Premise

FOR FOOLS rush in where angels fear to tread.

—Pope, Alexander

Here is a world beyond worlds. A demiplane beyond planes. Held fast in some scurrilous pocket apart from reality are realms which cast no inner light, reflecting nothing save darkness and shadow. Here lay desolate castles, gray landscapes, black clouds racing against the moon—all trappings, then, of something ancient, deep, and unquestionably Gothic. Here speak no gods. Here reigns only the potential and subsequent follies of men. No matter if hero or villain, all men here fear but one thing, and fear it ultimately:

The Mists of Death. Ravenloft.

For some, home.

Though the Realms of Terror’s true nature is forever a mystery, there is little question how the demiplane formed. Centuries ago the general Strahd von Zarovich settled in a land his family called Barovia in a castle he had built. It was in these hall and no other did such horrible events transpire that would wrestle Barovia from the Prime Material to its place beyond the Misty Border. Strahd, changed, put to pen his versions of events in a tome now entombed in the same castle which tombs him.

A page:

I AM THE ANCIENT. I AM THE LAND. MY BEGINNINGS ARE LOST IN THE DARKNESS OF THE PAST. I WAS THE WARRIOR, I WAS GOOD AND JUST. I THUNDERED ACROSS THE LAND LIKE THE WRATH OF A JUST GOD, BUT THE WAR YEARS AND THE KILLING YEARS WORE DOWN MY SOUL AS THE WIND WEARS STONE INTO SAND.

ALL GOODNESS SLIPPED FROM MY LIFE; I FOUND MY YOUTH AND STRENGTH GONE AND ALL I HAD LEFT WAS DEATH. MY ARMY SETTLED INTO THE VALLEY OF BAROVIA AND TOOK POWER OF THE PEOPLE IN THE NAME OF A JUST GOD, BUT WITH NONE OF A GOD’S GRACE OR JUSTICE.

Another:

THE DEATH SHE SAW IN MY TURNED HER FROM ME. AND SO I CAME TO HATE DEATH, MY DEATH. I MADE A PACT WITH DEATH, A PACT OF BLOOD. SHE FLED FROM ME. I PURSUED HER. SHE FLUNG HERSELF FROM THE WALLS OF RAVENLOFT AND I WATCHED EVERYTHING I EVER WANTED FALL FROM MY GRASP FOREVER.

I DID NOT DIE. NOR DID I LIVE.

I BECAME AS UNDEAD, FOREVER.

For a while, Barovia was the only land known to the Realms of Terror. Soon, however, others formed from the Mists. Azalin, a lich-king formerly of Oerth, had the second domain of Darkon—now, Necropolis—spring up around his person when he left Barovia after spending years as Strahd’s tutor and hateful confidante. In the ensuing centuries other domains have been revealed by the Mists of Death, each holding in their captive a person or people of unrelenting evil.

But they are darklords, and they are not the players in this story.

The Realms of Terror are many things, but they are inasmuch host to people who live their lives in the shadow of their rulers and the cosmic drama which surrounds them. Be they farmers, merchants, cobblers or even—yes—adventurers, these people count among them Outlanders who have been brought beyond the Misty Border from the Prime Material. It is with these people, their triumphs and tragedies which twine the great tapestry that is the Core.

These stories are never without struggle. Yet this Ravenloft seems to crystallize the greatest good as much as it defends—for a time—the greatest evils.

Synopsis

It is autumn in 755 BC, some five years after the Ruination of Darkon which consumed Il-Aluk and desecrated the kingdom into the rogue land now called only Necropolis. Azalin Rex is presumed gone or destroyed. Thousand of Darkonian refugees spill over her borders, some born in the kingdom and others remembering lives that were stolen from them elsewhere. Other casualties include the destruction of the Core’s Mistways connecting outside Clusters, now dormant and silent within the Core.

Then is the disappearance of neighbors Hazlan and Nova Vaasa to the Mists, those who once lived in either feeling their memories fade as though those two domains mean to slide out of history. Conjoined the night of the Ruination are the former territories of Verbrek and Valachan, now known as simply the Veldt, or “the killing fields”.

Few times have been more precarious in the Core, as from the vacuum left by Hazlan and Nova Vaasa springs Cordova, a vast empire including itself and its northwestern demidomain the Tirimisce Lands. While these imperials focus on fighting their ancient enemies in those bog-dwelling pagans, Cordovans have proven to be shrewd wildcards in this transformed Eastern Core, advantaging the undeath of Darkon even as they must fight legions of matriculated undead at their northern border in the name of their militant ideoligion. The Western Core fares only somewhat better as Falkovnia descends into outright civil war with northern Richemulot occupied, the Treaty of the Four Towers paralyzed by intrigue and ballroom politics.

Peril reaches even old, sinuous Barovia as Count Strahd von Zarovich has shut his borders until an entity he decries as “the Stargazer” is found and brought before him at Castle Ravenloft. Meanwhile old enemies in Borca conspire to advantage both situations east and west as they find suitable.

With twin apocalypses in the Grand Upheaval and now the Ruination of Darkon, the Core barrels toward a collective future never more uncertain.