Through the Portal and the Mists

The Portal and the Mists

This story arc begins whent he party inadvertantly opens the Void Portal, and the Mists of Ravenloft begin pouring into the world. This story arc deals heavily in choice, consequences, and alignment. The mists move at a speed that is influenced by the party's actions, speeding up if they do evil deeds and slowing down if they further the cause of good. Along their flight fromt he mists, they are intended to encoutner many situations of a nature causing them to make moral decisions. Often, these situations are very grey, and it is not easy to decide what is the right thing to do. Often, no matter what they do, people will still get hurt, and it will seem like they made the wrong choice. This is intended to eventually lead to an underlying feeling of self-doubt and inevitability, which sets them up perfectly for the eventual eclipse of their world by the mists.

This story arc is a lot of fun to DM because there is the most freedom. Up to this point, the story arcs have been very regimented, and there has not been a lot of divergent, free style, gaming. All of that changes with this arc. With the exception of a few suggestions and to the types of events and encounters they should have to get them to question their own morality and motives, there isn't anything else structured other than the behavior and of the mists and the mechanics of the efefcts of its proximity to the party. This is intended not only to set a mood, but to give the DM and the players a chance to really let it unwind, and experiment in a situation where there is no real penalty in having a total party kill, as they will simply wake up in Ravenloft if the die. This allows the DM to be more ruthless with monsters, NPCs, traps, environmental hazards, and anything else he may care to dream up. Also, this greater degree of freedom allows the party their first chance to truly go in any direction they please, and feel like they are making their own destiny (which is ironic, because they only gained this opportunity due to them accidentally settign in motion a chain of events that epitomizes the theme of inevitability). They are free to visit any town they want, explore any dark forest they desire, and for the first time, they begin to realize that as society is breaking down due to a feeling of armoggeddonism, they are free to commit evil acts if they choose with little or no society consequences. This will again cause them to question their beliefs, as it truly is only themselves that they have to answer to. In that sense, the mists, brought into the world due to the actions of the party, have become linked to their actions. Since the mists are from Ravenloft, which feeds on evil, the mists grow and accelerate the process of consuming the world when anyone in the party submits to their evil desires, but are slowed and possibly stopped if the party remains true to its moral code of justice and righteousness.

The Mechanics of the Mists

[mechanics of the mist document]