates sharks while being able to turn into one. He knows. He got both his wereshark infection and his fear of sharks in the same incident; as a child, he was captured by a crew of pirates, who stuck a hook into one of his calves and dangled him into shark-infested waters, understandably traumatizing the kid. And after his own piracy and terrorism of the seas in Umberlee's name caught the Dark Powers' attention, they saw no reason to mess with a perfectly good case of irony and gave him a neat selection of new powers... all of which were shark-themed. He controls sharks, can only breathe underwater (though he also has a ring of air-breathing that allows him to surface for a few hours at a time), and his resurrection method involves his spirit being reborn via sharks. He's also becoming increasingly shark-like in mentality as time passes, a prospect which terrifies him.

===Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth===

Darklord of Dominia. Reknowned throughout the Demiplane of Dread as an expert on mental illness, few know the dark secret behind his knowledge. Terrified of falling victim to the heredity madness that plagued his family, Heinfroth conducted horrific experiments on his mental patients to deepen his understanding of insanity. One of these experiments turned him into the first cerebral vampire, a vampire subspecies that feeds on cerebral fluid instead of blood.

===Dr. Frantisek Markov===
Darklord of Markovia. Originally a pig farmer from Barovia, he grew increasingly obsessed with the anatomy of the pigs he butchered and began to perform bizarre experiments on them that wouldn't be out of place in a [[Haemonculus]]' laboratory. When his "subjects" inevitably died, he simply sold the meat without telling anyone what he had done to it first. Eventually his wife discovered his gruesome hobby and threatened to expose him, at which time she ended up becoming one of his experiments as well. After three days of vivisection, she finally expired- her corpse was so horrifically mangled that when it was first discovered it was mistaken for the remains of a monster. When Markov's involvement in her death became clear, the mists claimed him and made him a Darklord.

Fittingly, Markov's curse allows him to shapeshift into any animal form he wishes (save for his head, which remains human), but is incapable of assuming his original human form. As a result, he normally takes the shape of a gorilla in order to continue his increasingly deranged experiments without being impeded by a lack of thumbs. Said experiments culminated in the creation of the "[[Broken One]]s"- animals (and the occasional unlucky human) that have been surgically mutilated into a human-animal hybrid form and given a semblance of intellect, similar to the Beast Folk of ''The Island of Dr. Moreau''. Like said Beast Folk, they too are highly prone to reverting to their primal instincts and bestial appearance after only a few days.

===Easan the Mad===
Darklord and ruler of Vechor. Easan has the power to reshape the land, and even reality itself, within his domain. Combined with his capricious whims, his power makes the realm a place of constant change.

Easan is a short wood elf and former agitator for a war against Iuz the Evil. For his efforts, he was seemingly driven mad by the possession of a fiend. Now Easan only looks for a cure to his madness, but he is willing to tear many innocent lives apart, and maybe even reality itself, to find a cure. His vile research has focused on souls and soul transference. Among other monstrosities, his research created the dread mechanical golem from fellow outlander Ahmi Vanjuko.

It all started on the outlander world of Oerth. Easan argued the cause for war to his colleagues among the rulers of a tiny elf kingdom bordering Iuz's empire. To make an example of the upstart elf, Iuz ordered his agents to kidnap Easan. With Easan rendered helpless before him, Iuz bound a fiend to Easan.

The presence of the fiend within Easan began eating away at his mind. Many magical means of expulsion failed, including the divine magic of [[St. Cuthbert]]'s followers. In an effort to find a way to free himself from the fiend, Easan visited a far-off island of mystics. They managed to suppress the fiend for a time, but eventually the monks and their island were rent asunder by a disaster of mysterious circumstances. Only Easan came out of it alive. The cause of the incident was Iuz's visit to the island and his ensuing frustration at Easan's seeming mastery over the fiendish spirit within. Iuz brought about the magical destruction that wiped out the entire island.

Whereas Easan emerged from the disaster with his body intact, his mind had only deteriorated further. The fiend had returned, but Easan did not give up hope. Where religion had failed, Easan resolved to find a way to banish the fiend with perverse experiments. Easan sacrificed many lives in his pursuit for a cure before he was taken in by the Mists.

Eventually, Easan noticed he was in a foreign, if familiar, land where he was viewed as a god. Indeed, he now had the power to warp reality (albeit slowly) within his own domain. Although he enjoys this from time to time, for the most part he remains obsessed with finding secrets of the soul. For all his power, he cannot seem to best his own inner demons, for he has all but forgotten the reasons why he began his foul research.

In truth, Easan never had a fiend implanted in him at all. It was all merely a deception to throw him off balance. Still, Easan's mind locked onto it, and when others couldn't detect the nonexistent affliction, Easan turned to his own methods for finding a cure.

===Ebonbane===
First introduced in the Darklords sourcebook, Ebonbane is a villainous character strongly associated with the mythos surrounding the Shadowborn Family and the Shadowlands cluster. In universe, Ebonbane is a source of horrific evil that has been opposed by Lady Kateri Shadowborn and her kin for almost two centuries, going back to the Heretical Wars on the Prime Material Plane. Once a powerful fiend known as Lussimar, Ebonbane was conjured and trapped inside a sword by mortal spellcasters. Ebonbane struck back at its summoners and enslaved them. After Ebonbane killed Kateri Shadowborn, it became darklord of Shadowborn Manor, the former residence of its nemesis.

===Elena Faith-Hold===
Darklord of Nidala. Elena was a [[Paladin]] of the god [[Belenus]] that acted as a guardian of a land also called Nidala, but her devotion to Belenus was tainted by her fondness for the adoration of the masses. Following a great crusade against the forces of evil, the people began to scorn those who did not worship Belenus. The more zealous members of the clergy appealed to her vanity and drive to please Belenus, and soon she grew so fanatical that after the "non-believers" were wiped out, she turned on followers that she deemed unworthy, always finding some new target for her purges. For this, Belenus withdrew his support, but Elena never realized that she fell because her formerly [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies had blossomed into full-fledged self-righteousness- thus leaving her incapable of even considering that she might have gone astray from her god's teachings.

Believing her fall to be only a test of faith, she grew ever more ruthless in purging those who she deemed unclean, until she was eventually drawn by the Mists into the Demiplane of Dread. She didn't actually become a Darklord until later, when she started slaughtering entire villages because she saw more evil than good in them (not knowing that she was only looking at the worst parts of each town). At that point, she was given the domain of Nidala, which she runs as a dour police state, forbidding all practices she sees as evil while allowing her cult of personality to reach new heights. When she considers a town to be too corrupted, she and her followers destroy it, blaming the deed on the fictional [[dragon]] Banemaw. Ironically enough, in her domain the true dogma of Belenus is considered [[Heresy]], and her servant/"spiritual guide" Theokos (a fiend-like entity masquerading as a [[Cleric]] of Belenus) strives to wipe it out entirely.

As a Darklord, Elena has her paladin powers back, except they're from the Dark Powers, so they're warped in ways that Elena is in severe denial about (to the point where she's a straight [[Blackguard]] in some writeups). Her unicorn steed is now fiendish, she commands undead instead of turning them, her Aura of Courage is an Aura of Despair, she can only heal herself or her steed, and most notably her Detect Evil power instead detects strong emotions that others feel towards her (any emotion works, so someone who genuinely loves her will still be detected as "evil" with predictable results), leaving them vulnerable to her version of Smite Evil. Naturally, Elana refuses to believe that her Detect Evil power doesn't actually work as it's supposed to and insists that the inability of anyone else to use Detect Evil in the Demiplane of Dread is proof of their spiritual impurity. She is also able to "convert" foes to her side as loyal servants who will gladly die for her, which functions like an enhanced humanoid-only version of Charm Monster.

She is cursed with bouts of self-doubt, and once every week she must take a midnight ride as a chorus of voices denounce her for becoming one of the forces of evil she once fought against.

===Eli Van Hassen===

Darklord of the Endless Road, and a creation of the 4th edition to replace the infamously-dubious Headless Horseman and his Winding Road domain. Eli, unlike the Horseman, has an actual known reason to be Darklord, with the Horseman being downgraded to part of Eli's curse.

Eli was once a minor nobleman who ruled over a hamlet called Tranquility, despite having much grander ambitions. When his lands were ravaged by a hydra, a wandering horseman came by and slew the beast, being lauded as a hero. Eli was filled with envy as the huntsman received praise and admiration that he didn't, and his daughter falling in love with the man was the last straw. He forced the girl to claim that the Horseman had raped her, whipped the denizens of Tranquility into a frenzied mob, and executed the innocent man. Drawn to the Demiplane of Dread for this crime, Eli is now trapped on his estate, for the Headless Horseman, the spectre of the hero he murdered, wanders the road outside and will kill Eli if he ever steps beyond his estate's boundaries.

===Gabrielle Aderre===
Darklord of Invidia. A [[half-Vistani]] whose mother was raped by Drakov and was rejected by her fellow Vistani, she had always fantasized about her father's identity and resented her mother's unwillingness to speak of him, as well as her warning that if she bore a child it would end in disaster for everyone around her. When her mother was attacked by a werewolf, Gabrielle refused to aid her until she revealed the truth about her father. But when her mother did so, Gabrielle refused to believe it and left her to die. The mists took her after that, and she came to be cursed with an inability to cause direct harm to the [[Vistani]], either physically or magically. Soon afterward she came to become the temporal leader of Invidia as well as its darklord, an opportunity that allowed her to begin persecuting the Vistani in spite of her curse.

She took many lovers as Invidia's ruler, though she only truly loved one of them, a wolfwere called Matton Blanchard. However, she was later seduced by the incubus calling himself "The Gentleman Caller" and left pregnant by him. Her son Malocchio soon proved to be one of the Dukkar- one of the rare males of Vistani blood with The Sight. On its own this would be a cause for concern among the Vistani, as the Dukkar is effectively the Vistani equivalent of the Antichrist; however, Gabrielle went even further and taught him to hate the Vistani as much as she did. Ultimately she taught him too well, as Malocchio betrayed Gabrielle and took the position of Invidia's temporal ruler for himself. She survived due to the intervention of Blanchard, but since then Malocchio has been the ruler of Invidia, persecuting the Vistani far more effectively than Gabrielle ever could have done. The only reason he has yet to kill her is because he knows that if she dies, he will inevitably inherit her title of Darklord, which he has no interest in gaining.

===Gregor Zolnik===

Darklord of Vorostokov. The only known Darklord from [[Birthright]], Gregor is descended from Azrai, and lives down to the bloodline's negative reputation. Gregor was an excellent hunter, and back in Cerilia, his skills saved his village during an exceptionally harsh winter. Gregor loved being a hero to the people, but his talent for hunting couldn't work so well every winter. And so, to keep bringing back meat, he started hunting humans. This drew Vorostokov into Ravenloft, where the winter has continued ever since (though recently it has shown some signs of abatement). Gregor still "hunts" for his people, although they've started to cotton on to Gregor's lies and resent their dependence on him, they have no other choice, for Gregor forbids anyone else from hunting.

Gregor is a [[Loup du Noir]], and the boyarsky who support him are the same, as he infected them. His two sons are also nascent Loup du Noir, but the younger, Mikhail, wishes to escape him.

===Gwydion the Sorceror-Fiend===
Darklord of the Shadow Rift, and such an asshole that even the ''Shadow Fey'' think he's a monster. He is also responsible for their current state, as prior to Ravenloft, he was a powerful warlord on the Plane of Shadow, and to sate his ambitions, he kidnapped a bunch of normal fey, turned them into the Shadow Fey, and told them to create an interdimensional portal so he could use them as an army to conquer other planes. This worked as well as could be expected [[Derp|considering he had no mental domination of his creations]]. The Shadow Fey made a portal, alright... but it wasn't to the Prime Material and the armies that marched through it were actually a mass exodus of the Shadow Fey, hidden by illusions.

Gwydion eventually discovered the Shadow Fey's treachery, but it was too late, and by the time he got to the portal to stop them, the exodus was almost complete. The Shadow Fey king, Arak, held Gwydion back long enough for the Shadow Fey to all escape and seal the portal while Gwydion was going through it, trapping the Sorceror-Fiend. The other side of the portal led to the Demiplane of Dread, where the Dark Powers created the Shadow Rift to contain Gwydion further.

And that's pretty much how it remains. Aside from a failed escape attempt during the Grand Conjunction, Gwydion has remained stuck in that portal, unable to do anything but watch and send Shadow Fey an occasional bad dream.

===Haki Shinpi===
Darklord of Rokushima Táiyoo. He's a powerless [[Geist]] that, in life, was a powerful [[samurai]] and clan leader that forged a big and powerful empire. He felt pride in the fact that his clan and lands held together while others fell to discord, despair, and war, which he helped to instigate via manipulation and betrayal. Haki Shinpi somewhat lived by the code of Bushido but abused and exploited it to manipulate his nemeses, play them against each other, and run their hopes into the ground.

Shortly prior to Haki's death, he made it known that each of his six sons would inherit part of his conquered lands evenly. As expected, this went swimmingly for everyone involved. After his death, his children turned to bickering and then all out war against each other. Two of his children met their doom, and their islands were leveled by earthquakes before Rokushima Taiyoo was brought into the Demiplane of Dread.

Far from the influential and powerful man he was in life, Haki Shinpi can now do little to keep his sons from tearing his land apart in civil war.

===Harkon Lukas===
Darklord of Kartakass. A [[wolfwere]] bard from the [[Forgotten Realms]] unusual among his kind for his highly social nature, as most wolfweres are lone predators who only come together temporarily to breed. Seeing as how he couldn't get other wolfweres to agree to hang around together, he started focusing more on integrating into human society. He still hunted and ate humans, but he also gained a genuine love of human culture and of the idea of being somebody important. One day, for no reason since he'd basically been doing the same stuff any wolfwere does, just spending a bit more time in town in between kills, the Dark Powers grabbed his ass and yanked him into Barovia. At which point he went on an anti-wolf killing spree for, again, no particular reason. This attracted Strahd's attention, and he nearly killed Lukas, forcing the wolfwere to flee into the Mists, which gave him his own domain of Kartakass. Which, much to his frustration, is a tiny, rustic place where the most power he'll ever have is being mayor of a small town, so he's got the letter of what he wanted but not the spirit, making for a hollow victory.

The 5th edition version of Harkon Lukas is a [[Loup-garou]] instead of a wolfwere, and it changes some of the other details about him. As in the original, he had dreams of a [[werewolf]] society - an empire of werewolves, in fact - but that dream was dashed by the werewolf indifference to gathering in large numbers. So he tried to forge an empire amongst [[human]]s, this time actually directly getting involved; ultimately, he led a revolution against a king by faking his own death as a martyr to stir up riots, then using these to get him close enough to the king that he could burst out of the coffin his followers were carrying him around in, rip the king to shreds, and take the king's crown for himself... which was when the mists swallowed him and he found himself in Kartakass. His curse is also tweaked slightly as well; rather than being doomed to never rise above the position of mayor, he's doomed to never rise above the even less prestigious position of nearly-forgotten, washed-up performer.
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===Hazlik===
Darklord of Hazlan. A gay [[Forgotten Realms|Red Wizard of Thay]] who was publicly humiliated and stripped of his status by his female rival and her boyfriend, the latter of which he lusted after. As revenge, he murdered the guy, made his girlfriend eat his corpse, then tortured her to death as well, at which time he was then swept up by the mists. His curse is to suffer from nightmares of his now-inaccessible rivals defeating him with impunity and generally humiliating him every night, which has made him even more fixated on getting revenge against the Red Wizards. So he's crafting plans to cast a spell that will genocide all members of his race, the Mulan, throughout the multiverse. To escape being killed by said genocide spell himself, he's prepared to bodysnatch his female Rashemani apprentice when he's ready to use it.

The 5e version retcons him quite a bit. Once an ambitious Red Wizard with a habit of horribly scarring his rivals, Hazlik came to believe that his lover/rival, a man named Indreficus, was planning to betray him. In retribution, he captured Indreficus and subjected him to a nightmarish experiment that left him permanently transformed into a pain-wracked living portal. Hazlik presented what had become of his former lover as to the zulkirs with hopes to impress them, only to be told Indreficus did not betray him and he had merely been manipulated by the zulkirs into thinking so as a way to halt the ambitious pair's ascent. They then declared Hazlik’s transformation of Indreficus an abomination, and that as punishment, every rival Hazlik had defeated could exact a penance of their choosing upon him. In desperation, Hazlik fled through the twisted portal that had been Indreficus and found himself in the demiplane of dread, where he eventually found his way to a realm that knew nothing of magic.

As well as his old nightmares (which are now of Indreficus taunting him for his failures), he also has a new curse borrowed from the now-absent Azalin Rex, making him unable to learn any new magic. On top of no longer being able to advance the magical research that used to drive his life, he's also absolutely terrified that anyone will learn of his limitations.

===Hive Queen===
Darklord of the sewer domain of Timor that lies beneath Paridon, and a half-Marikith because somebody thought it was time to rip off the Aliens franchise. She wasn't always a monster, though. She was originally a spoiled princess who decided one day to scare her mother to death. To do this, she seduced a wizard into casting an illusion of her transforming into a half-Marikith, but when said wizard saw her with her real lover, he decided to spice up the spell a bit by removing the 'illusion' bit and ''actually'' transforming her. She now lurks in the sewers as the Queen of the Marikiths, regularly laying more Marikith eggs. But she fears being usurped even from what little power she has, so if any of those eggs hatches another Marikith Queen, the Hive Queen kills the hatchling.

===Illithid God-Brain===
The darklord of Bluetspur is an [[illithid]] [[Elder Brain]], a massive conglomeration of the brain of every dead illithid, merged together into a new, living, entirely alien entity. It's the reason using psionic powers in Ravenloft is a dicey proposition, as the God-Brain might notice and attempt to integrate you into itself. It's notable for having '''no''' attempt to justify its position in Ravenloft whatsoever, with the original writeup in the Red Box, the original Ravenloft campaign setting collection, literally saying that nobody knows why it's in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], what crime it committed to end up here, or even how it's actually being tormented by its stay here!

The ''Book of Sacrifices'' gives it a backstory and reason for its Darklordship. Its core persona was once a human psion named Seldrid, whose people were at war with the Illithids. Eventually, they began to win for good once the Illithid Elder Brain started to die, but unfortunately for them, Seldrid had come to admire the Illithids' power and discipline, and merged with the Elder Brain to revive it. This act of betraying his people to such a great evil caught the Dark Powers' attention, and as the Illithids sacked his home city, they drew the country into the Demiplane of Dread as Bluetspur, with the Seldrid-brain as Darklord. Seldrid's curse is an inability to transfer his consciousness as he once did or to integrate any new consciousnesses into himself. Now trapped as a giant brain in a pool with nothing but Illithid tadpoles for company, unable to make himself more mobile or gain any outside experiences, Seldrid has gone quite insane.

5th edition has its own take on the idea. In a nutshell, the God-Brain hails from the era when the Illithid empire was at its peak, performing whatever blasphemous experiments took its fancy until it literally thought something that was unthinkable. That is, it had thought so blasphemous, so utterly inimical to reality itself, that even an Elder Brain couldn't actually think it. Becoming obsessed with this ineffable thought, the God-Brain began cannibalizing other Elder Brains to try and upgrade itself to the point where it could finally contemplate this mysterious thought-form. Instead, it just gave itself a kind of aggressive psychic cancer, which began fatally necrotizing the God-Brain's neural tissues. Aghast at its behavior and terrified of catching the disease themselves, the other Elder Brains pooled their powers and tried to erase the God-Brain from existence; thanks to the meddling of the [[Dark Powers]], they only succeeded in banishing the God-Brain to the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Now the God-Brain struggles endlessly to both find a cure for its disease and to manifest the alien thought-form still gestating inside of it, all the while subconsciously aware that there is '''nothing''' it can do to achieve either goal, but desperate to fight for every last moment of life.

===Inza Magdova Kulchevitch===

The current Darklord of Sithicus, replacing Lord Soth. She was born in Gundarak, on the night Duke Gundar was assassinated, and two years later, her caravan wandered into Sithicus, where they were trapped, although her mother Magda managed to bargain for protection with Soth.

Inza's dark mindset showed from a very early age. Even as a child she loved thieving and manipulating the giorgio of Sithicus, and for the most part stood aside from her tribe. Her only friend was Piotr, a boy 1 year her senior, and this wasn't such a good thing as Inza pushed him to join her in both emnity to the giorgios and bullying a boy named Nikolas for his kindness towards non-Vistani. Their friendship eventually came to an end when Inza allowed Nikolas to be brutally beaten and pinned the blame on Piotr. Inza also hated animals, since they were not fooled by her facade of innocence, and would torture and kill them on the sly. None of this disturbing behavior ever reached Magda, who doted on her daughter, but by adulthood her rampant kleptomania and unlikeable personality had alienated most of the other Vistani.

Inza became Darklord of Sithicus after betraying her mother and caravan to Malocchio Aderre, breaking the caravan's oath to Lord Soth in the process. She attempted to usurp Soth's power, but was foiled and as the surviving members of her caravan hunted her down, she leapt into a chasm to escape. The darkness within the chasm surrounded and embraced her, turning her into the new Darklord.

As Darklord, Inza exists as a force of corruption. Her curse is twofold- first, her form has become a mass of shadow, and she has to concentrate to look human. Second, she stole, manipulated, and was a general bitch because of her philosophy that everyone was as evil as her at heart. The presence of true heroes in her domain (to say nothing of the redeemed spirit of Lord Soth himself) has shaken her to the core, and despite all her efforts to stomp out the forces of good in her domain, they still exist as thorns in her side.

===Ivana Bortisi===

Darklord of Borca, and a reference to the titular character of ''Rappaccini's Daughter''. Ivana inherited the domain by poisoning her lover for cheating with her mother Camille (who she also poisoned). Thus, Ivana inherited Camille's domain, along with immunity and power over poison. This, of course, came with a curse- Ivana cannot turn her lethally poisonous touch ''off'', and thus will never be able to take a lover.

Ivana is best known for the creation of Ermordenung, humans infused with poison to make them super-assassins. The first of these was Nostalia Romaine, Ivana's childhood friend and the one to actually do the dirty work of killing Camille.

5e retcons her a bit, though not nearly as much as Borca's other Darklord. While the whole thing with her mother seducing her lover did still happen, there's no mention of her poisoning her lover and it's not the only reason she kills her mother. Rather, she murdered her brothers and mother in an attempt to force her father to name her his heir, and she murdered him and all of their servants with poison gas when he still refused to do so, insisting that her cousin Ivan Dilisnya would be his sole inheritor instead. She's still terrified of the possibility of her father's will being found, as that would mean that the business she's worked so hard to grow would go to her childish and depraved cousin.

Her poisonous touch is gone, with her curse now being the more mundane and psychological torments of boredom due to feeling like no one around her is her intellectual peer, and the fact that she is never given the respect she feels she is owed, always being doubted, second-guessed, and looked down upon just like her father did.

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===Ivan Dilisnya===

Co-Darklord of Borca, and former darklord of Dorvinia. He's a cousin to Ivana Bortisi, and shares many similarities with her, most notably his love of poisoning people who draw his ire. After he poisoned his sister (who he lusted after) and her husband, he became a Darklord. His curse is simple but effective; his greatest pleasure aside from killing was fine food and drink, so he lost his sense of taste, rendering all the luxury around him hollow and unenjoyable.

His similar nature and modus operandi to his cousin caused their domains to fuse together under the name of Borca during the Grand Conjunction. Both he and Ivana are immune to poison and can create any toxin they can imagine, but Ivana has one more gift- agelessness. Ivan is desperate to learn the secret to her immortality, and refuses to believe she has no idea how she came by the gift (the Dark Powers granted it). Unlike Ivana, Ivan doesn't create Ermordenung, but he does have one nasty trick up his sleeve: Borrowed Time, a poison that only he can create. It stays in one's bloodstream for life and causes lethal convulsions every sunset unless you've ingested the antidote, 'Mercy', which is also something only Ivan can create, that day. Most of his minions are thus held hostage, knowing that Ivan holds the key to each day of their lives.

5e retcons him heavily. While he's still the cousin of Ivana and co-darklord of Borca who envies his cousin's immortality, that's pretty much all that stays the same. Ivan was groomed from a young age to be the head of a noble family, but despite all the opportunity in the world he instead took to wallowing in childish depravity, his family ignoring and enabling his worst and strangest impulses as they hoped he would grow out of it. He of course did not grow out of it, only becoming more violent and immature as he aged. On the same night that Ivana Boritsi poisoned her family, Ivan learned of his parents’ intention to send his beloved sister Kristina to a prestigious boarding school, and murdered his entire family for it.

He now resides in the Dilisnya family estate, a twisted funhouse that he lures people to to torment. Those unable to escape are eventually forced to don the colorful uniforms of the Dilisnya household staff and become Ivan’s new servants. He rarely leaves the estate, instead communicating through letters and acting through his "toys," animate creatures of clockwork or cloth provided to him by the Dark Powers.

===Jaqueline Reiner===

Darklord of Richemulot. Appropriately to the name, she's a natural wererat, born to a wererat branch of the Reiner family. The Reiners followed their patriarch Claude into the mists, where he reigned as Richemulot's original Darklord, but eventually Jaqueline had enough of his abuse and killed him, taking on his title of Darklord in the process. And while that title came with neat perks like control over Richemulot, it also came with a pair of curses.

First, Jaqueline suffers from intense monophobia. She hates nothing worse than being alone, but her entire family is made up of evil wererats whom she ''also'' really hates, so being in their company is not that much better. Second, while Jaqueline falls in love easily, she will involuntarily shift into rat form whenever she's alone with someone she truly loves. And while that love is as genuine as anything Jaqueline has experienced, she can never muster up the trust that her lover will accept her as a wererat, and she almost invariably then kills him. She might make a good pair with Urik von Kharkov, but Darklords can never leave their domains and it's uncertain if she knows about him.

===King Crocodile===
Yes, Ravenloft even has Darklords that are talking animals! No, you cannot [[Furry|play as one yourself]].

King Crocodile is the savage and bestial Darklord of the equally savage and bestial Wildlands, which is based on Rudyard Kipling's ''Just-So Stories'' and ''The Jungle Book''. This talking crocodile was so bloodthirsty and ferocious to his fellow talking animals in the jungle, they begged the hairless apes (i.e. humans) to come and kill him, but instead of holding up their end of the bargain, the hairless apes just started destroying the jungle for resources and colonizing it. This drove the other talking animals into pleading for King Crocodile to kill the hairless apes, and he agreed on the condition that the other animals all loan him their powers, which they did with the exception of the Python (the "wisest of the animals") and the Fly (whom King Crocodile thought was too insignificant to matter).

King Crocodile did slake his bloodthirsty appetite on the hairless apes and drove them out, but instead of returning the other animals' powers when he was finished as he had promised, he instead returned to his old ways of gorging himself on the animal population even more wantonly and gluttonously than before. It was at this point that the Python told King Crocodile a prophecy, which was that King Crocodile would either be killed by one of the hairless apes or by something he thought was pathetic and beneath him. With this done, the Python and his fellow snakes left King Crocodile's jungle to its fate at the hands of Ravenloft's Dark Powers, who quickly claimed the land as their own.

True to the Python's words, King Crocodile is slowly dying of the sleeping sickness spread by the flies, and the only thing that might help him are the hairless apes. But he is unable to keep himself from attacking any who might cure his affliction, and might attack them even if they do help him. The other talking animals still live in fear of King Crocodile and will implore any player characters they meet to dispose of him, but the cycle of betrayal in this land is only doomed to repeat itself. As a result, even if the player characters succeed in killing King Crocodile none of the talking animals will honour their words and the other crocodiles will fight to the death to assume King Crocodile's crown (and his cursed fate), as "''gratitude is not a quality well-known in the jungle.''"

===Kas===
Darklord of Tovag. The infamous vampire who betrayed [[Vecna]] and cut off his hand and eye. Was drawn into the mists at the same time as Vecna and the two of them were at constant war with each other until Vecna escaped. It is confirmed in 5th edition that Kas is still in the Demiplane of Dread and also is unaware that Vecna is gone. He repeatedly sends out armies to attack Vecna which never return, leaving him increasingly frustrated.

In the [[World Axis]] cosmology from 4th edition, he's not a Darklord, but he ''does'' hang out in the Domain of Dread called Monadhan; because he's figured out how to freely leave the domain whenever he wishes, he's turned it into his own personal base under the nose of its [[dracolich]] Darklord.

===Lemot Sediam Juste===
Darklord of Scaena, one of the few Domains capable of traveling through the mists. Scaena is a theater house, and one that Juste worked at as a playwright prior to his becoming a Darklord. Juste was a well-known and talented writer of comedies and dramas, but this never satisfied him, as he wished to write tragedies. Unfortunately for him, his [[Grimdark]] always came out as grimderp, and the actors invariably played his tragic works as farces, since they weren't good for much else. Driven to a deep bitterness by his failure to fulfill his obsession with tragedy, he wrote one last play- this one designed to be a real-life tragedy that killed all of his actors, and when the audience booed this one too, he locked up the house and burned it down with them inside.

Now, as a Darklord, Lemot has ultimate control of his theater, allowing him to trap people in his plays and alter reality for these press-ganged performers, but all this is undercut because he can't believe any of it; for his Darklord curse, the Dark Powers have taken away his suspension of disbelief, forcing him to always see actors, props, and scenery for what they truly are instead of what he wants them to be.

===Lord Wilfred Godefroy===
Darklord of Mordent (the same place from the old Ravenloft II module). A nobleman who murdered his wife when she was unable to produce a son for him as an heir and then murdered his daughter for trying to stop him, and then framed their deaths as an accident. Their ghosts came back to haunt him for a year until he killed himself to make it stop, and when Azalin and Strahd inadvertently drew Mordent into the mists Godefroy (now a ghost himself) became its darklord. His curse is to be continually tormented by the ghosts of his wife and daughter just as he was in life, who tear him apart every night as they curse him for murdering them.

While he was formerly known to be rather passive as a Darklord, in recent times he has taken to enslaving other ghosts to do his bidding. In particular, he's had the mayor of Mordentshire under his thumb for years by holding the ghost of his wife hostage.
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===Maharaja Arijani===
[[Rakshasa]] darklord of Sri Raji, Arijani attained his position after betraying both his kind and his father, Ravana (or rather, the Avatar of Ravana), having received the scorn of the rakshasa for most of his life. Although Ravana is a deity venerated by the rakshasa, Arijani's mother was Mahiji, then high priest of the hated goddess Kali and a leader of the Dark Sisters. To compound things, the Avatar of Kali delivered Arijanni to a home of low caste rank. He lived as a pariah shunned by his fellow rakshasa and languished in a position of low social importance. This alienated Arijani from his own kind, such that he arranged the death of many rakshasa in the conflict with humans. Gradually, Arijani's manipulations became so great that the people of Bahru began hunting their former hunters.

Arijani's depredations climaxed with rakshasa retaliatory siege against Bahru. Although the city fell, the cost was massive casualties on both sides and the city left in ruins. Angered and disgusted by Arijani's actions, Ravana sent his avatar to dispatch his prodigal son. However, Arijani conspired with Mahiji and lured the avatar into a trap. Thus rendered helpless, Ravana offered Arijani a wish in return for his release. Ravana accepted the offer, wishing to become immune to the attacks of rakshasas. The wish was granted, but Arijani slew the avatar anyway. Such was the level of his treachery that the Mists brought Sri Raji into the Demiplane of Dread.

The Maharaja's curse is that, although he is a talented illusionist, Arijani cannot disguise himself in a pleasing form, as most rakshasa do. Instead, he can only assume despicable aspects, such as that of the viewer's worst enemy. Maharaja Arijani resides in Mahakala, in Bahru. There, he is served by the Dark Sisters, whom through him, must provide to Kali daily human sacrifice.

Beyond the threat of an all weretiger cult called "The Stalkers" that were huge fans of his dad trying to kill him, Arijani's greatest fear is the very weapon he used to kill the avatar with, knowing full well it's somewhere in the jungle and very likely to be used on him just like Ravana.

===Maligno===
Darklord of Odiare, and originally from Gothic Earth's version of Italy. In the same vein as Pinocchio, he was originally a marionette brought to life through his toymaker "father" Giuseppe's wishes for a son. Though beloved by the children of Odiare, the adults of the village did not consider him to be a "real" boy. He soon grew bitter over the discovery that he wasn't truly alive, and after terrorizing Guiseppe into making more [[carrionette]]s like himself he had them kill every adult at one of his performances. It was this act that drew Odiare into the Mists as an Island of Terror.

Later on, he planned to have the carrionettes steal the bodies of every surviving adult there so they would be forced to love him, but due to the intervention of the PCs in the module "The Created" he was forced to simply kill the adults off instead. The children now adore him only out of fear, and as they grow older they wonder when Maligno will come for them as well.

Maligno's curse is that he can never be human as he craves, as he alone among the carrionettes is unable to steal the bodies of others. Furthermore, he cannot kill Guiseppe because any injury he suffers is inflicted on Maligno himself. Instead, the old toymaker was driven insane and now exists solely to create more toys for his "son" to command. Should Maligno's body be totally destroyed, Guiseppe is compelled to rebuild it, with the foul puppet's spirit claiming the new body as its own.

In 5e, Maligno was originally called ''Figlio'', which at least is an actual Italian name and not literally calling him "Evil" from the start.

===Marquis Stezen d'Polarno===
Darklord of Ghastria. As Strahd is for Dracula, Dr. Mordenheim for Dr. Frankenstein, and Tristren/Malken for Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so is Stezen to Dorian Grey, of ''The Picture of Dorian Grey''. But unlike Dorian, Stezen was a piece of work before his cursed painting came into play. As a noble in an unknown land, he enjoyed sowing chaos and rebellion and assassinated many people, but his charismatic nature meant that he hung on to a good reputation. But after one particular attempted coup went too far, his king had enough. Consulting with his mistress, a master of dark arts, he laid a curse upon d'Polarno that would do the Dark Powers proud; trapping a good chunk of Stezen's soul in a painting, he robbed him of all his charisma, vibrance, and capacity for enjoyment.

In retaliation, Stezen poisoned the king and his family, which drew the land into the mists. But he wasn't yet its Darklord. That happened when he realized that, once per season, he could temporarily reclaim his soul from the painting- at the cost of up to 50 other souls, each granting him one hour of rejuvenation. Now, once per season, he'll invite every stranger in Ghastria to a party (he'll grab some peasants if not enough foreigners answer). The party is for him, and him alone. With the exception of a few guests that he debauches himself with/upon, all guests are exposed to the painting, giving him up to 50 hours of being able to enjoy himself again before he returns to his normal drab state. While this is when he's at his most dangerous, it's also when he's most vulnerable- when his soul is still in the painting, he's essentially immortal, but when he's whole, he is as vulnerable as any other (And ''unlike'' the original Dorian, killing the painting won't work until Stezen is dead).

===Prince Ladislav Mircea===
Darklord of Sanguinia. Ladislav's story is a ripoff of the Edgar Allan Poe classic ''The Masque of the Red Death'', with the prince abandoning his people to a lethal plague, and retreating to a closed castle with his friends. And like in the original story, the plague entered the castle anyway. When Ladislav caught the plague, he turned to alchemy in a desperate attempt to cure himself. This failed and he died, only to rise as a Vrykolaka (usually mindless plague-carrier vampires that feed on bodily humors) and become Darklord of Sanguinia. He still experiments with alchemy to cure himself of his undeath, but this is unlikely to ever succeed.

===Sisters Mindefisk===
The three [[Hag]] co-Darklords of Tepest, and based the "the three wicked witches" from folkloric stories. Three sisters who were left as babies for a humble farm wife who wished for daughters, but from their birth displayed mysterious traits. Most notably, after their mother died from the strain of caring for the three sickly girls (or possibly because they drained her life), their father (who had often voiced his dislike of "weakling daughters") tried to leave the three 2-year olds for dead repeatedly, but they always came back. Eventually he let them stay as long as they cooked for him and his sons. Growing up dissatisfied with their surroundings, they took to seducing, murdering, and eating travelers to build up a stockpile of money so they could ultimately leave the farm. This worked until one final traveler tried to turn them against each other, only to be murdered so none of the sisters could claim him as theirs. This was what ultimately led to their being taken into the Mists and stuck in the depths of a forest full of [[goblin]]s and witch-burning, faerie-chasing bumpkins. They still lure in any unwary travelers to their cottage, taking advantage of the locals' blaming the goblins for their victims' deaths, but otherwise have little influence on their domain.

The sisters consist of Laveeda, an Annis Hag, Leticia, a Sea Hag, and Lorinda, a Green Hag. Though they can shapeshift, they are cursed to always see themselves and each other as their true forms no matter which shape they take.

====Mother Lorina====
In the 5e version of Tepest, only Lorinda is the darklord, having imprisoned her sisters when they refused to let her make and rear a child despite how badly she wanted to be a mom. Which ignores the complete and utter lack of maternal feelings they had in past editions, but whatever. She desperately yearns to have a family, but is thwarted by both her own inherently controlling, murderous nature, her inability to trust that her offspring genuinely love her (and the subsequent smothering, demanding, overbearing way that this makes her act), and the curse that any child she magics up for herself is a short-lived, ravenous monster; she can only make [[hexblood]]s for other people.
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===Sodo===
Darklord of Paridon. A low-ranked dread [[Doppelganger]] who resented being born into a lowly clan and thus being prevented from rising through the ranks by merit. After acquiring a magical Hat of Disguise, he fulfilled this previously-thwarted ambition by killing the elders who ruled over the clans and impersonating them, while also offing anyone else who questioned him. For managing the impressive feat of committing a betrayal egregious even by doppelganger standards, he was claimed by the Mists and given Darklordship of Paridon, and nailed with three separate curses: inability to control his shapeshifting, a healing touch (which wouldn't be much of a curse to anyone else, [[Dark Eldar|but Sodo's a sadist]] and this along with the previous curse renders him unable to effectively torture people), and an extra dose of paranoia for flavor.

===Thakok-An===
Darklord of Kalidnay, formerly from Athas. She was a templar of Kalidnay's sorceror-king, Kalid-Ma. To help him ascend to dragonhood, she sacrificed her family for the ascension ritual- an act which, ironically, would ruin it, as the Dark Powers took notice and drew Kalidnay into Ravenloft, in one of the few occasions in which being in the Demiplane of Dread was an improvement for most people. But not for Thakok-An nor Kalid-Ma, as the failed ritual put Kalid-Ma into a coma. Thakok-An remains active, ruling the realm as a theocracy of Kalid-Ma, despite said lord being comatose and all her efforts being for naught.

===Tsien Chiang===
Originally from the continent of Kara-Tur on the world of Toril, Tsien Chiang was beautiful and powerful wizard, who hated all men due to her father's dismissal of her abilities. After killing him and disabling her relatives, she seized control of her family lands. She used her charm and position to marry a total of four men, each of whom fathered a child with her before she killed him and moved on to the next. Three of the daughters so produced were evil, with the fourth, Nightingale, being truly good-hearted and adored by the gods. Tsien Chang would go on to commit various evil acts, including the desecration of four sacred bells and four sacred trees, but her mistreatment of Nightingale is what ultimately led to her being taken by the mists. On the fourth time that Nightingale objected to her family's atrocities, Tsien Chang decided to do far worse than merely beat her as they had the last three times, and she and her evil daughters were taken by the mists as the torture began. Tsien Chiang imprisoned the living remains of Nightingale in the Tower of Broken Promises as the Mists tore I'Cath from Kara-Tur forever.

If you're wondering why the number four is mentioned so much, it's because it's homophonous with "death" in most Chinese languages and is considered bad luck in many east-Asian cultures.

Her 5e incarnation gives her such a radically different backstory that pretty much the only things that remain are the four daughters and a magic bell.

When Tsien Chiang was a child, her home was destroyed by invaders, forcing her to flee into frozen mountains where she expected to die. Luckily for her, she was found and taken in by a gold dragon who took pity on her, and she served him as an attendant in thanks for saving her life. While serving the dragon, she learned much of magic and medicine, growing to become an accomplished wizard. The dragon refused to teach her any truly dangerous or powerful magic though, knowing that she would only use it for revenge. In her studies, she learned of the Nightingale bell, an artifact that could make its ringer’s dreams come true -- but creating the bell required the scale of a gold dragon. Knowing her mentor would never provide a scale she attempted to drug him so she could steal a scale while he slept, but got the mixture wrong and not only killed him, but caused his entire hoard to be destroyed, with all that remained being a single scale. Chiang crafted the bell and took it to her home, where she used it to wish away the invaders, which instantly vanished. In awe and gratitude, the people elevated her to royalty and she became their queen.

She ruled well for years, enacting vast reforms and strict but sensible laws in pursuit of creating the perfect empire. She had a family, taking particular pride in her four beloved daughters. Though her kingdom was prosperous, her people eventually began to chafe under her strict laws and demanding orders and revolted. Chiang was swift and merciless in her attempts to quell the rebellion, but her ruthlessness only caused the resistance against her to grow. When she ordered her armies to kill the families of all insurrectionists, assassins struck Tsien Chiang’s palace and killed her family. Distraught, Chiang climbed to the highest tower of her palace, looked out over her burning dreams, and struck the Nightingale Bell. Rather than granting her vengeful wish, the bell cracked and spilled a golden mist across the land. When the mist cleared, Tsien Chiang’s perfect city was gone, replaced by the unreal prison-city of I’Cath.

I'Cath is a city divided in two: The true I'Cath of the waking world, and Tsien Chiang's impossible, perfect dream. In the waking world the city is a silent and chaotic labyrinth composed of surreal, knotted streets and citizens trapped in eternal slumber. In the dream the city is vibrant and living, a place of ultimate beauty and efficiency where all things move according to Tsien Chiang's design, and a nightmare of constant drudgery for her people. Every twilight, Tsien Chiang climbs the spirit-infested Ping’On Tower and tolls the Nightingale Bell. This renews the magic of her dream world and keeps her citizens asleep, but it also calls forth a legion of jiangshi, which emerge from their tombs to reshape the waking city’s mazelike streets in a fruitless attempt to match Tsien Chiang’s perfectionist vision.

Her curse is that while the dream is near-perfection in her eyes, that only makes the imperfections of the waking world all the more obvious and inescapable. No matter how many times she tries to bring the same order and beauty she sees in her dream to the waking world, I'Cath's streets grow only more twisted and labyrinthine. She spends as much time as she can with the dream-versions of her daughters though she knows they aren't real, and in the waking world she actively avoids the twisted reflections of her daughters that wander the true I'Cath's streets.

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===Tristen ApBlanc===
Darklord of Forlorn. A Vampyre (living vampire) born when his dad was turned into a vampire but refused to leave his wife, which resulted in their son being born a vampyre. Tristen's parents were killed by fearful peasantfolk, but not before his mom gave him to the druid Rual to be raised. By all accounts, Rual was a pretty good foster mom, but when he was fifteen years old, Rual caught him drinking the blood of a deer. Believing she had betrayed him when he saw her talking to other druids, he attacked her- only to get his ass impaled by a blessed deer antler she was carrying, and when he drank her blood, he was both poisoned and partially cured of his vampyrism by the holy water she'd just drank. As she died, Rual cursed Tristen to be trapped in the sacred grove where he killed her, and to (agonizingly) die and become a ghost each night, and rise as a vampyre each morning. This makes him one of the few Darklords to receive most of his curse prior to Darklordship, as Forlorn was only pulled into Ravenloft centuries later, when Tristen engineered a bloody civil war to take control of the land.

As it is now, Forlorn really lives down to its name; there's little there except savage goblyns, a few beleagured Druids, and Castle Tristenoira, where Tristen is stuck, along with the ghosts of his family. The castle is split between three separate time periods that adventurers can shift between, thought to be because of all the ghostly shenanigans. Because there's really not much to do in Forlorn besides exploring Castle Tristenoira and trying not to get eaten by goblyns, it has no real political importance and is ignored by basically everyone, despite being most likely the second-oldest domain after Barovia.

He gets some very minor retcons in 5e, but since he only gets a single paragraph there's not much in the way of details. Seemingly the only changes are that he's now a dhampir (which is really more-or-less the same thing as a vampyre) and that he was taken by the mists almost immediately after killing the druids.

===Vlad Drakov===
Darklord of Falkovnia. He was originally the leader of a mercenary band called the Talons of the Hawk in [[Dragonlance|Krynn]]. For their wanton brutality and bloodlust, they were taken into Ravenloft and claimed Falkovia for themselves (after a failed invasion of Darkon that was repulsed by Azalin's undead).[[Berserk|If this seems familiar]] then good, you're paying attention.

This rivalry with Azalin has since become part of Drakov's curse, though he seems unaware of it. While four other countries (that have themselves agreed to an alliance should Falkovnia ever attack one of them) surround him, Drakov considers them "women and fops" not worth the effort of invasion, obsesses over an enemy he has no way of defeating, and is forever unable to gain the approval and respect of the great military leaders that he has sought all his life. And even if he did somehow conquer Darkon, [[fail|no Darklord can ever leave his own realm]] so he would never actually get to conquer it himself. Another factor in his defeats is that his way of doing war is distinctly and doggedly medieval (no gunpowder, no magic), so on the rare occasions he decides to try his luck at conquering other neighbouring domains than Darkon (all of which are at a higher technological level than Falkovnia) his forces almost always get shot to pieces by firearms or, more rarely, blown to pieces with magic. Oddly enough, his realm may in fact be, on the whole, a net ''benefit'' to the other domains of the Core, as his penchant for overworking his peasantry/slaves (when he's not busy having them impaled for his entertainment, of course) means that his realm produces large amounts of grain and foodstuffs which he sells for funds to equip and train his forces, unintentionally making Falkovnia "the breadbasket of the Core."

In addition, Drakov may be unique as the one of the most "conventional" Darklords in Ravenloft in the sense that he is statted like a run-of-the-mill fighter-class BBEG, and much like this archetype he has no magical abilities aside from a few magical weapons and armour at his disposal, coupled with no ability to cheat death, and no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders (all of which are in line with his disdain for magic and the supernatural), except for a good amount of inherent magic resistance that will also work against beneficial spells (so if he's ever in a tight enough bind to require magical healing, he's screwed). However, PCs and DMs shouldn't mistake his one-dimensional combat abilities as a sign that Falkovnia would be easy to liberate from his iron-fisted rule via a [[Raven Guard|simple decapitation raid]]; the totalitarian and thoroughly abusive nature of his rule means that those he trusts enough to carry out his orders are all likely evil enough and think enough like him to instantly assume his mantle of Darklord should Drakov ever be killed, just like similar totalitarian regimes in real life can survive the deaths of multiple successive leaders. Truly liberating Falkovnia in a thematically appropriate way would require the PCs to either engineer a full-scale revolution, or otherwise ensure the complete destruction of his regime, much like truly destroying a cancerous tumour in real life requires removing or destroying every last cancer cell. And all of this says nothing about which neighbouring realm would end up absorbing Falkovnia on the off-chance it ever gets truly liberated, though at this point even Azalin would be a better ruler than Drakov given that the lich dispenses harsh but fair justice and otherwise leaves his subjects alone to continue his arcane pursuits.

5th edition got rid of him, since the developers found him redundant. He's replaced by Ledeska Drakov, and Falkovnia was reskinned with a zombie apocalypse vibe.

===Yagno Petrovna===
Darklord of G'Henna. The Petrovna family was one of those taken by the Mists when Barovia was absorbed into Ravenloft, and although they avoided Strahd's attention by hiding away in the mountains this in turn led to inbreeding. As Yagno grew up, it became clear to all that he was insane- he conversed with imaginary people and cowered from beasts that weren't there. One day, he was locked out of his family's home and had to take shelter in a cave for the night. When he woke up, he saw the name "[[Zhakata]]" scrawled on a wall.

Yagno concluded that Zhakata was the name of the god that had protected him when he slept that night and created a shrine to his savior. (In reality, the name was written by his brother as a prank and meant absolutely nothing.) At first he merely sacrificed animals to Zhakata, but then he moved on to sacrificing people. When he was caught trying to offer his sister's newborn baby to Zhakata, he was chased out of Barovia by his family. The Mists welcomed him to the domain of G'henna, where he became the Darklord.

Yagno is cursed to constantly suffer doubts about whether or not Zhakata is real. No matter how many sacrifices he makes or how many people he commands to starve themselves in the name of Zhakata, he can never quite get rid of his nagging disbelief and the worry that all his devotion has been directed towards a lie. This eventually led Yagno to call upon a wizard who claimed he could summon Zhakata; as he could not summon a nonexistent god, a nalfeshnee by the name of Malistroi answered the summons instead and told Yagno that Zhakata was just a figment of his imagination. The Darklord immediately flew into a rage and killed the wizard, while Malistroi later escaped to ravage G'Henna. Since then, he has merely redoubled his fanaticism in a futile attempt to dispel his doubts.

==Former Darklords==
You remember that section where the permanent death of Darklords is discussed? Well, it's actually happened in the past, though never yet to a band of plucky adventurers, and the results usually haven't been good. These Darklords for whatever reason no longer rule their domain, usually because some asshole killed them and was promptly saddled with their domain as the new Darklord.

===Bakholis===
Former Darklord of Invidia, and formerly a tyrannical king whose kingdom was claimed by the mists when he was spurned by a woman named Marta, and in return had her lover killed and eaten in front of her and Marta herself raped to death by his soldiers. As she died, Marta cursed him to be the beast he was inside and never be free of the blood of loved ones on his hands, which manifested as turning him into a werewolf. Unlike most Darklords, Bakholis said 'fuck this' to angst and [[Dark Eldar|embraced his curse]], descending to ever-greater depths of savagery until, to everyone's relief, the half-Vistani Gabrielle Aderre showed up and promptly murdered his ass, succeeding him as Darklord of Invidia.

===Camille Boritsi===
The mother of Ivana Boritsi and the first Darklord of Borca, who earned her position by poisoning her husband and his lover. She was cursed to be betrayed by any man she trusted, which left her with serious issues relating to men and a blindspot towards scheming women, which ultimately proved her downfall when her daughter Ivana turned the poison tables by killing ''her'' for sleeping with Ivana's lover. She was succeeded as Darklord by her daughter and murderer, Ivana Boritsi.

===Claude Reiner===
The first darklord of Richemulot. The patriarch of a family of wererats who lead his family into the mists to escape hunters, gaining his domain when his monstrous cruelty caught the attention of the Dark Powers. He was eventually killed when his granddaughter Jaqueline had enough of his abuse, making her the new Darklord of Richemulot.

===Duke Nharov Gundar===
Former Darklord of Gundarak, prior to being betrayed and usurped by Daclaud Heinfroth, who would later gain his own, separate domain. As Darklord of Gundarak, he enforced the worship of the malevolent trickster-god [[Erlin]] and taxed basically everything he could think of (with a special emphasis on the birth of girls), but little else is known of his rule. During the Grand Conjunction, Gundarak was absorbed by Barovia and Invidia.

But that wasn't the end of Nharov Gundar. He was a vampire, and though Heinfroth had staked him, he remained alive, but dormant. His skeletal remains somehow found their way to the traveling curio show of Professor Arcanus, where some complete berk went and yanked the stake out. This brought him back to life, though his time spent as a skeleton has reduced him to a near-bestial state, only vaguely remembering Heinfroth's betrayal.

===Lord Soth===
{{main|Lord Soth}}
The infamous Death Knight of Krynn was for a time the Darklord of Sithicus. More details can be found on his page, but suffice to say that the Dark Powers grew tired of him, and he was succeeded as Darklord by the [[Vistani]] Inza Kulchevitch.

===Nathan Timothy===
Darklord of Arkendale. There are more details on him in the section for his more important son Alfred, but suffice to say that Nathan was possessed of a deep-seated wanderlust, which the Dark Powers curtailed by cursing him such that he couldn't leave the river Musarde, lest he be crippled by land sickness. Nathan rolled with the curse and adapted so well to being a boatman that he outright lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction. He's still confined to river waters, but Arkendale has been absorbed into Alfred's domain of Verbrek.

===Vecna===
{{main|Vecna}}
Yes, THAT Vecna, the Maimed God; the guy whose eye and hand are still around for PCs to mess (and ''be'' messed) with.

The whole tale of Vecna's ascension to godhood is complicated, but at one point where he was 'merely' a demigod, he and Kas were pulled into the Mists after a bunch of meddlesome adventurers thwarted one of his plans. Not one to be contained for long, Vecna has the dubious honor of being the only Darklord to force his way out of the Demi-Plane of Dread after being drawn in by the Mists. On top of that, he managed to get himself 'promoted' to full-fledged minor God in the process, which is how he got the Dark Powers to kick him out due to their ban on allowing gods to influence Ravenloft. (The full story is recounted in the modules ''Vecna Lives!'', ''Vecna Reborn'' and ''Die Vecna Die!''.)

==Netbook Darklords==
These darklords represent the rulers of fan-made domains from [[netbook]]s such as the [[Books of S]], the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]], [[Quoth the Raven]], and other projects from the [[Fraternity of Shadows]].

===Ahasveros===
Darklord of Incitatus. Once, Ahasveros (male human) was the greatest scientist of his civilization, until the day his homeland was drawn into a great war against a rival nation. He invented the Adamas theory, a device that could be used to generate a mighty tidal wave to devaste the enemy's fleets and harbors.

But that wasn't enough for Ahasveros; he became obsessed with improving the device, banishing his assistants when they protested the potential dangers of doing so, cutting off all contact with those who might challenge his beliefs, and reducing the time he spent running his calculations.

The result was, when the device was used, Ahasveros lost control of it and the tidal wave annihilated ''his'' homeland as well, drowning him in the tower from whence he'd launched it.

Ever since then, the bussengeist he became has lingered in his tower, unable to decide whose fault the mess was, alternating between blaming his associates and himself. Honestly, he's not much of a darklord, and this is reflected by how empty and meaningless Incitatus is. He currently occupies a limbo; too dull to be truly absorbed into the [[Demiplane of Dread]], but still too evil and in denial of what he did to be released, either.

Ahasveros' existence is completely tied to the remnants of the Adamas machine. Only by destroying it, which will unshackle his spirit, and performing a brief rite to the long-forgotten sea god of ruined Misenos, which requires lighting the lanterns in the temple and praying for both Misenos and Ahasveros, will his torment end.

If Ahasveros wishes to seal his domain's borders, those attempting to cross it are overwhelmed by misery and the urge to seek comfort, which only those outside of the border can give them.

===The Barons Gustav===
Darklords of Gustavstan.

Baron Gustav the Elder is a male human ghost who once ruled a small kingdom in his homeland. Though he had intended to pass his holdings on to his younger brother Klaus, the younger sibling had no interest in ruling, so the elderly Gustav took a wife and fathered a son, Gustav the Younger. Then, when his son was fifteen, Gustav the Elder stepped on a snake in his garden and was fatally bitten.

Gustav the Younger (male human [[Fighter]]) was inconsolable, his mind fracturing under the sudden death of his beloved father. In his grief, he refused to take up the throne, forcing his uncle Klaus to become Baron in his place - as well as to wed Ingrid, Gustav the Elder's widow and Gustav the Younger's mother, to secure the Younger's inheritance. Unfortunately, this gesture was misunderstood by ''both'' Gustavs; the Younger began to despise his uncle and mother for their apparent disloyalty, whilst the Elder's restless spirit also became incensed at Klaus's apparent betrayal. He seized upon the idea of exploiting his son's fractured mind to both weaponize him against Klaus and to make him vulnerable, so the Elder could live again by stealing his son's body.

This domain is basically [[grimdark]] Hamlet, in case it's not obvious already.

So Gustav the Elder manifests to his son, lies that he was murdered by Klaus, and convinces his half-crazed son that Klaus wants to steal the throne for himself. Klaus the Younger swallows this bullshit hook, line and sinker, and pretending to be even madder than he actually was, he began preparing to kill his uncle and his mother both - ignoring that Gustav the Elder wanted Ingrid spared, having figured that once he stole his son's body, [[/d/|he could reclaim her as his wife]].

This led to Gustav the Younger murdering the father of Elaine, the woman he loved, and driving her so insane that she ended up committing suicide by throwing herself off the battlements of the castle - which didn't do Gustav Junior's sanity any great shakes. Instead, it provoked him into finally battling his uncle, killing Klaus and his mother in the process. Which was when Gustav the Eldler showed up and, horrified at his wife's death, he revealed the truth about how he'd played his son for a fool. Enraged, the son attacked his father's ghost, and that was when Gustavstan was snatched up by the mists.

Gustav the Younger now burns with the urge to hunt his father's spirit down and destroy him, a task not helped by his paranoia. Every night, he is haunted by the angry ghosts of Elaine and Klaus, who spend the night cursing him out for their murders.

Gustav the Elder now spends his days haunting the local insane asylum, where Ingrid - who actually survived her son's attack, but was left a raving madwoman - is now kept. At night, he strives to manipulate others into killing his son.

Neither darklord can be permanently destroyed by violence; they regenerate and revive from destruction. Only by killing Ingrid will their resurrective regeneration cease... but doing this will cause the killer to immediately suffer a failed [[Powers Check]], whilst those who watch get to roll one.

===Benada Nameless===
Darklord of Vin'Ejal. Conceived when the Eye of Toldun, the fake prophet of a phony goddess called Appissa (actually a powerful half-breed [[yuan-ti]] [[psion]] magically held in stasis), used a potion given to him by his goddess to drug and rape a woman named Dillura Ogfenhauer, Benada's mother despised her daughter from the moment she was born. Only Benada's uncle, Dillura's 12-year-old brother Ekkim, cared for her, and he raised her throughout her life, even taking her off with him to be his squire when he went to war after discovering her nature as a [[psion]]icist [[weresnake]]. Even when they returned, however, Dillura wanted nothing to do with her bastard daughter.

Finally, the enraged Benada sought to confront her mother one evening, only to track her to the Shrine of the Eye. When she saw Dillura embracing the Eye, she realized that this man was her father. Filled with hatred, she grabbed a bone knife and fatally stabbed her mother, before psionically torturing her father to death. As she turned to leave, she found herself confronted by her uncle Ekkim, who had seen everything. Realizing she couldn't let him live now, a weeping Benada killed the only person to ever show her love, transporting Vin'Ejal to the Misty Realm.

Benada's curse seems to be an insatiable hunger that only human flesh can sate; she only gives in to its demands once per month, however, as she fears depleting her domain's population. If she wishes to close the domain, the waters around Vin'Ejal decrease in temperature to the point that would-be swimmers will freeze solid, whilst hail begins savagely pelting down from above.

===Baroness Ilsabet Obour===
Darklord of Kislova. This female human [[alchemist]] was born the youngest daughter and favored child of Baron Janosk Obour of Kislova, and remained loyal and obedient to him even as he descended into brutal tyranny and made a failed attempt to conquer a neighboring barony, only to be crushed, captured and executed. Before he died, Janosk commanded each of his three children to take steps to both preserve their family and avenge the loss of their power.

Of the three, Ilsabet was the most loyal to her father, honing her alchemical skills and delving into dark alchemical practices, focusing on hideous poisons and the creation of alchemical undead. She crippled and maimed many prisoners who had dared to rebel against her father's rule before his conquest by Baron Peto, created a unique strain of alchemical vampires, fatally poisoned her elder siblings for perceived disloyalty to their father's dying wishes, and finally married Baron Peto herself and bore him a son in order to gain the opportunity to poison him with a paralytic venom. It was only as she administered what she intended to be the final, fatal dose, killing her mentor (and true love) to do so, that the Mists finally claimed her.

Ilsabet currently suffers two curses. Her most direct darklord-related curse is that her desire for power and revenge are thwarted; though her husband, Baron Peto, remains incurably paralyzed, he also remains unkillable - no matter what she does, he always returns to life. As a result, she remains forever his regent, rather than the true Baroness of Kislova, which she regards as unacceptable; she yearns to resume the interrupted reign of her own family. Secondly, Ilsabet has become a vampire-like creature that feeds on pain, and must have one person killed every day in order to survive.

Unlike many Darklords, Ilsabet has no particular powers of supernatural survival. If you can beat an 11th level [[wizard]] protected by her guard of alchemical vampires, you can kill her.

When Ilsabet closes the borders, a poisonous green mist surrounds Kislova, inflicting irresistable damage per round until the would-be escapee returns to Kislova.

===Bethany Stone===
Darklord of Stonewall. A sad, broken, bitter woman, Bethany was born the daughter of a family of puritans, self-righteous and obsessed with sin. When her father discovered the child Bethany, a cheerful, whimsical young girl, had dreams of leaving the family home to become a dollmaker, he destroyed the dolls she had painstakingly constructed over years of work and beat her within an inch of her life. Later, when she came of age, he arranged her marriage to a man of high standing.

After long years of often-lonely marriage, pregnant with her sixth child, Bethany's father and husband were caught in a terrible accident, with the former dying and the latter being left in a coma. That was hardship enough, but as she cared for her husband, Bethany discovered his diary, in which he revealed he had only wed her to cover up his "sinful" nature as a homosexual. Enraged, Bethany began tampering with her husband's medicine to ensure he remained comatose, and then launched her own moral crusade, something aided by the fact she established her charismatic but broken-willed son Clarence as the town's minister.

When the Salem Witch trials broke out, Bethany eagerly spread their madness to Stonewall. But the tenth victim was the friend of Bethany's youngest daughter, Katherine, who unearthed evidence that this was really a way for Bethany to resolve a land-dispute between their families in the Stone's favor. When Katherine tried to intervene, she called out her mother for the cold, twisted monster that she was. Bethany promptly stabbed Katherine in the heart, and that was when the Mists took the town.

Bethany Stone is now a [[harpy]], although she has limited shapeshifting abilities that let her masquerade as a human. Her curse is that she will be forever doomed to lose her children before they are fully ready, whether by death, betrayal or abandonment. Though she doesn't know it yet, as part of this curse, she will become spontaneously pregnant and give birth to a human child every 5 years. Both of her arms are permanently blood-red from the elbow down, although she considers it a sign of her righteousness and so doesn't hide it.

The borders of Stonewall are permanently closed; unless the departee has the approval of either Bethany or Clarence to leave, they will be struck by lightning bolts until they turn back. It's unknown if lightning immunity will nullify this border, but it's not explicitly countered.

Nothing explicitly says that Bethany cannot just be killed in a fight (and, frankly, Stonewall is described as the kind of place where wiping out everybody is actually the heroic thing to do), but she ''does'' have an explicit method of redemption. If the party can find one of the dolls she made as a child, as one survived her father's wrath, and present it to her, she will break down in tears. If consoled and successfully reminded of her long-lost dreams, the rest of the town will break down weeping with her, and then Stonewall will slide out of the Mists and back to the prime material. On the other hand, if they fail, then she'll destroy the doll herself and become even more fanatical.

===Caleb Wicks===
Darklord of Wayward on the Bone Sands. Even at the age of 10, Caleb was a fearless, stubborn, trouble-making brat. The only thing able to scare him into obedience were stories of a local boogeyman: Black Hat the Swordslinger.

Caleb's transformation from mere brat to full-blown Darklord came when his family were hired by the lord of the distant Hangingshire, which required a long trek that passed through a desert region known as the Bone Sands. During this leg of the journey, Caleb's family were seperated from the caravan and veered their wagon over a tall, steep dune as a result of a sudden sandstorm. The wagon was destroyed, their horses killed, and Caleb's elder brother Horatio was severely injured. Though they initially settled in to wait for the caravan to send a rescue party after them, their food swiftly ran out and they realized they would have to try and walk out of the desert on foot... a journey that Horatio couldn't make.

The senior Wicks came to a grim realization: Horatio wasn't going to live much longer anyway, so when he died, the family would eat his body for sustenane before making their trek towards safety. They were content to wait... but Caleb found out about their plans, and taunted his brother with this fact; when Horatio began to scream and cry, Caleb panicked and stabbed him to death with a cooking knife. Caleb's parents were horrified, but ultimately decided there was nothing left to do. They ate their dead son, and then broke camp the next morning.

As they were traveling, Caleb found himself separated from his family by another sandstorm, wandering on his own for days before he stumbled across a small town called "Wayward". Mad with hunger, he murdered the first townsman who tried to offer him help, devouring as much of the man's flesh as he could before fleeing into the night. The next morning, he revealed himself to the horrified townsfolk and claimed that he had witnessed Black Hat kill and eat the man. Unable to believe a youngster like Caleb could be responsible for so monstrous a crime, the townsfolk believed him, and opened their homes to the young cannibal.

Caleb became a beloved fixture of the community... and then, the neighboring [[gnome]] community of Rumbleton was destroyed in an earthquake that crushed the subterranean village like an egg. They begged Wayward for shelter whilst they tried to rebuild, and the humans took them in. But rebuilding a new gnomish settlement wasn't easy, as Rumbleton had already been built in what was considered the most stable, accessible ground for miles around. With little choice, the gnomes began to put down roots in Wayward.

Which was a problem: Wayward already had troubles supporting its own population before the gnomes came in, and now things were worse than ever. The population increase led to a famine, known as "The Lean Times" by the locals, and tensions began to grow between humans and gnomes... tensions only fanned by Caleb, who began advocating the humans of Wayward should eat the baby gnomes born after the refugees settled in their village. Whilst initially this proposal was rejected, the gnomes took affront when they learned of its proposal at all, and relations only continued to deteriorate... especially because Caleb was continuing to egg things on, pushing his cannibalistic plan in secret.

Finally, it all came to a head; on the first night of the full moon, the Waywarders, driven mad with hunger, descended on the gnome shantytown and abducted as many gnomish children as they could, cannibalizing them in a disgusting, bloody orgy. Over the next two days they massacred the surviving gnomes and ate them as well, then they ate the few Waywarders who had protested "The Feast", as it was dubbed. And on that final full moon night, as the cannibal villagers slept off their full bellies, Wayward on the Bone Sands was pulled into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Caleb and the other villagers are now [[quevari]]. They spend most of their time in an enchanted slumber, only waking when visitors come to town. Like all quevari, they are peaceful and innocent-seeming during the day, but revert to bloodthirsty cannibals at night, as the first three nights after outsiders arrive are all full moons - after those three nights, they fall back into slumber until disturbed again. It's unclear what happens if a survivor somehow avoids being killed on that third night.

Wayward itself has a couple of curses. Firstly, there are no children here; all of their youths were left behind when the village was pulled into the Misty Realms, and none of the women ever fall pregnant, save when Caleb is killed (we'll get to that). Secondly, all food and drink in the domain is inherently inedible - even foods brought in from outside instantly spoil, although the look and smell perfectly fine. Finally, none of the villagers will ever age beyond the day they were when they committed their sins.

Caleb himself is a 5th level [[quevari]] [[thief]] who wields an enchanted knife +3 of bleeding. He can Charm Person 1/day by speaking to them, and still carries the Triangle of the Feast - the triangular dinner bell he played before the cannibalism of the gnomes. This can function as a Chime of Hunger that only affects non-Waywarders 3/day, and can also summon 2d6 Waywarders to his aid at will. The other quevari only openly recognize him as their lord and master during the night, but still are fiercely protective of him during the day. He can potentially be driven away in fear by forcefully invoking Black Hat - this requires something like disguising yourself ''as'' the boogeyman or telling a Black Hat story, simply saying the name won't scare him.

If killed, one of the Wayward women will find herself pregnant within a week, and give birth to Caleb's reincarnation a month later. Caleb will resume his true form as an elven year old a month after being born. The only way to kill Caleb for good is to wipe out the entire town of Wayward, which frankly you should be wanting to do anyway.

Caleb can close the borders by summoning tornadoes that lash all around the domain's periphery, kicking up lethal sandstorms and making it impossible to flee.

===Cassandre Desesprits===
Darklord of Miseria. Born to a humble farmer's family, Cassandre was gifted with the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, which also made her a very effective seer. When this was revealed to her village, she became an immediate celebrity, and this situation - never permitted time to herself or any true friends, but also showered in displays of good will and thanks - twisted her heart. She became completely self-centered, egotistical and immoral, regarding all others as nothing more than things to use for her own amusement and gratification.

When a war broke out amongst the local villages over the ability to use her seer powers, Cassandre exploited this to become a veritable queen, feeding just the right predictions to all factions to keep the war dragging on perpetually for over two years, wallowing in opulence whilst others bled, died and starved over her. Inevitably, the war drew to its climax, with both factions preparing to launch a decisive blow with a super-spell; Cassandre manipulated them into both acting at the exact same time, figuring that this would cause the spells to negate each other and stalemate, thus preserving the war and her power. Instead, they magnified each other, resulting in the annihilation of the warring armies and Cassandre being literally blown into Miseria.

Cassandre's curse is, fundamentally, that she will never again enjoy the lifestyle she once enjoyed. Although surrounded by people who genuinely like and care for her rather than her gifts, she pines for the days when people doted upon her every wish and resents being forced to work for a living as a barmaid. Her [[diviner]] powers have dwindled and become almost useless, but her spiritual powers have expanded; she now commands incorporeal [[undead]] with the proficiency of a master [[necromancer]], and her life is supplement with the years drained by her [[ghost]]ly minions. None of her schemes to regain her "royal" status will ever work, and so she seems doomed to an eternity as a beloved but otherwise unremarkable barmaid.

When she closes the borders, Miseria is surrounded by thick red fog that causes those who try to leave to age and eventually crumble to dust, whereupon they become ghosts under her command.

If slain, Cassandre becomes a ghost herself, but then resurrects 2d4 days later. Only if she is confronted in ghost form by an exorcist of the local deity Saint-Ambroise who can denounce her for her crimes in life will she be banished from the world of the living forever.

===Coyote===
Darklord of Yatehcaa. Once, this animal god aided the First Man in protecting his American Aboriginal-flavored world from powerful monsters. But his greed, malice and cruelty led to him committing many dark acts, and so the gods declared him unfit to remain amongst their ranks. First Man took back Coyote's cloak of stars, condemning him to stay forever on the world and be vulnerable to the monsters he had once battled. But Coyote showed no regret, no compassion, no willingness to learn from his mistakes or to try and make amends, and so he found himself trapped in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Ever since, he has continued his old ways, playing cruel, malicious tricks on the people of Yatehcaa, all the while trying to distract himself from how afraid he is that some day, he might be caught and killed by "The Dark Watchers", the antediluvian monsters whom he once battled alongside First Man.

Technically, nothing protects Coyote from death, but between his lack of shame and utter cowardice combined with his powerful magical abilities, actually killing him in a fight is easier said than done.

===Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez===
Darklord of Resistencia. Born the son of a once-great noble family in the Holy Republic of Aragona, Santiago's family had fallen in stature to such a degree that the impoverished patricians had mortaged their lands to the hilt and lived a life barely above that of their peasant tenats. They scrimped and saved to send Santiago to court, but the Don of Quijada found himself a laughing stock, regarded as little better than a jumped up hayseed peasant. This only fueled a lifelong hatred for those lacking in noble blood.

Desperate to try and reclaim the respect he had been taught from birth his family name deserved, Santiago bought a commission in the army. He proved little better here than he had in the court; poor of health, average at best with the sword, and no genius in the command of men or the intricacies of tactics and strategy. His only saving grace was his thoroughness and dedication... but even this went sour, breeding in him an obsession with discipline, cleanliness and presentation, and a love of punishment so extreme that even the Aragonan army considered him a draconian tyrant.

Though Santiago managed to win a few fairly creditable actions early in his career, his faults quickly stole away what his successes had won him, sending him into a self-inflicted downward spiral of ever-worsening behavior and failures as a result. He was appointed as the governor a rebellious backwater province, and only made things worse as he extended the same tyrannical, brutal law he held over his military forces to the population.

Then he was offered the chance to take up governship in a minor overseas colony called Neuva Aragona, which was also currently rebelling. Despite recognizing that this was intended to be a sentence of exile, Santiago accepted, dreaming of reversing his fortunes. Instead, he proved the absolute ''worst'' choice for the role; a born-and-bred monarchist with no sympathy for the lot of the peasants, he ignored the legitimate grievances of the rebels and remained fundamentally convinced that the isle of Manzanilla - renamed "Resistencia" by the rebels - was home to a silent majority of good, loyal followers of the kings. Ignoring all opportunities efor a diplomatic solution, he launched into his trademark brutality, which only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the natives.

Among his many atrocities, he took captive the pregnant wife of the rebel leader Martin Jose Maconda, one Isabel de Maconda. Simultaneously smitten with her and repulsed by her loyalty to the rebel's cause, he alternatively cajoled her and brutalized her, culminating in his ordering that she would be permitted no midwife when she went into labor. The birth went bad, and both mother and child died.

All his atrocities were for nothing, ineptitude and his habit of overworking his never-great health led to him dying in his sickbed, on the very day the last of his depleted forced were overwhelmed and Neuva Aragona formally seceded independence. But even as he died, he cursed that the rebels must be defeated at any cost.

Santiago now exists as a ghost, cursed to forever mentally relieve every battle he lost on Resistencia and see with perfect clarity how he could have won. And, of course, he's also cursed that no matter how he schemes and plots, on those rare moments he tears himself away from his biter memories and dreams of glory to actually try and do something, his plans to re-conquer Manzanilla are doomed to fail.

If defeated in battle, Santiago reforms in his burial chamber below Castillo Ascension, although he remains trapped there until the next full moon. The only way he can be destroyed is if his personal sword is stolen from this chamber and used to deliver the death blow in combat.

When he closes the borders, the sea surrounding Resistencia takes on an eerie, unnatural calm; sailing ships cannot move, and rowers will find that they simply can't get more than a half-mile away from the coast.

===Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll===
Darklord of Immerabt. This female human alchemist could in many ways be considered a mirror to Dr. Mordenheim of Lamordia. Like him, she was born a scientific prodigy who had neither time nor patience for religions and matters of faith. When she was twelve, Dorothy's mother died in childbirth giving birth to a son, something Dorothy blamed upon both the local priest - for he had both refused to allow Dorothy to be present at the birth, despite her knowledge of herbs and medicines, for her lack of faith, and proven unable to save Lady Hemphyll's life with his limited divine magic - and her father, for he had listened to the priest.

This became the cornerstone of Dorothy's growing loathing for religion, something that grew ever stronger as she aged. She went abroad to study medical sciencies, [[transmuter|transmutation magic]] and [[alchemist|philosophical alchemy]], always seeking to refine her medical skills. She also visited the dark, seedy corners of society: brothels, dog-fighting arenas, drug-fueled parties and other such realms that further convinced her of the absence of divine intervention.

The kicker was when she met and fell in love with another medical student of noble ancestry; Hermann Leawly. Despite her feelings, she refused to marry him, for that would require submitting to a religious ceremony she wanted nothing to do with. But he bent under the pressure from his traditional family and returned to their home, something that enraged Dorothy, who now derided him as a weakling.

After a long, bloody war, a terrible plague gripped her homeland, and Dorothy came up with an idea for a new method to care for the terminally ill. She purchased an abandoned penitentiary on a small rocky island and converted it into a sickbay, hiring the best healers she could find (so long as they weren't divine spellcasters). One of those she hired was Hermann. She became ever-more obsessive, pushing her followers brutally, and gaining the first attention of the [[Dark Powers]]. When she perfected her prototype life support mechanisms and began abducting the terminally ill from her hospice to install them in the devices, trapping them at the brink of life and death in a state of constant, unrelenting pain, they grew anticipatory. But it wasn't until she got drunk at a party celebrating her newly produced plague vaccine, and revealed to Hermann her monstrous experiments, injecting him with concentrated plague serum and deliberately waiting for him to reach the still-incurable terminal stage of the disease before strapping him into one of her hideous living death machines that they seized her and transformed goal island into Immerabt.

Dorothy's curse is three-fold, and could be a considered a blend of Mordenheim's and Azalin's. Though she is well-aware of the fact that the local industries of Immerabt are poisoning the population, her attempts to plan and execute social projects to counter the pollution invariably fail due to being rejected or ignored. Secondly, she is kept so busy working her daily job that she cannot devote the time to furthering her understandings of magic and alchemy, preventing her from attaining the greater power she needs to pursue her goal of the ultimate curatives. Finally, she is unable to invent a vaccine to cure those suffering from the terminal effects of the plague, which means she cannot cure Hermann, who remains bound and suffering in his life-support in the depths of her sanitarium.

Unlike many darklords, Dorothy has no inherent abilities that make her unkillable, although her disease-bearing touch and biomechanical golem guards make her a force to be reckoned with in combat. She can regenerate, but she's vulnerable to fire.

If she wishes to close the borders of Immerabt, violent storms with strong winds and heavy rain surround the archipelago, whilst the waters boil with mutated [[shark]]s and other aquatic predators.

===Elizabeth Michelle Cole III===
Darklord of Hibernate. This female human [[vampire]] was born to the noble family of the Coles in the land of Hybernaya on Boram'ith. Despite her aristocratic lineage, she did not believe in the inherent superiority of her bloodline, and fell in love with a peasant boy, whom her parents had executed on trumped-up charges. This engendered a deep hatred for her parents in Elizabeth's heart, and at the age of 28, she left home to "think about things".

In her wanderings, she met and fell in love with a man named Alexander Berzinski, a [[vampire]] who converted her into one as well. They traveled together for seven years before parting, whereupon Elizaeth returned home, murdered her parents, and ruled their lands with an iron first for a decade.

During this time, she became a high priestess of [[Thanatos]], and attempted to lure a prophesied warrior known as "The Son of the Black Moon" into Thanatos' service. A task she delighted in, for she fell in love with him when she met him - a one-sided love, for he was devoted to his [[half-elf]] girlfriend. When he died escaping from his contract with the dark god, Elizabeth had him resurrected and attempted to lure him through a portal to the [[Lower Planes]], only to find herself alone in Darkon. Here, she fell afoul of the Kargat and fled to the Sea of Sorrows, only to find herself bound to the newly formed isle of Hibernate when she set foot there.

She has risen to power as the madame of the most well-respected brothel in Hibernate, leading a force of twenty eight call girls, all of whom she has turned into [[vampire]]s. Her curse is that she yearns to find the Son of the Black Moon and claim him for herself, but he has never materialized in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Elizabeth is unaffected by Hibernatian holy symbols, due to the combined facts that they represent a non-existant god and the lack of true faith endemic in Hibernate's people, but can be slain by a pine wood stake, or paralyzed with any other kind of stake. If Elizabeth is killed, one of her vampire prostitutes will fall into a month-long coma, during which she will physically and mentally be subsumed and transformed into a new incarnation of Elizabeth. It's unclear how this can be prevented.

When she wishes to close the domain, Hibernate's borders are choked by a thick fog that is impossible to navigate; those who try only find themselves circling back to Hibernate, no matter how hard they try.

The [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002 version of Elizabeth emphasizes her fundamental selfishness and cruelty, and also notes that her Undying Soul will allow her to possess any woman in Hibernate should all of her prostitutes be killed.

===Gatwe and Mr. Klein===
The domain of Nzari is home to two darklords, struggling for dominance.

'''Gatwe''' is the original Darklord; an Mwele man who was forever questioning the traditions of his people even from a youth and who burned to hold power. He apprenticed himself to the tribal shaman, whom he perceived held the true power, but his ambitions remained unchecked. When the most beautiful woman in the village chose to marry a respected hunter, that was the last straw; he forsook all the traditional limits on the shaman and began practicing sorcery. He used curses to sicken and kill those he hated, and goad the tribe into war, slowly building an empire from the scattered tribes of the Mwele. When suspicion began to fall upon him, he murdered his own family to try and throw it off, assuming the form of a leopard to plant a curse-bundle that would kill them all slowly and painfully. When he began to resume his human form, that was when the [[Dark Powers]] struck, trapping him in a twisted [[Broken One|nightmarish conglomerate form]], incapable of wielding his former magic, and launching Nzari into the Misty Realm.

'''Mr. Klein''' came to Nzari after its appearance in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. A fanatical devotee of [[Ezra]], he yearned to be a missionary, but found that goal stymied during the initial rush to explore the Sea of Sorrows; the merchants who controlled the expedition wanted profits, not proselytizing. Only when Nzari was discovered, with its savage cannibal tribes and vast wealth of ivory, did Mr. Klein finally find his desire within his grasp. He founded the Dementlieur Exploration Company, and led its first expedition to Nzari. The Mwele naturally resisted this foreign invasion, but Klein had the zeal of a fanatic and pressed on, resorting to ever-more brutal tactics as months of battle and disease took its toll on his followers. Eventually, he caught the attention of Gatwe, but managed to fight the feared "leopard-devil" off - an act that won him inroads amongst the Mwele. His followers swelled in numbers, and he seemed to make real progress in "civilizing" Nzari... until he realized that his followers were not worshipping Ezra, but Klein himself, and that those he conquered were merely paying lip service to his commands. Furious, he resorted to to ever-more draconian methods to "stamp out the heathenism", but succeeded only in pushing the Mwele to rebel. Klein counter-attacked viciously with his own forces, and responded by flaying every last one of them alive before he had them beheaded, their bodies cast into the river, and their heads impaled on stakes around his house.

In the face of such brutality, the Dark Powers aren't sure ''which'' of the two better deserves the title of Darklord.

Gatwe's curse is simple: he is forever cut off from the adoration and power he changes. No Mwele will have anything to do with one so obviously marked as a sorcerer, and he cannot change or disguise his form regardless of what artifice he tries. Mr. Klein, on the other hand, is cursed that when he sleeps, he sees the world through Gatwe's eyes, experiencing the broken one's life as he lives it. Both, ironically, share the curse of wanting to change the Mwele culture, but being completely incapable of doing so.

The two Darklords ''despise'' each other. Gatwe has become convinced that if he can kill Klein, his full powers will be restored to him. Klein, on the other hand, believes that Gatwe is a literal demon, a symbol of the savagery hidden in humanity's heart, and that only by "civilizing" the Mwele will the nightmarish dream-visions cease.

Unusually for co-darklords, they can both close Nzari's borders; Gatwe surrounds the domain an impenetrable thicket of vegetation, whilst those trying to flee against Klein's wishes find themselves lost in thick fog and eventually attacked by an endless hail of arrows.

Both darklords also have their own unique forms of immortality. If Gatwe is killed, one of the leopards of Nzari will become his reincarnation a day later. Klein, on the other hand, is simply impervious to all attacks not dealt with an ivory weapon (a ''blessed'' ivory weapon deals double damage!) and will not return if slain.

===Geren Horstadt===
Darklord of Seradan. Born the favored son of a minor noble family, Geren was a bullying braggart in private, but a charming and idolized peer in public. All that changed when, at the age of 17, he was struck by a strange wasting disease that crippled him irreversibly; he lost use of his legs, his muscles withered, and all his senses faded. Though his family bankrupted themselves to try and cure him, nothing worked. He spent fifteen years in his own personal hell, watching and envying those with normal lives, and resenting his family despite the love and care they still showered him with.

His true descent into damnation came when one of his brothers brought down a trunk full of books from the attack, and Geren learned one of his great-grandfathers had been a powerful [[wizard]] - one with considerable experience in summoning beings from the [[Lower Planes]]. When his family refused to hire a wizard to tutor Geren in magic, he decided to try summoning a [[fiend]] on his own. He called forth a [[yugoloth]], who was so surprised by the venomous manner in which Geren pleaded his case that he offered Geren a trade: the souls of Geren's families in exchange for the ability to "help Geren feel what others feel".

It was a bargain Geren made without hesitation. He hired an [[assassin]] to kill every last member of his family, other than his mother. In exchange, the yugoloth gifted him with the ability to possess others, which allowed him to vicariously experience life as a normal person again. He slowly began to rebuild the family's fortunes by using possessed thralls to commit acts of murder and theft... then the townsfolk began to suspect his mother was involved, and she in turn wondered if Geren was responsible. When she confronted him, however, Geren petuantly seized control of her mind and made her kill herself. But some of the townsfolk had just arrived to question her again, and they discovered her slumping over the infamous and now-hated cripple. Realizing that Geren had been responsible, they beat him with clubs and then dragged him into the streets, where the mob lynched him; hanging him from a tree and beating him to death as they burned his family's home and himself.

Such was Geren's rage at this fate that he returned from the grave as a powerful haunt - a [[Ravenloft]] strain of [[ghost]]. With his possession abilities enhanced, he used them to massacre the entire population of the village... which was when the Mists rolled in and claimed him for Seradan.

Geren's darklord status brings with it a cocktail of curses. The standard Darklord curse of being unable to leave his domain chafes him particularly, being that he yearns to explore and experience the world. Making matters worse is that he is now trapped in a realm of dullards, so docile, unimaginative and unfeeling that possessing them is little better than staying a ghost. For further insult, Geren can now only possess hosts for short periods of time, or else they die of a supernaturally induced fever, forcing him to largely avoid using his possession abilities.

Geren always reforms one week after being destroyed. Only if he is allowed to kill Wilhelm Braugh, the only survivor of Geren's hometown and the inspector who gave him over to the mob, will he cease to exist, having decided that there is nothing left to live for. If he closes the borders, supernatural exhaustion claims any who try to leave the domain, sapping their strength until they are left helpless.

===Henry Arlington===
Darklord of Arlington Farm. Henry Arlington was a farmer who obsessed about success. Inheriting his farm after the tragic death of his parents in a house fire, he killed his own elder brothers in a duel to secure his inheritance. He proved to be a demanding, overbearing farmer, and obsessed with successful crops; when an unexpected New Year's late frost resulted in damage to a significant portion of the crops, Henry flew into a rage, even though he had more than enough funds to weather this less-than-perfect year. In his rage, he murdered one of his farmhands, concealing the crime by cutting up his body and hiding it amongst the scarecrows on the property. That year, the farm bloomed with a record-breaking bounty.

The next year saw a similar pattern: the crops failed early in the year, but when Henry killed (in this case a stray dog), they suddenly reversed fortune and flourished. Henry became convinced that his farm would reward him with bounty only in exchange for blood sacrifices, and he began a yearly ritual of murdering some human victim and stuffing their dismembered body into the scarecrows. Over a decade of this grisly work, he soon had no farmhands left to sacrifice, and so instead he slaughtered his entire family for the sake of his farm.

That was the last straw. The grisly, corpse-stuffed scarecrows came to life and burned down all his crops, then dragged Henry out into the field and mutilated him, turning him into a fleshy scarecrow like themselves. That was when the Mists swallowed the farm.

In the present, Henry still tends to his farm as an animate corpse [[scarecrow]], only to find his labors undone whatever he achieves. In addition, every harvest moon, he finds himself human once more - and subsequently butchered by his vengeful scarecrow "workers".

Henry can close the border for up to an hour at a time by summoning a vast murder of crows that attack whoever tries to leave. After an hour, however, Henry is exhausted and must rest for 3 rounds before he can resummon the swarm. If slain, Henry remains dead until the next full moon or blue moon, whereupon he will possess one of the scarecrows in his domain and return to life. Theoretically, he can be destroyed forever by destroying all of the scarecrows.

===Hercules===
Darklord of Olympus. Born the son of the High Priest of [[Zeus]] in a theocratic nation ruled over by a collective of seven temples to the Greek Gods - Zeus, [[Athena]], [[Aphrodite]], [[Hermes]], [[Ares]], [[Apollo]] and [[Hades]], the man now known only as Hercules earned great fame in his youth by speaking up against the brutal repression of the priest-lords and championing the rights of the oppressed commoners. Although originally he sought peace, the overwhelming corruption opposing him led him first to delving into the murky depths of politics, and finally into leading a full-blown revolution.

This angered the realm's rulers, the conclave of High Priests known as the Council of Seven, who came up with three plans to ruin Hercules. The High Priest of Zeus sent his son cursed gauntlets that would drive him into bloodthirsty rages under false pretence of truce. The High Priestess of Athena sought to summon a daemonic entity that would grant the Council magical powers that would allow them to crush the rebels and prove themselves the true "Voices of the Gods". Finally, the High Priestess of Aphrodite arranged for one of her serving girls to be sent to seduce Hercules, with the ultimate plan of disgracing him by tempting him into committing the blasphemous act of making love in the holy ground of the temple of Zeus.

They couldn't have expected that Dejanira, the girl chosen by the Voice of Aphrodite, would fall in love with Hercules and reveal the ploy to him. Any more than she could have expected for him to revile her as a traitorous seductress, but hide his loathing and use her to deliver a strike against the Council as they performed the summoning ritual. At the height of battle and ritual both, Hercules turned on Dejanira and stabbed her to death before throwing her into the center of the Council, then beating his father to death as he was paralyzed by the sudden influx of magical energies from the rite.

The Seven Voices of the Gods were transformed into quasi-daemons in their own right, and Hercules became the Darklord of the realm now called simply "Olympus".

Hercules is cursed both with the erratic and dangerous rages from his braces, and in that he is haunted by the terrifying spectre of Dejanira, who still loves him even in death. Worse still, his reputation continually sours due to his berserk rages.

The only way to kill Hercules for good is to force him, the six "Living Gods" of Olympus and the Forsaken One (the half-daemonic ghost of the High Priest of Zeus) to meet in the abandoned temple of Zeus and perform the fiend summoning ritual again. Only if Hercules allows himself to be sacrificed as part of the ritual will his curse be ended - which will also strip the Living Gods of their powers and make them mortal as well.

If Hercules wishes to seal the borders of Olympus, a titanic lightning storm envelops the domain, striking down any who attempt to escape.

===Heresa Heri, The Vulture King===
Darklord of Tsuu-Y-Teke. Long ago, Heresa Heri was one of the great animal lords, powerful spirits subordinate to the greater animal gods, but he betrayed his master's wishes after being named ruler over the skies: when given the ability to create permanent light from enchanted crystals, rather than sharing this light with the world, he selfishly kept them for himself, turning them into a shining feathered headdress. But his treachery was uncovered by a human hero-shaman named Kanaciwe, who captured Heresa Heri and tore out the golden and silver feathers, turning them into the sun, moon and stars. But the appearance of the sun dazed Kanaciwe, allowing Heresa Heri to break free of the shaman's grip and kill him.

This act enraged his rival, the newly empowered Haloe-Tsuu (Sun Puma), who cursed Heresa Heri; never again would he be allowed to face the sunlight, or else it would destroy him. Though the Vulture King fled into the deepest cave, he was mortally wounded, and summoned his underlings to ceremonially preserve his body and spirit. As he died, he cursed all those who had robbed him of "his" treasure, from the humans whose shaman had taken his headdress of shining light to the skies themselves for being home to the sun and moon. Thus was the domain of Tsuu-Y-Teke born.

In appearance, the Vulture King is a white-feathered giant vulture with a dark red bonnet of dried blood on his head, sickly yellow eyes that glow in the dark, and a jagged, uneven beak that gives him the appearance of fanged teeth. He is an [[undead]] creature with powers similar to those of a [[mummy]], althoug he looks like a living bird.

As Darklord, Heresa Heri is trapped in his cavern lair except during True Night, the one period of darkness that comes to Tsuu-Y-Teke once per month. He has become obsessed with the idea that if he can amass a sufficient number of gems, he can reimprison the light and restore the endless Night that the world once knew... but he knows that to do so, he needs the ''exact'' number of gems as there are stars in the sky, and he no longer remembers how many that is!

In combat, Heresa Heri is a powerhouse and all but impossible to destroy without the use of sunlight or powerful magical light. Even then, if destroyed, his spirit will possess any giant vulture within a 13 mile radius, which will transform into the Vulture King 1 week later.

When the Vulture King seeks to seal Tsuu-Y-Teke, then impenetrable magical darkness gathers on the borders; those who try to escape instead get lost in the utter blackness and stumble right back out into the domain.

===Jarl Gravstein Hansen===
Darklord of the Northlands. This male human was born to the Gand tribe, son of the man who had founded the trade guild known as the Key, which was bringing much-needed prosperity to the realm. He railed against the tradition by which the Gand and Kosti tribes alternated ownership of the capital city of Miklaheim every five years, and was determined to keep ownership of the city for himself.

To do so, he launched a brutal campaign against the Gand tribe, taxing his own people into famine and ruin to do so. When they were devastated, he turned his back on the traditional religion of the seidmen, secretly siphoning away funds from the church who thought he was supporting them. Finally, he began taxing the trade guild to borderline ruin itself. Through his short-sighted greed and selfishness, the realm was drawn into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Secretly, Gravstein yearns to be respected and loved, but he cannot attain it - only if he returns all the land of the Gand to them will this curse be broken, which mechanically manifests as an automatic failure on any Charisma check other than Intimidation. He doesn't have any magical powers to preserve his life, but whoever takes up the mantle of leadership should he die will be cursed in the same manner.

Closing the borders results in a vast army of warrior spirits descending from the heavens and physically blocking passage.

===Captain Jacobi Robertsonn===
Darklord of Whal. Born a fisherman's son on an unnamed world, Jacobi grew up in seas that were plentiful with a father who loved him and loved his life on the sea. Then, when Jacobi was young, he and his father were caught in a terrible storm whilst fishing, during which the youth spotted a giant whale - a ''leviathan'' - playing in the rough surf. Play that ended with the breaching whale crashing right on top of the small fishing boat; Jacobi awoke washed ashore, scarred, surrounded by debris, and with his father missing.

Years later, Jacobi was commanding a trading galleon called the Sailor's Blessing with his beloved only son Abram when the ship was caught in a tropical storm. On the fourth day, the ship hit something in the water and began to sink, and during the scramble to escape, Abram was swept over the side and vanished. Spotting a leviathan in the storm, Jacobi blamed his son's apparent death on the creature, and in fact convinced himself it was the same whale that had killed his father.

Returning to port, he purchased a new ship, the Retribution, and became a whaler, venting his wrath on whales indiscriminately for the next decade. He was beginning to lose all hope of ever attaining vengeance when he finally encountered the biggest whale he'd ever seen - what he was sure was the leviathan that had killed his father and son. He personally led the hunt and harpooned the beast, only for it turn and smash his boat to pieces. Driven by rage, the wounded Jacobi hauled himself onto the beast by climbing the rope of the embedded harpoon; even as the surviving crew fled, he stabbed the whale over and over again, all the while cursing it, himself and his crew with all his soul... until everything went black.

Then he awoke and found himself on a strange, yet vaguely familiar, island; the land of Whal. A place of whalers who, to his surprise, deferred to him with their problems. He has since figured out he rules Whal, but is cursed to never leave it.

As a Darklord, Jacobi's curse is that he has become a rare oceanic [[therianthrope]]: a [[wereorca]]. He has distinctly mixed feelings about this form; he acknowledges the appropriateness of it, but he loathes being associated with a whale. He's also been cursed to suffer from intense sea-sickness if he ever sets foot upon a water-borne vessel, so whilst he does enjoy the freedom offered by his alterante form, the fact he can only hunt as an orca means he misses the thrill of commanding his own ship. Whilst normally he has control over this changes, he is forced to assume orca form on the days of his father's and son's deaths, days that are also marked by intense storms.

Perhaps his true curse, however, is that despite his obsession with killing the leviathan he blames for ruining his life, the creature never appears in the waters off of Whal.

When Jacobi closes his borders, the sea parts down to the sea floor, creating a 300ft wide chasm between the two bodies of water. Flight is, of course, impossible. Nothing explicitly prevents you from walking across the chasm and then using water-breathing magic to escape through the water on the other side, though.

Jacobi has no life-preserving powers outside of his immunity to any weapon that isn't +1 or made from whalebone. He is a 16th level [[Avenger]], however, which combined with the aquatic capabilities of his form makes him more dangerous than you'd think.

===Jinx===
Darklord of the Lost Wizard's Tower. This male black cat was once the [[familiar]] of a [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale, a caring and heroic individual, but a slightly neglectful owner, and also too hubristic for her own good. Jinx's journey into damnation began when she decided to use the cat as the test subject for an experiment in increasing the intelligence of animals.

It worked... but it also made Jinx smart enough to realize just how much more there was to Margaret's life than him. He became convinced that she had chosen him as her test subject because she simply didn't ''care'' if he lived or died, developing a burning resentment for it. Worse, he became mentally human enough to become convinced that he was in love with Margaret, and to be consumed with jealousy that she had other interests in her life.

When the region where they lived was attacked by [[barbarian]]s, Jinx went out of his way to assist Margaret, hoping to prove his worth in the hopes that she would come to reciprocate his jealous, obsessive love. She did not. Instead, she fell in love with a young warrior under her command. When she announced their upcoming marriage, he devised and enacted a plan to lead the man Margaret had fallen for to his death in battle. With no spellcasters in the region powerful enough to revive the fallen, Jinx was sure that this would be the end of his "competition".

To Jinx's fury, the death of her betrothed only filled Margaret with rage and suicidal grief. She prepared a super-powerful alchemical explosive, and made a personal assault on the horde's camp. Blind with fury, she waded through the ranks of the enemy, surviving many attacks only because Jinx fought like a hellcat to save her - to the familiar's growing rage as he realized she didn't even notice her efforts. Finally, Margaret planted the explosive, only to be attacked by the horde's leader. Though she defeated him, she was badly hurt in the process, leaving her helpless in the face of the coming explosion.

Jinx tried to pull her to safety, but was too weak to do so. Margaret told him to flee to safety, and expressed her happiness that in dying, she would meet her beloved fiancee in the afterlife. At that, the cat flew into a rage and revealed how ''he'' had arranged the warrior's death, blaming his actions on Margaret's decision to give him the curse of reason. Finally, he vowed that Margaret would neither see Jinx's death nor her beloved, raking her eyes with his claws and then fleeing his master, whose screams of pain were swiftly cut off by the explosion.

Unrepentant, yet fearful, Jinx fled all the way back to the tower where he and Margaret once lived, only to find it mysteriously deserted. He has remained there ever since.

Jinx waits endlessly now for people to visit the lost tower, hoping to claim a new master. His first preference is a female [[wizard]], then a female [[sorcerer]], then a female [[bard]] or any other arcane spellcasting clas, and then finally a male arcanist. He will do whatever he can to first persuade them to accept his presence, and then separate his chosen master from their former companions. His curse, of course, is that he will always destroy any relationship he establishes - if nothing else, he will end up killing the would-be master when they fail to meet his standards for loving and doting upon him. He prefers to use his retained spells ability, which allows him to cast Flesh to Stone one per day, to "immortalize" failed masters by petrifying them.

Jinx has no specific powers keeping him alive, so if you can kill the little beast, he's done for. He can't even close the borders properly, but instead just summons the Mists; those who flee will find themselves emerging from the mist elsewhere in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

===Warden Jonar Tamh===
Darklord of Karss. This [[Harmonium]]-sworn male [[aasimar]] [[Fighter]] joined the Harmonium at a young age, and very quickly moved up the ranks, attaining the position of Mover One at the age of 25. When he was selected to lead the experimental Great Prison of Ortho, a reformation-focused alternative to the [[Mercykiller]]-run prison of [[Sigil]], he saw it as a great honor... until it became apparent that the majority of the cynical Sigil-originated prisoners were unwilling to cooperate with the project.

Fearful for his reputation, Jonar Tamh resorted to increasingly brutal and draconian punishments, covering up the ongoing breakdown from his superiors and replacing subordinates who dared to question him. Growing convinced that some force - the [[Mercykiller]]s, the [[Revolutionary League]], or the agents of evil - was sabotaging the Great Prison, he descended ever-deeper into brutality. Finally, his best friend, the deputy warden Zet Keffen, tried to convince Jonar to return to the Great Prison's original premise; when Jonar refused, he declared he would bring this matter to the Factol of the Harmonium.

Jonar panicked and killed Zet right then and there, covering it up by blaming the murder on two particularly troublesome prisoners and executing them for it.

But Jonar couldn't cover it up forever. Hearing that his superiors were on their way to investigate the prison, and also that there were plans for a mass uprisiong, Jonar gathered 28 of the most outspoken and problematic inmates and hanged them all, one by one. As the last expired, a great hurricane arose from nowhere, forcing the Harmonium guards indoors. When the storm ended, the Great Prison now sat on the barren island of Karss.

Jonar Tamh suffers two major curses. Firstly, although he now has the ability to mentally control large numbers of people at once, he experiences all of the pain and misery of those he is controlling. Secondly, the vengeful spirit of Zet has become bound to Jonar's sword; if Jonar inflicts 12 or more damage with it against a single foe, Zet gains the abilities of a rank 2 ghost for one hour, allowing him to attack his former best friend.

The aasimar darklord cannot close the borders of Karss.

===Kasselheim Blightlyng===
Darklord of Vulnara. This [[gnome]] [[vampire]] had the misfortune to be born a gnome with no sense of humor. Whilst other gnomes were happily running round, playing stupid pranks and making silly illusions, Kasselheim was stuck fuming over how non-gnomish races didn't treat them with the slightest respect, all whilst the other gnomes reacted to his pleas for them to just try and be a little more serious by pranking him worse than ever. Eventually, he became a [[Transmuter]], bitterly thumbing his nose at a centuries old family radition, and withdrew to the deepest depths of their underground home. Then a few years later, a great flood washed through the gnome community and drove them up onto the surface, and the survivors counted Kasselheim as one of the dead.

They didn't know that Kasselheim had severely blinded and deafened himself in an alchemical explosion during his period of isolation. Nor could they know that many of those presumed dead in the flood were actually kidnapped by Kasselheim, who began experimenting in dark magic to steal their senses for himself, ultimately transforming them into warped monsters called "tactyles". But when they finally began moving back into the tunnels years later, they found out.

They formed a great war party with the aid of [elf]], [[dwarf]] and [[human]] adventurers from communities who had also suffered Kasselheim's depredations, and tracked him down to his underground fortress... only to be all but wiped out. Even though former friends (well, ''they'' considered themselves to be his friends, at least) and family were amongst the party, Kasselheim killed or captured them all. The last survivor was one of his sisters, a [[cleric]] of the gnome gods who threw herself to her death over a cliff whilst cursing him. An earthquake, and Kasselheim was knocked unconscious, rising to discover he had become a unique form of gnomish [[vampire]].

Kasselheim's curse is that he must ''constantly'' feed; his stolen senses of sight, hearing, scent and taste dwindle rapidly after feeding, until all that he has left is enough of a sense of touch to register pain. However, because of how fast his senses fade, and the isolated nature of his lair, he is effectively confined to a small part of his domain, and thus must go long, terrible intervals between feedings.

Killing Kasselheim can be done in two ways. First, if he is exposed to sunlight, he becomes incorporeal; if he is kept from fleeing back to his lair for two hours whilst in this form, he dissipates into nothing. Secondly, one can complete a complicated ritual, slightly altered from the traditional gnomish vampire. To achieve his permanent destruction, Kasselheim must first be immobilized by staking him with a silver spike through the heart. Then his hands must be cut off and boiled in a volcanic hot spring for 24 hours, after which his eyes must be gouged out and replaced with precious gems (100gp value minimum for each eye). Finally, his inert body must be carried to some place where it can be exposed to direct sunlight for an hour - but this will revive him in his incorporeal form, so the would-be vampire killer will need to use some method to trap him in the light for the full hour.

===General Martin Jose Maconda===
Darklord of Maconda. This charismatic male human was, from his earliest days, both adept at manipulating others with his natural charm and good looks, prone to surprising moments of generosity, and feared for his grudge-holding, horrifying fits of temper, and trait for cold-blooded manipulation. It came a great surprise to him when he discovered that there were people he could not dominate at will - and worse still, his mixed heritage would forever prevent him from joining the upepr echelon of Manzanillan society.

Thus, out of a mixture of pride and genuine interest, he became involved in the growing revolutionary movement, and ultimately he became the leader of the guerilla forces fighting against the brutal suppressionist forces of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez. When Maconda's beloved wife Isabel died in her childbed as a result of of Don Santiago's cruelty, Maconda went in search of the fearsome Warlok of the Peak, determined to have the power to triumph over his enemies.

And he returned with that power. Only to find, to Maconda's fury, that Don Santiago had died of fever in his sickbed mere hours before the last Royalist troops were defeated. Enraged, he ordered the Royalists massacred, cutting down a priest who dared argue against this behavior, and once the bloodshed was over, he left Resistencia for the mainland of Libertad, vowing never to return - a vow the [[Dark Powers]] were happy to fulfill for him.

A year later, he became the president of the Republic, and he soon established himself as a brutal tyrant as bad as the royalists he had overthrown.

The Warlock of the Peak transformed Maconda into a powerful [[wereanaconda]], and despite the many powers his state gives him, Maconda loathes this form, in part because he believes Isabel would be disgusted by it, and also in part because he is compellede to transform into a giant anaconda and feed on human flesh on the night of the new moon. Unusually, he cannot create other wereanacondas with his biter, but those who drink or touch his blood, even if they are spattered with it in combat, risk being turn into either were-fer-de-lanes or were-bushmasters, species of [[weresnake]] (treat as Neutral Evil [[werecobra]]s) native to Libertad and compelled to be loyal to him.

Maconda's curse is that he desperately yearns to be loved and adored, but his insistence upon doing so by repressing and removing all opposition or dissent merely stokes the hatred and fear of those he rules over.

He can be wounded by weapons made of silver or the wood of the caobo tree, and is sickened by both the smell and taste of guavas. If defeated in battle, Maconda doesn't die but instead assumes anaconda form and slithers off into the jungle, unable to regain his human form until the next new moon. There is no known way to permanently destroy him.

Maconda can close the domain borders of his island by causing the jungles and seas to become engulfed in massive swarms of lethally poisonous snakes.

===Miles Havelocke===
Darklord of the Eternal Torture. Born in a coastal city, Miles was pressganged at the age of 15, which ruined his life; he suffered from incurable seasickness, for which his fellows tormented him mercilessly and the bullying captain only made it worse by assigning him to the worst tasks possible for somebody with his condition, ordering him severely beaten when, inevitably, he threw up. With no aptitude for mathematics, Miles couldn't master the art of navigation, and so couldn't hope to progress to the higher ranks of the navy.

Twenty years of this treatment turned Miles into a bitter, miserable bully who loathed the sea and used what little authority he could get to exact vengeance upon those few below him on the ship's pecking order. Why he never simply fled during his first shore leave, nobody knows.

Eventually, Miles' captain was chosen to make a voyage into the uncharted western ocean, to Miles' dismay. But when the captain continued in pressing on in pursuit of ever-richer islands to the west, it led to the ship becoming lost in the waters and supplies running low. Miles seized this opportunity for revenge and began spreading rumors about the ship's officers hoarding food for themselves, ultimately leading a successful mutiny. When his ineptitude at seamanship led to them being becalmed, he led his mutineers to cannibalize the captured officers, gleefully rubbing their faces in their past abuse of him and coming to relish human flesh.

And then, as this supply of food began to run low, they finally spotted land... but, as they rowed frantcially to reach it, the Mists arose and swallowed the ship. When they cleared, the mutineers found themselves in the middle of a sea in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Overwhelmed by misery, they sat down and waited for death... and then, a fortnight later, they arose as [[ghoul]]s under the command of Miles Havelock, a Ghoul Lord, and began searching for food and land.

Miles Havelock suffers multiple curses. Firstly, he can never reach land, no matter how desperately he tries - at best, he can get a brief glimpse of the coast before the Mists immediately rise and teleport his ship elsewhere. Secondly, his seasickness has not only survived undeath, but intensified; he is '''perpetually''' seasick and also starving hungry, and these twin pains are why he has rechristened his ship "The Eternal Torture". If destroyed, his essence will inhabit the body of a living prisoner in the ship's hold and consume them from the inside out; the only way to end his curse is to kill him, rescue all of the prisoners, and sink the Eternal Torture, then make for land at full speed.

===Rafe Ungard===
Darklord of Callista. This male [[Half-Vistani]] [[Bard]] used his natural charm (and a complexion that allowed him to hide his hated Vistani blood) to swindle innocent women into marriage scams, start feuds amongst noble families for his own amusement, and delve into increasingly cruel and lethal manipulation. The backstory of poor Susannah Joson from [[Children of the Night]]: [[Ghost]]s is but one example of his misdeeds. When a party of [[adventurer]]s tried to bring him to justice, he continually slipped away, leaving the bodies of victims in his wake to torment them, and ultimately murdered his pursuers by burning down the inn they were staying in as they slept, which is when the Mists took him.

Rafe now possesses a strange form of immortality; he will ''always'' die once per day, no matter what steps he takes to try and avoid it, only to spontaneously return to life the next day. There is no known method to stop him from returning.

When he closes the domain, Callista's borders become a ring of boiling geysers that will kill anyone who passes through them, and which extend as high into the sky as needed to reach anyone trying to fly through.

===Sean Mako & Alice/Alison Marjory===
Darklords of Carcharodon Isle. Sort of a combination of Ladyhawke and the Little Mermaid. Over a century ago, a male human fisherman named Sean Marko lived in the village of Mistlington. One day, he discovered an injured [[merfolk|mermaid]] washed up on the isle's northwest shore, unconscious and bleeding from several wounds, including a severed left hand. Unable to turn away from someone in need, he brought her to his home and nursed her back to health. The mermaid, whose name translated into Common as "Alice", explained that she was the only survivor of a tribe that had been slaughtered by [[sahuagin]].

The two fell in love, much to the displeasure of the locals; the fishermen thought Sean was foolish for pining over a mermaid, and their wives were jealous of Alice's beauty, leading to them slandering her and Sean's relationship as "unnatural". Ultimately, a bunch of the village's men took it upon themselves to "repatriate" Alice; they came to Sean's house in the night, bludgeoned him unconscious, and carried Alice away. When Sean regained consciousness, he rowed desperately to catch up to them, but by the time he did so, they'd thrown the still-bound mermaid overboard.

Enraged, Sean snatched up a boathook and attacked the men who had assaulted him and the woman he loved, butchering them. When the carnage was over, he dove into the water after Alice, and then begged the full moon above for a fins and a tail so he might never be separated from his love.

Naturally, the [[Dark Powers]] chose to be dicks about granting this wish...

Both Sean and the revived Alice, now a human calling herself Alison Marjory, have become maledictive [[therianthrope]]s.

Sean is a giant [[wereshark]] who spends most of the month as an intelligent megalodon, unaware that he ''can'' transform and remembering nothing of his human life; only during the nights of the full moon and those nights directly before and after it does he return to his human form... which remembers everything he did as a giant killer shark. Because of his curse-spawned ignorance, the only way that shark!Sean can transform is if he is magically compelled to do so, such as by an Amulet of the Beast. He spends his days asleep and his nights hunting for food.

In contrast, Alison is a [[seawolf]] who spends most of the month as a human, but assumes her seawolf form on the nights before, during and after the full moon - the same nights when Sean regains his humanity. Like Sean, as a seawolf, she is completely ignorant of her human life. She keeps to herself, for the people of the isle still distrust and dislike her, gladly telling the nastiest stories they can think of about her to anyone who'll listen.

Neither darklord can be slain permanently through violence; they fully heal and return to life 1 round after being defeated. They also can't close the domain's borders, although since the only local vessels are small fishing boats that are no match for a giant shark or a massive seafaring wolf, they don't need to do much more than patrol the borders themselves.

Curing them simply requires breaking the curse by getting them to touch as humans, but doing so is tough; aside from the fact that they alternate human and monster forms, neither is aware of the fact that the other survives. Whichever of them is in beast form also refuses to get within 10 feet of the other one. They also won't willingly get within 5 feet of an Amulet of the Beast. So players are going to have to get creative to break their curse.

===Serenissa D'Aubliet===
Darklord of Romagna. Serenissa (female human spectre) was born an orphan; her father, a miller's son, was killed soon after her conception, and her peasant girl mother died in birthing her. She was taken in the local lord to serve as companion to his two daughters, but their initial friendship soured as they came of age and Serenissa realized the social gap between them. At the age of twelve, she was sent to the family of a neighboring lord to become a nursemaid to that lord's newly born twin children; Serenissa doted upon the children, and happily threw herself into their care.

However, she also became increasingly obsessed with fanciful daydreams about her origins, fixating on the belief that she was actually of noble birth and that her parents were both alive and desperately seeking her. She loved to tell these stories to her two charges... until the eve of their fourth birthdays, when, at the top of the Eagle's Tower, the two young children scolded her for lying and corrected her that she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a simpleton and a millerboy, both of whom had died. Mad with rage, especially when the twins revealed that everyone in the castle claimed that this was so, she pushed them off of the tower to their deaths.

Her skill at lying allowed her to escape being blamed for what she described as a terrible accident. For two weeks she festered on the idea that people were "slandering her" behind her back, and finally, two months after the day she had murdered the twins, she set a fire in the Great Hall that night, killing everyone in the castle.

Slinking away from the carnage, she made her way to the barony of Romagna, where she seduced her way into both a respectable position as lady's maid to the younger sister of Baron Etain and into the arms of Baron Etain himself. After several months of dalliance, he gifted her with a gemstone brooch... and then announced his upcoming marriage to the Lady Fialle, daughter of a neighboring lord, the very next day.

This pushed Serenissa over the edge and soon thereafter, she drew Baron Etain to a high tower, where she grabbed him and leapt off the edge, intending that they die together so she would not live alone.

But this time, with the interference of the [[Dark Powers]], her scheme failed. Serenissa hit the ground and was killed on impact, but her body cushioned Etain's fall, and so he lived. The madwoman's spirit rose from its grave as a ghost, trapped in an endless time loop; Romagna experiences only a single year, constantly recycling itself. It starts one week before the equinox Spring Festival, when Fialle arrives in Romagna for her upcoming wedding to Baron Etain. That week is spent in feasts and celebrations, capped off by a three-day non-stop revelry for the weding proper. Then, six months later, Fialle conceives Etain's child. And then, one week before the first anniversary of the wedding, time looks back and it is the week before the Spring Festival again.

Furthering Serenissa's torment, she is completely incapable of physically interacting with the people of Romagna, although she can manipulate their emotions despite the fact they cannot see, hear or touch her. She uses her emotional control to turn them into her agents of retribution, although she can't turn them against Etain or Fialle. This ability is defined vaguely, because she herself hasn't really studied her full capabilities with it.

Only visitors to Romagna are in true danger from Serenissa, because she is fully visible and audible to them, although still intangible. She invariably attempts to seduce the handsome male visitors to the domain, luring them away if they prove receptive to try and embrace them - doing so, however, results in her draining 1 level per 2 rounds, causing them to disintegrate... but if they break free, she attacks.

Serenissa is vulnerable to holy water, +2 or stronger magic weapons, and functional weapons made of gold. She is impervious to holy symbols, but can be turned with symbols of true love and matrimony - for example, the wedding rings of people who are actually married. If destroyed, she can reform at Etain and Fialle's wedding. Exactly ho to destroy her permanently is left vague, with her entry in the Book of Sorrows concluding with this paragraph:
::''Weapons forged from symbols of love (such as rings, charms, wooden wands, or ceremonial ropes used to bind a man and woman together at their wedding) may have greater effect, rendering her helpless or immobile. Her final death is likely to involve elements of her first experience; rejection, a long fall, and/or a noble lover. Heroes should beware, though—the dark powers may look with interest upon anyone who willingly transforms a symbol of love into a weapon of war.''

===Urdogen "The Red"===
Darklord of The Raging Tears. Male Human Spectre. In life, Urdogen (who first appeared in the [[Forgotten Realms]] splat "Pirates of the Fallen Stars") was basically Faerun's version of Blackbeard - if Blackbeard was a redhead. He terrorized the Inner Sea so badly that the nations of that region united to defeat his fleet, whereupon Urdogen fled and found himself spirited away by the Mists into the Sea of Sorrows... where he promptly hit a hidden reef and sank his ship, drowning.

Ever since then, Urdogen's ghostly vessel has sailed all the seas of the Misty Realm, cursed to never be able to come within sight of land and only able to rise from his watery grave during the nocturnal hours. Further stymying his desperate desire to reclaim his former reputation as a fearsome pirate lord, any who encounter Urdogen and live to tell the tale are cursed to forget his name.

To put an end to Urdogen, the ruin of the Raging Tears must be hauled up from the seafloor and carried inland, where it must then be burned completely to ash in a funeral pyre.

Interestingly, Urdogen's ghostly ship is actually able to return to the Inner Sea of Faerun on moonless, foggy nights in his homeworld, although he must return to the Misty Realms upon dawn.

If Urdogen chooses to close the borders of his traveling domain, the waters around his ship become rough and infested with a feeding frenzy of sharks; those who try to fly away will instead find themselves sinking into the water.

==5e Darklords==
As part of its general overhaul of the [[Demiplane of Dread]], 5th edition added a significant number of new darklords - some to replace former darklords, others ruling over brand new domains. Darklords who simply got retconned backstories and other traits have those details added to their entries above. Quite a few of these characters don't have much info on them due to being only mentioned in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book, most of which only have a single paragraph dedicated to their domain and darklord.

One unique trait common to all 5e darklords is that the personalizad domain border closures of the past are largely gone; there might be cosmetic tweaks, but in general most 5e Domains of Dread all function the same when a person tries to escape through a closed border.

===Chakuna===
The replacement Darklord of Valachan, and one of the few 5e darklords to explicitly continue on in some fashion from the setting as it existed before. A female [[werepanther]], Chakuna belongs to a tribe of [[werecat]]s (specifically panthers and ocelots) called the Oselo, whom were hunted to the brink of extinction by Baron Urik von Kharkov, as he had come to fixate upon them as the most intriguing and challenging quarry. (Nevermind that Urik was originally "Blacula Strahd" with no real interest in "hunting the most dangerous game".) To save her people, she went to the literal heart of the domain and performed an unholy rite, cutting out her own heart and offering it to the land as sacrifice in exchange for the power to defeat Urik. Long story short, it worked; she ripped out his heart, tore him to pieces, and buried his still-living and curse-spewing head in the ruins of his castle before building her own treetop hunting lodge atop the ruins. Which is actually kind of badass. But now the jungle has become hungrier than ever, and she must regularly sacrifice human hearts to the land to keep the plants and animals from slaughtering all the Valachani (shades of the Wildlands, there), which she obtains through the "Trials of the Heart" - ceremonially hunting down designated victims with the aid of trained [[Displacer Beast]]s. She won't touch a fellow Oselo, but everybody else is fair game.

Chakuna can only be killed if her heart is found in the secret grove where she performed her dark rite and destroyed, but unless somebody assumes her mantle in the process, then the jungle will be free to kill everyone.
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===Flimira Vhage===
Currently very little is known about Flimira Vhage other than that their domain is the office of a detective agency which is actually is an extension of their own broken mind.

===Jacqueline Renier===
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===The Inheritors of Darkon===
Similar to what happened during [[Grim Harvest]], Darkon currently has multiple Darklords while Azalin is missing. Specificly, there's only three of them this time.

'''"Baron" Alcio Metus''' is a female vampire, and the sister of Baron Metus - the vampire who got [[Van Richten]] started on his monster-killing path. Having risen to rule the criminal underworld of the Jagged Coast region, driving out her former Kargat masters in the process, Alcio burns with the desire for revenge against Van Richten for killing her brother. Not helping is that she's occupied Van Richten's ancestral home of Richten House and found that Van Richten's wife Ingrid still lingers as a [[ghost]] - but one who refuses to help Alcio in her quest for vengeance.

'''Cardinna Artazas''', the thrice-reincarnated leader of an elfin mystery cult in Nevuchar Springs, has damned her soul in the name of good: desperate to preserve Darkon, she has striven to revive the spirit of Darcalus Rex, the king who reigned over Darkon prior to the coming of Azalin. Unfortunately, all she has called forth is a necrichor, and she must constantly weigh her belief that what she is doing serves "the greater good" against the very real demands that the undead tyrant makes for ever-greater magical reagents and sacrifices.

Finally, '''Madame Talisveri Eris''' is an elderly but vibrant and intelligent aristocrat who accidentally made herself permanently invisible whilst seeking to make herself look younger. She uses her invisibility to her advantage, having created an array of different identities that she assumes through costumes and cosmetics. She's currently built up a cult amongst the younger members of Il Aluk's nobility, offering them an elixir on the night of the new moon that makes them invisible until dawn and then sending them out to commit crimes and mayhem that advance her cause.

Because none of them are true darklords yet, none of them have specific curses.

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===Isolde & Nepenthe===
Like the original Isolde, the 5e Isolde is an [[eladrin]] [[paladin]], though this one was an [[adventurer]] who battled [[dragon]]s and [[demon]]s that threatened the [[Feywild]]. This unknowingly led her into the machinations of Zybilna, an evil [[archfey]] who had lost a number of [[fiend]]ish allies to Isolde and her companions. Zybilna called upon her remaining pacts to arrange for a powerful [[incubus]] called "The Caller" (5e's retconned version of the Gentleman Caller) to corrupt and slaughter Isolde's companions; once that was done, the archfey stepped in and exploited Isolde's vulnerable state to become her "new best friend". She arranged for Isolde to become the guardian of a traveling fey carnival that also concealed a portal to Zybilna's realm... then, when Isolde began to tire of this role and their relationship grew strained, she secretly warped Isolde's mind with magic to ensure that Isolde would always prioritize the needs of the Carnival over her own wants. Even so, this wasn't enough to keep Isolde bound to Zybilna's reins. When Isolde encountered a traveling carnival from the [[Shadowfell]] managed by [[shadar-kai]], she made a pact with its twin managers to trade ownership of their carnivals, but only until next the two carnivals met. The shadar-kai agreed, and gave her the magical sword Nepenthe as symbol of her new status as owner and champion - but that wasn't enough for Zybilna. She used her magic to erase Isolde's memories of all things relating to Zybilna, and also sent fey creatures to forever follow and harass Isolde's new carnival.

To make things worse, Nepenthe was a cursed blade; an intelligent Holy Avenger used to executed thousands of criminals, not all of whom were actually guilty, the blade had developed a deep craving for bloodshed in the name of justice. In Isolde, it found an easily manipulated host; it awoke her memories of the Caller, and stoked her desire for retribution. In many ways, it could be considered the "true" darklord of the Carnival, especially given how Isolde constantly struggles to resist its naked, insatiable need to kill.

Isolde's curse, then, is to wrestle with both the imperatives of Zybilna and those of Nepenthe; she craves vengeance, but finds herself forever stymied by her need to tend to the ever-growing Carnival's need, as well as fearing that she may one day encounter the Carnival's true owners and be forced to relinquish it back to them. Explicitly, she could be saved if Nepenthe was taken from her, but its grip on her mind means she would refuse to abandon it.

===Klorr===
Darklord of Klorr. We know nothing about this darklord, but the name is taken from a character who appeared in the original Red Box; a clockwork-obsessed [[planeswalker]] [[mage]] who was infuriated that he couldn't synchronize and control his heart the way he could his clockwork creations. He made assorted dark bargains and ultimately came to rest in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], where he produced four cursed timepieces: the Water Clock of Klorr, the Moondial of Klorr, the Hourglass of Klorr, and his final work: the Timepiece of Klorr. This cursed pocketwatch gave Klorr extended life and increased arcane power, but required him to regularly charge it with murder, an impulse he succumbed to. It ultimately killed him when he failed to sacrifice a life to it on time.

The Timepiece of Klorr is given mechanical stats in the "Forbidden Lore" boxed set. Klorr's other works are statted in "Forged of Darknes":
* The Water Clock lets the user transform into a water [[elemental]], but might kill them in the process and also might leave them permanently trapped in elemental form.
* The Moondial grants powers based on the phase of the moon, but slowly transforms the user into a light-averse monster.
* The Hourglass can grant the user Improved Haste for 1 hour, but will age them 1d10 years and might also leave them under the effects of Slow for 24 hours after being used.

===The Last Passenger===
Darklord of The Mourning Rail. Nothing is known about this Darklord other than they were a VIP that delayed a train escaping from The Mourning, and threw out a bunch of passengers to make room for their self and their retinue, dooming the train, and they are now an undead being of some kind trapped on the train with the rest of the undead passengers.

===Myar Hiregaard===
Mentioned only in passing as the Darklord of the revised Nova Vaasa, She's basically a female Genghis Khan with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde; she was originally a female chieftain who united the nomadic plains-dwelling tribes of Nova Vaasa into a single culture, but she proved to be a terrible peacetime leader because she craved bloodshed and excitement. She tried to stave off her boredom with, quote, "brutal games" for a time, but ultimately she couldn't resist the thrill of war: she began fostering disputes amongst her vassal tribes so she had an excuse to lead her forces to crush both sides. This eventually got her claimed by the mists, and now she switches between two personas and possibly two bodies: as Mya Hiregaard, she rules with "strict fairness", but when she gets too bloodlusty, she transforms into her alter-ego of Malken and "sows discord across the plains".

...Whatever else you may think of it, at least it's more justified than Tristren "My dad got cursed and died, so I inherited his curse and became a Darklord without ever having to do anything to actually earn it" Hiregaard.

===Pietra van Riese===
A gender-swapped version of Pieter van Riese and the darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Not much is known about her due to being in the "Other Domains of Dread" section, and therefore only getting one paragraph to herself. She was a ruthless pirate with a fondness for keelhauling her victims, and now she's a ruthless ''zombie'' pirate who speaks through the mouths of her undead crew.

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===Ramya Vasavadan===
Darklord of Kalakeri. Ramya was hand-picked by her father, the last ruler of Kalkeri, to succeed him, but when he died, her brother Arijani contested her claim, leading to a brief civil war. Ramya would have killed Arijani then and there, but their sister Reeva counseled mercy, and Ramya conceded, not really wanting to kill her brother anyway. She enjoyed a brief period of unchallenged leadership, bringing a golden age to Kalakeri, but all the while Reeva was working behind her back to build up support for Arijani, culminating in her freeing Arijani and launching a second civil war. Enraged, Ramya suppressed the rebellion with brutal methods, executing captured rebel ranas and executing them in horrifically inventive methods that only made the people distrust her more and furthered the fighting. At the second war's climax, Arijani and Reeva sued for peace and Ramya agreed... only to be captured by her treacherous siblings and murdered. Before the court strangler garotted her in the central courtyard of her own palace, Ramya cursed her siblings as bloodthirsty beasts.

Once it was done, Arijani and Reeva further disrespected their sister by throwing her body into the ocean... an act that resulted in a terrible monsoon lashing Kalakeri for weeks. And then, when it was done, Ramya rose from her watery grave and marched on her former siblings, followed by an ever-swelling army of undead soldiers made up of all her loyal warriors who had fought and died for her. This time, Ramya showed no mercy, capturing her siblings and having them crushed to death by undead elephants.

...And then they came back as fiends - Arijani as a [[rakshasa]] and Reeva as an [[arcanoloth]] - and the civil war has raged ever since.

This civil war is the primary curse that Ramya experiences, with two secondary elements. Firstly, despite knowing better, Ramya ''always'' remains vulnerable to their lies and deceptions, which prevents her from truly ending the war. Secondly, Ramya's direct control over the domain is tied to her being seated in the Sapphire Throne, the symbol of Kalakeri's ruler; if the rebels oust her from the Cerulean Citadel, then her dominion diminishes until she can reclaim it. A second curse she labors under is the fact that, despite being shrouded in an illusion of life, Ramya ''knows'' that she's actually [[undead]], and this is apparent in her reflection, so she bans mirrors from her presence.
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===Saidra d'Honaire===
The future darklord Saidra grew up on a tiny farm, raised by her widower father, who filled her head with stories of her noble bloodline - he claimed to be a duke that had been ousted from his rightful throne by a vicious younger brother. Life was hard, especially as Saidra's sincere belief in her father's stories meant she alienated her peers, and only got worse when Saidra's father married a prosperous merchant woman with two daughters from her previous marriage, all of whom tormented Saidra and forced her to work as their personal servant, ala Cinderella. One day, a nearby duke perished, and when Saidra wondered if it had been her father's evil little brother, she was forced to confront the cruel truth: her father's stories had all been a pack of lies, and he was nothing more than a common-born servant who had fled to save his neck after trying to nick silverware from the duke's kitchen.

Saidra went to her mom's grave to beg her mother's spirit for help, which was when a "kind, grandmotherly figure" appeared and granted Saidra her wish, clothing her in a magnificent gown and fine jewelry before conjuring a stately carriage to carry her to the masquerade ball that was being held to celebrate the coronation of the new duke. We don't know who this figure was, but it's interesting to note that Saidra's version of Dementlieu contains a [[hag]] coven who basically love to pretend to be Fairy Godmother figures so they can mess with people. Anyway, off Saidra went to the ball, plotting to kill the new duke and claim his title. When she got there, she swiftly seduced the new duke, so successfully that she began contemplating if it mightn't be better to wed the duke instead. Things were going smashingly... until the clock chimed midnight and the whole party began dropping dead of a sudden, fast-acting plague, which rather put a downer on things. The kicker, for Saidra, was as she and the duke lay dying in each other's arms and he confessed that he ''wasn't'' noble-born, but instead a commoner who had been adopted by the previous duke. In fact, he was actually Saidra's long-lost brother.

Enraged at this second "betrayal", Saidra stabbed her brother in the heart with the last of her strength and then tried to stagger away from the corpse, only to collapse dead on the stairs leading into the palace.

And then she woke up as a [[wraith]], the new spectral queen of Dementlieu, a shabby and impoverished town whose populace struggle to fake the appearance of being more important than they truly are, all the while risking Saidra's deadly wrath: she '''hates''' pompous fools who pretend to be what they aren't, aspire to higher station than they deserve, and fail to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

...Well, yeah, she wouldn't be a ''darklord'' if she wasn't at least a little bit of a hypocrite, now would she?

Saidra is a wraith who has the ability to launch free Disintegrates at anyone who reveals themselves to be lying about who they are in her presence - we don't know much more than that, mechanically. She lives in constant terror of being exposed as a fraud herself, and in fact she can only be killed permanently if she is revealed to be a fraud first. Related to that, she lives in terror that her hated stepmother and stepsisters are still alive somewhere in Dementlieu. Finally, almost tangentially, her status as a wraith means her beloved masquerade balls are a complete waste of time, as she can't enjoy any of the physical pleasures associated with them.

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===Sarthak===
Darklord of the Ashram of Niranjan, Sarthak is an evil bronze dragon who poses as a mystic named Niranjan. He send agents into the Mists bearing his philosophical writings, which promise escape, peace, and enlightenment to any who adopt their teachings. Anyone who comes to his monastery is told that they must divest themselves of worldly goods, which are added to Sarthak’s hidden hoard. Sarthak then helps his victim enter a blissful trance that causes their soul to slip away from their body over the course of days. Sarthak consumes this soul and replaces it with a shadow, leaving the victim’s body under his control.

There's no indication of what his curse might be, since he's in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book and as such only gets a single paragraph to himself.

===Teresa Bleysmith===

===Viktra Mordenheim===
Basically, she's Victor Mordenheim but a woman... what, that's not good enough? Alright...

Viktra Mordenheim was born the daughter of a minor noble family, as well as a natural prodigy in medicine - she taught herself anatomy as a child, and by the time she was a teenager she held a doctorate ''and'' had been appointed as a preeminent researcher at a local university. For all her genius, however, Viktra was arrogant, not to mention completely lacking in empathy, compassion and moral qualms. To her, medicine was just a way to sate her burning curiosity about the secrets of life. Also, she hated magic, regarding it as as "stealing the powers of otherworldly beings and cheating the laws of nature", and thus inferior to '''SCIENCE!'''

In the best Frankenstein tradition, she grew obsessed with the idea that she could not merely mend the sick, but actively create and even improve upon life. So she began hiring the services of bodysnatchers to provide her with fresh human cadavers for her research. This is how she met Elise; amazingly, the cold, aloof methodical surgeon and the beautiful but reckless and spontaneous body snatcher became infatuated with each other, and the two women's relationship swiftly changed from professional to personal. When Elise contracted an incurable wasting disease, Mordenheim became obsessed with saving her, and her experiments increased in numbers - she also began having living victims actively kidnapped for her experiments. Through countless murders, resurrections and remurders, Viktra honed her knowledege. Finally, as Elise fell into the deep sleep that marked the final stages of the disease, Viktra poured everything she had learned from a thousand deaths into saving a single life, crafting and installing the Unbreakable Heart: an artificial super-organ.

But just as she was stitching the fabulous device into place, constables burst into her lab, accusing her of being behind the recent string of kidnappings and murders. In the struggle, the lab caught fire and flooded with acrid chemical smoke: Mordenheim's last vision was of Elise rising from her table, a golden light glowing in her chest where the Unbreakable Heart had been installed.

When Mordenheim came to, she was in a strange, icy realm called "Lamordia", where she was hailed as the greatest genius ever, but there was no sign of Elise.

Viktra's torments largely center around Elise and the Unbreakable Heart; she can neither recreate the Heart on her own, but nor can she find Elise to study it again. Secondary to this curse is that she is showered with the love, respect and attention of Lamordia, whose people view her as a luminary savior; to Mordenheim, they are incomprehensible, and she loathes their constant distractions from her work.
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===Vladeska Drakov===
In a nameless world, in a land torn between myriad bitterly feuding royal families, the woman named Vladeska Drakov was a skilled fighter and general, a mercenary who came to be known as the Crimson Falcon, the leader of a well-regarded mercenary army called the Falcon's Talons. Business was profitable, and Vladeska was raking in the loot, with dreams of retiring young, cashing in her wealth and reputation to buy land and a title. Then came the sacking of Veivere, where the Talons accidentally killed a very important figure. So important that the entirety of the aristocracy took up arms against the Talons, determined to kill them all for it. Well, Vladeska had no intention of just rolling over and dying, and she launched a bloody counter-attack that soon turned into a crushing campaign of conquest; her forces swept through the land, replenishing themselves with conscripted peasants and wiping out everyone stupid enough to stand against them. Vladeska made a point of impaling ''everybody'' with even the slightest drop of aristocratic blood that she caught alive. Through years of bloody effort, she became the ruler of an empire that stretched over the former patchwork nation, but as she crushed the last defiant village, the smoke engulfed Vladeska and her most elite warriors.

They found themselves in a new realm, and after swiftly conquering its capital city, Vladeska declared herself Empress of Falkovnia. Which was when she found the downside of her rule... namely, the armies of [[zombie]]s that would attack her new kingdom every month with the rising of the new moon.

Vladeska's curse, obviously, is the zombie attacks, which press her to her limit as she struggles to throw back the dead and preserve what she has, but it goes deeper than that. Firstly, she suffers a horrible sensation of recognition; every zombie, to her, seems to be the animate corpse of one of her victims or her fallen soldiers, filling her with the gnawing belief that the dead are coming for ''her'' specifically. Secondly, no matter what scheme or ploy she tries, the result is always Phyrric; her people haven't been wiped out yet, but there's a big difference between 'survival' and 'winning'. Finally, she '''knows''' that her efforts doomed - there is ''no way'' to hold Falkovnia against the dead, not with the forces that she has, and the only chance she has for survival is to take her people and flee during the peaceful period after the dead are repulsed for the month. But she's too stubborn to run, and so she keeps fighting her bloody, futile war.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Ravenloft]]

Darklord

2021-05-23T20:38:23Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:689D:BB48:785D:2381: /* Harkon Lukas */

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{{Topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

The '''Darklords''' are the rulers ''and'' prisoners of the plane of [[Ravenloft]], from the D&D setting of the same name.

You might be wondering "How are they both rulers and prisoners at the same time?" The reason for this is simple: each Darklord was pulled into the plane by the nebulous forces known only as the Dark Powers after an especially heinous deed (known in-universe as a "Act of Ultimate Darkness"), which reshapes a part of the plane into [[Demiplane of Dread|a realm tailored to each Darklord's defining crime]]. In its own realm a Darklord is a BBEG to rule over all other BBEGs, with absolute power over everything except whatever they desire most - whatever thing that might be, it is always dangled ever so slightly out of their reach by the Dark Powers to amplify their torment further. They have no mouth, and they must scream. (Thus the common description of the setting as "Hell, but not for you".)

=Common Characteristics of Darklords=
The exact abilities and backstories of Ravenloft's Darklords have varied from edition to edition, but almost all exert considerable control over their individual domains, and many Darklords also rule their domains (assuming the domain has a population to rule), either openly or behind the scenes. Many Darklords are also extremely dangerous to confront in open combat, or otherwise have hidden powers up their sleeves that can neutralize entire groups of player characters even without combat.

Keeping in line with the Gothic Horror theme of Ravenloft, the presence and persistence of insidious evil on this plane is the rule and not the exception. By contrast, lasting triumphs of good are vanishingly rare possibilities. As such, PCs aren't really supposed to go toe-to-toe with Darklords and expect to come out on top like your average group of [[murderhobos]] in other D&D settings. Trying to storm through Castle Ravenloft or Castle Avernus (not the Avernus of [[Baator]]) and expecting to put Strahd's or Azalin's skulls on a pike by the end of the play session will most likely either end in a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|total party kill]] or a fate worse than death, assuming the Dungeon Master is at all trying to run the game in a thematically appropriate way. At most, the PCs' efforts might preserve a bit of light in the ever-present mists and hope their activities stay beneath the local Darklord's notice. [[Grimdark|Heroes in this benighted plane are not guaranteed a peaceful death in bed surrounded by family and friends, or a life of glory and deeds well remembered.]] Openly going up against a Darklord is one of the surest ways of ending your character's life and career for good.

A few things about Darklords have remained constant throughout Ravenloft's editions, however. First, unless the Dark Powers will it, Darklords are completely unable to leave their own domains (note that certain "pocket domains" are in fact mobile and can travel between larger domains, but the Darklord within is still powerless to leave its own pocket domain as any other). If PCs manage to leave a Darklord's domain, that specific Darklord is usually powerless to personally come after them (but see "Closing the Borders" below). Second, almost every Darklord has a weakness, usually in the form of something or someone they desire above all else that they would risk anything and everything for, or a personal vulnerability tied to its curse that is usually well-hidden and hard to figure out. Discovering and exploiting these weaknesses are one of the only ways to accomplish some good in spite of a Darklord's efforts, but if it comes to that you've likely already attracted (or will very soon attract) a Darklord's attention and are in deep trouble. A couple other abilities common to Darklords are discussed below.

===Closing the Borders===
The vast majority of Darklords have the ability to force others to share in their imprisonment by supernaturally closing the borders of their domains, usually leaving no way out even with the aid of magic. Trying to leave a closed domain border will just result in a grisly death or automatic failure, and teleportation magic won't work past a closed domain border either. As Ravenloft was an early AD&D product, the designers gave this handy tool to DMs so as to stop players from just up and leaving without going through the DM's plot. Improperly used it can smack of railroading, but it fits well within the Gothic Horror genre convention of having characters get trapped in sinister and dangerous locales with no safe passage out, until a situation is resolved (or the Darklord opens the borders again, as in the case of Ravenloft).

The few Darklords who cannot supernaturally close their borders either lack that ability as part of their curse, or are unable to do so as part of their nature. Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia for instance disdains magic and the supernatural, and in line with this attitude gained no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders upon becoming a Darklord. However, even these Darklords have more mundane ways of barring escape from their domains, such as sending their numerous lackeys to patrol the borders, though thankfully this doesn't impede magical methods of escape. An even smaller number of Darklords are completely unable to close their domain borders in any way, such as Haki Shinpi of Rokushima Taiyoo who was cursed to become a powerless geist upon becoming Darklord (rather than becoming a Death Knight as he originally planned) and was doomed to watch everything he built in his life's conquest literally sink into ruin through the squabbling of his sons.

===Immortality===
Another reason to avoid going up against Darklords is that many of them have ways of returning from death, rendering all of your hard work moot. Even those who don't have explicitly mentioned methods of cheating death, like Strahd, generally have many contingency plans to avoid ever being at risk of getting truly destroyed. To make a bad situation worse, the Dark Powers appear to get occasionally "attached" to their playthings, and frown harshly upon attempts to take their toys away. In game terms, this means that certain Darklords are truly indestructible and can ever only be put out of commission temporarily, and even the attempt at doing so may end up drawing the Dark Powers' attention to whoever tries such a feat. Mercifully, these individuals are the exception, not the rule.

By contrast, some Darklords are fairly ordinary people with no significant combat skills and no more resistance to being killed off for real than their subjects. However, as mentioned above, even these seemingly vulnerable BBEGs often still have the means or minions to deal with a bunch of murderhobos, and most of these non-combat-focused Darklords are still savvy enough to be wary of any potential threats to their survival, and to nip those threats in the bud via underhanded means.

Outside of these extremes, permanently destroying most Darklords requires either killing one in a very specific manner and/or destroying a Darklord's means of cheating death (which in some cases might be nigh-impossible, such as killing every specimen of a very numerous type of creature in a domain before confronting the Darklord). Finding out this information is likely to require a good deal of questing and research to find out, but can make for a great campaign if properly handled. However, even accomplishing all this does nothing to stop the Dark Powers from "promoting" someone in the realm evil enough to assume the mantle of Darklord, possibly leaving the realm and its inhabitants in [[Not as planned|a worse situation than before]]. In fact, not a few of the "current" Darklords assumed their positions by killing the previous ones. In other cases, the title and sometimes even the personality of the Darklord is immediately passed down to another being on the moment of the Darklord's death, thus ensuring that their position is never lost.

===What happens if you permanently destroy a Darklord somehow?===
It's likely that some of you action-oriented elegan/tg/entleman reading this are just champing at the bit to claim a Darklord's skull for your trophy rooms, but as noted above, the odds and the themes of the setting itself are decidedly against you. Or maybe you're a DM who wants to run a Ravenloft campaign where good really can make a difference and want to know what happens when these Gothic Horror BBEGs finally bite the dust for real and no one takes their place.

Unfortunately, the rulebooks have historically been rather ambivalent and lacking in detail about the answer to this question and the resulting implications. Some Ravenloft rulebooks say that once a Darklord is permanently destroyed and no successor is forthcoming, the destroyed Darklord's associated domain might simply disappear, leaving open the question of what happens to all the people who were living there. If the people there simply disappear as well, were they never real in the first place, instead being undispellable illusions made up whole-cloth by the Dark Powers to torment the Darklord? That might work out just fine if your group stuck to playing [[Weekend in Hell]] style adventures in Ravenloft, but what would it say about PCs native to Ravenloft, or even native to the domain now without a Darklord? Or were the people in the Darklord-less domain no more real (and therefore no more morally troubling to harm in any way) than characters in a video game, making the whole "Powers Check" mechanic moot with regards to harming innocents? Is there now a gaping misty void where the previous domain used to be?

Canonically, the answer might be found in how two domains (Arkandale and Gundarak) where the Darklords lost their darklordship were absorbed by neighbouring ones, essentially meaning the people inside those domains just exchanged one insidious tyrant for another. This solution is probably the smoothest way to incorporate the plot element of Darklords being permanently destroyed in your campaign. On the other hand, geographically isolated domains (such as one of the numerous "Islands of Terror" that are completely surrounded by the Mists), or mobile pocket domains with no notable population of sentients can just disappear back into the mists with no larger consequences to other domains upon the permanent death of their Darklords. It still leaves open the question of what happens to the population of sentients in domains situated in the middle of nowhere that suffer a sudden lack of a Darklord, though.

Strahd himself is explicitly mentioned to be a special case with regards to permanent destruction, most probably due to his status as the posterboy of the entire Ravenloft setting (even in universe, it's noted that the Demi-Plane of Dread didn't seem to exist until Strahd's damnation). In 5e's Curse of Strahd module, it is said that in the absurdly unlikely event he is permanently killed with all of his failsafes destroyed or deactivated, the Dark Powers will intervene to resurrect him within a month [[Grimdark|because they refuse to allow the possibility of ending his torment]]. They're "possessive" about their favourite playthings like that.

Players crying foul about this should note that the Dark Powers are mighty enough to bar the gods themselves from coming to Ravenloft. In light of that, something like bringing a Darklord back to life looks like a trivial feat by comparison.

5e Overhall of some domains of Dreads gives some more definitive insight, either hinted at or explicit With some of the newer darklords stealing rulership from older ones. Darklordship Darkon is a prime example of a missing Darklord, as, without Azalin Rex, the domains is slowly dissolving.

Bottom line? Hash it out with your DM beforehand, or if you're a DM yourself, make sure you have a sensible plot thread lined up if you choose to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords, while keeping in mind how important Darklords are to the themes of Ravenloft.

=Notable Darklords=

==The "Hammer Horror" Darklords==
With the horror films by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions Hammer Film Productions] officially cited as a major source of inspiration for the setting of Ravenloft, the Darklords who are patterned after the horror monster archetypes featured in those films will be listed here.

===Strahd von Zarovich===
{{main|Strahd von Zarovich}}
Darklord of Barovia, and the first Darklord to be introduced to the setting--in fact, it's named after his own castle. He is the archetypal vampire darklord in the setting, though by no means the only one, and his appearance is clearly based off of Christopher Lee's portrayal of Dracula in the 1958 ''Dracula'' film by Hammer Film Productions.

Originally the conqueror of a region called Barovia that he claims was the ancestral home of his family, Strahd came to lust after a woman called Tatyana who rejected him in favor of his younger brother Sergei. Strahd took this very badly; badly enough that at some point he made what he called "a pact with Death" that turned him into a [[vampire]] in a desperate attempt to restore his youth. This too failed to win her over, and on the day Tatyana was to be married to Sergei, Strahd killed him and drove her to suicide.

His realm is a copy of Barovia from the Prime Material plane (the original apparently still exists but nothing is said about its current condition or even which D&D setting it originated from), which he has absolute power over to the point where he can enter any private home uninvited in spite of the fact most vampires are unable to do so (since as he boasts, "I am the land"), and he can ignore the standard vampiric weaknesses to mirrors, garlic or holy symbols, none of which ordinary vampires can do. He isn't even "killed" when staked through the heart like ordinary vampires are (though he is effectively paralyzed while staked) and can resist up to ten rounds of sunlight exposure before being destroyed, though he has always a contingency spell cast on himself that will teleport him away to a hidden mountain sanctuary should he ever be exposed to sunlight or staked by a prepared party, much like Bram Stoker's own Dracula had many coffins to sleep in to make his final destruction more difficult. However, Strahd's curse is to have the events leading to his damnation repeat themselves forever--once every generation he will encounter a woman who he believes to be Tatyana's reincarnation, only to be rejected by her in spite of all his vampiric mind control powers, and become responsible for her death once more, all while being unable to simply give up on trying to win her love.

===Ankhtepot===
Darklord of Har'Akir, partially based on the monster from the 1959 film ''The Mummy'' by Hammer Film Productions. He is the archetypal Mummy-based Darklord in the setting, but he is not the only "Ancient Dead" (i.e., a preserved corpse animated into undeath) who happens to be a Darklord.

Ankhtepot in life was a hubristic ruler of a land also named Har'Akir, patterned after Ancient Egypt and sharing the same pantheon of gods. As the head priest of the sun god Ra, the chief god of his land, Ankhtepot was [[Nagash|obsessed with death and became consumed with the desire to live forever]]. Despite sparing no expense (nor quite a few lives, for that matter) his efforts were in vain, and in his rage he razed several temples, stormed into the greatest one and cursed the gods for withholding his heart's desire. For this blasphemy, Ra contacted Ankhtepot directly and said that Ankhtepot would indeed live after death, though he might wish otherwise. Anhktepot was confused about this, but later discovered that he had received a dire curse (making him one of the few outlander Darklords to have received the majority of his curse ''before'' being taken into Ravenloft); anyone he touched was dead by nightfall, and those he killed in this fashion rose from their tombs to serve him absolutely as undead mummies, because apparently Ra considers having mindless servants a punishment. Taking this in stride despite killing many of his relatives, he used his new undead servants to tighten his grip over Har'Akir, but his fellow priests rebelled, killed Ankhtepot in his sleep, and mummified him, little knowing he was still conscious and going insane inside his sarcophagus during his month-long funeral. After being entombed in a remote area with one small village named Mudar, the mists of Ravenloft claimed Ankhtepot, his tomb, and the nearby village, leaving no trace of them in Ankhtepot's home plane.

As Darklord, Ankhtepot spends most of his time in a deathless dream of better days in his tomb, but he can be roused from this state in a few ways, such as if his tomb is disturbed, or if the people of Mudar are anxious or otherwise distressed. His hubris and pride followed him into undeath, and similarly his greatest torment is his desire to be human again, as the god-king of a great empire he once was, while in reality he "rules" over a barren patch of desert with naught but a small mud-hut village. To frustrate him further, the Dark Powers granted Ankhtepot the ability to regain his human form and mortality by draining a human of moisture and life force in a dread sunrise ceremony, but this reversion to mortality lasts only from dawn to nightfall, and during those few daylight hours "under Ra's gaze" he loses all his supernatural powers, once again becoming a normal human with no appreciable abilities until nightfall, whereupon the transformation is undone. Knowing that he would face an eternity of solitude were he to sacrifice everyone in his domain to fleetingly experience mortality again, Ankhtepot generally prefers to wait and dream until he might rule a larger population, a time he seems unaware will never come.

With respect to his crunch, Ankhtepot can be an unholy terror in his Greater Mummy form. He retains much of the high-level spellcasting ability he had in life, his touch-delivered Mummy Rot is both more virulent and harder to cure than almost any other Ravenloft Mummy's, and those who become infected and are mummified alive become Greater Mummies under his total control. Other aces up his sleeve (or rather, his bandages) are the fact that he commands virtually every mummy in his domain, so if sufficiently provoked he can summon up an entire shambling army of mummies to do his bidding, and the fact that a certain item on his person allows him to heal lost hitpoints very quickly, even if reduced below zero, unless that item is removed from him or his downed "corpse." Ankhtepot can, however, easily be killed during his bouts of mortality (even though doing so might attract the attention of the Dark Powers since he poses no real threat during these times), but if he is killed while an ordinary human he can reanimate if he is mummified and entombed again. As a result of a possible oversight by the writers, no mention is made of how Ankhtepot might be able to return to unlife should he be defeated in his Greater Mummy form nor how he might be permanently destroyed, though he can simply reform in his tomb in the case of the former and the latter might simply require that both his tomb and his physical body be completely destroyed, resulting in the village of Mudar returning to its home plane and Ankhtepot's desert joining an adjacent domain.

Given the relative lack of sex appeal for mummies compared to the far more famous vampires and werewolves (unless you're a fan of the [[Tomb Kings]] or [[Mummy: The Curse]]), Ankhtepot and his domain more or less dropped off the face of Ravenloft canon after the AD&D version, and even in AD&D he was fairly passive. Even so, he did affect Ravenloft and D&D at large in one way by creating the first Greater Mummies (AKA "Children of Ankhtepot") to ever exist in a D&D system, though they have since significantly changed from their original incarnation. Ankhtepot has also been known to send his Mummy and Greater Mummy servants outside of his domain to track and kill grave robbers who defile his tomb and other unfortunates who incur his wrath.

Ankhtepot and his domain made his first appearance as the star villain of the classic ''Touch of Death'' Ravenloft module in 1991.

Despite not having shown up since AD&D, he was re-introduced to the setting in 5e, albeit with some significant retcons.

In an ancient country the inhabitants called the Land of Reeds and Lotuses, Ankhtepot served three generations of pharaohs as high priest. When the second pharaoh died, her unworthy son ascended to the throne. The new pharaoh quickly became unpopular among the people and priests, and Ankhtepot came to believe that the gods wanted himself to take the pharaoh's place. On the day of the pharaoh's coronation, Ankhtepot rallied his loyal priests and murdered their liege. Unfortunately he had misjudged both the people's loyalty and the gods' wills. The people rose up and killed him and his fellow priests, and when he died the gods forsook him and barred him from the afterlife. The gods returned him to the world, but stripped away a piece of his soul called the ka -- the vital essence that inspires all living beings.

He awoke immobilized and trapped in his sarcophagus, during which he felt the pain of every cut and every organ removed as if he were alive. One day, after untold years of this suffering, he a voice asking if he still felt he was worthy to rule. Still arrogant after all he had been through, he answered with certainty, and thus emerged from his crypt into the domain of Har’Akir. In this new land, Ankhtepot found a pious people devoted to the same gods he once served, and immediately set to wiping that religion out and replacing their gods with false idols of his own invention. Using blasphemous rites, Ankhtepot resurrected the priests once buried alongside him as powerful mummies, replacing their heads with those of beasts holy to his new faith. These Children of Ankhtepot served him as they did in life, and together the dead conquered the souls of Har’Akir.

Since then he has seen much, and known many things, but now he seeks one thing only: to be reconnected with his lost Ka, which he believes will allow him to finally die. Where and what his Ka is now is left up to the DM to decide, as is what happens when he is reunited with it. All of the suggested results are pretty grim, ranging from him being reborn as a living tyrant far more decadent and sadistic than he was as an undead, to discovering that he cannot be returned to mortality and deciding to wipe out all life in his domain out of spite.

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===Alfred Timothy===
Darklord of Verbrek, and the archetypal werewolf Darklord of the setting, though by no means the only lycanthrope Darklord in Ravenloft. Alfred Timothy was born to Nathan Timothy (former werewolf Darklord of Arkandale) and an unknown mother. Disdained by Nathan for being frail and sickly in his human form, Alfred in turn disdained his father for his "overly human" interest in ferrying cargo and passengers with his paddleboat (in truth, Nathan was cursed as Darklord of Arkandale to become cripplingly nauseous with "land sickness" anytime he tried to set foot on dry land, but instead of suffering from this curse, Nathan grew so accustomed to boating and the company of his human passengers that he unknowingly lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction, despite still being confined to river waters and remaining an unrepentant serial killer).

Leaving to find his own way and to escape the perpetual treatment as the runt of the litter, Alfred happened upon villagers in his father's domain who regularly made sacrifices to appease a savage being they called [[the Wolf God]] in the hopes of relief from continual attacks by bloodthirsty wolves. Taking inspiration from the sight of humans propitiating a lupine deity and perhaps indulging more than a little megalomania at the prospect of being an object of worship or leading a werewolf-centric religion, Alfred wandered the domains and interrogated clerics he met, sometimes lethally, on how he could become a cleric of this "Wolf God" and use its granted powers to inaugurate a werewolf-led reign of terror over humans. Unfortunately, his efforts and sacrifices were fruitless in provoking any response from this "deity," and he began to take out his frustrations on any clerics and religious buildings he could find whenever his latest interrogation target failed to provide the missing ingredient to contacting and receiving spells from the Wolf God. After [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=425913 one such iconoclastic rampage], Alfred incautiously fell asleep near the mutilated corpses and smouldering wreckage of his latest failure. Not content to "let sleeping dogs lie," Alfred was discovered, chained, and about to be burned at the stake by vengeful villagers, were it not for a mother-daughter pair of prescient Vistani who purchased his freedom and told Nathan that for this stay of execution, he must allow all Vistani safe passage in the future. Enraged at the possibility of being bound by a bargain struck with "mere" humans, Alfred promptly killed the Vistani mother, and the mists of Ravenloft claimed him for this betrayal, leaving him within his new domain of Verbrek, which eventually grew to encompass his father's former domain of Arkandale.

Now a Darklord, Alfred was initially delighted at having truly become a cleric of the Wolf God, receiving divine spells and being able to "converse" with it (assuming it exists, but if you decide to play with a nonexistent Wolf God, Ravenloft's Dark Powers have been known to grant divine spells and Alfred might just be hearing voices in his head). The price, as ever with Darklords, was an insidious curse. Alfred wants nothing more than to revel in the bestial fury and passion he once enjoyed as a werewolf, but as Darklord he is forced to transform back into his human form should he ever succumb to any kind of base passion: fear, rage, or lust. Having built a cult of savagery, wanton bloodshed, and debauchery among a large pack of werewolves as the chief priest of the Wolf God, his uncharacteristic unwillingness to practice what he preaches by frequently refraining from hunts and hesitance at finding a mate means his position is growing increasingly precarious. Realizing that widespread knowledge of his weakness would spell his doom (because [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=262657 "being an alpha means proving it every full moon"]), Alfred is trying to divest himself of his humanity by commanding and occasionally participating in ever-greater acts of slaughter, dedicating and offering them to his god who has remained silent on this one pressing issue, with the only exceptions to his wrath being the Vistani as he still remembers what happened the last time he killed one.

Crunch-wise, Alfred is rather conventional as lycanthrope BBEGs go, aside from his cleric levels and being forced to fight in a calculating and tactical manner unlike most werewolves lest he be forced to return to his much weaker human form. He doesn't cast a shadow (since his domain is effectively the shadow he casts on Ravenloft), and can even teleport from shadow to shadow within his domain whenever the moon is visible. As an ironic reminder from the Dark Powers of his fundamental weakness, Alfred cannot even supernaturally close the borders of his own domain, short of sending his dire wolf and werewolf minions to patrol them, though the true nature of this additional curse is likely lost on him, since he probably doesn't know about other Darklords and their ability to close their domain's borders supernaturally. Though not specifically mentioned, Alfred's fluff implies that even ''[https://youtu.be/ZxcljnLb95M?t=1m8s harsh language]'' might be one of the most potent weapons against him; if PCs can recognize him in either his wolf or hybrid forms and manage to enrage him through taunts, he will be forced to return to human form and at a minimum be robbed of the natural weapons of his alternate forms, or even be forced to kill any wolf or werewolf witnesses to his weakness with his clerical powers before turning his attentions to the PCs. However, even if Alfred is killed (and his crunch does not mention any method through which he could cheat death), it is likely the Darklordship (and possibly even Alfred's curse) will simply pass to whichever werewolf in his domain is evil enough for the Dark Powers' liking, preserving Verbrek as a separate domain unless every werewolf in the domain is killed or driven out before the current Darklord's death. Even then, the Dark Powers can always make more Darklordship candidates, though a more darkly ironic postmortem fate for Alfred's cult and domain might be for the Wolf God cult to scatter to the winds after Alfred's death, in essence metastasizing and spreading its cell members and evil elsewhere, while Alfred's father returns to Arkandale just in time to resume his old Darklordship and hear about his son's death, saying only ''"So that self-righteous runt finally bit off more than he could chew. No matter. Runts have always thought themselves to be bigger than they are."''

On a side note, players who want to play a Ravenloft campaign set in Verbrek, but who also want to use [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition|D&D 5e]] rules instead of relying on older books, might opt to use the official Magic-the-Gathering-to-D&D-5e conversion [[Innistrad|''Plane Shift: Innistrad'']] book, using its rules to play a campaign set in Innistrad's Kessig province. Kessig is thematically similar to Ravenloft's Verbrek as both are "werewolf country" locations, minus Darklords and other Ravenloft-exclusive mechanics. Until the Ravenloft setting is more fully adapted for D&D 5e, the Innistrad conversion is probably the best foundation for playing Verbrek in 5e.

===Dr. Victor Mordenheim/Adam===
Co-Darklords of Lamordia, of a sort. Like the character of Victor Frankenstein (best known for creating Frankenstein's monster) he was based on, Dr. Victor Mordenheim sought to create life and was certain that a soul was not necessary for it to exist. To show him the error of his ways, the gods saw fit to endow the doctor's creation with a soul--specifically, an irredeemably evil soul. The newly created dread flesh [[golem]] was dubbed Adam, and he soon grew jealous of the love that his maker's wife Elise and adopted daughter Eva had for him. Adam's plan to kidnap Elise failed, and instead he killed Eva and wounded Elise so badly she went into a vegetative state. It was at that time that the doctor and his creation were taken together into Ravenloft.

The doctor himself resides in his own mansion, Schloss Mordenheim, spending most of his time obsessively trying to revive his comatose-but-alive wife (who has herself long since gone mad due to her life support system causing her constant pain simply by being active), up to the point of continually constructing new bodies out of exhumed or painlessly-killed female corpses for her, but is cursed to never succeed and to never stop trying. Note that this is not out of love, though Mordenheim still believes that it is--it has become nothing more than a compulsion that has become his only reason for living. Meanwhile, Adam is now the "ruler" of an inhospitable island aptly dubbed the Isle of Agony in the middle of Lamordia inhabited solely by himself, forever cut off from the acceptance that he sought, cursed to feel the doctor's pain as his own, and rejected by the very land that he supposedly controls (as it is influenced by Mordenheim and not Adam). Adam's only form of solace comes from sabotaging Dr. Mordenheim's attempts at reviving Elise just to spite him. Player characters who meet Adam and treat him without pity or revulsion may be able to get some useful information out of him or even get him to open the borders of Lamordia, but he is very prone to anger and is virtually unstoppable once enraged.

So strong is Mordenheim's disbelief in magic that his own domain also (potentially) interferes with divine magic of any kind, making it unreliable, and may even block any magical attempts to heal Elise. Worse still, Mordenheim's attempts at training apprentices over the years in the vain hope that they might just achieve the necessary breakthrough to restoring Elise has unleashed quite a few mad scientist villains, or monsters born of mad science (such as the Living Brain, a disembodied brain in a life-support jar that uses its psionic powers to direct and dominate a major organized crime ring), onto Ravenloft at large.

In a curious twist, Adam is the Darklord and is the one with the power to close Lamordia's borders, but both Adam and his creator are effectively immortal and ageless, and Mordenheim even shares his creation's immunities and regenerative properties. If either is killed and their corpse completely destroyed by fire, acid, or even disintegration, either will simply reincarnate into the nearest most recently deceased male corpse (for Mordenheim) or flesh golem corpse (for Adam, and there are a quite a number of these running around Lamordia, made either by Mordenheim as failed bodies for Elise and futile attempts to recreate Adam's "success," or Adam's frustrated attempts at making sympathetic company for himself), and will shortly thereafter shape their new bodies into looking just like their previous selves. The only way to destroy Adam and Mordenheim for good is to destroy them together at the same time. If DMs decide to allow the permanent destruction of Darklords (see above), then the fate of Elise and Lamordia itself is up to them; one appropriate denouement could be that the permanent deaths of Adam and Mordenheim might just be the spark Mordenheim's machinery needs to briefly restore Elise long enough to rise up and forgive their long-suffering spirits before leading both to their afterlives, just before the land suddenly twists and shifts to reflect the curse and nature of its new Darklord.

Adam and Dr. Mordenheim first appeared in the one-shot adventure in a 1994 boxed set named "Adam's Wrath," intended for outlander PCs to undertake a [[Weekend in Hell]] adventure.

===Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken===
The "Jekyll & Hyde" Darklord of Nova Vaasa. Sir Hiregaard is a staunch, gruff but sincerely righteous man who is dedicated to his people and his land. However, he also plays host to Malken- an alternate personality that takes over Tristen's body, warping it into [[Caliban (Ravenloft)|a form so hideously ugly one can't recognize they're the same person]] and who delights in killing anyone who stands in the way of Hiregaard's repressed desires.

Strangely, Tristen did nothing at all to earn the position of Darklord; Malken is an entity born from a curse that was placed on Tristen's ''father'' by Tristen's mother Romir that compelled him to kill every woman he loved and any man who crossed him; Hiregaard Senior was an intensely jealous man and killed his wife and the man teaching her how to waltz in a fit of rage, thinking she was having an affair with him. When he killed himself to escape the curse, the curse passed to Tristen instead. Six years and nine killings after the curse first manifested itself in him, Tristen was taken into the mists and the secret jealousies and angers born from the curse coalesced into the being known as Malken. Tristen is only partially aware of Malken's existence, just enough to have his guards lock him into his personal chambers when he feels a fit of jealousy or anger coming on. For years he has assumed this has kept Malken in check, but as of late he is starting to suspect that Malken is too clever to be thwarted by mundane confinement despite the latter's attempts at keeping his influence a secret. Were he to discover the whole truth, he would be willing to do anything to end the curse.

This curse is the key to Malken's immortality; if Tristen is killed, then Tristen's eldest living male descendant will be possessed - and Malken will keep going down the chain each time his host dies, meaning that unless you find "the right way" to kill him, Malken can only be stopped by massacring Tristen's entire family line... which the players could potentially belong to. However, if Malken's host is killed by a woman genuinely in love with that man, then Malken will be dragged screaming into whatever hell-hole awaits him. And given that this would be a massive act of betrayal on that woman's part, she would likely end up becoming the new Darklord herself.

It should also be noted for DMs that "the struggle within his soul" prevents Malken from achieving the proper focus to Close the Borders of his domain, so if you want to run a session or campaign focussed around Nova Vaasa, you had better have a compelling in-universe reason to keep the PCs from simply up and leaving, since canonically DMs can't force the issue and simply lock the PCs into Nova Vaasa like they can with most other Darklords. It's possible that if Malken possesses a more evil host, he might just be able to Close the Borders then, but the form such a closed border would take has never been revealed in canon.

==Other Darklords==

===Addar===
{{main|Addar}}
The father of [[Shadow Unicorn]]s and a Darklord of questionable canon. More info on his page.

===Azalin Rex===
Darklord of Darkon. A powerful mage who inherited the rule of the city-state of Knurl, his draconian rule culminated in the execution of his son when he was caught freeing political prisoners. Soon afterward, Azalin became a [[lich]] and devoted himself to searching for a spell that could resurrect the dead; he believed that his son's sense of compassion was due to a mistake in his upbringing and assumed that if he could be revived that mistake could be fixed.

As soon as he was taken into Ravenloft he lost the ability to learn any new magic at all- a terrible thing for any magic user, and even worse for a lich like him who became undead for the sole purpose of gaining more knowledge. This power over memory affects anyone else who enters Darkon as well; staying there for more than three months at a time causes a visitor's memories to be erased and replaced with false ones of spending one's whole life in Darkon. Originally an ally of Strahd when he first entered the mists, their relationship soured quickly after a failed attempt at escaping the Demi-plane of Dread temporarily split the former into two separate beings and they've remained enemies ever since. Another ill-fated attempt at breaking free in which he planned to become a demilich backfired even more spectacularly. Instead of allowing his essence to be freed from Ravenloft, it dispersed his essence across Darkon and destroyed the domain's capital. It took five years for him to reassume a corporeal form and take control of his realm again.

In 5th edition, Azalin has mysteriously gone missing. Did he finally outsmart the Dark Powers and escape? The only clue about where he went is that when he vanished a strange golden star or starlike thing called The King's Tear appeared in the sky and hasn't moved since and the sun and moon pass ''behind'' it instead of in front of it every day.

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===Baron Urik von Kharkov===
Considered one of the goofier Darklords, albeit not as bad as Tristen ApBlanc, and with a much more usable domain in Valachan. Baron Kharkov is basically half-Blacula and half-Werepanther; he was a black panther that a Red Wizard of Thay turned into a human being to use as an assassin. The Red Wizard arranged for him to fall in love with his rival, and then undid the transfiguration spell on him while they were together so he would tear her apart as a panther. When he was turned back into a human, he freaked out and ran off into the Mists. He found himself in Darkon, where he spent 20 years as a member of Azalin's secret police (turning into a Nosferatu in the process). He later escaped and subsequently became the Darklord of Valachan after entering the Mists again. We don't know what he did that turned him into a Darklord, in part due to his own fuzzy memories of what happened during that time, but he claims he killed many people while in the mists, including the Red Wizard that transformed him the first time.

Anyway, he's a blood-drinking black vampire cursed with yellow eyes (that turn into cat's eyes when he's pissed off) and with hands that resemble paws, being covered in fur and bearing retractile claws. He can still turn into a panther, in which state his bite turns people into werepanthers, and controls panthers instead of the normal wolves. His curse is to basically relive his most traumatizing event over and over again; he's constantly seeking a human bride, but once he has one, he can never trust her not to find out that he's not human, and inevitably murders her in a fit of paranoid fury. (He should try dating a [[Furry]] fan or Jaqueline Reiner, that would solve it.)

In 5th edition he has been killed and succeeded by Chakuna.

===Bluebeard===
A rare darklord actually ''liked'' by his subjects, Bluebeard rules over Blaustein (German: "Blue Stone"), a small nation from an unknown world. His rule was considered just and fair, and as a ruler he was considered to be quite generous. Unfortunately for him, he was an incredibly ugly man -- a blue-tinted beard and all -- which to his credit, he overcame with his own charms... and being incredibly wealthy didn't hurt either. Despite all of his good qualities, however, Bluebeard could not achieve a lasting marriage.

He would find a woman to marry, and soon after the wedding he would leave the castle for a time, handing its care over to his new wife. He would give her a set of keys to every door in the castle, and pointing out the one special golden key which opened a room at the very top floor. His instruction was to never open that particular door, with vague consequences. So far none of his wives have been able to overcome this temptation; and when they did open the door they found his grisly collection of former wives, hung up by meat-hooks with their throats slit. By opening the door, the key -- which was magical in nature -- would have a bloody mark that would appear that could not be removed except by Bluebeard himself. He would return to the castle soon after, and demand to see the keys. If the woman had given into temptation (which each invariably did), she would then share the fate as the other women in the room. Marcella was his fourth wife and victim. Her death was not the final, but eventually Bluebeard's repeated murders brought Blaustein into Ravenloft.

After becoming a darklord, Bluebeard was gifted by the Dark Powers with a minor charisma increase, which does not make him handsome by any means but does not leave him as ugly as he once was. He is also able to perfectly detect any lie. Even after the Mists took hold, Bluebeard is still the de facto leader of Blaustein, although his rule was twisted to be even more sadistic. Simply displeasing him is a death sentence, yet the populace still holds him in incredibly high regard. This is because he also has complete control over their memories, and freely erases or rewrites their recollections of his atrocities.

He is unable to marry any woman native to Blaustein, as their visages always twist to the posthumous appearance of one of his dead wives. This curse does not affect women who were born foreign of Blaustein, and Bluebeard along with his subjects are always on the constant lookout for any attractive women who fit this criteria. Lorel, an outlander he grabbed through the Mists, was his latest wife (and victim).

Bluebeard is also haunted by the ghosts of the wives he killed. Every third night must be spent in his castle in order to sleep, and he always awakes to the frightening caress of the specters of his murdered wives. Like his subjects, they are utterly devoted to him, yet in the most twisted way possible. While he considers this distressing, it has not stopped him from sending another wife to the same fate.

It is currently unknown if he has any dealings with any other nation or darklord, at least beyond welcoming in his harbour ships including those engaged in piracy.

He's mentioned in a single sentence in 5e, which states that apparently his spectral wives overthrew him and now endlessly torment him. Exactly how this happened or what this entails is not elaborated upon.

===Captain Alain Monette===

Darklord of L'ile de la Tempete. A violent and cruel privateer and captain of the ''Ouragan''. Eventually his crew snapped from his vicious temper and regular abuse and mutinied against him, keelhauling him thrice before throwing him into the sea. This was meant to be an execution- keelhauling, or dragging a sailor around the keel of a ship to be cut by the barnacles growing on it and hit against the ship's hull, is traumatic even when it's only done once and the victim is taken on board the ship afterward. But Alain survived, and washed up on the shores of a small island in the mists. Vampire bats came to drink the blood from his wounds, and Alain survived in turn by eating them- which turned him into a werebat.

Alain thus recovered from his keelhauling, but physical health was a cold comfort as he soon found that even with the flight he gained as a werebat, he could not leave his lonesome island. Driven mad by the isolation and cut off from the sea, he now vents his frustrations on those who sail as he no longer can. His island contains a lighthouse, but as with many things in Ravenloft, it's a trap in the guise of something helpful. Anyone, even outside the Mists, who investigates the light is drawn to the hazardous waters near his lighthouse, where most are shipwrecked. If any survivors somehow make it to shore, Alain will greet them. He'll be quite friendly, at first- he's starved for company and news of the outside world. But he's even more starved for flesh, and within a few days at most he will attack and kill them.

===Captain Pieter van Riese===
Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Originally from Gothic Earth's version of the Netherlands, Pieter was a ship's captain obsessed with finding the legendary Northwest Passage. When his ship was sunk in an encounter with an iceberg, he offered his own life along with the lives of his crew to any being who could help them forward, and the Dark Powers answered him. Naturally, they didn't actually give him what he wanted.

Pieter is now a ghost, and the captain of the ghost ship ''The Relentless''. He has the power to summon the ghosts of those who killed others and then were killed in the Sea of Sorrows to crew his ship, and can sail anywhere in his domain. However, he can no longer explore as he wishes, since the island domains in the Sea of Sorrows move around and he can only sail to land that he's chartered to go to.

Pieter is Ravenloft's answer to the legends of the ''Flying Dutchman'', a ghost ship that is unable to make port and sails the seas forever. Most versions say that the curse is because of her captain, Hendrick van der Decken, refusing to go to port while crossing the Cape of Good Hope, declaring that he would not make port "though I should beat about here till the day of judgment". He got shipwrecked in a storm, and the ghost of his ship is now bound by his curse to never be able to rest at port.

===Councilor Dominic d'Honaire===
The darklord of Dementlieu. Originally born in Mordentshire, Dominic led his nanny to suicide at age 7 and then manipulated his family to move away to avoid the Mordentshire police, with the mists giving him the domain of Dementlieu. Dominic is not the domain's temporal leader but does serve as an adviser for Marcel Guignol, Dementlieu's head of state. However, Dominic has much more power than his official position would suggest. The darklord's power is domination over the minds of other people on a prodigious scale. A great many in the land, including its recognized head, are his obedients and through this network he knows whatever goes on in his land.

His personal curse is that any woman he woos sees him as more repulsive the more he is attracted to her. Also, for some time his rule is challenged by an entity who is called (and virtually is) the Living Brain (re: ''Sherlock Holmes''' Moriarty), the last remains of Rudolph von Aubrecker, the youngest son of Lamordia's political ruler.

in 5e, the domain was revamped and the Darklord is now Saidra d’Honaire, though there is a plot hook that hints he's still around and trying to get his position back (then again Dementlieu is now a place where everyone pretends).

==="Death"===
Darklord of Necropolis (formerly Il-Aluk, the capital of Darkon). He is one of several minor Darklords that took over pieces of Darkon in Azalin's absence during the [[Grim Harvest]] and the only one of them to become a full Darklord after Azalin came back. Originally a clone of Azalin made by him as part of a convoluted scheme to bypass his curse, he was transformed into a negative energy elemental by the prototype version of the "Doomsday Device" Azalin thought would make him into a demilich. When it backfired, the massive surge of negative energy it released killed the whole of Il-Aluk's population. "Death" then claimed the ruined capital and its remaining undead inhabitants as its own, and after Azalin reconstituted himself Necropolis became its own domain. A shroud of negative energy still remains over Necropolis, which instantly kills all non-undead which attempt to enter its borders.

===Draga Salt-Biter===

Darklord of Saragoss, a watery domain where the only analogue to 'land' is 'places where the seaweed is clumped particularly tight'. Draga is a [[Therianthrope|wereshark]] pirate [[Cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] with a deep-rooted fear of sharks. Yes, it's ironic that he hates sharks while being able to turn into one. He knows. He got both his wereshark infection and his fear of sharks in the same incident; as a child, he was captured by a crew of pirates, who stuck a hook into one of his calves and dangled him into shark-infested waters, understandably traumatizing the kid. And after his own piracy and terrorism of the seas in Umberlee's name caught the Dark Powers' attention, they saw no reason to mess with a perfectly good case of irony and gave him a neat selection of new powers... all of which were shark-themed. He controls sharks, can only breathe underwater (though he also has a ring of air-breathing that allows him to surface for a few hours at a time), and his resurrection method involves his spirit being reborn via sharks. He's also becoming increasingly shark-like in mentality as time passes, a prospect which terrifies him.

===Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth===

Darklord of Dominia. Reknowned throughout the Demiplane of Dread as an expert on mental illness, few know the dark secret behind his knowledge. Terrified of falling victim to the heredity madness that plagued his family, Heinfroth conducted horrific experiments on his mental patients to deepen his understanding of insanity. One of these experiments turned him into the first cerebral vampire, a vampire subspecies that feeds on cerebral fluid instead of blood.

===Dr. Frantisek Markov===
Darklord of Markovia. Originally a pig farmer from Barovia, he grew increasingly obsessed with the anatomy of the pigs he butchered and began to perform bizarre experiments on them that wouldn't be out of place in a [[Haemonculus]]' laboratory. When his "subjects" inevitably died, he simply sold the meat without telling anyone what he had done to it first. Eventually his wife discovered his gruesome hobby and threatened to expose him, at which time she ended up becoming one of his experiments as well. After three days of vivisection, she finally expired- her corpse was so horrifically mangled that when it was first discovered it was mistaken for the remains of a monster. When Markov's involvement in her death became clear, the mists claimed him and made him a Darklord.

Fittingly, Markov's curse allows him to shapeshift into any animal form he wishes (save for his head, which remains human), but is incapable of assuming his original human form. As a result, he normally takes the shape of a gorilla in order to continue his increasingly deranged experiments without being impeded by a lack of thumbs. Said experiments culminated in the creation of the "[[Broken One]]s"- animals (and the occasional unlucky human) that have been surgically mutilated into a human-animal hybrid form and given a semblance of intellect, similar to the Beast Folk of ''The Island of Dr. Moreau''. Like said Beast Folk, they too are highly prone to reverting to their primal instincts and bestial appearance after only a few days.

===Easan the Mad===
Darklord and ruler of Vechor. Easan has the power to reshape the land, and even reality itself, within his domain. Combined with his capricious whims, his power makes the realm a place of constant change.

Easan is a short wood elf and former agitator for a war against Iuz the Evil. For his efforts, he was seemingly driven mad by the possession of a fiend. Now Easan only looks for a cure to his madness, but he is willing to tear many innocent lives apart, and maybe even reality itself, to find a cure. His vile research has focused on souls and soul transference. Among other monstrosities, his research created the dread mechanical golem from fellow outlander Ahmi Vanjuko.

It all started on the outlander world of Oerth. Easan argued the cause for war to his colleagues among the rulers of a tiny elf kingdom bordering Iuz's empire. To make an example of the upstart elf, Iuz ordered his agents to kidnap Easan. With Easan rendered helpless before him, Iuz bound a fiend to Easan.

The presence of the fiend within Easan began eating away at his mind. Many magical means of expulsion failed, including the divine magic of [[St. Cuthbert]]'s followers. In an effort to find a way to free himself from the fiend, Easan visited a far-off island of mystics. They managed to suppress the fiend for a time, but eventually the monks and their island were rent asunder by a disaster of mysterious circumstances. Only Easan came out of it alive. The cause of the incident was Iuz's visit to the island and his ensuing frustration at Easan's seeming mastery over the fiendish spirit within. Iuz brought about the magical destruction that wiped out the entire island.

Whereas Easan emerged from the disaster with his body intact, his mind had only deteriorated further. The fiend had returned, but Easan did not give up hope. Where religion had failed, Easan resolved to find a way to banish the fiend with perverse experiments. Easan sacrificed many lives in his pursuit for a cure before he was taken in by the Mists.

Eventually, Easan noticed he was in a foreign, if familiar, land where he was viewed as a god. Indeed, he now had the power to warp reality (albeit slowly) within his own domain. Although he enjoys this from time to time, for the most part he remains obsessed with finding secrets of the soul. For all his power, he cannot seem to best his own inner demons, for he has all but forgotten the reasons why he began his foul research.

In truth, Easan never had a fiend implanted in him at all. It was all merely a deception to throw him off balance. Still, Easan's mind locked onto it, and when others couldn't detect the nonexistent affliction, Easan turned to his own methods for finding a cure.

===Ebonbane===
First introduced in the Darklords sourcebook, Ebonbane is a villainous character strongly associated with the mythos surrounding the Shadowborn Family and the Shadowlands cluster. In universe, Ebonbane is a source of horrific evil that has been opposed by Lady Kateri Shadowborn and her kin for almost two centuries, going back to the Heretical Wars on the Prime Material Plane. Once a powerful fiend known as Lussimar, Ebonbane was conjured and trapped inside a sword by mortal spellcasters. Ebonbane struck back at its summoners and enslaved them. After Ebonbane killed Kateri Shadowborn, it became darklord of Shadowborn Manor, the former residence of its nemesis.

===Elena Faith-Hold===
Darklord of Nidala. Elena was a [[Paladin]] of the god [[Belenus]] that acted as a guardian of a land also called Nidala, but her devotion to Belenus was tainted by her fondness for the adoration of the masses. Following a great crusade against the forces of evil, the people began to scorn those who did not worship Belenus. The more zealous members of the clergy appealed to her vanity and drive to please Belenus, and soon she grew so fanatical that after the "non-believers" were wiped out, she turned on followers that she deemed unworthy, always finding some new target for her purges. For this, Belenus withdrew his support, but Elena never realized that she fell because her formerly [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies had blossomed into full-fledged self-righteousness- thus leaving her incapable of even considering that she might have gone astray from her god's teachings.

Believing her fall to be only a test of faith, she grew ever more ruthless in purging those who she deemed unclean, until she was eventually drawn by the Mists into the Demiplane of Dread. She didn't actually become a Darklord until later, when she started slaughtering entire villages because she saw more evil than good in them (not knowing that she was only looking at the worst parts of each town). At that point, she was given the domain of Nidala, which she runs as a dour police state, forbidding all practices she sees as evil while allowing her cult of personality to reach new heights. When she considers a town to be too corrupted, she and her followers destroy it, blaming the deed on the fictional [[dragon]] Banemaw. Ironically enough, in her domain the true dogma of Belenus is considered [[Heresy]], and her servant/"spiritual guide" Theokos (a fiend-like entity masquerading as a [[Cleric]] of Belenus) strives to wipe it out entirely.

As a Darklord, Elena has her paladin powers back, except they're from the Dark Powers, so they're warped in ways that Elena is in severe denial about (to the point where she's a straight [[Blackguard]] in some writeups). Her unicorn steed is now fiendish, she commands undead instead of turning them, her Aura of Courage is an Aura of Despair, she can only heal herself or her steed, and most notably her Detect Evil power instead detects strong emotions that others feel towards her (any emotion works, so someone who genuinely loves her will still be detected as "evil" with predictable results), leaving them vulnerable to her version of Smite Evil. Naturally, Elana refuses to believe that her Detect Evil power doesn't actually work as it's supposed to and insists that the inability of anyone else to use Detect Evil in the Demiplane of Dread is proof of their spiritual impurity. She is also able to "convert" foes to her side as loyal servants who will gladly die for her, which functions like an enhanced humanoid-only version of Charm Monster.

She is cursed with bouts of self-doubt, and once every week she must take a midnight ride as a chorus of voices denounce her for becoming one of the forces of evil she once fought against.

===Eli Van Hassen===

Darklord of the Endless Road, and a creation of the 4th edition to replace the infamously-dubious Headless Horseman and his Winding Road domain. Eli, unlike the Horseman, has an actual known reason to be Darklord, with the Horseman being downgraded to part of Eli's curse.

Eli was once a minor nobleman who ruled over a hamlet called Tranquility, despite having much grander ambitions. When his lands were ravaged by a hydra, a wandering horseman came by and slew the beast, being lauded as a hero. Eli was filled with envy as the huntsman received praise and admiration that he didn't, and his daughter falling in love with the man was the last straw. He forced the girl to claim that the Horseman had raped her, whipped the denizens of Tranquility into a frenzied mob, and executed the innocent man. Drawn to the Demiplane of Dread for this crime, Eli is now trapped on his estate, for the Headless Horseman, the spectre of the hero he murdered, wanders the road outside and will kill Eli if he ever steps beyond his estate's boundaries.

===Gabrielle Aderre===
Darklord of Invidia. A [[half-Vistani]] whose mother was raped by Drakov and was rejected by her fellow Vistani, she had always fantasized about her father's identity and resented her mother's unwillingness to speak of him, as well as her warning that if she bore a child it would end in disaster for everyone around her. When her mother was attacked by a werewolf, Gabrielle refused to aid her until she revealed the truth about her father. But when her mother did so, Gabrielle refused to believe it and left her to die. The mists took her after that, and she came to be cursed with an inability to cause direct harm to the [[Vistani]], either physically or magically. Soon afterward she came to become the temporal leader of Invidia as well as its darklord, an opportunity that allowed her to begin persecuting the Vistani in spite of her curse.

She took many lovers as Invidia's ruler, though she only truly loved one of them, a wolfwere called Matton Blanchard. However, she was later seduced by the incubus calling himself "The Gentleman Caller" and left pregnant by him. Her son Malocchio soon proved to be one of the Dukkar- one of the rare males of Vistani blood with The Sight. On its own this would be a cause for concern among the Vistani, as the Dukkar is effectively the Vistani equivalent of the Antichrist; however, Gabrielle went even further and taught him to hate the Vistani as much as she did. Ultimately she taught him too well, as Malocchio betrayed Gabrielle and took the position of Invidia's temporal ruler for himself. She survived due to the intervention of Blanchard, but since then Malocchio has been the ruler of Invidia, persecuting the Vistani far more effectively than Gabrielle ever could have done. The only reason he has yet to kill her is because he knows that if she dies, he will inevitably inherit her title of Darklord, which he has no interest in gaining.

===Gregor Zolnik===

Darklord of Vorostokov. The only known Darklord from [[Birthright]], Gregor is descended from Azrai, and lives down to the bloodline's negative reputation. Gregor was an excellent hunter, and back in Cerilia, his skills saved his village during an exceptionally harsh winter. Gregor loved being a hero to the people, but his talent for hunting couldn't work so well every winter. And so, to keep bringing back meat, he started hunting humans. This drew Vorostokov into Ravenloft, where the winter has continued ever since (though recently it has shown some signs of abatement). Gregor still "hunts" for his people, although they've started to cotton on to Gregor's lies and resent their dependence on him, they have no other choice, for Gregor forbids anyone else from hunting.

Gregor is a [[Loup du Noir]], and the boyarsky who support him are the same, as he infected them. His two sons are also nascent Loup du Noir, but the younger, Mikhail, wishes to escape him.

===Gwydion the Sorceror-Fiend===
Darklord of the Shadow Rift, and such an asshole that even the ''Shadow Fey'' think he's a monster. He is also responsible for their current state, as prior to Ravenloft, he was a powerful warlord on the Plane of Shadow, and to sate his ambitions, he kidnapped a bunch of normal fey, turned them into the Shadow Fey, and told them to create an interdimensional portal so he could use them as an army to conquer other planes. This worked as well as could be expected [[Derp|considering he had no mental domination of his creations]]. The Shadow Fey made a portal, alright... but it wasn't to the Prime Material and the armies that marched through it were actually a mass exodus of the Shadow Fey, hidden by illusions.

Gwydion eventually discovered the Shadow Fey's treachery, but it was too late, and by the time he got to the portal to stop them, the exodus was almost complete. The Shadow Fey king, Arak, held Gwydion back long enough for the Shadow Fey to all escape and seal the portal while Gwydion was going through it, trapping the Sorceror-Fiend. The other side of the portal led to the Demiplane of Dread, where the Dark Powers created the Shadow Rift to contain Gwydion further.

And that's pretty much how it remains. Aside from a failed escape attempt during the Grand Conjunction, Gwydion has remained stuck in that portal, unable to do anything but watch and send Shadow Fey an occasional bad dream.

===Haki Shinpi===
Darklord of Rokushima Táiyoo. He's a powerless [[Geist]] that, in life, was a powerful [[samurai]] and clan leader that forged a big and powerful empire. He felt pride in the fact that his clan and lands held together while others fell to discord, despair, and war, which he helped to instigate via manipulation and betrayal. Haki Shinpi somewhat lived by the code of Bushido but abused and exploited it to manipulate his nemeses, play them against each other, and run their hopes into the ground.

Shortly prior to Haki's death, he made it known that each of his six sons would inherit part of his conquered lands evenly. As expected, this went swimmingly for everyone involved. After his death, his children turned to bickering and then all out war against each other. Two of his children met their doom, and their islands were leveled by earthquakes before Rokushima Taiyoo was brought into the Demiplane of Dread.

Far from the influential and powerful man he was in life, Haki Shinpi can now do little to keep his sons from tearing his land apart in civil war.

===Harkon Lukas===
Darklord of Kartakass. A [[wolfwere]] bard from the [[Forgotten Realms]] unusual among his kind for his highly social nature, as most wolfweres are lone predators who only come together temporarily to breed. Seeing as how he couldn't get other wolfweres to agree to hang around together, he started focusing more on integrating into human society. He still hunted and ate humans, but he also gained a genuine love of human culture and of the idea of being somebody important. One day, for no reason since he'd basically been doing the same stuff any wolfwere does, just spending a bit more time in town in between kills, the Dark Powers grabbed his ass and yanked him into Barovia. At which point he went on an anti-wolf killing spree for, again, no particular reason. This attracted Strahd's attention, and he nearly killed Lukas, forcing the wolfwere to flee into the Mists, which gave him his own domain of Kartakass. Which, much to his frustration, is a tiny, rustic place where the most power he'll ever have is being mayor of a small town, so he's got the letter of what he wanted but not the spirit, making for a hollow victory.

The 5th edition version of Harkon Lukas is a [[Loup-garou]] instead of a wolfwere, and it changes some of the other details about him. As in the original, he had dreams of a [[werewolf]] society - an empire of werewolves, in fact - but that dream was dashed by the werewolf indifference to gathering in large numbers. So he tried to forge an empire amongst [[human]]s, this time actually directly getting involved; ultimately, he led a revolution against a king by faking his own death as a martyr to stir up riots, then using these to get him close enough to the king that he could burst out of the coffin his followers were carrying him around in, rip the king to shreds, and take the king's crown for himself... which was when the mists swallowed him and he found himself in Kartakass. His curse is also tweaked slightly as well; rather than being doomed to never rise above the position of mayor, he's doomed to never rise above the even less prestigious position of nearly-forgotten, washed-up performer.
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===Hazlik===
Darklord of Hazlan. A gay [[Forgotten Realms|Red Wizard of Thay]] who was publicly humiliated and stripped of his status by his female rival and her boyfriend, the latter of which he lusted after. As revenge, he murdered the guy, made his girlfriend eat his corpse, then tortured her to death as well, at which time he was then swept up by the mists. His curse is to suffer from nightmares of his now-inaccessible rivals defeating him with impunity and generally humiliating him every night, which has made him even more fixated on getting revenge against the Red Wizards. So he's crafting plans to cast a spell that will genocide all members of his race, the Mulan, throughout the multiverse. To escape being killed by said genocide spell himself, he's prepared to bodysnatch his female Rashemani apprentice when he's ready to use it.

The 5e version retcons him quite a bit. Once an ambitious Red Wizard with a habit of horribly scarring his rivals, Hazlik came to believe that his lover/rival, a man named Indreficus, was planning to betray him. In retribution, he captured Indreficus and subjected him to a nightmarish experiment that left him permanently transformed into a pain-wracked living portal. Hazlik presented what had become of his former lover as to the zulkirs with hopes to impress them, only to be told Indreficus not betray him and he had merely been manipulated by the zulkirs into thinking so as a way to halt the ambitious pair's ascent. They then declared Hazlik’s transformation of Indreficus an abomination, and that as punishment, every rival Hazlik had defeated could exact a penance of their choosing upon him. In desperation, Hazlik fled through the twisted portal that had been Indreficus and found himself in the demiplane of dread, where he eventually found his way to a realm that knew nothing of magic.

As well as his old nightmares (which are now of Indreficus taunting him for his failures), he also has a new curse borrowed from the now-absent Azalin Rex, making him unable to learn any new magic. On top of no longer being able to advance the magical research that used to drive his life, he's also absolutely terrified that anyone will learn of his limitations.

===Hive Queen===
Darklord of the sewer domain of Timor that lies beneath Paridon, and a half-Marikith because somebody thought it was time to rip off the Aliens franchise. She wasn't always a monster, though. She was originally a spoiled princess who decided one day to scare her mother to death. To do this, she seduced a wizard into casting an illusion of her transforming into a half-Marikith, but when said wizard saw her with her real lover, he decided to spice up the spell a bit by removing the 'illusion' bit and ''actually'' transforming her. She now lurks in the sewers as the Queen of the Marikiths, regularly laying more Marikith eggs. But she fears being usurped even from what little power she has, so if any of those eggs hatches another Marikith Queen, the Hive Queen kills the hatchling.

===Illithid God-Brain===
The darklord of Bluetspur is an [[illithid]] [[Elder Brain]], a massive conglomeration of the brain of every dead illithid, merged together into a new, living, entirely alien entity. It's the reason using psionic powers in Ravenloft is a dicey proposition, as the God-Brain might notice and attempt to integrate you into itself. It's notable for having '''no''' attempt to justify its position in Ravenloft whatsoever, with the original writeup in the Red Box, the original Ravenloft campaign setting collection, literally saying that nobody knows why it's in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], what crime it committed to end up here, or even how it's actually being tormented by its stay here!

The ''Book of Sacrifices'' gives it a backstory and reason for its Darklordship. Its core persona was once a human psion named Seldrid, whose people were at war with the Illithids. Eventually, they began to win for good once the Illithid Elder Brain started to die, but unfortunately for them, Seldrid had come to admire the Illithids' power and discipline, and merged with the Elder Brain to revive it. This act of betraying his people to such a great evil caught the Dark Powers' attention, and as the Illithids sacked his home city, they drew the country into the Demiplane of Dread as Bluetspur, with the Seldrid-brain as Darklord. Seldrid's curse is an inability to transfer his consciousness as he once did or to integrate any new consciousnesses into himself. Now trapped as a giant brain in a pool with nothing but Illithid tadpoles for company, unable to make himself more mobile or gain any outside experiences, Seldrid has gone quite insane.

5th edition has its own take on the idea. In a nutshell, the God-Brain hails from the era when the Illithid empire was at its peak, performing whatever blasphemous experiments took its fancy until it literally thought something that was unthinkable. That is, it had thought so blasphemous, so utterly inimical to reality itself, that even an Elder Brain couldn't actually think it. Becoming obsessed with this ineffable thought, the God-Brain began cannibalizing other Elder Brains to try and upgrade itself to the point where it could finally contemplate this mysterious thought-form. Instead, it just gave itself a kind of aggressive psychic cancer, which began fatally necrotizing the God-Brain's neural tissues. Aghast at its behavior and terrified of catching the disease themselves, the other Elder Brains pooled their powers and tried to erase the God-Brain from existence; thanks to the meddling of the [[Dark Powers]], they only succeeded in banishing the God-Brain to the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Now the God-Brain struggles endlessly to both find a cure for its disease and to manifest the alien thought-form still gestating inside of it, all the while subconsciously aware that there is '''nothing''' it can do to achieve either goal, but desperate to fight for every last moment of life.

===Inza Magdova Kulchevitch===

The current Darklord of Sithicus, replacing Lord Soth. She was born in Gundarak, on the night Duke Gundar was assassinated, and two years later, her caravan wandered into Sithicus, where they were trapped, although her mother Magda managed to bargain for protection with Soth.

Inza's dark mindset showed from a very early age. Even as a child she loved thieving and manipulating the giorgio of Sithicus, and for the most part stood aside from her tribe. Her only friend was Piotr, a boy 1 year her senior, and this wasn't such a good thing as Inza pushed him to join her in both emnity to the giorgios and bullying a boy named Nikolas for his kindness towards non-Vistani. Their friendship eventually came to an end when Inza allowed Nikolas to be brutally beaten and pinned the blame on Piotr. Inza also hated animals, since they were not fooled by her facade of innocence, and would torture and kill them on the sly. None of this disturbing behavior ever reached Magda, who doted on her daughter, but by adulthood her rampant kleptomania and unlikeable personality had alienated most of the other Vistani.

Inza became Darklord of Sithicus after betraying her mother and caravan to Malocchio Aderre, breaking the caravan's oath to Lord Soth in the process. She attempted to usurp Soth's power, but was foiled and as the surviving members of her caravan hunted her down, she leapt into a chasm to escape. The darkness within the chasm surrounded and embraced her, turning her into the new Darklord.

As Darklord, Inza exists as a force of corruption. Her curse is twofold- first, her form has become a mass of shadow, and she has to concentrate to look human. Second, she stole, manipulated, and was a general bitch because of her philosophy that everyone was as evil as her at heart. The presence of true heroes in her domain (to say nothing of the redeemed spirit of Lord Soth himself) has shaken her to the core, and despite all her efforts to stomp out the forces of good in her domain, they still exist as thorns in her side.

===Ivana Bortisi===

Darklord of Borca, and a reference to the titular character of ''Rappaccini's Daughter''. Ivana inherited the domain by poisoning her lover for cheating with her mother Camille (who she also poisoned). Thus, Ivana inherited Camille's domain, along with immunity and power over poison. This, of course, came with a curse- Ivana cannot turn her lethally poisonous touch ''off'', and thus will never be able to take a lover.

Ivana is best known for the creation of Ermordenung, humans infused with poison to make them super-assassins. The first of these was Nostalia Romaine, Ivana's childhood friend and the one to actually do the dirty work of killing Camille.

5e retcons her a bit, though not nearly as much as Borca's other Darklord. While the whole thing with her mother seducing her lover did still happen, there's no mention of her poisoning her lover and it's not the only reason she kills her mother. Rather, she murdered her brothers and mother in an attempt to force her father to name her his heir, and she murdered him and all of their servants with poison gas when he still refused to do so, insisting that her cousin Ivan Dilisnya would be his sole inheritor instead. She's still terrified of the possibility of her father's will being found, as that would mean that the business she's worked so hard to grow would go to her childish and depraved cousin.

Her poisonous touch is gone, with her curse now being the more mundane and psychological torments of boredom due to feeling like no one around her is her intellectual peer, and the fact that she is never given the respect she feels she is owed, always being doubted, second-guessed, and looked down upon just like her father did.

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===Ivan Dilisnya===

Co-Darklord of Borca, and former darklord of Dorvinia. He's a cousin to Ivana Bortisi, and shares many similarities with her, most notably his love of poisoning people who draw his ire. After he poisoned his sister (who he lusted after) and her husband, he became a Darklord. His curse is simple but effective; his greatest pleasure aside from killing was fine food and drink, so he lost his sense of taste, rendering all the luxury around him hollow and unenjoyable.

His similar nature and modus operandi to his cousin caused their domains to fuse together under the name of Borca during the Grand Conjunction. Both he and Ivana are immune to poison and can create any toxin they can imagine, but Ivana has one more gift- agelessness. Ivan is desperate to learn the secret to her immortality, and refuses to believe she has no idea how she came by the gift (the Dark Powers granted it). Unlike Ivana, Ivan doesn't create Ermordenung, but he does have one nasty trick up his sleeve: Borrowed Time, a poison that only he can create. It stays in one's bloodstream for life and causes lethal convulsions every sunset unless you've ingested the antidote, 'Mercy', which is also something only Ivan can create, that day. Most of his minions are thus held hostage, knowing that Ivan holds the key to each day of their lives.

5e retcons him heavily. While he's still the cousin of Ivana and co-darklord of Borca who envies his cousin's immortality, that's pretty much all that stays the same. Ivan was groomed from a young age to be the head of a noble family, but despite all the opportunity in the world he instead took to wallowing in childish depravity, his family ignoring and enabling his worst and strangest impulses as they hoped he would grow out of it. He of course did not grow out of it, only becoming more violent and immature as he aged. On the same night that Ivana Boritsi poisoned her family, Ivan learned of his parents’ intention to send his beloved sister Kristina to a prestigious boarding school, and murdered his entire family for it.

He now resides in the Dilisnya family estate, a twisted funhouse that he lures people to to torment. Those unable to escape are eventually forced to don the colorful uniforms of the Dilisnya household staff and become Ivan’s new servants. He rarely leaves the estate, instead communicating through letters and acting through his "toys," animate creatures of clockwork or cloth provided to him by the Dark Powers.

===Jaqueline Reiner===

Darklord of Richemulot. Appropriately to the name, she's a natural wererat, born to a wererat branch of the Reiner family. The Reiners followed their patriarch Claude into the mists, where he reigned as Richemulot's original Darklord, but eventually Jaqueline had enough of his abuse and killed him, taking on his title of Darklord in the process. And while that title came with neat perks like control over Richemulot, it also came with a pair of curses.

First, Jaqueline suffers from intense monophobia. She hates nothing worse than being alone, but her entire family is made up of evil wererats whom she ''also'' really hates, so being in their company is not that much better. Second, while Jaqueline falls in love easily, she will involuntarily shift into rat form whenever she's alone with someone she truly loves. And while that love is as genuine as anything Jaqueline has experienced, she can never muster up the trust that her lover will accept her as a wererat, and she almost invariably then kills him. She might make a good pair with Urik von Kharkov, but Darklords can never leave their domains and it's uncertain if she knows about him.

===King Crocodile===
Yes, Ravenloft even has Darklords that are talking animals! No, you cannot [[Furry|play as one yourself]].

King Crocodile is the savage and bestial Darklord of the equally savage and bestial Wildlands, which is based on Rudyard Kipling's ''Just-So Stories'' and ''The Jungle Book''. This talking crocodile was so bloodthirsty and ferocious to his fellow talking animals in the jungle, they begged the hairless apes (i.e. humans) to come and kill him, but instead of holding up their end of the bargain, the hairless apes just started destroying the jungle for resources and colonizing it. This drove the other talking animals into pleading for King Crocodile to kill the hairless apes, and he agreed on the condition that the other animals all loan him their powers, which they did with the exception of the Python (the "wisest of the animals") and the Fly (whom King Crocodile thought was too insignificant to matter).

King Crocodile did slake his bloodthirsty appetite on the hairless apes and drove them out, but instead of returning the other animals' powers when he was finished as he had promised, he instead returned to his old ways of gorging himself on the animal population even more wantonly and gluttonously than before. It was at this point that the Python told King Crocodile a prophecy, which was that King Crocodile would either be killed by one of the hairless apes or by something he thought was pathetic and beneath him. With this done, the Python and his fellow snakes left King Crocodile's jungle to its fate at the hands of Ravenloft's Dark Powers, who quickly claimed the land as their own.

True to the Python's words, King Crocodile is slowly dying of the sleeping sickness spread by the flies, and the only thing that might help him are the hairless apes. But he is unable to keep himself from attacking any who might cure his affliction, and might attack them even if they do help him. The other talking animals still live in fear of King Crocodile and will implore any player characters they meet to dispose of him, but the cycle of betrayal in this land is only doomed to repeat itself. As a result, even if the player characters succeed in killing King Crocodile none of the talking animals will honour their words and the other crocodiles will fight to the death to assume King Crocodile's crown (and his cursed fate), as "''gratitude is not a quality well-known in the jungle.''"

===Kas===
Darklord of Tovag. The infamous vampire who betrayed [[Vecna]] and cut off his hand and eye. Was drawn into the mists at the same time as Vecna and the two of them were at constant war with each other until Vecna escaped. It is confirmed in 5th edition that Kas is still in the Demiplane of Dread and also is unaware that Vecna is gone. He repeatedly sends out armies to attack Vecna which never return, leaving him increasingly frustrated.

In the [[World Axis]] cosmology from 4th edition, he's not a Darklord, but he ''does'' hang out in the Domain of Dread called Monadhan; because he's figured out how to freely leave the domain whenever he wishes, he's turned it into his own personal base under the nose of its [[dracolich]] Darklord.

===Lemot Sediam Juste===
Darklord of Scaena, one of the few Domains capable of traveling through the mists. Scaena is a theater house, and one that Juste worked at as a playwright prior to his becoming a Darklord. Juste was a well-known and talented writer of comedies and dramas, but this never satisfied him, as he wished to write tragedies. Unfortunately for him, his [[Grimdark]] always came out as grimderp, and the actors invariably played his tragic works as farces, since they weren't good for much else. Driven to a deep bitterness by his failure to fulfill his obsession with tragedy, he wrote one last play- this one designed to be a real-life tragedy that killed all of his actors, and when the audience booed this one too, he locked up the house and burned it down with them inside.

Now, as a Darklord, Lemot has ultimate control of his theater, allowing him to trap people in his plays and alter reality for these press-ganged performers, but all this is undercut because he can't believe any of it; for his Darklord curse, the Dark Powers have taken away his suspension of disbelief, forcing him to always see actors, props, and scenery for what they truly are instead of what he wants them to be.

===Lord Wilfred Godefroy===
Darklord of Mordent (the same place from the old Ravenloft II module). A nobleman who murdered his wife when she was unable to produce a son for him as an heir and then murdered his daughter for trying to stop him, and then framed their deaths as an accident. Their ghosts came back to haunt him for a year until he killed himself to make it stop, and when Azalin and Strahd inadvertently drew Mordent into the mists Godefroy (now a ghost himself) became its darklord. His curse is to be continually tormented by the ghosts of his wife and daughter just as he was in life, who tear him apart every night as they curse him for murdering them.

While he was formerly known to be rather passive as a Darklord, in recent times he has taken to enslaving other ghosts to do his bidding. In particular, he's had the mayor of Mordentshire under his thumb for years by holding the ghost of his wife hostage.
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===Maharaja Arijani===
[[Rakshasa]] darklord of Sri Raji, Arijani attained his position after betraying both his kind and his father, Ravana (or rather, the Avatar of Ravana), having received the scorn of the rakshasa for most of his life. Although Ravana is a deity venerated by the rakshasa, Arijani's mother was Mahiji, then high priest of the hated goddess Kali and a leader of the Dark Sisters. To compound things, the Avatar of Kali delivered Arijanni to a home of low caste rank. He lived as a pariah shunned by his fellow rakshasa and languished in a position of low social importance. This alienated Arijani from his own kind, such that he arranged the death of many rakshasa in the conflict with humans. Gradually, Arijani's manipulations became so great that the people of Bahru began hunting their former hunters.

Arijani's depredations climaxed with rakshasa retaliatory siege against Bahru. Although the city fell, the cost was massive casualties on both sides and the city left in ruins. Angered and disgusted by Arijani's actions, Ravana sent his avatar to dispatch his prodigal son. However, Arijani conspired with Mahiji and lured the avatar into a trap. Thus rendered helpless, Ravana offered Arijani a wish in return for his release. Ravana accepted the offer, wishing to become immune to the attacks of rakshasas. The wish was granted, but Arijani slew the avatar anyway. Such was the level of his treachery that the Mists brought Sri Raji into the Demiplane of Dread.

The Maharaja's curse is that, although he is a talented illusionist, Arijani cannot disguise himself in a pleasing form, as most rakshasa do. Instead, he can only assume despicable aspects, such as that of the viewer's worst enemy. Maharaja Arijani resides in Mahakala, in Bahru. There, he is served by the Dark Sisters, whom through him, must provide to Kali daily human sacrifice.

Beyond the threat of an all weretiger cult called "The Stalkers" that were huge fans of his dad trying to kill him, Arijani's greatest fear is the very weapon he used to kill the avatar with, knowing full well it's somewhere in the jungle and very likely to be used on him just like Ravana.

===Maligno===
Darklord of Odiare, and originally from Gothic Earth's version of Italy. In the same vein as Pinocchio, he was originally a marionette brought to life through his toymaker "father" Giuseppe's wishes for a son. Though beloved by the children of Odiare, the adults of the village did not consider him to be a "real" boy. He soon grew bitter over the discovery that he wasn't truly alive, and after terrorizing Guiseppe into making more [[carrionette]]s like himself he had them kill every adult at one of his performances. It was this act that drew Odiare into the Mists as an Island of Terror.

Later on, he planned to have the carrionettes steal the bodies of every surviving adult there so they would be forced to love him, but due to the intervention of the PCs in the module "The Created" he was forced to simply kill the adults off instead. The children now adore him only out of fear, and as they grow older they wonder when Maligno will come for them as well.

Maligno's curse is that he can never be human as he craves, as he alone among the carrionettes is unable to steal the bodies of others. Furthermore, he cannot kill Guiseppe because any injury he suffers is inflicted on Maligno himself. Instead, the old toymaker was driven insane and now exists solely to create more toys for his "son" to command. Should Maligno's body be totally destroyed, Guiseppe is compelled to rebuild it, with the foul puppet's spirit claiming the new body as its own.

In 5e, Maligno was originally called ''Figlio'', which at least is an actual Italian name and not literally calling him "Evil" from the start.

===Marquis Stezen d'Polarno===
Darklord of Ghastria. As Strahd is for Dracula, Dr. Mordenheim for Dr. Frankenstein, and Tristren/Malken for Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so is Stezen to Dorian Grey, of ''The Picture of Dorian Grey''. But unlike Dorian, Stezen was a piece of work before his cursed painting came into play. As a noble in an unknown land, he enjoyed sowing chaos and rebellion and assassinated many people, but his charismatic nature meant that he hung on to a good reputation. But after one particular attempted coup went too far, his king had enough. Consulting with his mistress, a master of dark arts, he laid a curse upon d'Polarno that would do the Dark Powers proud; trapping a good chunk of Stezen's soul in a painting, he robbed him of all his charisma, vibrance, and capacity for enjoyment.

In retaliation, Stezen poisoned the king and his family, which drew the land into the mists. But he wasn't yet its Darklord. That happened when he realized that, once per season, he could temporarily reclaim his soul from the painting- at the cost of up to 50 other souls, each granting him one hour of rejuvenation. Now, once per season, he'll invite every stranger in Ghastria to a party (he'll grab some peasants if not enough foreigners answer). The party is for him, and him alone. With the exception of a few guests that he debauches himself with/upon, all guests are exposed to the painting, giving him up to 50 hours of being able to enjoy himself again before he returns to his normal drab state. While this is when he's at his most dangerous, it's also when he's most vulnerable- when his soul is still in the painting, he's essentially immortal, but when he's whole, he is as vulnerable as any other (And ''unlike'' the original Dorian, killing the painting won't work until Stezen is dead).

===Prince Ladislav Mircea===
Darklord of Sanguinia. Ladislav's story is a ripoff of the Edgar Allan Poe classic ''The Masque of the Red Death'', with the prince abandoning his people to a lethal plague, and retreating to a closed castle with his friends. And like in the original story, the plague entered the castle anyway. When Ladislav caught the plague, he turned to alchemy in a desperate attempt to cure himself. This failed and he died, only to rise as a Vrykolaka (usually mindless plague-carrier vampires that feed on bodily humors) and become Darklord of Sanguinia. He still experiments with alchemy to cure himself of his undeath, but this is unlikely to ever succeed.

===Sisters Mindefisk===
The three [[Hag]] co-Darklords of Tepest, and based the "the three wicked witches" from folkloric stories. Three sisters who were left as babies for a humble farm wife who wished for daughters, but from their birth displayed mysterious traits. Most notably, after their mother died from the strain of caring for the three sickly girls (or possibly because they drained her life), their father (who had often voiced his dislike of "weakling daughters") tried to leave the three 2-year olds for dead repeatedly, but they always came back. Eventually he let them stay as long as they cooked for him and his sons. Growing up dissatisfied with their surroundings, they took to seducing, murdering, and eating travelers to build up a stockpile of money so they could ultimately leave the farm. This worked until one final traveler tried to turn them against each other, only to be murdered so none of the sisters could claim him as theirs. This was what ultimately led to their being taken into the Mists and stuck in the depths of a forest full of [[goblin]]s and witch-burning, faerie-chasing bumpkins. They still lure in any unwary travelers to their cottage, taking advantage of the locals' blaming the goblins for their victims' deaths, but otherwise have little influence on their domain.

The sisters consist of Laveeda, an Annis Hag, Leticia, a Sea Hag, and Lorinda, a Green Hag. Though they can shapeshift, they are cursed to always see themselves and each other as their true forms no matter which shape they take.

====Mother Lorina====
In the 5e version of Tepest, only Lorinda is the darklord, having imprisoned her sisters when they refused to let her make and rear a child despite how badly she wanted to be a mom. Which ignores the complete and utter lack of maternal feelings they had in past editions, but whatever. She desperately yearns to have a family, but is thwarted by both her own inherently controlling, murderous nature, her inability to trust that her offspring genuinely love her (and the subsequent smothering, demanding, overbearing way that this makes her act), and the curse that any child she magics up for herself is a short-lived, ravenous monster; she can only make [[hexblood]]s for other people.
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===Sodo===
Darklord of Paridon. A low-ranked dread [[Doppelganger]] who resented being born into a lowly clan and thus being prevented from rising through the ranks by merit. After acquiring a magical Hat of Disguise, he fulfilled this previously-thwarted ambition by killing the elders who ruled over the clans and impersonating them, while also offing anyone else who questioned him. For managing the impressive feat of committing a betrayal egregious even by doppelganger standards, he was claimed by the Mists and given Darklordship of Paridon, and nailed with three separate curses: inability to control his shapeshifting, a healing touch (which wouldn't be much of a curse to anyone else, [[Dark Eldar|but Sodo's a sadist]] and this along with the previous curse renders him unable to effectively torture people), and an extra dose of paranoia for flavor.

===Thakok-An===
Darklord of Kalidnay, formerly from Athas. She was a templar of Kalidnay's sorceror-king, Kalid-Ma. To help him ascend to dragonhood, she sacrificed her family for the ascension ritual- an act which, ironically, would ruin it, as the Dark Powers took notice and drew Kalidnay into Ravenloft, in one of the few occasions in which being in the Demiplane of Dread was an improvement for most people. But not for Thakok-An nor Kalid-Ma, as the failed ritual put Kalid-Ma into a coma. Thakok-An remains active, ruling the realm as a theocracy of Kalid-Ma, despite said lord being comatose and all her efforts being for naught.

===Tsien Chiang===
Originally from the continent of Kara-Tur on the world of Toril, Tsien Chiang was beautiful and powerful wizard, who hated all men due to her father's dismissal of her abilities. After killing him and disabling her relatives, she seized control of her family lands. She used her charm and position to marry a total of four men, each of whom fathered a child with her before she killed him and moved on to the next. Three of the daughters so produced were evil, with the fourth, Nightingale, being truly good-hearted and adored by the gods. Tsien Chang would go on to commit various evil acts, including the desecration of four sacred bells and four sacred trees, but her mistreatment of Nightingale is what ultimately led to her being taken by the mists. On the fourth time that Nightingale objected to her family's atrocities, Tsien Chang decided to do far worse than merely beat her as they had the last three times, and she and her evil daughters were taken by the mists as the torture began. Tsien Chiang imprisoned the living remains of Nightingale in the Tower of Broken Promises as the Mists tore I'Cath from Kara-Tur forever.

If you're wondering why the number four is mentioned so much, it's because it's homophonous with "death" in most Chinese languages and is considered bad luck in many east-Asian cultures.

Her 5e incarnation gives her such a radically different backstory that pretty much the only things that remain are the four daughters and a magic bell.

When Tsien Chiang was a child, her home was destroyed by invaders, forcing her to flee into frozen mountains where she expected to die. Luckily for her, she was found and taken in by a gold dragon who took pity on her, and she served him as an attendant in thanks for saving her life. While serving the dragon, she learned much of magic and medicine, growing to become an accomplished wizard. The dragon refused to teach her any truly dangerous or powerful magic though, knowing that she would only use it for revenge. In her studies, she learned of the Nightingale bell, an artifact that could make its ringer’s dreams come true -- but creating the bell required the scale of a gold dragon. Knowing her mentor would never provide a scale she attempted to drug him so she could steal a scale while he slept, but got the mixture wrong and not only killed him, but caused his entire hoard to be destroyed, with all that remained being a single scale. Chiang crafted the bell and took it to her home, where she used it to wish away the invaders, which instantly vanished. In awe and gratitude, the people elevated her to royalty and she became their queen.

She ruled well for years, enacting vast reforms and strict but sensible laws in pursuit of creating the perfect empire. She had a family, taking particular pride in her four beloved daughters. Though her kingdom was prosperous, her people eventually began to chafe under her strict laws and demanding orders and revolted. Chiang was swift and merciless in her attempts to quell the rebellion, but her ruthlessness only caused the resistance against her to grow. When she ordered her armies to kill the families of all insurrectionists, assassins struck Tsien Chiang’s palace and killed her family. Distraught, Chiang climbed to the highest tower of her palace, looked out over her burning dreams, and struck the Nightingale Bell. Rather than granting her vengeful wish, the bell cracked and spilled a golden mist across the land. When the mist cleared, Tsien Chiang’s perfect city was gone, replaced by the unreal prison-city of I’Cath.

I'Cath is a city divided in two: The true I'Cath of the waking world, and Tsien Chiang's impossible, perfect dream. In the waking world the city is a silent and chaotic labyrinth composed of surreal, knotted streets and citizens trapped in eternal slumber. In the dream the city is vibrant and living, a place of ultimate beauty and efficiency where all things move according to Tsien Chiang's design, and a nightmare of constant drudgery for her people. Every twilight, Tsien Chiang climbs the spirit-infested Ping’On Tower and tolls the Nightingale Bell. This renews the magic of her dream world and keeps her citizens asleep, but it also calls forth a legion of jiangshi, which emerge from their tombs to reshape the waking city’s mazelike streets in a fruitless attempt to match Tsien Chiang’s perfectionist vision.

Her curse is that while the dream is near-perfection in her eyes, that only makes the imperfections of the waking world all the more obvious and inescapable. No matter how many times she tries to bring the same order and beauty she sees in her dream to the waking world, I'Cath's streets grow only more twisted and labyrinthine. She spends as much time as she can with the dream-versions of her daughters though she knows they aren't real, and in the waking world she actively avoids the twisted reflections of her daughters that wander the true I'Cath's streets.

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===Tristen ApBlanc===
Darklord of Forlorn. A Vampyre (living vampire) born when his dad was turned into a vampire but refused to leave his wife, which resulted in their son being born a vampyre. Tristen's parents were killed by fearful peasantfolk, but not before his mom gave him to the druid Rual to be raised. By all accounts, Rual was a pretty good foster mom, but when he was fifteen years old, Rual caught him drinking the blood of a deer. Believing she had betrayed him when he saw her talking to other druids, he attacked her- only to get his ass impaled by a blessed deer antler she was carrying, and when he drank her blood, he was both poisoned and partially cured of his vampyrism by the holy water she'd just drank. As she died, Rual cursed Tristen to be trapped in the sacred grove where he killed her, and to (agonizingly) die and become a ghost each night, and rise as a vampyre each morning. This makes him one of the few Darklords to receive most of his curse prior to Darklordship, as Forlorn was only pulled into Ravenloft centuries later, when Tristen engineered a bloody civil war to take control of the land.

As it is now, Forlorn really lives down to its name; there's little there except savage goblyns, a few beleagured Druids, and Castle Tristenoira, where Tristen is stuck, along with the ghosts of his family. The castle is split between three separate time periods that adventurers can shift between, thought to be because of all the ghostly shenanigans. Because there's really not much to do in Forlorn besides exploring Castle Tristenoira and trying not to get eaten by goblyns, it has no real political importance and is ignored by basically everyone, despite being most likely the second-oldest domain after Barovia.

He gets some very minor retcons in 5e, but since he only gets a single paragraph there's not much in the way of details. Seemingly the only changes are that he's now a dhampir (which is really more-or-less the same thing as a vampyre) and that he was taken by the mists almost immediately after killing the druids.

===Vlad Drakov===
Darklord of Falkovnia. He was originally the leader of a mercenary band called the Talons of the Hawk in [[Dragonlance|Krynn]]. For their wanton brutality and bloodlust, they were taken into Ravenloft and claimed Falkovia for themselves (after a failed invasion of Darkon that was repulsed by Azalin's undead).[[Berserk|If this seems familiar]] then good, you're paying attention.

This rivalry with Azalin has since become part of Drakov's curse, though he seems unaware of it. While four other countries (that have themselves agreed to an alliance should Falkovnia ever attack one of them) surround him, Drakov considers them "women and fops" not worth the effort of invasion, obsesses over an enemy he has no way of defeating, and is forever unable to gain the approval and respect of the great military leaders that he has sought all his life. And even if he did somehow conquer Darkon, [[fail|no Darklord can ever leave his own realm]] so he would never actually get to conquer it himself. Another factor in his defeats is that his way of doing war is distinctly and doggedly medieval (no gunpowder, no magic), so on the rare occasions he decides to try his luck at conquering other neighbouring domains than Darkon (all of which are at a higher technological level than Falkovnia) his forces almost always get shot to pieces by firearms or, more rarely, blown to pieces with magic. Oddly enough, his realm may in fact be, on the whole, a net ''benefit'' to the other domains of the Core, as his penchant for overworking his peasantry/slaves (when he's not busy having them impaled for his entertainment, of course) means that his realm produces large amounts of grain and foodstuffs which he sells for funds to equip and train his forces, unintentionally making Falkovnia "the breadbasket of the Core."

In addition, Drakov may be unique as the one of the most "conventional" Darklords in Ravenloft in the sense that he is statted like a run-of-the-mill fighter-class BBEG, and much like this archetype he has no magical abilities aside from a few magical weapons and armour at his disposal, coupled with no ability to cheat death, and no supernatural ability to close his domain's borders (all of which are in line with his disdain for magic and the supernatural), except for a good amount of inherent magic resistance that will also work against beneficial spells (so if he's ever in a tight enough bind to require magical healing, he's screwed). However, PCs and DMs shouldn't mistake his one-dimensional combat abilities as a sign that Falkovnia would be easy to liberate from his iron-fisted rule via a [[Raven Guard|simple decapitation raid]]; the totalitarian and thoroughly abusive nature of his rule means that those he trusts enough to carry out his orders are all likely evil enough and think enough like him to instantly assume his mantle of Darklord should Drakov ever be killed, just like similar totalitarian regimes in real life can survive the deaths of multiple successive leaders. Truly liberating Falkovnia in a thematically appropriate way would require the PCs to either engineer a full-scale revolution, or otherwise ensure the complete destruction of his regime, much like truly destroying a cancerous tumour in real life requires removing or destroying every last cancer cell. And all of this says nothing about which neighbouring realm would end up absorbing Falkovnia on the off-chance it ever gets truly liberated, though at this point even Azalin would be a better ruler than Drakov given that the lich dispenses harsh but fair justice and otherwise leaves his subjects alone to continue his arcane pursuits.

5th edition got rid of him, since the developers found him redundant. He's replaced by Ledeska Drakov, and Falkovnia was reskinned with a zombie apocalypse vibe.

===Yagno Petrovna===
Darklord of G'Henna. The Petrovna family was one of those taken by the Mists when Barovia was absorbed into Ravenloft, and although they avoided Strahd's attention by hiding away in the mountains this in turn led to inbreeding. As Yagno grew up, it became clear to all that he was insane- he conversed with imaginary people and cowered from beasts that weren't there. One day, he was locked out of his family's home and had to take shelter in a cave for the night. When he woke up, he saw the name "[[Zhakata]]" scrawled on a wall.

Yagno concluded that Zhakata was the name of the god that had protected him when he slept that night and created a shrine to his savior. (In reality, the name was written by his brother as a prank and meant absolutely nothing.) At first he merely sacrificed animals to Zhakata, but then he moved on to sacrificing people. When he was caught trying to offer his sister's newborn baby to Zhakata, he was chased out of Barovia by his family. The Mists welcomed him to the domain of G'henna, where he became the Darklord.

Yagno is cursed to constantly suffer doubts about whether or not Zhakata is real. No matter how many sacrifices he makes or how many people he commands to starve themselves in the name of Zhakata, he can never quite get rid of his nagging disbelief and the worry that all his devotion has been directed towards a lie. This eventually led Yagno to call upon a wizard who claimed he could summon Zhakata; as he could not summon a nonexistent god, a nalfeshnee by the name of Malistroi answered the summons instead and told Yagno that Zhakata was just a figment of his imagination. The Darklord immediately flew into a rage and killed the wizard, while Malistroi later escaped to ravage G'Henna. Since then, he has merely redoubled his fanaticism in a futile attempt to dispel his doubts.

==Former Darklords==
You remember that section where the permanent death of Darklords is discussed? Well, it's actually happened in the past, though never yet to a band of plucky adventurers, and the results usually haven't been good. These Darklords for whatever reason no longer rule their domain, usually because some asshole killed them and was promptly saddled with their domain as the new Darklord.

===Bakholis===
Former Darklord of Invidia, and formerly a tyrannical king whose kingdom was claimed by the mists when he was spurned by a woman named Marta, and in return had her lover killed and eaten in front of her and Marta herself raped to death by his soldiers. As she died, Marta cursed him to be the beast he was inside and never be free of the blood of loved ones on his hands, which manifested as turning him into a werewolf. Unlike most Darklords, Bakholis said 'fuck this' to angst and [[Dark Eldar|embraced his curse]], descending to ever-greater depths of savagery until, to everyone's relief, the half-Vistani Gabrielle Aderre showed up and promptly murdered his ass, succeeding him as Darklord of Invidia.

===Camille Boritsi===
The mother of Ivana Boritsi and the first Darklord of Borca, who earned her position by poisoning her husband and his lover. She was cursed to be betrayed by any man she trusted, which left her with serious issues relating to men and a blindspot towards scheming women, which ultimately proved her downfall when her daughter Ivana turned the poison tables by killing ''her'' for sleeping with Ivana's lover. She was succeeded as Darklord by her daughter and murderer, Ivana Boritsi.

===Claude Reiner===
The first darklord of Richemulot. The patriarch of a family of wererats who lead his family into the mists to escape hunters, gaining his domain when his monstrous cruelty caught the attention of the Dark Powers. He was eventually killed when his granddaughter Jaqueline had enough of his abuse, making her the new Darklord of Richemulot.

===Duke Nharov Gundar===
Former Darklord of Gundarak, prior to being betrayed and usurped by Daclaud Heinfroth, who would later gain his own, separate domain. As Darklord of Gundarak, he enforced the worship of the malevolent trickster-god [[Erlin]] and taxed basically everything he could think of (with a special emphasis on the birth of girls), but little else is known of his rule. During the Grand Conjunction, Gundarak was absorbed by Barovia and Invidia.

But that wasn't the end of Nharov Gundar. He was a vampire, and though Heinfroth had staked him, he remained alive, but dormant. His skeletal remains somehow found their way to the traveling curio show of Professor Arcanus, where some complete berk went and yanked the stake out. This brought him back to life, though his time spent as a skeleton has reduced him to a near-bestial state, only vaguely remembering Heinfroth's betrayal.

===Lord Soth===
{{main|Lord Soth}}
The infamous Death Knight of Krynn was for a time the Darklord of Sithicus. More details can be found on his page, but suffice to say that the Dark Powers grew tired of him, and he was succeeded as Darklord by the [[Vistani]] Inza Kulchevitch.

===Nathan Timothy===
Darklord of Arkendale. There are more details on him in the section for his more important son Alfred, but suffice to say that Nathan was possessed of a deep-seated wanderlust, which the Dark Powers curtailed by cursing him such that he couldn't leave the river Musarde, lest he be crippled by land sickness. Nathan rolled with the curse and adapted so well to being a boatman that he outright lost his Darklordship during the Grand Conjunction. He's still confined to river waters, but Arkendale has been absorbed into Alfred's domain of Verbrek.

===Vecna===
{{main|Vecna}}
Yes, THAT Vecna, the Maimed God; the guy whose eye and hand are still around for PCs to mess (and ''be'' messed) with.

The whole tale of Vecna's ascension to godhood is complicated, but at one point where he was 'merely' a demigod, he and Kas were pulled into the Mists after a bunch of meddlesome adventurers thwarted one of his plans. Not one to be contained for long, Vecna has the dubious honor of being the only Darklord to force his way out of the Demi-Plane of Dread after being drawn in by the Mists. On top of that, he managed to get himself 'promoted' to full-fledged minor God in the process, which is how he got the Dark Powers to kick him out due to their ban on allowing gods to influence Ravenloft. (The full story is recounted in the modules ''Vecna Lives!'', ''Vecna Reborn'' and ''Die Vecna Die!''.)

==Netbook Darklords==
These darklords represent the rulers of fan-made domains from [[netbook]]s such as the [[Books of S]], the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]], [[Quoth the Raven]], and other projects from the [[Fraternity of Shadows]].

===Ahasveros===
Darklord of Incitatus. Once, Ahasveros (male human) was the greatest scientist of his civilization, until the day his homeland was drawn into a great war against a rival nation. He invented the Adamas theory, a device that could be used to generate a mighty tidal wave to devaste the enemy's fleets and harbors.

But that wasn't enough for Ahasveros; he became obsessed with improving the device, banishing his assistants when they protested the potential dangers of doing so, cutting off all contact with those who might challenge his beliefs, and reducing the time he spent running his calculations.

The result was, when the device was used, Ahasveros lost control of it and the tidal wave annihilated ''his'' homeland as well, drowning him in the tower from whence he'd launched it.

Ever since then, the bussengeist he became has lingered in his tower, unable to decide whose fault the mess was, alternating between blaming his associates and himself. Honestly, he's not much of a darklord, and this is reflected by how empty and meaningless Incitatus is. He currently occupies a limbo; too dull to be truly absorbed into the [[Demiplane of Dread]], but still too evil and in denial of what he did to be released, either.

Ahasveros' existence is completely tied to the remnants of the Adamas machine. Only by destroying it, which will unshackle his spirit, and performing a brief rite to the long-forgotten sea god of ruined Misenos, which requires lighting the lanterns in the temple and praying for both Misenos and Ahasveros, will his torment end.

If Ahasveros wishes to seal his domain's borders, those attempting to cross it are overwhelmed by misery and the urge to seek comfort, which only those outside of the border can give them.

===The Barons Gustav===
Darklords of Gustavstan.

Baron Gustav the Elder is a male human ghost who once ruled a small kingdom in his homeland. Though he had intended to pass his holdings on to his younger brother Klaus, the younger sibling had no interest in ruling, so the elderly Gustav took a wife and fathered a son, Gustav the Younger. Then, when his son was fifteen, Gustav the Elder stepped on a snake in his garden and was fatally bitten.

Gustav the Younger (male human [[Fighter]]) was inconsolable, his mind fracturing under the sudden death of his beloved father. In his grief, he refused to take up the throne, forcing his uncle Klaus to become Baron in his place - as well as to wed Ingrid, Gustav the Elder's widow and Gustav the Younger's mother, to secure the Younger's inheritance. Unfortunately, this gesture was misunderstood by ''both'' Gustavs; the Younger began to despise his uncle and mother for their apparent disloyalty, whilst the Elder's restless spirit also became incensed at Klaus's apparent betrayal. He seized upon the idea of exploiting his son's fractured mind to both weaponize him against Klaus and to make him vulnerable, so the Elder could live again by stealing his son's body.

This domain is basically [[grimdark]] Hamlet, in case it's not obvious already.

So Gustav the Elder manifests to his son, lies that he was murdered by Klaus, and convinces his half-crazed son that Klaus wants to steal the throne for himself. Klaus the Younger swallows this bullshit hook, line and sinker, and pretending to be even madder than he actually was, he began preparing to kill his uncle and his mother both - ignoring that Gustav the Elder wanted Ingrid spared, having figured that once he stole his son's body, [[/d/|he could reclaim her as his wife]].

This led to Gustav the Younger murdering the father of Elaine, the woman he loved, and driving her so insane that she ended up committing suicide by throwing herself off the battlements of the castle - which didn't do Gustav Junior's sanity any great shakes. Instead, it provoked him into finally battling his uncle, killing Klaus and his mother in the process. Which was when Gustav the Eldler showed up and, horrified at his wife's death, he revealed the truth about how he'd played his son for a fool. Enraged, the son attacked his father's ghost, and that was when Gustavstan was snatched up by the mists.

Gustav the Younger now burns with the urge to hunt his father's spirit down and destroy him, a task not helped by his paranoia. Every night, he is haunted by the angry ghosts of Elaine and Klaus, who spend the night cursing him out for their murders.

Gustav the Elder now spends his days haunting the local insane asylum, where Ingrid - who actually survived her son's attack, but was left a raving madwoman - is now kept. At night, he strives to manipulate others into killing his son.

Neither darklord can be permanently destroyed by violence; they regenerate and revive from destruction. Only by killing Ingrid will their resurrective regeneration cease... but doing this will cause the killer to immediately suffer a failed [[Powers Check]], whilst those who watch get to roll one.

===Benada Nameless===
Darklord of Vin'Ejal. Conceived when the Eye of Toldun, the fake prophet of a phony goddess called Appissa (actually a powerful half-breed [[yuan-ti]] [[psion]] magically held in stasis), used a potion given to him by his goddess to drug and rape a woman named Dillura Ogfenhauer, Benada's mother despised her daughter from the moment she was born. Only Benada's uncle, Dillura's 12-year-old brother Ekkim, cared for her, and he raised her throughout her life, even taking her off with him to be his squire when he went to war after discovering her nature as a [[psion]]icist [[weresnake]]. Even when they returned, however, Dillura wanted nothing to do with her bastard daughter.

Finally, the enraged Benada sought to confront her mother one evening, only to track her to the Shrine of the Eye. When she saw Dillura embracing the Eye, she realized that this man was her father. Filled with hatred, she grabbed a bone knife and fatally stabbed her mother, before psionically torturing her father to death. As she turned to leave, she found herself confronted by her uncle Ekkim, who had seen everything. Realizing she couldn't let him live now, a weeping Benada killed the only person to ever show her love, transporting Vin'Ejal to the Misty Realm.

Benada's curse seems to be an insatiable hunger that only human flesh can sate; she only gives in to its demands once per month, however, as she fears depleting her domain's population. If she wishes to close the domain, the waters around Vin'Ejal decrease in temperature to the point that would-be swimmers will freeze solid, whilst hail begins savagely pelting down from above.

===Baroness Ilsabet Obour===
Darklord of Kislova. This female human [[alchemist]] was born the youngest daughter and favored child of Baron Janosk Obour of Kislova, and remained loyal and obedient to him even as he descended into brutal tyranny and made a failed attempt to conquer a neighboring barony, only to be crushed, captured and executed. Before he died, Janosk commanded each of his three children to take steps to both preserve their family and avenge the loss of their power.

Of the three, Ilsabet was the most loyal to her father, honing her alchemical skills and delving into dark alchemical practices, focusing on hideous poisons and the creation of alchemical undead. She crippled and maimed many prisoners who had dared to rebel against her father's rule before his conquest by Baron Peto, created a unique strain of alchemical vampires, fatally poisoned her elder siblings for perceived disloyalty to their father's dying wishes, and finally married Baron Peto herself and bore him a son in order to gain the opportunity to poison him with a paralytic venom. It was only as she administered what she intended to be the final, fatal dose, killing her mentor (and true love) to do so, that the Mists finally claimed her.

Ilsabet currently suffers two curses. Her most direct darklord-related curse is that her desire for power and revenge are thwarted; though her husband, Baron Peto, remains incurably paralyzed, he also remains unkillable - no matter what she does, he always returns to life. As a result, she remains forever his regent, rather than the true Baroness of Kislova, which she regards as unacceptable; she yearns to resume the interrupted reign of her own family. Secondly, Ilsabet has become a vampire-like creature that feeds on pain, and must have one person killed every day in order to survive.

Unlike many Darklords, Ilsabet has no particular powers of supernatural survival. If you can beat an 11th level [[wizard]] protected by her guard of alchemical vampires, you can kill her.

When Ilsabet closes the borders, a poisonous green mist surrounds Kislova, inflicting irresistable damage per round until the would-be escapee returns to Kislova.

===Bethany Stone===
Darklord of Stonewall. A sad, broken, bitter woman, Bethany was born the daughter of a family of puritans, self-righteous and obsessed with sin. When her father discovered the child Bethany, a cheerful, whimsical young girl, had dreams of leaving the family home to become a dollmaker, he destroyed the dolls she had painstakingly constructed over years of work and beat her within an inch of her life. Later, when she came of age, he arranged her marriage to a man of high standing.

After long years of often-lonely marriage, pregnant with her sixth child, Bethany's father and husband were caught in a terrible accident, with the former dying and the latter being left in a coma. That was hardship enough, but as she cared for her husband, Bethany discovered his diary, in which he revealed he had only wed her to cover up his "sinful" nature as a homosexual. Enraged, Bethany began tampering with her husband's medicine to ensure he remained comatose, and then launched her own moral crusade, something aided by the fact she established her charismatic but broken-willed son Clarence as the town's minister.

When the Salem Witch trials broke out, Bethany eagerly spread their madness to Stonewall. But the tenth victim was the friend of Bethany's youngest daughter, Katherine, who unearthed evidence that this was really a way for Bethany to resolve a land-dispute between their families in the Stone's favor. When Katherine tried to intervene, she called out her mother for the cold, twisted monster that she was. Bethany promptly stabbed Katherine in the heart, and that was when the Mists took the town.

Bethany Stone is now a [[harpy]], although she has limited shapeshifting abilities that let her masquerade as a human. Her curse is that she will be forever doomed to lose her children before they are fully ready, whether by death, betrayal or abandonment. Though she doesn't know it yet, as part of this curse, she will become spontaneously pregnant and give birth to a human child every 5 years. Both of her arms are permanently blood-red from the elbow down, although she considers it a sign of her righteousness and so doesn't hide it.

The borders of Stonewall are permanently closed; unless the departee has the approval of either Bethany or Clarence to leave, they will be struck by lightning bolts until they turn back. It's unknown if lightning immunity will nullify this border, but it's not explicitly countered.

Nothing explicitly says that Bethany cannot just be killed in a fight (and, frankly, Stonewall is described as the kind of place where wiping out everybody is actually the heroic thing to do), but she ''does'' have an explicit method of redemption. If the party can find one of the dolls she made as a child, as one survived her father's wrath, and present it to her, she will break down in tears. If consoled and successfully reminded of her long-lost dreams, the rest of the town will break down weeping with her, and then Stonewall will slide out of the Mists and back to the prime material. On the other hand, if they fail, then she'll destroy the doll herself and become even more fanatical.

===Caleb Wicks===
Darklord of Wayward on the Bone Sands. Even at the age of 10, Caleb was a fearless, stubborn, trouble-making brat. The only thing able to scare him into obedience were stories of a local boogeyman: Black Hat the Swordslinger.

Caleb's transformation from mere brat to full-blown Darklord came when his family were hired by the lord of the distant Hangingshire, which required a long trek that passed through a desert region known as the Bone Sands. During this leg of the journey, Caleb's family were seperated from the caravan and veered their wagon over a tall, steep dune as a result of a sudden sandstorm. The wagon was destroyed, their horses killed, and Caleb's elder brother Horatio was severely injured. Though they initially settled in to wait for the caravan to send a rescue party after them, their food swiftly ran out and they realized they would have to try and walk out of the desert on foot... a journey that Horatio couldn't make.

The senior Wicks came to a grim realization: Horatio wasn't going to live much longer anyway, so when he died, the family would eat his body for sustenane before making their trek towards safety. They were content to wait... but Caleb found out about their plans, and taunted his brother with this fact; when Horatio began to scream and cry, Caleb panicked and stabbed him to death with a cooking knife. Caleb's parents were horrified, but ultimately decided there was nothing left to do. They ate their dead son, and then broke camp the next morning.

As they were traveling, Caleb found himself separated from his family by another sandstorm, wandering on his own for days before he stumbled across a small town called "Wayward". Mad with hunger, he murdered the first townsman who tried to offer him help, devouring as much of the man's flesh as he could before fleeing into the night. The next morning, he revealed himself to the horrified townsfolk and claimed that he had witnessed Black Hat kill and eat the man. Unable to believe a youngster like Caleb could be responsible for so monstrous a crime, the townsfolk believed him, and opened their homes to the young cannibal.

Caleb became a beloved fixture of the community... and then, the neighboring [[gnome]] community of Rumbleton was destroyed in an earthquake that crushed the subterranean village like an egg. They begged Wayward for shelter whilst they tried to rebuild, and the humans took them in. But rebuilding a new gnomish settlement wasn't easy, as Rumbleton had already been built in what was considered the most stable, accessible ground for miles around. With little choice, the gnomes began to put down roots in Wayward.

Which was a problem: Wayward already had troubles supporting its own population before the gnomes came in, and now things were worse than ever. The population increase led to a famine, known as "The Lean Times" by the locals, and tensions began to grow between humans and gnomes... tensions only fanned by Caleb, who began advocating the humans of Wayward should eat the baby gnomes born after the refugees settled in their village. Whilst initially this proposal was rejected, the gnomes took affront when they learned of its proposal at all, and relations only continued to deteriorate... especially because Caleb was continuing to egg things on, pushing his cannibalistic plan in secret.

Finally, it all came to a head; on the first night of the full moon, the Waywarders, driven mad with hunger, descended on the gnome shantytown and abducted as many gnomish children as they could, cannibalizing them in a disgusting, bloody orgy. Over the next two days they massacred the surviving gnomes and ate them as well, then they ate the few Waywarders who had protested "The Feast", as it was dubbed. And on that final full moon night, as the cannibal villagers slept off their full bellies, Wayward on the Bone Sands was pulled into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Caleb and the other villagers are now [[quevari]]. They spend most of their time in an enchanted slumber, only waking when visitors come to town. Like all quevari, they are peaceful and innocent-seeming during the day, but revert to bloodthirsty cannibals at night, as the first three nights after outsiders arrive are all full moons - after those three nights, they fall back into slumber until disturbed again. It's unclear what happens if a survivor somehow avoids being killed on that third night.

Wayward itself has a couple of curses. Firstly, there are no children here; all of their youths were left behind when the village was pulled into the Misty Realms, and none of the women ever fall pregnant, save when Caleb is killed (we'll get to that). Secondly, all food and drink in the domain is inherently inedible - even foods brought in from outside instantly spoil, although the look and smell perfectly fine. Finally, none of the villagers will ever age beyond the day they were when they committed their sins.

Caleb himself is a 5th level [[quevari]] [[thief]] who wields an enchanted knife +3 of bleeding. He can Charm Person 1/day by speaking to them, and still carries the Triangle of the Feast - the triangular dinner bell he played before the cannibalism of the gnomes. This can function as a Chime of Hunger that only affects non-Waywarders 3/day, and can also summon 2d6 Waywarders to his aid at will. The other quevari only openly recognize him as their lord and master during the night, but still are fiercely protective of him during the day. He can potentially be driven away in fear by forcefully invoking Black Hat - this requires something like disguising yourself ''as'' the boogeyman or telling a Black Hat story, simply saying the name won't scare him.

If killed, one of the Wayward women will find herself pregnant within a week, and give birth to Caleb's reincarnation a month later. Caleb will resume his true form as an elven year old a month after being born. The only way to kill Caleb for good is to wipe out the entire town of Wayward, which frankly you should be wanting to do anyway.

Caleb can close the borders by summoning tornadoes that lash all around the domain's periphery, kicking up lethal sandstorms and making it impossible to flee.

===Cassandre Desesprits===
Darklord of Miseria. Born to a humble farmer's family, Cassandre was gifted with the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, which also made her a very effective seer. When this was revealed to her village, she became an immediate celebrity, and this situation - never permitted time to herself or any true friends, but also showered in displays of good will and thanks - twisted her heart. She became completely self-centered, egotistical and immoral, regarding all others as nothing more than things to use for her own amusement and gratification.

When a war broke out amongst the local villages over the ability to use her seer powers, Cassandre exploited this to become a veritable queen, feeding just the right predictions to all factions to keep the war dragging on perpetually for over two years, wallowing in opulence whilst others bled, died and starved over her. Inevitably, the war drew to its climax, with both factions preparing to launch a decisive blow with a super-spell; Cassandre manipulated them into both acting at the exact same time, figuring that this would cause the spells to negate each other and stalemate, thus preserving the war and her power. Instead, they magnified each other, resulting in the annihilation of the warring armies and Cassandre being literally blown into Miseria.

Cassandre's curse is, fundamentally, that she will never again enjoy the lifestyle she once enjoyed. Although surrounded by people who genuinely like and care for her rather than her gifts, she pines for the days when people doted upon her every wish and resents being forced to work for a living as a barmaid. Her [[diviner]] powers have dwindled and become almost useless, but her spiritual powers have expanded; she now commands incorporeal [[undead]] with the proficiency of a master [[necromancer]], and her life is supplement with the years drained by her [[ghost]]ly minions. None of her schemes to regain her "royal" status will ever work, and so she seems doomed to an eternity as a beloved but otherwise unremarkable barmaid.

When she closes the borders, Miseria is surrounded by thick red fog that causes those who try to leave to age and eventually crumble to dust, whereupon they become ghosts under her command.

If slain, Cassandre becomes a ghost herself, but then resurrects 2d4 days later. Only if she is confronted in ghost form by an exorcist of the local deity Saint-Ambroise who can denounce her for her crimes in life will she be banished from the world of the living forever.

===Coyote===
Darklord of Yatehcaa. Once, this animal god aided the First Man in protecting his American Aboriginal-flavored world from powerful monsters. But his greed, malice and cruelty led to him committing many dark acts, and so the gods declared him unfit to remain amongst their ranks. First Man took back Coyote's cloak of stars, condemning him to stay forever on the world and be vulnerable to the monsters he had once battled. But Coyote showed no regret, no compassion, no willingness to learn from his mistakes or to try and make amends, and so he found himself trapped in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Ever since, he has continued his old ways, playing cruel, malicious tricks on the people of Yatehcaa, all the while trying to distract himself from how afraid he is that some day, he might be caught and killed by "The Dark Watchers", the antediluvian monsters whom he once battled alongside First Man.

Technically, nothing protects Coyote from death, but between his lack of shame and utter cowardice combined with his powerful magical abilities, actually killing him in a fight is easier said than done.

===Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez===
Darklord of Resistencia. Born the son of a once-great noble family in the Holy Republic of Aragona, Santiago's family had fallen in stature to such a degree that the impoverished patricians had mortaged their lands to the hilt and lived a life barely above that of their peasant tenats. They scrimped and saved to send Santiago to court, but the Don of Quijada found himself a laughing stock, regarded as little better than a jumped up hayseed peasant. This only fueled a lifelong hatred for those lacking in noble blood.

Desperate to try and reclaim the respect he had been taught from birth his family name deserved, Santiago bought a commission in the army. He proved little better here than he had in the court; poor of health, average at best with the sword, and no genius in the command of men or the intricacies of tactics and strategy. His only saving grace was his thoroughness and dedication... but even this went sour, breeding in him an obsession with discipline, cleanliness and presentation, and a love of punishment so extreme that even the Aragonan army considered him a draconian tyrant.

Though Santiago managed to win a few fairly creditable actions early in his career, his faults quickly stole away what his successes had won him, sending him into a self-inflicted downward spiral of ever-worsening behavior and failures as a result. He was appointed as the governor a rebellious backwater province, and only made things worse as he extended the same tyrannical, brutal law he held over his military forces to the population.

Then he was offered the chance to take up governship in a minor overseas colony called Neuva Aragona, which was also currently rebelling. Despite recognizing that this was intended to be a sentence of exile, Santiago accepted, dreaming of reversing his fortunes. Instead, he proved the absolute ''worst'' choice for the role; a born-and-bred monarchist with no sympathy for the lot of the peasants, he ignored the legitimate grievances of the rebels and remained fundamentally convinced that the isle of Manzanilla - renamed "Resistencia" by the rebels - was home to a silent majority of good, loyal followers of the kings. Ignoring all opportunities efor a diplomatic solution, he launched into his trademark brutality, which only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the natives.

Among his many atrocities, he took captive the pregnant wife of the rebel leader Martin Jose Maconda, one Isabel de Maconda. Simultaneously smitten with her and repulsed by her loyalty to the rebel's cause, he alternatively cajoled her and brutalized her, culminating in his ordering that she would be permitted no midwife when she went into labor. The birth went bad, and both mother and child died.

All his atrocities were for nothing, ineptitude and his habit of overworking his never-great health led to him dying in his sickbed, on the very day the last of his depleted forced were overwhelmed and Neuva Aragona formally seceded independence. But even as he died, he cursed that the rebels must be defeated at any cost.

Santiago now exists as a ghost, cursed to forever mentally relieve every battle he lost on Resistencia and see with perfect clarity how he could have won. And, of course, he's also cursed that no matter how he schemes and plots, on those rare moments he tears himself away from his biter memories and dreams of glory to actually try and do something, his plans to re-conquer Manzanilla are doomed to fail.

If defeated in battle, Santiago reforms in his burial chamber below Castillo Ascension, although he remains trapped there until the next full moon. The only way he can be destroyed is if his personal sword is stolen from this chamber and used to deliver the death blow in combat.

When he closes the borders, the sea surrounding Resistencia takes on an eerie, unnatural calm; sailing ships cannot move, and rowers will find that they simply can't get more than a half-mile away from the coast.

===Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll===
Darklord of Immerabt. This female human alchemist could in many ways be considered a mirror to Dr. Mordenheim of Lamordia. Like him, she was born a scientific prodigy who had neither time nor patience for religions and matters of faith. When she was twelve, Dorothy's mother died in childbirth giving birth to a son, something Dorothy blamed upon both the local priest - for he had both refused to allow Dorothy to be present at the birth, despite her knowledge of herbs and medicines, for her lack of faith, and proven unable to save Lady Hemphyll's life with his limited divine magic - and her father, for he had listened to the priest.

This became the cornerstone of Dorothy's growing loathing for religion, something that grew ever stronger as she aged. She went abroad to study medical sciencies, [[transmuter|transmutation magic]] and [[alchemist|philosophical alchemy]], always seeking to refine her medical skills. She also visited the dark, seedy corners of society: brothels, dog-fighting arenas, drug-fueled parties and other such realms that further convinced her of the absence of divine intervention.

The kicker was when she met and fell in love with another medical student of noble ancestry; Hermann Leawly. Despite her feelings, she refused to marry him, for that would require submitting to a religious ceremony she wanted nothing to do with. But he bent under the pressure from his traditional family and returned to their home, something that enraged Dorothy, who now derided him as a weakling.

After a long, bloody war, a terrible plague gripped her homeland, and Dorothy came up with an idea for a new method to care for the terminally ill. She purchased an abandoned penitentiary on a small rocky island and converted it into a sickbay, hiring the best healers she could find (so long as they weren't divine spellcasters). One of those she hired was Hermann. She became ever-more obsessive, pushing her followers brutally, and gaining the first attention of the [[Dark Powers]]. When she perfected her prototype life support mechanisms and began abducting the terminally ill from her hospice to install them in the devices, trapping them at the brink of life and death in a state of constant, unrelenting pain, they grew anticipatory. But it wasn't until she got drunk at a party celebrating her newly produced plague vaccine, and revealed to Hermann her monstrous experiments, injecting him with concentrated plague serum and deliberately waiting for him to reach the still-incurable terminal stage of the disease before strapping him into one of her hideous living death machines that they seized her and transformed goal island into Immerabt.

Dorothy's curse is three-fold, and could be a considered a blend of Mordenheim's and Azalin's. Though she is well-aware of the fact that the local industries of Immerabt are poisoning the population, her attempts to plan and execute social projects to counter the pollution invariably fail due to being rejected or ignored. Secondly, she is kept so busy working her daily job that she cannot devote the time to furthering her understandings of magic and alchemy, preventing her from attaining the greater power she needs to pursue her goal of the ultimate curatives. Finally, she is unable to invent a vaccine to cure those suffering from the terminal effects of the plague, which means she cannot cure Hermann, who remains bound and suffering in his life-support in the depths of her sanitarium.

Unlike many darklords, Dorothy has no inherent abilities that make her unkillable, although her disease-bearing touch and biomechanical golem guards make her a force to be reckoned with in combat. She can regenerate, but she's vulnerable to fire.

If she wishes to close the borders of Immerabt, violent storms with strong winds and heavy rain surround the archipelago, whilst the waters boil with mutated [[shark]]s and other aquatic predators.

===Elizabeth Michelle Cole III===
Darklord of Hibernate. This female human [[vampire]] was born to the noble family of the Coles in the land of Hybernaya on Boram'ith. Despite her aristocratic lineage, she did not believe in the inherent superiority of her bloodline, and fell in love with a peasant boy, whom her parents had executed on trumped-up charges. This engendered a deep hatred for her parents in Elizabeth's heart, and at the age of 28, she left home to "think about things".

In her wanderings, she met and fell in love with a man named Alexander Berzinski, a [[vampire]] who converted her into one as well. They traveled together for seven years before parting, whereupon Elizaeth returned home, murdered her parents, and ruled their lands with an iron first for a decade.

During this time, she became a high priestess of [[Thanatos]], and attempted to lure a prophesied warrior known as "The Son of the Black Moon" into Thanatos' service. A task she delighted in, for she fell in love with him when she met him - a one-sided love, for he was devoted to his [[half-elf]] girlfriend. When he died escaping from his contract with the dark god, Elizabeth had him resurrected and attempted to lure him through a portal to the [[Lower Planes]], only to find herself alone in Darkon. Here, she fell afoul of the Kargat and fled to the Sea of Sorrows, only to find herself bound to the newly formed isle of Hibernate when she set foot there.

She has risen to power as the madame of the most well-respected brothel in Hibernate, leading a force of twenty eight call girls, all of whom she has turned into [[vampire]]s. Her curse is that she yearns to find the Son of the Black Moon and claim him for herself, but he has never materialized in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Elizabeth is unaffected by Hibernatian holy symbols, due to the combined facts that they represent a non-existant god and the lack of true faith endemic in Hibernate's people, but can be slain by a pine wood stake, or paralyzed with any other kind of stake. If Elizabeth is killed, one of her vampire prostitutes will fall into a month-long coma, during which she will physically and mentally be subsumed and transformed into a new incarnation of Elizabeth. It's unclear how this can be prevented.

When she wishes to close the domain, Hibernate's borders are choked by a thick fog that is impossible to navigate; those who try only find themselves circling back to Hibernate, no matter how hard they try.

The [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002 version of Elizabeth emphasizes her fundamental selfishness and cruelty, and also notes that her Undying Soul will allow her to possess any woman in Hibernate should all of her prostitutes be killed.

===Gatwe and Mr. Klein===
The domain of Nzari is home to two darklords, struggling for dominance.

'''Gatwe''' is the original Darklord; an Mwele man who was forever questioning the traditions of his people even from a youth and who burned to hold power. He apprenticed himself to the tribal shaman, whom he perceived held the true power, but his ambitions remained unchecked. When the most beautiful woman in the village chose to marry a respected hunter, that was the last straw; he forsook all the traditional limits on the shaman and began practicing sorcery. He used curses to sicken and kill those he hated, and goad the tribe into war, slowly building an empire from the scattered tribes of the Mwele. When suspicion began to fall upon him, he murdered his own family to try and throw it off, assuming the form of a leopard to plant a curse-bundle that would kill them all slowly and painfully. When he began to resume his human form, that was when the [[Dark Powers]] struck, trapping him in a twisted [[Broken One|nightmarish conglomerate form]], incapable of wielding his former magic, and launching Nzari into the Misty Realm.

'''Mr. Klein''' came to Nzari after its appearance in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. A fanatical devotee of [[Ezra]], he yearned to be a missionary, but found that goal stymied during the initial rush to explore the Sea of Sorrows; the merchants who controlled the expedition wanted profits, not proselytizing. Only when Nzari was discovered, with its savage cannibal tribes and vast wealth of ivory, did Mr. Klein finally find his desire within his grasp. He founded the Dementlieur Exploration Company, and led its first expedition to Nzari. The Mwele naturally resisted this foreign invasion, but Klein had the zeal of a fanatic and pressed on, resorting to ever-more brutal tactics as months of battle and disease took its toll on his followers. Eventually, he caught the attention of Gatwe, but managed to fight the feared "leopard-devil" off - an act that won him inroads amongst the Mwele. His followers swelled in numbers, and he seemed to make real progress in "civilizing" Nzari... until he realized that his followers were not worshipping Ezra, but Klein himself, and that those he conquered were merely paying lip service to his commands. Furious, he resorted to to ever-more draconian methods to "stamp out the heathenism", but succeeded only in pushing the Mwele to rebel. Klein counter-attacked viciously with his own forces, and responded by flaying every last one of them alive before he had them beheaded, their bodies cast into the river, and their heads impaled on stakes around his house.

In the face of such brutality, the Dark Powers aren't sure ''which'' of the two better deserves the title of Darklord.

Gatwe's curse is simple: he is forever cut off from the adoration and power he changes. No Mwele will have anything to do with one so obviously marked as a sorcerer, and he cannot change or disguise his form regardless of what artifice he tries. Mr. Klein, on the other hand, is cursed that when he sleeps, he sees the world through Gatwe's eyes, experiencing the broken one's life as he lives it. Both, ironically, share the curse of wanting to change the Mwele culture, but being completely incapable of doing so.

The two Darklords ''despise'' each other. Gatwe has become convinced that if he can kill Klein, his full powers will be restored to him. Klein, on the other hand, believes that Gatwe is a literal demon, a symbol of the savagery hidden in humanity's heart, and that only by "civilizing" the Mwele will the nightmarish dream-visions cease.

Unusually for co-darklords, they can both close Nzari's borders; Gatwe surrounds the domain an impenetrable thicket of vegetation, whilst those trying to flee against Klein's wishes find themselves lost in thick fog and eventually attacked by an endless hail of arrows.

Both darklords also have their own unique forms of immortality. If Gatwe is killed, one of the leopards of Nzari will become his reincarnation a day later. Klein, on the other hand, is simply impervious to all attacks not dealt with an ivory weapon (a ''blessed'' ivory weapon deals double damage!) and will not return if slain.

===Geren Horstadt===
Darklord of Seradan. Born the favored son of a minor noble family, Geren was a bullying braggart in private, but a charming and idolized peer in public. All that changed when, at the age of 17, he was struck by a strange wasting disease that crippled him irreversibly; he lost use of his legs, his muscles withered, and all his senses faded. Though his family bankrupted themselves to try and cure him, nothing worked. He spent fifteen years in his own personal hell, watching and envying those with normal lives, and resenting his family despite the love and care they still showered him with.

His true descent into damnation came when one of his brothers brought down a trunk full of books from the attack, and Geren learned one of his great-grandfathers had been a powerful [[wizard]] - one with considerable experience in summoning beings from the [[Lower Planes]]. When his family refused to hire a wizard to tutor Geren in magic, he decided to try summoning a [[fiend]] on his own. He called forth a [[yugoloth]], who was so surprised by the venomous manner in which Geren pleaded his case that he offered Geren a trade: the souls of Geren's families in exchange for the ability to "help Geren feel what others feel".

It was a bargain Geren made without hesitation. He hired an [[assassin]] to kill every last member of his family, other than his mother. In exchange, the yugoloth gifted him with the ability to possess others, which allowed him to vicariously experience life as a normal person again. He slowly began to rebuild the family's fortunes by using possessed thralls to commit acts of murder and theft... then the townsfolk began to suspect his mother was involved, and she in turn wondered if Geren was responsible. When she confronted him, however, Geren petuantly seized control of her mind and made her kill herself. But some of the townsfolk had just arrived to question her again, and they discovered her slumping over the infamous and now-hated cripple. Realizing that Geren had been responsible, they beat him with clubs and then dragged him into the streets, where the mob lynched him; hanging him from a tree and beating him to death as they burned his family's home and himself.

Such was Geren's rage at this fate that he returned from the grave as a powerful haunt - a [[Ravenloft]] strain of [[ghost]]. With his possession abilities enhanced, he used them to massacre the entire population of the village... which was when the Mists rolled in and claimed him for Seradan.

Geren's darklord status brings with it a cocktail of curses. The standard Darklord curse of being unable to leave his domain chafes him particularly, being that he yearns to explore and experience the world. Making matters worse is that he is now trapped in a realm of dullards, so docile, unimaginative and unfeeling that possessing them is little better than staying a ghost. For further insult, Geren can now only possess hosts for short periods of time, or else they die of a supernaturally induced fever, forcing him to largely avoid using his possession abilities.

Geren always reforms one week after being destroyed. Only if he is allowed to kill Wilhelm Braugh, the only survivor of Geren's hometown and the inspector who gave him over to the mob, will he cease to exist, having decided that there is nothing left to live for. If he closes the borders, supernatural exhaustion claims any who try to leave the domain, sapping their strength until they are left helpless.

===Henry Arlington===
Darklord of Arlington Farm. Henry Arlington was a farmer who obsessed about success. Inheriting his farm after the tragic death of his parents in a house fire, he killed his own elder brothers in a duel to secure his inheritance. He proved to be a demanding, overbearing farmer, and obsessed with successful crops; when an unexpected New Year's late frost resulted in damage to a significant portion of the crops, Henry flew into a rage, even though he had more than enough funds to weather this less-than-perfect year. In his rage, he murdered one of his farmhands, concealing the crime by cutting up his body and hiding it amongst the scarecrows on the property. That year, the farm bloomed with a record-breaking bounty.

The next year saw a similar pattern: the crops failed early in the year, but when Henry killed (in this case a stray dog), they suddenly reversed fortune and flourished. Henry became convinced that his farm would reward him with bounty only in exchange for blood sacrifices, and he began a yearly ritual of murdering some human victim and stuffing their dismembered body into the scarecrows. Over a decade of this grisly work, he soon had no farmhands left to sacrifice, and so instead he slaughtered his entire family for the sake of his farm.

That was the last straw. The grisly, corpse-stuffed scarecrows came to life and burned down all his crops, then dragged Henry out into the field and mutilated him, turning him into a fleshy scarecrow like themselves. That was when the Mists swallowed the farm.

In the present, Henry still tends to his farm as an animate corpse [[scarecrow]], only to find his labors undone whatever he achieves. In addition, every harvest moon, he finds himself human once more - and subsequently butchered by his vengeful scarecrow "workers".

Henry can close the border for up to an hour at a time by summoning a vast murder of crows that attack whoever tries to leave. After an hour, however, Henry is exhausted and must rest for 3 rounds before he can resummon the swarm. If slain, Henry remains dead until the next full moon or blue moon, whereupon he will possess one of the scarecrows in his domain and return to life. Theoretically, he can be destroyed forever by destroying all of the scarecrows.

===Hercules===
Darklord of Olympus. Born the son of the High Priest of [[Zeus]] in a theocratic nation ruled over by a collective of seven temples to the Greek Gods - Zeus, [[Athena]], [[Aphrodite]], [[Hermes]], [[Ares]], [[Apollo]] and [[Hades]], the man now known only as Hercules earned great fame in his youth by speaking up against the brutal repression of the priest-lords and championing the rights of the oppressed commoners. Although originally he sought peace, the overwhelming corruption opposing him led him first to delving into the murky depths of politics, and finally into leading a full-blown revolution.

This angered the realm's rulers, the conclave of High Priests known as the Council of Seven, who came up with three plans to ruin Hercules. The High Priest of Zeus sent his son cursed gauntlets that would drive him into bloodthirsty rages under false pretence of truce. The High Priestess of Athena sought to summon a daemonic entity that would grant the Council magical powers that would allow them to crush the rebels and prove themselves the true "Voices of the Gods". Finally, the High Priestess of Aphrodite arranged for one of her serving girls to be sent to seduce Hercules, with the ultimate plan of disgracing him by tempting him into committing the blasphemous act of making love in the holy ground of the temple of Zeus.

They couldn't have expected that Dejanira, the girl chosen by the Voice of Aphrodite, would fall in love with Hercules and reveal the ploy to him. Any more than she could have expected for him to revile her as a traitorous seductress, but hide his loathing and use her to deliver a strike against the Council as they performed the summoning ritual. At the height of battle and ritual both, Hercules turned on Dejanira and stabbed her to death before throwing her into the center of the Council, then beating his father to death as he was paralyzed by the sudden influx of magical energies from the rite.

The Seven Voices of the Gods were transformed into quasi-daemons in their own right, and Hercules became the Darklord of the realm now called simply "Olympus".

Hercules is cursed both with the erratic and dangerous rages from his braces, and in that he is haunted by the terrifying spectre of Dejanira, who still loves him even in death. Worse still, his reputation continually sours due to his berserk rages.

The only way to kill Hercules for good is to force him, the six "Living Gods" of Olympus and the Forsaken One (the half-daemonic ghost of the High Priest of Zeus) to meet in the abandoned temple of Zeus and perform the fiend summoning ritual again. Only if Hercules allows himself to be sacrificed as part of the ritual will his curse be ended - which will also strip the Living Gods of their powers and make them mortal as well.

If Hercules wishes to seal the borders of Olympus, a titanic lightning storm envelops the domain, striking down any who attempt to escape.

===Heresa Heri, The Vulture King===
Darklord of Tsuu-Y-Teke. Long ago, Heresa Heri was one of the great animal lords, powerful spirits subordinate to the greater animal gods, but he betrayed his master's wishes after being named ruler over the skies: when given the ability to create permanent light from enchanted crystals, rather than sharing this light with the world, he selfishly kept them for himself, turning them into a shining feathered headdress. But his treachery was uncovered by a human hero-shaman named Kanaciwe, who captured Heresa Heri and tore out the golden and silver feathers, turning them into the sun, moon and stars. But the appearance of the sun dazed Kanaciwe, allowing Heresa Heri to break free of the shaman's grip and kill him.

This act enraged his rival, the newly empowered Haloe-Tsuu (Sun Puma), who cursed Heresa Heri; never again would he be allowed to face the sunlight, or else it would destroy him. Though the Vulture King fled into the deepest cave, he was mortally wounded, and summoned his underlings to ceremonially preserve his body and spirit. As he died, he cursed all those who had robbed him of "his" treasure, from the humans whose shaman had taken his headdress of shining light to the skies themselves for being home to the sun and moon. Thus was the domain of Tsuu-Y-Teke born.

In appearance, the Vulture King is a white-feathered giant vulture with a dark red bonnet of dried blood on his head, sickly yellow eyes that glow in the dark, and a jagged, uneven beak that gives him the appearance of fanged teeth. He is an [[undead]] creature with powers similar to those of a [[mummy]], althoug he looks like a living bird.

As Darklord, Heresa Heri is trapped in his cavern lair except during True Night, the one period of darkness that comes to Tsuu-Y-Teke once per month. He has become obsessed with the idea that if he can amass a sufficient number of gems, he can reimprison the light and restore the endless Night that the world once knew... but he knows that to do so, he needs the ''exact'' number of gems as there are stars in the sky, and he no longer remembers how many that is!

In combat, Heresa Heri is a powerhouse and all but impossible to destroy without the use of sunlight or powerful magical light. Even then, if destroyed, his spirit will possess any giant vulture within a 13 mile radius, which will transform into the Vulture King 1 week later.

When the Vulture King seeks to seal Tsuu-Y-Teke, then impenetrable magical darkness gathers on the borders; those who try to escape instead get lost in the utter blackness and stumble right back out into the domain.

===Jarl Gravstein Hansen===
Darklord of the Northlands. This male human was born to the Gand tribe, son of the man who had founded the trade guild known as the Key, which was bringing much-needed prosperity to the realm. He railed against the tradition by which the Gand and Kosti tribes alternated ownership of the capital city of Miklaheim every five years, and was determined to keep ownership of the city for himself.

To do so, he launched a brutal campaign against the Gand tribe, taxing his own people into famine and ruin to do so. When they were devastated, he turned his back on the traditional religion of the seidmen, secretly siphoning away funds from the church who thought he was supporting them. Finally, he began taxing the trade guild to borderline ruin itself. Through his short-sighted greed and selfishness, the realm was drawn into the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

Secretly, Gravstein yearns to be respected and loved, but he cannot attain it - only if he returns all the land of the Gand to them will this curse be broken, which mechanically manifests as an automatic failure on any Charisma check other than Intimidation. He doesn't have any magical powers to preserve his life, but whoever takes up the mantle of leadership should he die will be cursed in the same manner.

Closing the borders results in a vast army of warrior spirits descending from the heavens and physically blocking passage.

===Captain Jacobi Robertsonn===
Darklord of Whal. Born a fisherman's son on an unnamed world, Jacobi grew up in seas that were plentiful with a father who loved him and loved his life on the sea. Then, when Jacobi was young, he and his father were caught in a terrible storm whilst fishing, during which the youth spotted a giant whale - a ''leviathan'' - playing in the rough surf. Play that ended with the breaching whale crashing right on top of the small fishing boat; Jacobi awoke washed ashore, scarred, surrounded by debris, and with his father missing.

Years later, Jacobi was commanding a trading galleon called the Sailor's Blessing with his beloved only son Abram when the ship was caught in a tropical storm. On the fourth day, the ship hit something in the water and began to sink, and during the scramble to escape, Abram was swept over the side and vanished. Spotting a leviathan in the storm, Jacobi blamed his son's apparent death on the creature, and in fact convinced himself it was the same whale that had killed his father.

Returning to port, he purchased a new ship, the Retribution, and became a whaler, venting his wrath on whales indiscriminately for the next decade. He was beginning to lose all hope of ever attaining vengeance when he finally encountered the biggest whale he'd ever seen - what he was sure was the leviathan that had killed his father and son. He personally led the hunt and harpooned the beast, only for it turn and smash his boat to pieces. Driven by rage, the wounded Jacobi hauled himself onto the beast by climbing the rope of the embedded harpoon; even as the surviving crew fled, he stabbed the whale over and over again, all the while cursing it, himself and his crew with all his soul... until everything went black.

Then he awoke and found himself on a strange, yet vaguely familiar, island; the land of Whal. A place of whalers who, to his surprise, deferred to him with their problems. He has since figured out he rules Whal, but is cursed to never leave it.

As a Darklord, Jacobi's curse is that he has become a rare oceanic [[therianthrope]]: a [[wereorca]]. He has distinctly mixed feelings about this form; he acknowledges the appropriateness of it, but he loathes being associated with a whale. He's also been cursed to suffer from intense sea-sickness if he ever sets foot upon a water-borne vessel, so whilst he does enjoy the freedom offered by his alterante form, the fact he can only hunt as an orca means he misses the thrill of commanding his own ship. Whilst normally he has control over this changes, he is forced to assume orca form on the days of his father's and son's deaths, days that are also marked by intense storms.

Perhaps his true curse, however, is that despite his obsession with killing the leviathan he blames for ruining his life, the creature never appears in the waters off of Whal.

When Jacobi closes his borders, the sea parts down to the sea floor, creating a 300ft wide chasm between the two bodies of water. Flight is, of course, impossible. Nothing explicitly prevents you from walking across the chasm and then using water-breathing magic to escape through the water on the other side, though.

Jacobi has no life-preserving powers outside of his immunity to any weapon that isn't +1 or made from whalebone. He is a 16th level [[Avenger]], however, which combined with the aquatic capabilities of his form makes him more dangerous than you'd think.

===Jinx===
Darklord of the Lost Wizard's Tower. This male black cat was once the [[familiar]] of a [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale, a caring and heroic individual, but a slightly neglectful owner, and also too hubristic for her own good. Jinx's journey into damnation began when she decided to use the cat as the test subject for an experiment in increasing the intelligence of animals.

It worked... but it also made Jinx smart enough to realize just how much more there was to Margaret's life than him. He became convinced that she had chosen him as her test subject because she simply didn't ''care'' if he lived or died, developing a burning resentment for it. Worse, he became mentally human enough to become convinced that he was in love with Margaret, and to be consumed with jealousy that she had other interests in her life.

When the region where they lived was attacked by [[barbarian]]s, Jinx went out of his way to assist Margaret, hoping to prove his worth in the hopes that she would come to reciprocate his jealous, obsessive love. She did not. Instead, she fell in love with a young warrior under her command. When she announced their upcoming marriage, he devised and enacted a plan to lead the man Margaret had fallen for to his death in battle. With no spellcasters in the region powerful enough to revive the fallen, Jinx was sure that this would be the end of his "competition".

To Jinx's fury, the death of her betrothed only filled Margaret with rage and suicidal grief. She prepared a super-powerful alchemical explosive, and made a personal assault on the horde's camp. Blind with fury, she waded through the ranks of the enemy, surviving many attacks only because Jinx fought like a hellcat to save her - to the familiar's growing rage as he realized she didn't even notice her efforts. Finally, Margaret planted the explosive, only to be attacked by the horde's leader. Though she defeated him, she was badly hurt in the process, leaving her helpless in the face of the coming explosion.

Jinx tried to pull her to safety, but was too weak to do so. Margaret told him to flee to safety, and expressed her happiness that in dying, she would meet her beloved fiancee in the afterlife. At that, the cat flew into a rage and revealed how ''he'' had arranged the warrior's death, blaming his actions on Margaret's decision to give him the curse of reason. Finally, he vowed that Margaret would neither see Jinx's death nor her beloved, raking her eyes with his claws and then fleeing his master, whose screams of pain were swiftly cut off by the explosion.

Unrepentant, yet fearful, Jinx fled all the way back to the tower where he and Margaret once lived, only to find it mysteriously deserted. He has remained there ever since.

Jinx waits endlessly now for people to visit the lost tower, hoping to claim a new master. His first preference is a female [[wizard]], then a female [[sorcerer]], then a female [[bard]] or any other arcane spellcasting clas, and then finally a male arcanist. He will do whatever he can to first persuade them to accept his presence, and then separate his chosen master from their former companions. His curse, of course, is that he will always destroy any relationship he establishes - if nothing else, he will end up killing the would-be master when they fail to meet his standards for loving and doting upon him. He prefers to use his retained spells ability, which allows him to cast Flesh to Stone one per day, to "immortalize" failed masters by petrifying them.

Jinx has no specific powers keeping him alive, so if you can kill the little beast, he's done for. He can't even close the borders properly, but instead just summons the Mists; those who flee will find themselves emerging from the mist elsewhere in the [[Demiplane of Dread]].

===Warden Jonar Tamh===
Darklord of Karss. This [[Harmonium]]-sworn male [[aasimar]] [[Fighter]] joined the Harmonium at a young age, and very quickly moved up the ranks, attaining the position of Mover One at the age of 25. When he was selected to lead the experimental Great Prison of Ortho, a reformation-focused alternative to the [[Mercykiller]]-run prison of [[Sigil]], he saw it as a great honor... until it became apparent that the majority of the cynical Sigil-originated prisoners were unwilling to cooperate with the project.

Fearful for his reputation, Jonar Tamh resorted to increasingly brutal and draconian punishments, covering up the ongoing breakdown from his superiors and replacing subordinates who dared to question him. Growing convinced that some force - the [[Mercykiller]]s, the [[Revolutionary League]], or the agents of evil - was sabotaging the Great Prison, he descended ever-deeper into brutality. Finally, his best friend, the deputy warden Zet Keffen, tried to convince Jonar to return to the Great Prison's original premise; when Jonar refused, he declared he would bring this matter to the Factol of the Harmonium.

Jonar panicked and killed Zet right then and there, covering it up by blaming the murder on two particularly troublesome prisoners and executing them for it.

But Jonar couldn't cover it up forever. Hearing that his superiors were on their way to investigate the prison, and also that there were plans for a mass uprisiong, Jonar gathered 28 of the most outspoken and problematic inmates and hanged them all, one by one. As the last expired, a great hurricane arose from nowhere, forcing the Harmonium guards indoors. When the storm ended, the Great Prison now sat on the barren island of Karss.

Jonar Tamh suffers two major curses. Firstly, although he now has the ability to mentally control large numbers of people at once, he experiences all of the pain and misery of those he is controlling. Secondly, the vengeful spirit of Zet has become bound to Jonar's sword; if Jonar inflicts 12 or more damage with it against a single foe, Zet gains the abilities of a rank 2 ghost for one hour, allowing him to attack his former best friend.

The aasimar darklord cannot close the borders of Karss.

===Kasselheim Blightlyng===
Darklord of Vulnara. This [[gnome]] [[vampire]] had the misfortune to be born a gnome with no sense of humor. Whilst other gnomes were happily running round, playing stupid pranks and making silly illusions, Kasselheim was stuck fuming over how non-gnomish races didn't treat them with the slightest respect, all whilst the other gnomes reacted to his pleas for them to just try and be a little more serious by pranking him worse than ever. Eventually, he became a [[Transmuter]], bitterly thumbing his nose at a centuries old family radition, and withdrew to the deepest depths of their underground home. Then a few years later, a great flood washed through the gnome community and drove them up onto the surface, and the survivors counted Kasselheim as one of the dead.

They didn't know that Kasselheim had severely blinded and deafened himself in an alchemical explosion during his period of isolation. Nor could they know that many of those presumed dead in the flood were actually kidnapped by Kasselheim, who began experimenting in dark magic to steal their senses for himself, ultimately transforming them into warped monsters called "tactyles". But when they finally began moving back into the tunnels years later, they found out.

They formed a great war party with the aid of [elf]], [[dwarf]] and [[human]] adventurers from communities who had also suffered Kasselheim's depredations, and tracked him down to his underground fortress... only to be all but wiped out. Even though former friends (well, ''they'' considered themselves to be his friends, at least) and family were amongst the party, Kasselheim killed or captured them all. The last survivor was one of his sisters, a [[cleric]] of the gnome gods who threw herself to her death over a cliff whilst cursing him. An earthquake, and Kasselheim was knocked unconscious, rising to discover he had become a unique form of gnomish [[vampire]].

Kasselheim's curse is that he must ''constantly'' feed; his stolen senses of sight, hearing, scent and taste dwindle rapidly after feeding, until all that he has left is enough of a sense of touch to register pain. However, because of how fast his senses fade, and the isolated nature of his lair, he is effectively confined to a small part of his domain, and thus must go long, terrible intervals between feedings.

Killing Kasselheim can be done in two ways. First, if he is exposed to sunlight, he becomes incorporeal; if he is kept from fleeing back to his lair for two hours whilst in this form, he dissipates into nothing. Secondly, one can complete a complicated ritual, slightly altered from the traditional gnomish vampire. To achieve his permanent destruction, Kasselheim must first be immobilized by staking him with a silver spike through the heart. Then his hands must be cut off and boiled in a volcanic hot spring for 24 hours, after which his eyes must be gouged out and replaced with precious gems (100gp value minimum for each eye). Finally, his inert body must be carried to some place where it can be exposed to direct sunlight for an hour - but this will revive him in his incorporeal form, so the would-be vampire killer will need to use some method to trap him in the light for the full hour.

===General Martin Jose Maconda===
Darklord of Maconda. This charismatic male human was, from his earliest days, both adept at manipulating others with his natural charm and good looks, prone to surprising moments of generosity, and feared for his grudge-holding, horrifying fits of temper, and trait for cold-blooded manipulation. It came a great surprise to him when he discovered that there were people he could not dominate at will - and worse still, his mixed heritage would forever prevent him from joining the upepr echelon of Manzanillan society.

Thus, out of a mixture of pride and genuine interest, he became involved in the growing revolutionary movement, and ultimately he became the leader of the guerilla forces fighting against the brutal suppressionist forces of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez. When Maconda's beloved wife Isabel died in her childbed as a result of of Don Santiago's cruelty, Maconda went in search of the fearsome Warlok of the Peak, determined to have the power to triumph over his enemies.

And he returned with that power. Only to find, to Maconda's fury, that Don Santiago had died of fever in his sickbed mere hours before the last Royalist troops were defeated. Enraged, he ordered the Royalists massacred, cutting down a priest who dared argue against this behavior, and once the bloodshed was over, he left Resistencia for the mainland of Libertad, vowing never to return - a vow the [[Dark Powers]] were happy to fulfill for him.

A year later, he became the president of the Republic, and he soon established himself as a brutal tyrant as bad as the royalists he had overthrown.

The Warlock of the Peak transformed Maconda into a powerful [[wereanaconda]], and despite the many powers his state gives him, Maconda loathes this form, in part because he believes Isabel would be disgusted by it, and also in part because he is compellede to transform into a giant anaconda and feed on human flesh on the night of the new moon. Unusually, he cannot create other wereanacondas with his biter, but those who drink or touch his blood, even if they are spattered with it in combat, risk being turn into either were-fer-de-lanes or were-bushmasters, species of [[weresnake]] (treat as Neutral Evil [[werecobra]]s) native to Libertad and compelled to be loyal to him.

Maconda's curse is that he desperately yearns to be loved and adored, but his insistence upon doing so by repressing and removing all opposition or dissent merely stokes the hatred and fear of those he rules over.

He can be wounded by weapons made of silver or the wood of the caobo tree, and is sickened by both the smell and taste of guavas. If defeated in battle, Maconda doesn't die but instead assumes anaconda form and slithers off into the jungle, unable to regain his human form until the next new moon. There is no known way to permanently destroy him.

Maconda can close the domain borders of his island by causing the jungles and seas to become engulfed in massive swarms of lethally poisonous snakes.

===Miles Havelocke===
Darklord of the Eternal Torture. Born in a coastal city, Miles was pressganged at the age of 15, which ruined his life; he suffered from incurable seasickness, for which his fellows tormented him mercilessly and the bullying captain only made it worse by assigning him to the worst tasks possible for somebody with his condition, ordering him severely beaten when, inevitably, he threw up. With no aptitude for mathematics, Miles couldn't master the art of navigation, and so couldn't hope to progress to the higher ranks of the navy.

Twenty years of this treatment turned Miles into a bitter, miserable bully who loathed the sea and used what little authority he could get to exact vengeance upon those few below him on the ship's pecking order. Why he never simply fled during his first shore leave, nobody knows.

Eventually, Miles' captain was chosen to make a voyage into the uncharted western ocean, to Miles' dismay. But when the captain continued in pressing on in pursuit of ever-richer islands to the west, it led to the ship becoming lost in the waters and supplies running low. Miles seized this opportunity for revenge and began spreading rumors about the ship's officers hoarding food for themselves, ultimately leading a successful mutiny. When his ineptitude at seamanship led to them being becalmed, he led his mutineers to cannibalize the captured officers, gleefully rubbing their faces in their past abuse of him and coming to relish human flesh.

And then, as this supply of food began to run low, they finally spotted land... but, as they rowed frantcially to reach it, the Mists arose and swallowed the ship. When they cleared, the mutineers found themselves in the middle of a sea in the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Overwhelmed by misery, they sat down and waited for death... and then, a fortnight later, they arose as [[ghoul]]s under the command of Miles Havelock, a Ghoul Lord, and began searching for food and land.

Miles Havelock suffers multiple curses. Firstly, he can never reach land, no matter how desperately he tries - at best, he can get a brief glimpse of the coast before the Mists immediately rise and teleport his ship elsewhere. Secondly, his seasickness has not only survived undeath, but intensified; he is '''perpetually''' seasick and also starving hungry, and these twin pains are why he has rechristened his ship "The Eternal Torture". If destroyed, his essence will inhabit the body of a living prisoner in the ship's hold and consume them from the inside out; the only way to end his curse is to kill him, rescue all of the prisoners, and sink the Eternal Torture, then make for land at full speed.

===Rafe Ungard===
Darklord of Callista. This male [[Half-Vistani]] [[Bard]] used his natural charm (and a complexion that allowed him to hide his hated Vistani blood) to swindle innocent women into marriage scams, start feuds amongst noble families for his own amusement, and delve into increasingly cruel and lethal manipulation. The backstory of poor Susannah Joson from [[Children of the Night]]: [[Ghost]]s is but one example of his misdeeds. When a party of [[adventurer]]s tried to bring him to justice, he continually slipped away, leaving the bodies of victims in his wake to torment them, and ultimately murdered his pursuers by burning down the inn they were staying in as they slept, which is when the Mists took him.

Rafe now possesses a strange form of immortality; he will ''always'' die once per day, no matter what steps he takes to try and avoid it, only to spontaneously return to life the next day. There is no known method to stop him from returning.

When he closes the domain, Callista's borders become a ring of boiling geysers that will kill anyone who passes through them, and which extend as high into the sky as needed to reach anyone trying to fly through.

===Sean Mako & Alice/Alison Marjory===
Darklords of Carcharodon Isle. Sort of a combination of Ladyhawke and the Little Mermaid. Over a century ago, a male human fisherman named Sean Marko lived in the village of Mistlington. One day, he discovered an injured [[merfolk|mermaid]] washed up on the isle's northwest shore, unconscious and bleeding from several wounds, including a severed left hand. Unable to turn away from someone in need, he brought her to his home and nursed her back to health. The mermaid, whose name translated into Common as "Alice", explained that she was the only survivor of a tribe that had been slaughtered by [[sahuagin]].

The two fell in love, much to the displeasure of the locals; the fishermen thought Sean was foolish for pining over a mermaid, and their wives were jealous of Alice's beauty, leading to them slandering her and Sean's relationship as "unnatural". Ultimately, a bunch of the village's men took it upon themselves to "repatriate" Alice; they came to Sean's house in the night, bludgeoned him unconscious, and carried Alice away. When Sean regained consciousness, he rowed desperately to catch up to them, but by the time he did so, they'd thrown the still-bound mermaid overboard.

Enraged, Sean snatched up a boathook and attacked the men who had assaulted him and the woman he loved, butchering them. When the carnage was over, he dove into the water after Alice, and then begged the full moon above for a fins and a tail so he might never be separated from his love.

Naturally, the [[Dark Powers]] chose to be dicks about granting this wish...

Both Sean and the revived Alice, now a human calling herself Alison Marjory, have become maledictive [[therianthrope]]s.

Sean is a giant [[wereshark]] who spends most of the month as an intelligent megalodon, unaware that he ''can'' transform and remembering nothing of his human life; only during the nights of the full moon and those nights directly before and after it does he return to his human form... which remembers everything he did as a giant killer shark. Because of his curse-spawned ignorance, the only way that shark!Sean can transform is if he is magically compelled to do so, such as by an Amulet of the Beast. He spends his days asleep and his nights hunting for food.

In contrast, Alison is a [[seawolf]] who spends most of the month as a human, but assumes her seawolf form on the nights before, during and after the full moon - the same nights when Sean regains his humanity. Like Sean, as a seawolf, she is completely ignorant of her human life. She keeps to herself, for the people of the isle still distrust and dislike her, gladly telling the nastiest stories they can think of about her to anyone who'll listen.

Neither darklord can be slain permanently through violence; they fully heal and return to life 1 round after being defeated. They also can't close the domain's borders, although since the only local vessels are small fishing boats that are no match for a giant shark or a massive seafaring wolf, they don't need to do much more than patrol the borders themselves.

Curing them simply requires breaking the curse by getting them to touch as humans, but doing so is tough; aside from the fact that they alternate human and monster forms, neither is aware of the fact that the other survives. Whichever of them is in beast form also refuses to get within 10 feet of the other one. They also won't willingly get within 5 feet of an Amulet of the Beast. So players are going to have to get creative to break their curse.

===Serenissa D'Aubliet===
Darklord of Romagna. Serenissa (female human spectre) was born an orphan; her father, a miller's son, was killed soon after her conception, and her peasant girl mother died in birthing her. She was taken in the local lord to serve as companion to his two daughters, but their initial friendship soured as they came of age and Serenissa realized the social gap between them. At the age of twelve, she was sent to the family of a neighboring lord to become a nursemaid to that lord's newly born twin children; Serenissa doted upon the children, and happily threw herself into their care.

However, she also became increasingly obsessed with fanciful daydreams about her origins, fixating on the belief that she was actually of noble birth and that her parents were both alive and desperately seeking her. She loved to tell these stories to her two charges... until the eve of their fourth birthdays, when, at the top of the Eagle's Tower, the two young children scolded her for lying and corrected her that she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a simpleton and a millerboy, both of whom had died. Mad with rage, especially when the twins revealed that everyone in the castle claimed that this was so, she pushed them off of the tower to their deaths.

Her skill at lying allowed her to escape being blamed for what she described as a terrible accident. For two weeks she festered on the idea that people were "slandering her" behind her back, and finally, two months after the day she had murdered the twins, she set a fire in the Great Hall that night, killing everyone in the castle.

Slinking away from the carnage, she made her way to the barony of Romagna, where she seduced her way into both a respectable position as lady's maid to the younger sister of Baron Etain and into the arms of Baron Etain himself. After several months of dalliance, he gifted her with a gemstone brooch... and then announced his upcoming marriage to the Lady Fialle, daughter of a neighboring lord, the very next day.

This pushed Serenissa over the edge and soon thereafter, she drew Baron Etain to a high tower, where she grabbed him and leapt off the edge, intending that they die together so she would not live alone.

But this time, with the interference of the [[Dark Powers]], her scheme failed. Serenissa hit the ground and was killed on impact, but her body cushioned Etain's fall, and so he lived. The madwoman's spirit rose from its grave as a ghost, trapped in an endless time loop; Romagna experiences only a single year, constantly recycling itself. It starts one week before the equinox Spring Festival, when Fialle arrives in Romagna for her upcoming wedding to Baron Etain. That week is spent in feasts and celebrations, capped off by a three-day non-stop revelry for the weding proper. Then, six months later, Fialle conceives Etain's child. And then, one week before the first anniversary of the wedding, time looks back and it is the week before the Spring Festival again.

Furthering Serenissa's torment, she is completely incapable of physically interacting with the people of Romagna, although she can manipulate their emotions despite the fact they cannot see, hear or touch her. She uses her emotional control to turn them into her agents of retribution, although she can't turn them against Etain or Fialle. This ability is defined vaguely, because she herself hasn't really studied her full capabilities with it.

Only visitors to Romagna are in true danger from Serenissa, because she is fully visible and audible to them, although still intangible. She invariably attempts to seduce the handsome male visitors to the domain, luring them away if they prove receptive to try and embrace them - doing so, however, results in her draining 1 level per 2 rounds, causing them to disintegrate... but if they break free, she attacks.

Serenissa is vulnerable to holy water, +2 or stronger magic weapons, and functional weapons made of gold. She is impervious to holy symbols, but can be turned with symbols of true love and matrimony - for example, the wedding rings of people who are actually married. If destroyed, she can reform at Etain and Fialle's wedding. Exactly ho to destroy her permanently is left vague, with her entry in the Book of Sorrows concluding with this paragraph:
::''Weapons forged from symbols of love (such as rings, charms, wooden wands, or ceremonial ropes used to bind a man and woman together at their wedding) may have greater effect, rendering her helpless or immobile. Her final death is likely to involve elements of her first experience; rejection, a long fall, and/or a noble lover. Heroes should beware, though—the dark powers may look with interest upon anyone who willingly transforms a symbol of love into a weapon of war.''

===Urdogen "The Red"===
Darklord of The Raging Tears. Male Human Spectre. In life, Urdogen (who first appeared in the [[Forgotten Realms]] splat "Pirates of the Fallen Stars") was basically Faerun's version of Blackbeard - if Blackbeard was a redhead. He terrorized the Inner Sea so badly that the nations of that region united to defeat his fleet, whereupon Urdogen fled and found himself spirited away by the Mists into the Sea of Sorrows... where he promptly hit a hidden reef and sank his ship, drowning.

Ever since then, Urdogen's ghostly vessel has sailed all the seas of the Misty Realm, cursed to never be able to come within sight of land and only able to rise from his watery grave during the nocturnal hours. Further stymying his desperate desire to reclaim his former reputation as a fearsome pirate lord, any who encounter Urdogen and live to tell the tale are cursed to forget his name.

To put an end to Urdogen, the ruin of the Raging Tears must be hauled up from the seafloor and carried inland, where it must then be burned completely to ash in a funeral pyre.

Interestingly, Urdogen's ghostly ship is actually able to return to the Inner Sea of Faerun on moonless, foggy nights in his homeworld, although he must return to the Misty Realms upon dawn.

If Urdogen chooses to close the borders of his traveling domain, the waters around his ship become rough and infested with a feeding frenzy of sharks; those who try to fly away will instead find themselves sinking into the water.

==5e Darklords==
As part of its general overhaul of the [[Demiplane of Dread]], 5th edition added a significant number of new darklords - some to replace former darklords, others ruling over brand new domains. Darklords who simply got retconned backstories and other traits have those details added to their entries above. Quite a few of these characters don't have much info on them due to being only mentioned in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book, most of which only have a single paragraph dedicated to their domain and darklord.

One unique trait common to all 5e darklords is that the personalizad domain border closures of the past are largely gone; there might be cosmetic tweaks, but in general most 5e Domains of Dread all function the same when a person tries to escape through a closed border.

===Chakuna===
The replacement Darklord of Valachan, and one of the few 5e darklords to explicitly continue on in some fashion from the setting as it existed before. A female [[werepanther]], Chakuna belongs to a tribe of [[werecat]]s (specifically panthers and ocelots) called the Oselo, whom were hunted to the brink of extinction by Baron Urik von Kharkov, as he had come to fixate upon them as the most intriguing and challenging quarry. (Nevermind that Urik was originally "Blacula Strahd" with no real interest in "hunting the most dangerous game".) To save her people, she went to the literal heart of the domain and performed an unholy rite, cutting out her own heart and offering it to the land as sacrifice in exchange for the power to defeat Urik. Long story short, it worked; she ripped out his heart, tore him to pieces, and buried his still-living and curse-spewing head in the ruins of his castle before building her own treetop hunting lodge atop the ruins. Which is actually kind of badass. But now the jungle has become hungrier than ever, and she must regularly sacrifice human hearts to the land to keep the plants and animals from slaughtering all the Valachani (shades of the Wildlands, there), which she obtains through the "Trials of the Heart" - ceremonially hunting down designated victims with the aid of trained [[Displacer Beast]]s. She won't touch a fellow Oselo, but everybody else is fair game.

Chakuna can only be killed if her heart is found in the secret grove where she performed her dark rite and destroyed, but unless somebody assumes her mantle in the process, then the jungle will be free to kill everyone.
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===Flimira Vhage===
Currently very little is known about Flimira Vhage other than that their domain is the office of a detective agency which is actually is an extension of their own broken mind.

===Jacqueline Renier===
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===The Inheritors of Darkon===
Similar to what happened during [[Grim Harvest]], Darkon currently has multiple Darklords while Azalin is missing. Specificly, there's only three of them this time.

'''"Baron" Alcio Metus''' is a female vampire, and the sister of Baron Metus - the vampire who got [[Van Richten]] started on his monster-killing path. Having risen to rule the criminal underworld of the Jagged Coast region, driving out her former Kargat masters in the process, Alcio burns with the desire for revenge against Van Richten for killing her brother. Not helping is that she's occupied Van Richten's ancestral home of Richten House and found that Van Richten's wife Ingrid still lingers as a [[ghost]] - but one who refuses to help Alcio in her quest for vengeance.

'''Cardinna Artazas''', the thrice-reincarnated leader of an elfin mystery cult in Nevuchar Springs, has damned her soul in the name of good: desperate to preserve Darkon, she has striven to revive the spirit of Darcalus Rex, the king who reigned over Darkon prior to the coming of Azalin. Unfortunately, all she has called forth is a necrichor, and she must constantly weigh her belief that what she is doing serves "the greater good" against the very real demands that the undead tyrant makes for ever-greater magical reagents and sacrifices.

Finally, '''Madame Talisveri Eris''' is an elderly but vibrant and intelligent aristocrat who accidentally made herself permanently invisible whilst seeking to make herself look younger. She uses her invisibility to her advantage, having created an array of different identities that she assumes through costumes and cosmetics. She's currently built up a cult amongst the younger members of Il Aluk's nobility, offering them an elixir on the night of the new moon that makes them invisible until dawn and then sending them out to commit crimes and mayhem that advance her cause.

Because none of them are true darklords yet, none of them have specific curses.

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===Isolde & Nepenthe===
Like the original Isolde, the 5e Isolde is an [[eladrin]] [[paladin]], though this one was an [[adventurer]] who battled [[dragon]]s and [[demon]]s that threatened the [[Feywild]]. This unknowingly led her into the machinations of Zybilna, an evil [[archfey]] who had lost a number of [[fiend]]ish allies to Isolde and her companions. Zybilna called upon her remaining pacts to arrange for a powerful [[incubus]] called "The Caller" (5e's retconned version of the Gentleman Caller) to corrupt and slaughter Isolde's companions; once that was done, the archfey stepped in and exploited Isolde's vulnerable state to become her "new best friend". She arranged for Isolde to become the guardian of a traveling fey carnival that also concealed a portal to Zybilna's realm... then, when Isolde began to tire of this role and their relationship grew strained, she secretly warped Isolde's mind with magic to ensure that Isolde would always prioritize the needs of the Carnival over her own wants. Even so, this wasn't enough to keep Isolde bound to Zybilna's reins. When Isolde encountered a traveling carnival from the [[Shadowfell]] managed by [[shadar-kai]], she made a pact with its twin managers to trade ownership of their carnivals, but only until next the two carnivals met. The shadar-kai agreed, and gave her the magical sword Nepenthe as symbol of her new status as owner and champion - but that wasn't enough for Zybilna. She used her magic to erase Isolde's memories of all things relating to Zybilna, and also sent fey creatures to forever follow and harass Isolde's new carnival.

To make things worse, Nepenthe was a cursed blade; an intelligent Holy Avenger used to executed thousands of criminals, not all of whom were actually guilty, the blade had developed a deep craving for bloodshed in the name of justice. In Isolde, it found an easily manipulated host; it awoke her memories of the Caller, and stoked her desire for retribution. In many ways, it could be considered the "true" darklord of the Carnival, especially given how Isolde constantly struggles to resist its naked, insatiable need to kill.

Isolde's curse, then, is to wrestle with both the imperatives of Zybilna and those of Nepenthe; she craves vengeance, but finds herself forever stymied by her need to tend to the ever-growing Carnival's need, as well as fearing that she may one day encounter the Carnival's true owners and be forced to relinquish it back to them. Explicitly, she could be saved if Nepenthe was taken from her, but its grip on her mind means she would refuse to abandon it.

===Klorr===
Darklord of Klorr. We know nothing about this darklord, but the name is taken from a character who appeared in the original Red Box; a clockwork-obsessed [[planeswalker]] [[mage]] who was infuriated that he couldn't synchronize and control his heart the way he could his clockwork creations. He made assorted dark bargains and ultimately came to rest in the [[Demiplane of Dread]], where he produced four cursed timepieces: the Water Clock of Klorr, the Moondial of Klorr, the Hourglass of Klorr, and his final work: the Timepiece of Klorr. This cursed pocketwatch gave Klorr extended life and increased arcane power, but required him to regularly charge it with murder, an impulse he succumbed to. It ultimately killed him when he failed to sacrifice a life to it on time.

The Timepiece of Klorr is given mechanical stats in the "Forbidden Lore" boxed set. Klorr's other works are statted in "Forged of Darknes":
* The Water Clock lets the user transform into a water [[elemental]], but might kill them in the process and also might leave them permanently trapped in elemental form.
* The Moondial grants powers based on the phase of the moon, but slowly transforms the user into a light-averse monster.
* The Hourglass can grant the user Improved Haste for 1 hour, but will age them 1d10 years and might also leave them under the effects of Slow for 24 hours after being used.

===The Last Passenger===
Darklord of The Mourning Rail. Nothing is known about this Darklord other than they were a VIP that delayed a train escaping from The Mourning, and threw out a bunch of passengers to make room for their self and their retinue, dooming the train, and they are now an undead being of some kind trapped on the train with the rest of the undead passengers.

===Myar Hiregaard===
Mentioned only in passing as the Darklord of the revised Nova Vaasa, She's basically a female Genghis Khan with a dash of Jekyll & Hyde; she was originally a female chieftain who united the nomadic plains-dwelling tribes of Nova Vaasa into a single culture, but she proved to be a terrible peacetime leader because she craved bloodshed and excitement. She tried to stave off her boredom with, quote, "brutal games" for a time, but ultimately she couldn't resist the thrill of war: she began fostering disputes amongst her vassal tribes so she had an excuse to lead her forces to crush both sides. This eventually got her claimed by the mists, and now she switches between two personas and possibly two bodies: as Mya Hiregaard, she rules with "strict fairness", but when she gets too bloodlusty, she transforms into her alter-ego of Malken and "sows discord across the plains".

...Whatever else you may think of it, at least it's more justified than Tristren "My dad got cursed and died, so I inherited his curse and became a Darklord without ever having to do anything to actually earn it" Hiregaard.

===Pietra van Riese===
A gender-swapped version of Pieter van Riese and the darklord of the Sea of Sorrows. Not much is known about her due to being in the "Other Domains of Dread" section, and therefore only getting one paragraph to herself. She was a ruthless pirate with a fondness for keelhauling her victims, and now she's a ruthless ''zombie'' pirate who speaks through the mouths of her undead crew.

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===Ramya Vasavadan===
Darklord of Kalakeri. Ramya was hand-picked by her father, the last ruler of Kalkeri, to succeed him, but when he died, her brother Arijani contested her claim, leading to a brief civil war. Ramya would have killed Arijani then and there, but their sister Reeva counseled mercy, and Ramya conceded, not really wanting to kill her brother anyway. She enjoyed a brief period of unchallenged leadership, bringing a golden age to Kalakeri, but all the while Reeva was working behind her back to build up support for Arijani, culminating in her freeing Arijani and launching a second civil war. Enraged, Ramya suppressed the rebellion with brutal methods, executing captured rebel ranas and executing them in horrifically inventive methods that only made the people distrust her more and furthered the fighting. At the second war's climax, Arijani and Reeva sued for peace and Ramya agreed... only to be captured by her treacherous siblings and murdered. Before the court strangler garotted her in the central courtyard of her own palace, Ramya cursed her siblings as bloodthirsty beasts.

Once it was done, Arijani and Reeva further disrespected their sister by throwing her body into the ocean... an act that resulted in a terrible monsoon lashing Kalakeri for weeks. And then, when it was done, Ramya rose from her watery grave and marched on her former siblings, followed by an ever-swelling army of undead soldiers made up of all her loyal warriors who had fought and died for her. This time, Ramya showed no mercy, capturing her siblings and having them crushed to death by undead elephants.

...And then they came back as fiends - Arijani as a [[rakshasa]] and Reeva as an [[arcanoloth]] - and the civil war has raged ever since.

This civil war is the primary curse that Ramya experiences, with two secondary elements. Firstly, despite knowing better, Ramya ''always'' remains vulnerable to their lies and deceptions, which prevents her from truly ending the war. Secondly, Ramya's direct control over the domain is tied to her being seated in the Sapphire Throne, the symbol of Kalakeri's ruler; if the rebels oust her from the Cerulean Citadel, then her dominion diminishes until she can reclaim it. A second curse she labors under is the fact that, despite being shrouded in an illusion of life, Ramya ''knows'' that she's actually [[undead]], and this is apparent in her reflection, so she bans mirrors from her presence.
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===Saidra d'Honaire===
The future darklord Saidra grew up on a tiny farm, raised by her widower father, who filled her head with stories of her noble bloodline - he claimed to be a duke that had been ousted from his rightful throne by a vicious younger brother. Life was hard, especially as Saidra's sincere belief in her father's stories meant she alienated her peers, and only got worse when Saidra's father married a prosperous merchant woman with two daughters from her previous marriage, all of whom tormented Saidra and forced her to work as their personal servant, ala Cinderella. One day, a nearby duke perished, and when Saidra wondered if it had been her father's evil little brother, she was forced to confront the cruel truth: her father's stories had all been a pack of lies, and he was nothing more than a common-born servant who had fled to save his neck after trying to nick silverware from the duke's kitchen.

Saidra went to her mom's grave to beg her mother's spirit for help, which was when a "kind, grandmotherly figure" appeared and granted Saidra her wish, clothing her in a magnificent gown and fine jewelry before conjuring a stately carriage to carry her to the masquerade ball that was being held to celebrate the coronation of the new duke. We don't know who this figure was, but it's interesting to note that Saidra's version of Dementlieu contains a [[hag]] coven who basically love to pretend to be Fairy Godmother figures so they can mess with people. Anyway, off Saidra went to the ball, plotting to kill the new duke and claim his title. When she got there, she swiftly seduced the new duke, so successfully that she began contemplating if it mightn't be better to wed the duke instead. Things were going smashingly... until the clock chimed midnight and the whole party began dropping dead of a sudden, fast-acting plague, which rather put a downer on things. The kicker, for Saidra, was as she and the duke lay dying in each other's arms and he confessed that he ''wasn't'' noble-born, but instead a commoner who had been adopted by the previous duke. In fact, he was actually Saidra's long-lost brother.

Enraged at this second "betrayal", Saidra stabbed her brother in the heart with the last of her strength and then tried to stagger away from the corpse, only to collapse dead on the stairs leading into the palace.

And then she woke up as a [[wraith]], the new spectral queen of Dementlieu, a shabby and impoverished town whose populace struggle to fake the appearance of being more important than they truly are, all the while risking Saidra's deadly wrath: she '''hates''' pompous fools who pretend to be what they aren't, aspire to higher station than they deserve, and fail to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

...Well, yeah, she wouldn't be a ''darklord'' if she wasn't at least a little bit of a hypocrite, now would she?

Saidra is a wraith who has the ability to launch free Disintegrates at anyone who reveals themselves to be lying about who they are in her presence - we don't know much more than that, mechanically. She lives in constant terror of being exposed as a fraud herself, and in fact she can only be killed permanently if she is revealed to be a fraud first. Related to that, she lives in terror that her hated stepmother and stepsisters are still alive somewhere in Dementlieu. Finally, almost tangentially, her status as a wraith means her beloved masquerade balls are a complete waste of time, as she can't enjoy any of the physical pleasures associated with them.

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===Sarthak===
Darklord of the Ashram of Niranjan, Sarthak is an evil bronze dragon who poses as a mystic named Niranjan. He send agents into the Mists bearing his philosophical writings, which promise escape, peace, and enlightenment to any who adopt their teachings. Anyone who comes to his monastery is told that they must divest themselves of worldly goods, which are added to Sarthak’s hidden hoard. Sarthak then helps his victim enter a blissful trance that causes their soul to slip away from their body over the course of days. Sarthak consumes this soul and replaces it with a shadow, leaving the victim’s body under his control.

There's no indication of what his curse might be, since he's in the "Other Domains of Dread" section of the book and as such only gets a single paragraph to himself.

===Teresa Bleysmith===

===Viktra Mordenheim===
Basically, she's Victor Mordenheim but a woman... what, that's not good enough? Alright...

Viktra Mordenheim was born the daughter of a minor noble family, as well as a natural prodigy in medicine - she taught herself anatomy as a child, and by the time she was a teenager she held a doctorate ''and'' had been appointed as a preeminent researcher at a local university. For all her genius, however, Viktra was arrogant, not to mention completely lacking in empathy, compassion and moral qualms. To her, medicine was just a way to sate her burning curiosity about the secrets of life. Also, she hated magic, regarding it as as "stealing the powers of otherworldly beings and cheating the laws of nature", and thus inferior to '''SCIENCE!'''

In the best Frankenstein tradition, she grew obsessed with the idea that she could not merely mend the sick, but actively create and even improve upon life. So she began hiring the services of bodysnatchers to provide her with fresh human cadavers for her research. This is how she met Elise; amazingly, the cold, aloof methodical surgeon and the beautiful but reckless and spontaneous body snatcher became infatuated with each other, and the two women's relationship swiftly changed from professional to personal. When Elise contracted an incurable wasting disease, Mordenheim became obsessed with saving her, and her experiments increased in numbers - she also began having living victims actively kidnapped for her experiments. Through countless murders, resurrections and remurders, Viktra honed her knowledege. Finally, as Elise fell into the deep sleep that marked the final stages of the disease, Viktra poured everything she had learned from a thousand deaths into saving a single life, crafting and installing the Unbreakable Heart: an artificial super-organ.

But just as she was stitching the fabulous device into place, constables burst into her lab, accusing her of being behind the recent string of kidnappings and murders. In the struggle, the lab caught fire and flooded with acrid chemical smoke: Mordenheim's last vision was of Elise rising from her table, a golden light glowing in her chest where the Unbreakable Heart had been installed.

When Mordenheim came to, she was in a strange, icy realm called "Lamordia", where she was hailed as the greatest genius ever, but there was no sign of Elise.

Viktra's torments largely center around Elise and the Unbreakable Heart; she can neither recreate the Heart on her own, but nor can she find Elise to study it again. Secondary to this curse is that she is showered with the love, respect and attention of Lamordia, whose people view her as a luminary savior; to Mordenheim, they are incomprehensible, and she loathes their constant distractions from her work.
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===Vladeska Drakov===
In a nameless world, in a land torn between myriad bitterly feuding royal families, the woman named Vladeska Drakov was a skilled fighter and general, a mercenary who came to be known as the Crimson Falcon, the leader of a well-regarded mercenary army called the Falcon's Talons. Business was profitable, and Vladeska was raking in the loot, with dreams of retiring young, cashing in her wealth and reputation to buy land and a title. Then came the sacking of Veivere, where the Talons accidentally killed a very important figure. So important that the entirety of the aristocracy took up arms against the Talons, determined to kill them all for it. Well, Vladeska had no intention of just rolling over and dying, and she launched a bloody counter-attack that soon turned into a crushing campaign of conquest; her forces swept through the land, replenishing themselves with conscripted peasants and wiping out everyone stupid enough to stand against them. Vladeska made a point of impaling ''everybody'' with even the slightest drop of aristocratic blood that she caught alive. Through years of bloody effort, she became the ruler of an empire that stretched over the former patchwork nation, but as she crushed the last defiant village, the smoke engulfed Vladeska and her most elite warriors.

They found themselves in a new realm, and after swiftly conquering its capital city, Vladeska declared herself Empress of Falkovnia. Which was when she found the downside of her rule... namely, the armies of [[zombie]]s that would attack her new kingdom every month with the rising of the new moon.

Vladeska's curse, obviously, is the zombie attacks, which press her to her limit as she struggles to throw back the dead and preserve what she has, but it goes deeper than that. Firstly, she suffers a horrible sensation of recognition; every zombie, to her, seems to be the animate corpse of one of her victims or her fallen soldiers, filling her with the gnawing belief that the dead are coming for ''her'' specifically. Secondly, no matter what scheme or ploy she tries, the result is always Phyrric; her people haven't been wiped out yet, but there's a big difference between 'survival' and 'winning'. Finally, she '''knows''' that her efforts doomed - there is ''no way'' to hold Falkovnia against the dead, not with the forces that she has, and the only chance she has for survival is to take her people and flee during the peaceful period after the dead are repulsed for the month. But she's too stubborn to run, and so she keeps fighting her bloody, futile war.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Ravenloft]]