Café de Nuit

Blood's main character, Caleb, is an excellent NPC.

His story has him as a fearsome gunman even at age 17, living in a frontier state. In his 20s he encountered the work of the Cult of Tchernobog (the One Who Binds) when he found villages burned and the people slaughtered. On one such occasion he found a survivor, Ophelia - a woman driven mad with anger at her dead husband, a cult member who failed to protect her from the cult's depredations.

Caleb and Ophelia developed a dark bond, Ophelia drawn to his strength and ruthlessness, and Caleb finding in her the one thing in the world too beautiful to destroy. Caleb joined the cult through her and over the years, rose through the ranks, to form the top echelons of the cult, alongside Gabriel, Ophelia, and Ishmael. It is likely that he gained some amount of magical powers during this time as well.

Tchernobog proved a fickle god, however. It turned out that humans on this world were not his only servitors. Strange interlopers from other dimensions also bent his ear, eventually causing him to cast away the human servants. Inhuman servants took Gabriel, Ishmael, and Ophelia, leaving Caleb to face his dark god, who cast him into a hollow grave to consider his power for eternity.

Caleb wakes up in the grave in a body that protests with every movement. Consumed by a burning desire for vengeance, he vows to bring ruination on the Cult and its dark master for the whimsical betrayal of their most trusted servants.


In-game, Caleb has a dry sense of lucid humor mixed with periodic episodes of psychopathy. He is an excellent marksman and can take a much greater amount of punishment than the human frame normally can. However, given that his enemies are armed with 1920s-era firearms, explosives, and magical weaponry, he still has to be judicious in picking his fights. As he follows the trail of the Cult back to the top echelons, he will move beyond the realms of normal human cultists and discover otherworldly enemies, eventually confronting Tchernobog himself in the Halls of Epiphany.

Interestingly, Tchernobog is etymologically very close to the dark god that appears in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Tchernovog. Both derive from an Eastern European deity...

I'm hoping to write up a conversion for Blood the video game to Ravenloft rules. I'm not sure if I want to do this for the Masque setting or not. The presence of dynamite, firearms, and the steam engine suggest that it could work in Masque campaigns. Alternatively, the tie-in to EtCR suggests a possible crossover there too.

Well, as long as they make it OS 9 compatable...

Yeah I know, but i'm Retro that way.

I'd like to see a Nocturne sequel (yes, I know there was a few unofficial ones, but what about a survival horror/RPG?

You start in 1898, as Roosevelt as he kills the werewolfe, then go through the ages, selecting missions to go on and which members to put on them. You could skip missions, but you may just get an oppurtunity to take it again, only it's worse, or the effect of not taking it at all can affect your game's difficulty. I also think they should have a "team system" where each person has abilities. If you want me to elaborate on this, just say so.

What if, for all intents and purposes, it /looks/ like Ratik's finally hunted down his killer, you get right to that oh so saisfying moment where you're choking the jerk to death...

...and then it dissolves into mist, with Azalin's faint laughter around Ratik's ears. The entire quest was after an illusion of Ratik's killer created by Azalin, to maniuver the myopic reverant's path in the way of certain plans Azalin wanted furthered, or plots of other Darklords he wanted foiled. Your choices during the game-how ruthless you were, if you were a jerk for being a jerk's sake, if you paused to help people, that kind of stuff, would show how successful Azalin's little scheme was.

Sure, it's frustrating, but sometimes that's Ravenloft. And it's a good way to have a logical conclusion, "The battle with the killer." while still keeping Ratik around.

Anything involving Azalin directly is something of a moot point anyway. Azalin in 2nd ed. could instantly seize control of any undead creature, and in 3E he gained the power to modify your memories, regardless of whether you were undead or not, and you got no save against it.

If I were Ratik, I'd stay the heck away from Darkon. Toben the Many has exactly the same policy for exactly the same reason.

...

Holy cow! What if... what if the killer of Ratik was a part of Toben? Not when he originally killed Ratik, of course, but in the intervening years he fled from Darkon and hid himself somewhere and a Toben infestation killed him and now he's part of that tribe...

That would be awesome - a revenant who can't be killed and keeps coming back, against a hivemind undead gestalt entity that can animate and keep on living as long as it has some undead material to work with...

Now that's epic.

That'd be a hell of a boss fight, yeah.

HuManBing, you just blew my mind.

Hear that sweet, cool silence? Even the Voices In My Head are impressed...

HuManBing wrote: Holy cow! What if... what if the killer of Ratik was a part of Toben? Not when he originally killed Ratik, of course, but in the intervening years he fled from Darkon and hid himself somewhere and a Toben infestation killed him and now he's part of that tribe...

That would be awesome - a revenant who can't be killed and keeps coming back, against a hivemind undead gestalt entity that can animate and keep on living as long as it has some undead material to work with...

Now that's epic.

That would be fun, but very...difficult. I mean, Ratik's own body could be used against him. Under the circumstances, no true resolution could be reached. Then again, it is Ravenloft, so one shouldn't expect things to wrap up all nice and neat where the villain loses.

Oh, and my first post, and all that.

Welcome to the Fraternity! We hope you'll enjoy your stay and if you need anything, just scream!

*Howl of pain from elsewhere in the dungeon*

Oh! We're just so busy!


I checked VRGttWD and it says that Toben can only seize control of something that his zombies kill. Because he can't kill Ratik, Toben can never seize control of him. Additionally, it's not clear whether Toben can seize control of undead creatures at all. Toben's spawn ability is more akin to a vampire's "stuff I kill become my undead servants" rather than Azalin's "anything undead is a potential instant servant, no save or Spell Resistance".

So Toben v. Ratik is still on!

While it's an interesting quandry, I think that if Ratik's killer were slain by someone/something else, the revenant would probably collapse into dust, or at least sense that it had happened and that his goal of revenge had become unattainable. It's not his killer's body he's really after, but the soul/personality of whomever decided to murder him; whether or not that person's dead body gets animated after-the-fact as one of Toben's zombies or not shouldn't make any difference to Ratik. (Indeed, he may even consider it a fitting irony, given his own undead state.)

OTOH, that gives me another idea: what if Ratik's killer wasn't acting of his or her own free will, but was actually possessed by an odem at the time? Ratik might track down the person whose hands struck the killing blow, only to find that the "killer" knows nothing about the murder, and that killing the "killer" brings him no release. Now, he's got to track down the spirit that was really to blame, as it jumps from body to body...

HuManBing wrote:Welcome to the Fraternity! We hope you'll enjoy your stay and if you need anything, just scream!

*Howl of pain from elsewhere in the dungeon*

Oh! We're just so busy!


I checked VRGttWD and it says that Toben can only seize control of something that his zombies kill. Because he can't kill Ratik, Toben can never seize control of him. Additionally, it's not clear whether Toben can seize control of undead creatures at all. Toben's spawn ability is more akin to a vampire's "stuff I kill become my undead servants" rather than Azalin's "anything undead is a potential instant servant, no save or Spell Resistance".

So Toben v. Ratik is still on!

From a video game perspective, that would make a good end game showdown. Let's say the final battle happened in village. The fight would involve not only defeating the Toben, but also protecting innocent lives from being killed by the zombies. Fail to save even one, and he has a body to reinhabit, thus making the fight twice as hard. Save them all and then you only have to fight one incarnation. Fail to save any and you're really in trouble.

Oh, and thanks for the welcome.

One more thing:

What would be the most Ravenloft-esque moment in (insert videogame title here)

I'd have to say that for Oblivion, talking with the Dark Brotherhood people can be really, really weird.

Ornum wrote:Let's say the final battle happened in village. The fight would involve not only defeating the Toben, but also protecting innocent lives from being killed by the zombies. Fail to save even one, and he has a body to reinhabit, thus making the fight twice as hard. Save them all and then you only have to fight one incarnation. Fail to save any and you're really in trouble.

Actually, given Ratik's demonstrated level of compassion for people who impede his quest for vengeance -- deliberately or by simply getting in his way -- my guess is that he'd solve the quandry by simply killing all the innocent bystanders himself. If they're cut down by Ubel before they can succumb to disease, Toben can't do diddly-squat with the resulting corpses.

Not to imply that wouldn't be a "Ravenlofty" ending, in its own way, but still....

Georg Kristianokov wrote:One more thing:

What would be the most Ravenloft-esque moment in (insert videogame title here)

Clive Barker's Undying - pretty much the whole damn game is a Ravenloft fest. But if I had to choose a specific moment, it would have to be the boss fight against Lizbeth. You have a beautiful, murderous, and remarkably well preserved undead female wearing the remnants of her burial shift as she chases you through the catacombs where, just moments before, the thoroughly-decayed corpse of her mother stood at a table crooning a lullaby.

Lizbeth hounds you through mist-enshrouded hallways and over piles of clacking bonehoards. Every so often you bump into something in the dark and it raises its bony hands to swipe at you with a wickedly sharp quarterstaff.

Quite possibly the scariest game I've ever played.


In Blood, the boss fight against Cheogh would have to be the most Ravenloftish battle I can think of. After fighting to get to the roof of the Cabal temple, Caleb gets to a sacrificial altar where he sees the remains of his wife, Ophelia. Though she's still recognizable, there's a moment's shock when he realizes he is too late and she is beyond saving, no matter how heroic his efforts.

His rage boils over and he screams to the skies - "Show yourself! SHOW YOURSELF!" Then Cheogh, the otherworlder, swoops down from the skies with his two attendant beasts and the battle begins in earnest...


In System Shock 2, it would have to be the maliciously-difficult Cargo Bay level, where ammunition is terribly limited and the enemies keep coming back. Round a corner - over the crates - past the turrets, they're there and waiting. And as your latest pistol breaks in your hands, or your last bullet ricochets off a turret's shell, you have only one last option open to you - RUN!


As for Thief - two words: Cathedral cutscene. Best plot in a game ever, hands down.

Almost nything whatsoever in Koudelka or Shadow Hearts can be considered Ravenloft-fodder. Reading the Guard's Diary or Patrick's research notes in the former game can still give me chills. And the cutscene where Koudelka is knocked out by Ogden, wakes up strapped to the table while he's honing his axe, and then is rescued by Bessie (who then kills herself because "Ogden's waiting...") is pretty impressive.

And then there's the ladies' room scene in the inn in Prague as far as Shadow Hearts goes...not only is the set-up creepy, but having to fight Olga with only Alice is no picnic. And the entire Dollhouse dungeon had me jumping at every little noise in the apartment (especially since I was playing at 2 a.m. and my wife had gone to bed...)...especially when you realize that the little girl's diary was written by the doll...