Premise

FOR FOOLS rush in where angels fear to tread.

—Pope, Alexander

Imagine, if you will, a world beyond worlds. A demiplane beyond planes. Held fast in some scurrilous pocket of reality’s jaws are realms which cast no light of their own, reflecting only shadows. Here lie dark castles, desolate landscapes, black clouds which race against the moon—trappings, then, of something deep, ancient, and unquestionably Gothic. Here speak no gods. Here may reign only the potential and subsequent folly of men. Here all men be they hero or villain fear one thing, and fear it ultimately.

The Land of the Mists. Ravenloft.

For some, home.

Though the true nature of these Realms of Terror is ambiguous, there is no question as to how the demiplane formed. Centuries ago the noble general Strahd von Zarovich settled in a land called Barovia in a castle he had built. In these halls and no other did such horrible events transpire that Barovia was wrestled from the Prime Material to its place now beyond the Misty Border. Strahd, changed, put to pen his version of events in a tome entombed in the very castle that 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 ME 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 stepped from the Mists. Some good and some evil, and not all of them men. Azalin, a lich formerly a king of Oerth, created the second domain of Darkon—today, Necropolis—after he left Barovia discovering secrets he believed to be truths about the Mists and Strahd’s imprisonment, for he was imprisoned. In the ensuing years other domains have formed, each holding in their captive a person or people of unchanging evil.

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

The Realms of Terror are many things, but they are also host to countless folk who live their lives independently 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 worlds originating on the Prime Material, led here by the same Mists who trap all. It is with these people and their triumphs or tragedies that we form the fabric of the great tapestry that is the Core.

Their stories are not without struggle. Yet in this Ravenloft seems to seek to crystallize the greatest good inasmuch as it will defend—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, desecrating the landscape into the rogue “nation” called Necropolis. Azalin Rex is presumed gone or destroyed. Thousands of Darkonian refugees spill across her borders, some born there and others who now remember lives stolen from elsewhere. Another casualty was the destruction of the Core’s Mistways to any outside Clusters, now dormant and silent.

Curiouser still was the disappearance of neighbors Hazlan and Nova Vaasa into the Mists, those who once lived in either finding their memories fading as though the two domains are sliding 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”.

There have been few times more precarious in the Core, as from the corpse of Hazlan and Nova Vaasa has sprung Cordova, a vast domain including itself and its northwestern demidomain the Tirimisce Lands. A country of imperials fighting their ancient enemy in these bog-dwelling pagans, Cordovans have proven to be shrewd and not well understood wildcards in the Eastern Core, advantaging the undeath of Darkon even as they fight legions of matriculated undead seeping past their northern border in the name of their militant religion. The Western Core has fared little better as Falkovnia descends into outright civil war with sections of Richemulot occupied, the Treaty of the Four Towers lying paralyzed by intrigue and ballroom politics.

Peril has reached even old, sinuous Barovia as Count Strahd von Zarovich has shut his borders until an entity named only as “the Stargazer” is found, captured, and brought before him at Castle Ravenloft. Meanwhile their old enemies in Borca conspire to advantage both the situation in their east and the brewing call for arms in their west.

Transformed first by the Great Upheaval and now the Ruination of Darkon, the Core barrels toward a collective future which has never before been more uncertain.