Ravenloft/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster: Althought some Darklords like Strahd, Azalin or Lord Soth bear a tragic background, some others totally lack any sympathetic trait. The most notable being Vlad Drakov--a brutal, racist, sadistic dictator--or Lord Wilfred Godefroy--a peevish, arrogant, conceited snob with such an irate temper he beat his wife and daughter to death with his walking stick because his wife hadn't given him the son he wanted.
    • Ivan Dilisnya enjoyed torturing small animals at the age of six, killed a servant girl five years later, and poisoned his mother for no particular reason when he was twelve! And It Got Worse.
  • Moment of Awesome: Lord Soth, in the Ravenloft tie-in novel Knight of the Black Rose, is highly displeased to find himself taken from Krynn and dumped in a strange, misty land. He expresses his displeasure violently, to the point where Ravenloft starts to resemble Tokyo with Lord Soth playing the title role in a Godzilla movie.
    • Not to mention the part where a portal guardian in service to the Dark Powers demands Lord Soth's soul, and he insultingly informs her that if she wants his soul, she'll first have to 1) Go to Krynn 2) Go to Hell (well, the Abyss) and 3) Convince Chemosh, the Krynnish god of the undead, to fork it over(which still wouldn't get her the soul because his soul is bound to the armor he wears). The guardian thinks that one over a bit and just lets Soth go on his way.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Notable Acts of Ultimate Darkness (defined on the main page) by the setting's Darklords are:
    • Count Strahd Von Zarovich's murder of his brother Sergei over Tatyana, the woman both men loved, on their wedding day, leading to Tatyana throwing herself off the wall of Ravenloft as Strahd pursued her.
    • Lord Soth committed several major acts that would qualify as Acts of Ultimate Darkness:
      • He and his first wife, Lady Korrine of Gladria, had been trying to produce a son to be his heir, and Korrine had consulted a witch about the problem, who had agreed to help them, but had warned her that the child would be a representation of Soth's soul. Unfortunately, Korrine didn't know about the bad shit that her husband had done, including ordering the murders of his half-brother and sister by his seneschal Caradoc, else she would have known what would eventually transpire of the birth and would be of a mind to curse the witch. When she gave birth to the son in question, it had a face similar to that of dragon-kin with two arms on one side and a leg on the other, with the last leg placed at the bottom of the buttocks as if it were a tail. To say that Soth was pissed about this was a massive understatement, and thinking that she had cheated on him with some kind of demon, Soth murdered both Korrine and the monstrous child.
      • After marrying a second wife named Isolde he set out on a quest to stop the Kingpriest from unleashing the Cataclysm upon Krynn by forcing the Rod of Omniscient Wisdom into his hands (according to Isolde's vision, it would take many tries, and each time he was killed, he'd rise with greater power) in return for redemption. When Soth and the thirteen knights with him found the Rod, he left his soul due to the curse on the coffer, and was now a type of Lich, with his soul residing in the coffer like a phylactery, astrally projecting into his body, and unaware of this new state. On his way to Istar, he came across three elf-maids who proceeded to poison his mind about Isolde, telling him lies about her infidelity and saying that she had sent him on this quest to die in order to get rid of him. Soth got pissed again, returned home and confronted his wife just as the Cataclysm began. A chandelier fell on Isolde and their newborn son, and she begged for him to save their son, but Soth stopped himself from doing so, so as to prevent his own son from growing up as he himself had. With her final breath, Isolde cursed him to live the lifetime of every soul that he had caused death on that day, and as Soth's keep burned down, Soth became a Death Knight, and his retainers became undead.
    • Azalin Rex's execution of his own son after catching him freeing political prisoners.
    • Lord Wilfred Godefroy's murder of his wife and daughter with his walking stick because his wife hadn't given him the son he wanted.
    • Harkon Lukas abusing his position of the "Grandfather Wolf" in order to bring civilization to his homelands, driving out his own people in the process. Interestingly, the Act wasn't enough to catapult him to Darklord-dom; rather, it was using the colonists as a food source, which isn't normally a powers-check worthy act for wolfweres-rather, it was the betrayal of trust.