PDA

View Full Version : Is this horror encounter too horrific?



Jeff the Green
2013-07-07, 08:32 AM
My Expedition to Castle Ravenloft players please go away.

My players are about to trounce their current encounter, and I only have one in the buffer so it's about time for me to plan out the one after that, and I want to check my idea before I invest heavy time into it.

A ways back the PCs fought an insane priest who'd caused a zombie plague by trying to raise his son from the dead. They made the mistake of doing Constitution damage to him, and so his Taint overloaded and he died. They also made the mistake of not securing his body, so when he rose as an undead there was no one to stop him from getting up and leaving. And then they made the mistake of letting the villagers gather his body, so no one realized it wasn't in the massive funeral pyre they had to build once they stopped the plague. Now it's time for that to bite them in the ass.

When they next go to town, they will discover that all the children are being kept indoors and every adult is about. The children have been vanishing for a week, usually about one a day, and the villagers are frantic. With one exception the players are goody two shoes, so I expect they'll drop everything to look for them. Eventually one child will mention that the last one to go missing went to the church to pray with "Father." This will hopefully make them nervous. Someone will also mention that the ravens have all disappeared.

When they go to investigate the church they'll discover that though it's been boarded up there are signs of it being lived in. Hopefully then they'll investigate the graveyard, where they'll be surprised by the priest and a shugenja that was a PC before she went insane from taint. The shugenja will have the most recent abductee splayed across an altar and be surrounded by seven tiny skeletons and a cloud of tattered ravens.

The priest will attack them with claws, bites, a venomous tongue, and a blade made of screaming souls while the shugenja casts some nasty spells on them empowered by the child's blood. The party will have to take out the shugenja before she kills the kid, but will have to deal with invisible walls of bone, the tiny skeletons (which explode when you destroy them), and the zombie ravens pecking their eyes out.

This will be their first real horror encounter; though they knew what they were getting into playing a Ravenloft campaign, previously it's been a sort of "heroes in a horrific situation" campaign. Do you think I'm going overboard with this? How can I ratchet up or down the horror as appropriate? (Note that this is a PbP game.)

The Rose Dragon
2013-07-07, 08:50 AM
I don't think it's particularly horrific. Gory, but not horrific.

Vultawk
2013-07-07, 09:12 AM
The only thing particularly horrific about it is that there are children involved. That can be a hot button issue for some people, but it doesn't seem like it's a factor with what you've said your group has dealt with in the past.

ShadowFireLance
2013-07-07, 11:58 AM
This to me is particularly awesome, not even close to "horrific"

Ionbound
2013-07-07, 01:01 PM
It's Ravenloft. The horrific bar is set so high, it'd take a Dwarf Fortress level of evil to even bump it. You're in the clear.

GlorinSteampike
2013-07-07, 01:32 PM
Yeah nothing super horrific unless you try to go into great detail of the child on the altar having stuff done to them or something. Making them skeletons is a good idea, because that takes away from the child-likeness of it.

I find as long as you don't make the players actually attack/kill them children can be used effectively.

allonym
2013-07-07, 06:04 PM
That's not really horrific at all. You get a bit of mileage out of kids-as-victims, I guess, but soaking things in blood is not horror.

Now, if you want it to be horrific, you make it look like your scenario is what's happening - have a conspicuous lack of children, at most one or two, who later disappear and the village disavows all knowledge of their existence, and have the village priest and magic user and a couple of other likely bad guys missing from the village, with villagers making dark allusions to them and shutting up if the players ask them anything. Plant clues in the places of the priest and magic user etc which might hint at bad things - a diary from the priest expressing bitterness at his ignorant flock, a dodgy-looking tome for the magic user, and so on. Then, once the players are really deep in the investigation and there's no going back, the actual truth comes to light.

The sacrificial cult is the children of the village, held in sway by a particularly charismatic kid who is very tainted. Perhaps have there be a location with corrupt magic where the child cult meets, the experienced inductees coercing newcomers to eat of tainted food which makes them suggestible, and twisted, and gives them some measure of power. The kids who disappeared earlier were some of the last few village kids to be recruited to the child cult. The village lives in abject terror of their own children, who sacrificed the priest and the magic user and the mayor and whoever to some nameless thing.

For added creepiness, add twisted nursery rhymes. Have a scene where older kids are trying to force a younger kid to lure her own parents to a spot so they can be taken. Play up themes reminiscent of playground bullying. Have the most unpopular kid in the village be there, genuinely happy to finally be accepted and loved by his peers, and have the charismatic ruler punish other kids (previously established to be brats) for picking on him. Read Lord of the Flies for inspiration for specific cruelties for children to commit. And so on, and so forth. Try to avoid a lazy way out, such as having the charismatic leader kid be secretly a demon.

It's creepy because it subverts not only your players' expectations, but also the instinctive feeling that children are innocent, and adults corrupt. It flips ideas of power and authority on their heads. And the parents, and quite possibly the players, depending on how murderhobo they are, will find it hard to stop their plans, not because they are stronger, but because they love their children, and harming a child is so intensely morally wrong. It would be important to make sure that they don't seem mindless, or utterly beyond redemption - definitely don't make it so that killing them could unequivocably be a kindness.

Scow2
2013-07-07, 06:28 PM
It's Ravenloft. The horrific bar is set so high, it'd take a Dwarf Fortress level of evil to even bump it. You're in the clear.
In that case, the evil priest should be running a Mermaid-harvesting scheme beneath the chapel (Made of the blackest of bronzes and paved in the bones of dwarves, goblins, and skeletal elks), and instead of killing the children, kidnapping them and putting them in cages with wolves to be mauled to death or come out bigger, stronger, mentally destroyed killing machines, across from a moat of carp.

Rhesus Macaques should also harrass the players at every step, stealing their items, luring them into ‼☼Spinning Blade Traps☼‼ that menace with spikes, and into wild Elephant and Unicorn attacks... while screams rise from the darkness beneath, and... where am I going with this?

1337 b4k4
2013-07-07, 08:33 PM
Doesn't seem particularly horrific to me. Like others have said leave things to the imagination rather than describing the horrific sacrificial scene and obviously be aware if any of your players have problems with the victims being children, other than that, it sounds like pretty typical horror tropes to me.

As long as you're already including zombie crows, I'd like to plug my corpse crow (http://idungeoncrawl.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/monster-of-the-day-corpse-crow/) monster. It's stated for S&W and other OSR games but shouldn't be too hard to stat for 3.x if you're running that.

Kazemi
2013-07-07, 10:21 PM
/snip

It's creepy because it subverts not only your players' expectations, but also the instinctive feeling that children are innocent, and adults corrupt. It flips ideas of power and authority on their heads. And the parents, and quite possibly the players, depending on how murderhobo they are, will find it hard to stop their plans, not because they are stronger, but because they love their children, and harming a child is so intensely morally wrong. It would be important to make sure that they don't seem mindless, or utterly beyond redemption - definitely don't make it so that killing them could unequivocably be a kindness.

This. Subversion is a great tool when it comes to the creepy and catching the players off guard prevents them from having had time to steel themselves. I also am a great fan of using Fridge Logic for a horror effect when you show them something non-threatening that turns out to have been a real threat. Google the creepypastas "White with Red" and "Portraits" for my personal favorite examples of this.

Also, Allonym, you scare me.

Ionbound
2013-07-08, 02:01 PM
In that case, the evil priest should be running a Mermaid-harvesting scheme beneath the chapel (Made of the blackest of bronzes and paved in the bones of dwarves, goblins, and skeletal elks), and instead of killing the children, kidnapping them and putting them in cages with wolves to be mauled to death or come out bigger, stronger, mentally destroyed killing machines, across from a moat of carp.

Rhesus Macaques should also harrass the players at every step, stealing their items, luring them into ‼☼Spinning Blade Traps☼‼ that menace with spikes, and into wild Elephant and Unicorn attacks... while screams rise from the darkness beneath, and... where am I going with this?

I was thinking more along on the lines of the Obok Meatgod incident *shudders*. But we don't talk about that anymore.

Killer Angel
2013-07-08, 04:20 PM
I was thinking more along on the lines of the Obok Meatgod incident *shudders*. But we don't talk about that anymore.

And with good reasons.

That said, I'm gonna join the chorus of "go with it, it's not too horror"

Alejandro
2013-07-08, 04:30 PM
Horror would be if you had the PCs kill a bunch of insane children who attacked them relentlessly with knives on their way to the village, and then arrived in the village, where the villagers ask them to please help their insane children running rampant in the woods.

:D

Jeff the Green
2013-07-09, 06:33 AM
Alas, I've already characterized the village children, so no murderous kiddy cult. And there's a paladin and a LG crusader around, so it'd be hard to make the villagers sacrificing their own kids.

I am looking to create some horror and squick, but not so much as to make my players dislike the encounter. I guess we'll see if this fits the bill.

(They've already had some fridge horror as they correctly guessed that they've been gated into Ravenloft for the purpose of turning them into zombies and then sending them back in order to infect their home-worlds and give Count Strahd hordes of undead at his beck and call. He's already got Eberron, and will soon have Rokugan. I'm just looking for some more direct horror this time around.)

JustSomeGuy
2013-07-09, 07:14 AM
The creatures and overall vibe in 'Shadow Over Innsmouth' is creepy but allows for LG attacks/self defence, and i'm sure it could be adapted to fit... have your players read it do you know?

SethoMarkus
2013-07-09, 07:54 AM
The creatures and overall vibe in 'Shadow Over Innsmouth' is creepy but allows for LG attacks/self defence, and i'm sure it could be adapted to fit... have your players read it do you know?

Along the same lines, what about "The Rats in the Walls" or "The Lurking Fear".

Neither of those is necessarily about (overt) evil, so even a Paladin living in the town might not hold back the tide alone, while still having cause to fight against the slowly creeping madness that such subtle evil brings. The keys to horror is to a) not let the PCs/audience know all of the information, let them make inferences, and b) continually take away or threaten to take away their hope.

Just read through some Lovecraft or Poe to get ideas.

(Also, as a note, rather than describe any gore or bloodshed, infer that it has happened but leave the details up to the player's minds. Rather than show or describe what happens, describe the reactions of any other witnesses; nausea, vomiting, screaming, psychotic episodes, etc)

JustSomeGuy
2013-07-09, 09:52 AM
Agree'd - if you explicitly tell the mabout the inhuman horror, they'll start the sword-swinging purgery, but if the townsfolk are all described as normal humans (with references and rumours of the hidden monstrosities and barbarism, but no direct evidence until they're in the belly of the beast so to speak) the PC's won't be attacking them in good conscience until they're way in over their heads and you set up the big 'breaking out of the depths of hell' adventure, if that's where you want to go with it

Draken
2013-07-09, 10:34 AM
Doesn't really strike me as particularly horrific.

If you do want more horrendous, you could add a Gray Jester to the fight and change the children from skeletons into Bleak Ones.

Fighter1000
2013-07-09, 11:02 AM
There are things about this encounter you describe that creep me out.
I don't know the minds of your players, but if I was in your campaign, I am pretty sure my mind would go back to this encounter at some point, and shudder.
I like that their are pretty much just undead for the most part. You don't slide into the otherworldly creature idea, which is a refreshing change.
Based on all deez posts, I've got to say Call of Cthulhu is on the mind now.

Wardog
2013-07-10, 02:41 AM
In that case, the evil priest should be running a Mermaid-harvesting scheme beneath the chapel (Made of the blackest of bronzes and paved in the bones of dwarves, goblins, and skeletal elks), and instead of killing the children, kidnapping them and putting them in cages with wolves to be mauled to death or come out bigger, stronger, mentally destroyed killing machines, across from a moat of carp.

Rhesus Macaques should also harrass the players at every step, stealing their items, luring them into ‼☼Spinning Blade Traps☼‼ that menace with spikes, and into wild Elephant and Unicorn attacks... while screams rise from the darkness beneath, and... where am I going with this?

Don't forget the zombie whales and giant sponge husks. And kitten-rot dust.

Doorhandle
2013-07-10, 05:43 AM
Don't forget the zombie whales and giant sponge husks. And kitten-rot dust.

...You know what, dwarf fortress would have a great atmosphere for a horror game. (and that last husk is totally a shoggoth.)

Ionbound
2013-07-10, 09:51 AM
Alas, I've already characterized the village children, so no murderous kiddy cult. And there's a paladin and a LG crusader around, so it'd be hard to make the villagers sacrificing their own kids.

I am looking to create some horror and squick, but not so much as to make my players dislike the encounter. I guess we'll see if this fits the bill.

(They've already had some fridge horror as they correctly guessed that they've been gated into Ravenloft for the purpose of turning them into zombies and then sending them back in order to infect their home-worlds and give Count Strahd hordes of undead at his beck and call. He's already got Eberron, and will soon have Rokugan. I'm just looking for some more direct horror this time around.)

Whoa, wait. Eberron got zombie apocalypse'd? How did that happen?

Scow2
2013-07-10, 10:58 AM
Whoa, wait. Eberron got zombie apocalypse'd? How did that happen?

DM Fiat, because that's the only justification. That setting by default is too awesome to fall to one because it would ruin everyone ELSE'S plans for the apocalypse.

Jeff the Green
2013-07-10, 11:04 AM
Whoa, wait. Eberron got zombie apocalypse'd? How did that happen?

A previous character (a Healer from Eberron) was killed, plague-zombified, and sent home (to his sleeping wife and children :smalleek:). The plague is almost unstoppable over the long run, especially since it transmits to already dead bodies (such as the thousands of victims of the Last War) and the only reason the heroes were able to stop it in Barovia is that it was a small town with a small graveyard.

Rokugan will suffer the same fate when they kill the shugenja (whom they don't realize has the plague) and she gets transported home.

So while they try to take down Strahd they'll have to deal with at least two gates, one of which pours out zombie warforged etc. and the other pours out zombie samurai.

allonym
2013-07-10, 12:06 PM
I'm afraid I don't see how you will ever manage to evoke horror with that plot. It's an error I made a couple of times when I was starting out as a Call of Cthulhu keeper. Scale is very important for horror. The most effective horror movies are not on a global scale. This is the reason that World War Z is not a horror movie/novel (though it certainly has "elements"), but 28 Days Later is. Now, that's fine if you want an epic confrontation game with a little bit of gruesome seasoning, but for bona fide horror you need a heavily scaled back scope.

AstralFire
2013-07-10, 12:36 PM
Yeah, see, I hate horror games/stories, and I'd be mildly interested in playing in a scenario like you've described, because it's really more "heroes against the vile darkness with horror elements" than "horror game with D&D elements."

Jeff the Green
2013-07-10, 02:02 PM
Yeah, this isn't meant to be a horror game. (I'm not a fan of most "pure" horror anyways, only Lovecraft for me.) It's a horrific fantasy, like the Weeping Angel episodes, a lot of The X Files, or some of Neil Gaiman's stuff. I mean, the climax will be fighting a megalomaniac Vlad Tepes expy with hordes of zombies from two or more worlds. It's the little stuff before that, like the skeleton children, seeing the zombified healer by teleported back to his sleeping wife and daughters, the were-rat swarm, and the realization that Strahd has the ability to strip a paladin's immunity to disease that I'm aiming to inject a little horror to.

Alejandro
2013-07-10, 02:24 PM
This is the reason that World War Z is not a horror movie/novel (though it certainly has "elements"), but 28 Days Later is.

To be fair, the movie is pretty horrible.

allonym
2013-07-10, 03:46 PM
In that case, it's all good.

One piece of advice I would carry over from actual horror games to a horror-themed heroic game is: All Victories Are Pyrrhic.

Winter_Wolf
2013-07-10, 09:52 PM
I don't see anything real horrific in the OP. Maybe I'm jaded, but that sounds more or less like a regular story arc to me.

If you really want to horrify your group, you need to know what horrifies each of your players, and to what extent. Then milk it. Milk it until it's dry. Then let them think they've overcome it or at least gotten away from it. Then use it to tear off their faces the faces of their closest allies and friends. Dial it back if anyone starts to cry/wet themselves.

Like I said, probably jaded. And maybe a little cruel.

scsimodem
2013-07-10, 10:35 PM
With the OP, I'd like to break it down.

Infection spreading undead: Fairly standard. Is central to the campaign, has wormed into pop culture.

Bad guy returns: A blow to the party, but not particularly horrific. Also legitimate, rather than DM fiat, so not unfair.

Death cult: Fairly common to more bloody, darker toned D&D games.

Child victims: This is your selling point. The human sacrifice part can be fairly gut wrenching if done correctly, but the child victims part gives it the punch. How well this works depends wholly on the players.

Advice:

What is unseen: It's too explicit. Everything is explained. Leave things unshown. What's so scary about the weeping angels and the X-files is that you can't see the monster coming at you. It comes at you when you least expect it. Instead give hints that things are wrong. Children are missing, but characters with high spot might see something scurry away out of the corner of their eye, but will find nothing if they investigate. Characters might think they see small eyes lingering in the shadows. Make sure it affects the characters mechanically, too. Eyes in the dark might make them suspicious. Having seemingly random items vanish from their inventories while they're not looking will really get them. This is where I like the 'abandoned' church. They don't find anybody there, but they do see that something is off. Find creative ways to make things seem 'wrong' without actually showing them anything they don't already know.

Despair: This is Ravenloft. I say they find out after killing the shugenja that he knew he had the plague and he was a good man only doing this to prolong his life until he could find a way to save his homeworld. Also, he makes shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero.

Seharvepernfan
2013-07-10, 10:58 PM
This to me is particularly awesome, not even close to "horrific"

Yeah, replace "horrific" with "awesome" and my answer would be yes.

tasw
2013-07-10, 11:03 PM
Combining some of these ideas would be best. Try something like this. The final kid is the actual mastermind and the whole scene is a set up.

Opening gates in ravenloft is nigh impossible according to the rules. So say in order for the shugenja to be transported home he must be killed by a righteous fool for good reasons. Or something similarly fairytale-ish. After he's killed and thus infects a whole new world the players find out a few adventures down the road that the whole scene was staged and kid played them. Preferably by returning to the town to find it totally enthrall to the dark cult.

Detecting mind control, evil, etc is also very hard in Ravenloft. Use that so that when the players see whats really going on they dont know which villagers are totally on board with evil, which are mind controlled and which are just intimidated into helping the dark, or at least not helping the good guys. That way hopefully your goody goody players will have to find someway to incapacitate the villagers / kids rather then just busting out the full attack butt kickery on everyone they see.

One of the best tropes of horror is the sequel..... you never really win.

SethoMarkus
2013-07-11, 07:35 AM
One of the best tropes of horror is the sequel..... you never really win.

Along the lines of never really winning, make death a real threat and possibility (if you haven't already). This doesn't mean that you have to actually kill any characters, but make it known that a death isn't going to be easily overcome with just a resurrection spell. Maybe something is harvesting souls, or there is so much negative energy that the victim almost immediately raises as undead.

When you make the players feel that their character only has one life, these unknown dangers suddenly seem a lot more terrifying.

Of course, I'm only assuming that D&D players generally have the mindset of their characters being functionally immortal- if they die, they can just be raised later on. I know this isn't true for all campaigns, but if you want to focus on horror you need to doubly make sure that the general mindset is "death is final".

Jeff the Green
2013-07-11, 06:33 PM
Opening gates in ravenloft is nigh impossible according to the rules. So say in order for the shugenja to be transported home he must be killed by a righteous fool for good reasons. Or something similarly fairytale-ish. After he's killed and thus infects a whole new world the players find out a few adventures down the road that the whole scene was staged and kid played them. Preferably by returning to the town to find it totally enthrall to the dark cult.

Actually, I've already made some alterations there. Strahd's grown frustrated with his inability to find and woo Tatyana. He learned from Lord Soth that there are places beyond the Demiplane of Dread, and he's convinced Tatyana's been reincarnated elsewhere. So he's figured out how to transport non-natives to and from Barovia (still doesn't work on inhabitants) and is planning on building zombie armies to take over other planes and look for her.


Along the lines of never really winning, make death a real threat and possibility (if you haven't already). This doesn't mean that you have to actually kill any characters, but make it known that a death isn't going to be easily overcome with just a resurrection spell. Maybe something is harvesting souls, or there is so much negative energy that the victim almost immediately raises as undead.

I think they already have this mindset to some extent. One character has died already (due to his player having disappeared), immediately rose as a zombie due to the plague, and then one round later was transported back to Eberron. For a while they thought the plague was gone, but now they know it's not. Once they run into the shugenja and (hopefully) kill her, she'll rise as a zombie and be transported to Rokugan. And even if they have a party member die without rising as a zombie, they have no way to cast raise dead.

SethoMarkus
2013-07-12, 08:40 AM
With everything else then, I think you're good to go!

Remember to trust yourself and not over-think things. Some scenarios will lack horror, some will get it just right, and some will go too far over the line, but you'll never know until you try. It sounds like you have some great ideas though, so I think you'll do well.

TeChameleon
2013-07-12, 10:01 PM
Honestly? Just taking the elements presented, I'd rejuggle things a little if you want horrific.

First off, animate the little skeletons. They can explode or not when defeated, but give them the dead children's voices and personalities, with maybe a flickering sort of ghost 'overlay' over the skellies so that they're clearly children.

Secondly, have the undead children believe that the priest is a doctor who is preparing to heal their playmate so he can join them.

And finally, have them react as would be appropriate for young children if large, heavily-armed and clearly hostile strangers burst into their place of safety, with crying for their parents/protectors, hiding behind the shugenja/priest, or maybe one of the larger ones trying to interpose him/herself between the PCs and/or kicking them in the shins (with accompanying necrotic damage).

So... the kids don't know that they're dead, nor do they know that they can pretty much kill with a touch, spreading the disease. Lots and lots of trauma to go around. Add in undead ravens trying to rip the PC's eyeballs out as they try to deal with this and you should have a 'fun' session :smalleek:

tasw
2013-07-13, 01:20 AM
Sounds like your on a good track. A little more high powered then ravenloft usually is, or at least more grand story then you typically see in horror.

So i would just suggest you keep in mind that horror is close to you. The big world threatening plot is good, but its action movie save the world stuff. Horror is your neighbor turns out to be a cannibal, the kid from school that no one noticed is now an invisible murderer or your mother was really a guinea pig for a mad scientist / mage/ necromancer and horrible things ensue.

Horror is close to you, it hits right at your home and your heart. Grand stories dont do that. Have one if you like, it sounds like a cool one. But take moments to make small battles, enemies and non-plot adventures hit very, very close to home and "real" to the characters .

Another_Poet
2013-07-15, 07:57 PM
It's not too horrific as described, provided you understand that it is very likely the Shugenja will kill the child before the PCs can kill the Shugenja.

Maybe not like 99% likely but certainly a good chance.

It sounds like you are playing 3.x which means the Shugenja can use the Coup de Grace action on the helpless child, certainly killing them in 1 turn. Even if that is not the system you're using, a single attack will likely kill a human child, IMO.

If you're OK with the PCs facing this non-heroic, we-were-too-late situation (more accurately: if they as players are okay with that kind of mixed success in their game) then it sounds great. Challenging, fitting to the setting, and highly dramatic.

Jacob.Tyr
2013-07-16, 12:27 PM
Maybe the Priest and Shugenja aren't necessarily bad, despite everything you've planned out? The Shugenja is tainted, and the shugenja and priest are the ones taking the children, but what if they're working to "contain" or "reverse" the taint? The priest could be turned into a tragic hero, working with the Shugenja (in whom he has managed to hold back the taint), to try and stop the spread of taint in the children?

Unfortunately they aren't being successful, and despite trying to separate the children from the taint in them, the taint is just managing to latch onto some part of them (skeleton) and leaving the rest of the child to die? The villagers might be inadvertently doing something themselves, which is causing the taint in their children.

Basically, after they kill the priest and Shugenja, children start warping with taint and you wind up with an outbreak in the village. Upon further investigation it turns out that X/Y/Z is responsible for what is happening, and the priest has been sacrificing his own soul to try and save the children from what was happening to them and felt wretched about what he was doing.

Tanuki Tales
2013-07-16, 01:37 PM
It's Ravenloft. The horrific bar is set so high, it'd take a Dwarf Fortress level of evil to even bump it. You're in the clear.

This was exactly what I was thinking when I read the first line of the first post.

Scow2
2013-07-16, 10:41 PM
I am going to have to say it: Having Count Strahd just take over Eberron is lame, and squandering Heroic Horror opportunities.

I'm not saying that his plague shouldn't have scarred Eberron, though - but that setting has things FAR more powerful trapped away than anything Ravenloft has to offer. Instead of the climax being Strahd opening portals and having Warforged Zombies (Which don't really work out) come through, it should have... nothing. Followed by Strahd getting offed unceremoniously by one of the Lords of Dust released by the damage caused by Strahd's plague.

Tanuki Tales
2013-07-18, 11:09 AM
I'm not saying that his plague shouldn't have scarred Eberron, though - but that setting has things FAR more powerful trapped away than anything Ravenloft has to offer.

Aren't the dark things that run Ravenloft unstatted entities though?

Segev
2013-07-18, 12:16 PM
Given that Ravenloft's Dark Powers are known for drawing in "horrific evils" to make into new Darklords, I could see them taking advantage of Strahd's efforts to nab a few of the horrific beings that lurk under Eberron for the Demiplane of Dread.

tasw
2013-07-19, 12:04 AM
Given that Ravenloft's Dark Powers are known for drawing in "horrific evils" to make into new Darklords, I could see them taking advantage of Strahd's efforts to nab a few of the horrific beings that lurk under Eberron for the Demiplane of Dread.

Indeed. To me the dark powers have always been a very powerful, beyond typical D&D god sort of alien power. Thats how they kept their region so isolated and abducted individuals from other realms with no repercussions to themselves.

Balor01
2013-07-19, 08:44 AM
Go a tad further.

The crypt:

The BBEG in this case uses children to have them infected with half-undead fetuses (boys and girls) in order to grow some super-MM2-ghouls. Each ghoul grows in a child, then shreds its way out of its bloated, stretched insides like a small, claw-y, bitey baby. While this would kill most humans, BBEG is always there to cast regeneration upon a child in order for him to re-grow back and be infected again. Most children are completely insane with their tongues bit off, some still have shreds of sanity, crying for End.

Walls of the crypt where all of this is happening in are marked with slogans: Be good to daddy or Baddy comes, All play and no work makes Jimmy a dull boy

Baddy is a mindflyer with slime template. He feeds on "bad" children, devours them partially, than has them regenerated back. BBEG keeps him alive, because mindflayer gives him valuable arcane and local info.