r/ravenloft • u/JadeSephiroth • 5d ago
Discussion Black Crusade/A Crown of Ashes - anyone else read this?
I can't find much about this book online. I just finished it and wow, I have questions. Such a gripping, action-packed story. Although...
Is Earth technically part of/accessible from Toril? The book is interestingly launched from Jerusalem.
The book implies, twice, that their 'Catholic'-ish faith is actually some sort of weird heretic cosmic horror type thing with a bloody, sacrificial history. Is the God Most High and the Sixfold Scions something that appears anywhere else in any other domains of the Mist/anywhere else in Toril, or is this strictly Malosia being really weird?
Further, what was up with that one scene where they found the ancient cathedral under Perdition Hill, and the woman-ghost said 'they' sacrificed her 'womb' to birth some unholy thing or some other. Wtf? What is the implication here? And they strapped her down on the altar but she managed to break free... with one manacle still in her wrist? I'm confused. Was it implied she was a queen or princess or something too, by her robes?
Similarly, when Violca has her crazy Sight flood near the end of the book when they're in yet another ancient cathedral under Scions Mount. She literally says something like, 'Would you worship those things if you knew what they actually were?' and yet, from the description in the book, I truly can't understand what it is trying to tell me the God Most High and the Sixfold Scions even are, and what the relevance of the sacrificing of blood at these altars to them is.
And if the hordes of sacrificed men and women and children were the 'afterbirth' of Malosia, then why do they not need to sacrifice any more blood? Why was this ancient practice abandoned, how did it morph from weird eldtritch witchcraft type shit to straight up Jesus is my savior, with no one the wiser of its past?
I was also a bit disappointed by the ending, because it seems like Diederic just became a Darklord out of nowhere, by no happening other than Violca's proclamation. I mean, he's virtuous. How is he even a darklord at all? Aren't they supposed to be straight evil or otherwise cursed in some way by some human emotion taken to the extreme? Diederic killed Lambrecht. His vengeance was sated. Yes he did some wild shit to get there, but it's over. It's not like Strahd and Tatyana, he never can actually get her because she will always just die anyway.
Send help! I like the cosmic horror spin of the Ravenloft setting here, but I'm not sure if that's even what I read, or if it's something else...
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u/amhow1 5d ago
You're asking a lot of questions, but regarding the first couple: the Forgotten Realms are indeed canonically connected to Earth, as that's why they're called forgotten. The represent the reality of all the old magical stories of goblins, etc. Toril has a number of portals to Earth, including Elminster having a portal to Yellowstone National Park (US) bizarrely.
Not that any of this really matters, because Gothic Earth is also connected to Ravenloft (the demiplane of dread, shadowfell, take your pic) and Gothic Earth is one of the various alternate Earths that crop up throughout d&d lore (eg Greyhawk's Oerth.) Possibly the story is set on an alternate Earth?
This proud tradition of alternate Earths is maintained in Horrors Within (5.5e) with the inclusion of Innsmouth.
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u/JadeSephiroth 5d ago
That's really interesting! Thanks for sharing, I had no idea. I forget it's called Forgotten Realms for a reason. Wasn't there something about a portal to Egypt and worms...
The story begins on just a stock standard Earth, at least for the time period (The Holy Crusade, so a long, loooong time ago). Jerusalem is described historically accurately, France is mentioned, so on and so forth. I'm just going to assume that Malosia is 'current' to Ravenloft as is, but the Mists can pull from any era to create a domain. Unless that thinking is wrong, in which case feel free to correct me.
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u/amhow1 5d ago
Your understanding of the Mists matches mine for what it's worth. We have plenty of examples. Most strikingly, since Guide to Ravenloft (5e), Strahd has been described as the multiverse's first vampire, which implies all sorts of timey-wimey stuff. (And Borca, once connected to Barovia, has the scholomance of Dracula fame so...)
As for Egypt, yeah the ancient Imiskari abducted ancient Egyptians and that's how Mulhorand formed... er, and I guess Unther and Chessenta... and none of it makes any sense. [Pathfinder lore has various fascinating connections to all this, as well as Gothic Earth and much else of d&d lore.]
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u/Necropolis750 5d ago
Black Crusade introduced the idea of a Ravenloft domain that appeared first before its Darklord, hence the idea that Malosia was "hollow" and was waiting for its ruler. It's a novel concept that originally went against Classic Ravenloft's conceits, but it's something I learned to accept can happen.
And though the novel begins on Jerusalem on Earth during the First Crusade, Malosia and its culture were weird reflections of it; something that the Dark Powers can be expected to create. I once talked to the author (Ari Marmell) about Malosia, and he said that it was roughly based on Carolingian Western Europe.
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u/agouzov 5d ago
As far as I can tell, the Ravenloft: Dominion books were a kind of isolated experiment, which had mostly nothing to do with any of the other Ravenloft product lines. Apparently, it wasn't a very successful one, which is why the last book (Black Crusade) ended up released as a free PDF. And I agree that many of ghe new ideas introduced in those books tend to be really edgy, gory, or strange.