The Land: Nova Vaasa is a fairly large domain on the east side of the Core. Next to the Balinoks, the terrain is rocky and steep, but it quickly spreads eastward into a vast, grassy plateau dotted with occasional rock outcroppings. Aside from the trees along the rivers, woods are scarce, and nearly a quarter of the land is devoted to farming. The weather here is temperate year around, and farmers can harvest their wheat, oat, and rye crops three or four times a year. The soil is rocky, and fields cleared for farming are bordered by crude stone walls. Despite Nova Vaasa's relative youth as a Core domain, many of these walls appear ancient. Abandoned, roofless stone huts grouped in circles mark the habitats of forgotten families, and the tombs of a forgotten civilization are carved into the bluffs in the northern part of the domain.
Even newer buildings in Nova Vaasa are commonly made of stone. Nova Vaasan lumber often rots in just a few years; As a result, timber for construction is usually imported from other domains.
The city of Kantora lies near the center of the domain. It rivals Lekar in size, with sixteen thousand people, mostly peasants living in squalid conditions after being driven off their lands by exorbitant taxes. Egertus is about half that size, being home to nine thousand. Egertus has been the termination point for merchant caravans from Falkovnia and other nations further west. This cosmopolitan city is the center of education in Nova Vaasa and rivals Port-a-Lucine in culture. It is the location of some of the finest boarding schools, colleges, and medical institutions of the Core, including a Clinic for the Mentally Distressed. Although much of its staff - including medical pioneer Dr. Gregorian Illhousen - recently vanished mysteriously, the facility continues to be on the cutting edge of treating insanity and mental disorders. The smaller towns of Liara, Arbora, and Bergovitsa house about two thousand people each.
This domain is known mostly for its horses. The best mounts in Ravenloft come from Nova Vaasan bloodlines. Many of them run wild, particularly along the eastern ranges that spread out flat to the horizon in grassy plains. Commonly, herds of twenty to fifty black steeds thunder across the open range, spirited and free. Some claim that by night, herds of nightmares replace the mortal creatures of the day.
Cultural Level: Medieval, though Egertus is more chivalric due to outside influences.
The Folk: Nova Vaasans are sharply divided into a small aristocracy, impoverished masses, and a vague middle class, which consists of tax collectors, merchants, and clever thugs. The rich are very rich, while the poor are very poor and generally miserable. Vice and violence are rampant in the domain's large cities, and each town has an inordinate number of gambling houses and taverns.
The peasants and the working poor in the cities dress in plain, brown clothing that is usually heavily patched. The men wear loose shirts and cotton trousers, while the women wear blouses and divided skirt-pants, which allow comfortable riding for those wealthy enough to own a horse. Most peasants go barefoot, though a handful wear boots.
The nobles of the domain dress in elaborately colored costumes, a brilliant contrast to the clothes worn by the peasants. The men wear baggy pants tucked into shiny, black riding boots and shirt sleeves and collars trimmed with lace. The women dress in elaborate riding skirts made of velvet, soft cotton blouses trimmed with lace, and riding boots. Their hair is covered with beautiful scarves, trimmed with small gold coins and bells that jingle upon their forehead.
The men of Nova Vaasa, from peasant to noble, pride themselves on their mustaches, letting them grow long and bushy and waxing them into tight curls. A thick mustache is taken as a sign of maturity and virility.
The Law: The domain's aristocracy consists of five families. Four of these families (the Hiregaards, the Chekivs, the Rivtoffs, and the Vistins) live in castles on the grasslands and have the right to tax the peasants who live along the Dnar, Little Borchava, Volgis, and Ivlis rivers respectively. Each family pays tribute to the fifth family, the Bolshniks, who live in a castle in Kantora and control the Borchava River farmlands. Prince Othmar Bolshnik is the current political leader of the domain. There was a time when the noble families would each rule the domain for five years at a time. However, Othmar came to power twenty-two years ago and has taken several steps to insure that his family remains in power. He commands a sizable cavalry, consisting of 1st-level fighters equipped with ring mail and clubs. In addition, he has recruited dozens of lycanthrope mercenaries that serve as his special enforcement squads.
The other noble families pay their tribute to Othmar, though some grudgingly. The Hiregaards and Chekiv families support Othmar's rule; they feel that if Othmar did not have Bane's blessing, he would not be ruling. The Rivtoffs and Vistins are less pleased with Othmar and wish to return to the traditional rotation system. Neither family is strong enough to oppose Othmar and his forces, however.
Native Player Characters: Nova Vaasan heroes divide along the same lines as their countrymen. When a hero is created, the player must roll percentile dice. Any result of 89 or less means the character is from the lower class and receives half his normal starting allotment of gold. These characters are accustomed to poor accommodations, so they can always manage to find food, lodging, and clothing for half the price listed in the Player's Handbook. With a result between 90 and 95, the hero is a member of the domain's emerging middle class and receives normal starting funds. If the result is 96 or higher, the hero is a member of the aristocracy and receives five times normal starting money; further, the player must then choose which of the five ruling families his character belongs to. Characters from the upper class are required to purchase goods of extremely high quality. Thus, their weapons, armor, and miscellaneous equipment will always cost 50% more than listed in the Player's Handbook.
Heroes may be drawn from all classes permitted in the Ravenloft setting. The official religion of Nova Vaasa is the Church of Bane. The tenets are the same as the church in Hazlan (see the "Hazlan" entry), but the Nova Vaasan church has no schism. Although these priests also lost their spells during the Grand Conjunction, they uniformly believe that it was merely a side effect of the catastrophe, not due to Bane's disfavor. As such, they are also keenly interested in preventing any such event from occurring again. Nova Vaasan priests of Bane have major access to the spheres of all, combat, healing, necromantic, and sun and minor access to the spheres of numbers and wards.
All Nova Vaasan natives have an innate understanding of horses. This ability functions like the 1st-level priest spell animal friendship, except that the character must spend 1 d6 rounds attempting to convince the animal of his good intentions. Additionally, Nova Vaasan nobles receive the riding proficiency for free.
Personalities of Note: A beastly creature known as Malken plagues this land. He is known to stalk and brutalize young women and their husbands or lovers, but he always seems to escape town guardsmen undetected.
One of Nova Vaasa's most famous residents is a grim-faced warrior named Weathermay. He rides a black warhorse and is always clad entirely in black. He roams Nova Vaasa on a relentless quest against creatures of the night and other evildoers. He is to the common man what the famed scholar Rudolph van Richten was to scholars. His fame is not for his great insight into the nature of evil creatures, but instead for his talent at destroying them.
Encounters: On the plains of Nova Vaasa, the traveler is bound to see thundering herds of sleek black horses, perhaps as many as forty or fifty following the lead stallion. After dark, nightmares take their turn at running across the open expanses, and the very unlucky may find themselves faced with ten or twenty of the evil creatures.
Most other encounters are with bandits. The only serious predators are the plains cats. These black, tailless creatures live in the crevices of granite outcroppings and hunt on the plains by night. The females hunt in prides, dragging down horses and other sizeable mammals. The chance for an encounter is 25%, once during the day and twice during the night.
Further Reading: The game adventure The Awakening offers more details on Nova Vaasa and a look at some of the ancient ruins of the domain. The novel The Enemy Within focuses on the darklord of Nova Vaasa and his evil counterpart.
Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken
8th-Level Human Fighter,
Lawful Neutral/Chaotic Evil
| Armor Class | 2 | Str | 17 | ||||
| Movement | 12 | Dex | 15 | ||||
| Level/ Hit Dice | 8 | Con | 12 | ||||
| Hit Points | 59 | Int | 13 | ||||
| THAC0 | 13 | Wis | 14 | ||||
| No. of Attacks | 3/2 rounds | Cha | 18 (3) | ||||
| Damage/ Attack | By weapon | ||||||
| Special Attacks | Weapon specialization | ||||||
| Special Defences | See below | ||||||
| Magic Resistance | Nil | ||||||
Sir Tristen Hiregaard is a tall, muscular man with dusky skin and gray-streaked black hair. He waxes the ends of his thick mustache into stiff points. His face is set in a stern expression, but compassion flickers in his dark eyes, He appears to be in his early sixties due to his dark hair; in fact, he is ninety years old. He remains as vital as men half his age, however.
Tristen dresses in loose, black trousers; tall, black riding boots; and a bright red shirt. The yellow scarf he wears around his neck is embroidered with red and black horses, and additional scarves with diagonal bands of red and black are folded and tied around his upper arms.
Background: Tristen Hiregaard was the first son of Romir Hiregaard, a princely knight of Vaasa. His father taught him the arts of riding, weaponry, and war, as well as the nobles' code, which proscribed strict rules for interactions between peasants and nobles - and between a noble and his prince.
Romir Hiregaard was an honest, fair ruler, but he had one fatal flaw. If he even imagined his young wife was unfaithful to him, he flew into an insane rage. One day he caught his wife in the arms of another man, and in a fit of passion, Romir killed them both. Only later did he learn that the man had innocently been teaching his wife how to waltz.
With her dying breath, Romir's wife cursed him. From that day on, he would kill any woman he fell in love with, or any man that crossed him. Unable to face up to his evil deed, Romir killed himself, and the curse was transferred to his son.
The curse did not manifest until Tristen first fell in love at the age of fifteen. The victim was a fair-haired peasant girl who worked as a servant in the family castle. The crime was quickly hushed up (for Tristen was the head of his noble household), but it left the young boy with deep emotional scars. He was by nature and training both honest and compassionate, yet he had enjoyed killing the girl, even though he felt great remorse about it later.
Six years and nine killings later - each of which gave him greater pleasure than the sensation of love - Tristen was pulled into Ravenloft. As he was drawn in by the dark powers, his personality split.
Sir Hiregaard is of lawful neutral alignment. His alter ego, known to the people of Nova Vaasa as Malken, is a chaotic evil killer who feeds upon Sir Hiregaard's secret jealousies and angers, savagely brutalizing the women Tristen loves and murdering the men who stand in the way of his desires.
Current Sketch: Sir Tristen Hiregaard is head of the Hiregaard family, which controls and exacts tribute from the farmlands along the Dnar River and the city of Liara. Unlike Nova Vaasa's other noble families, the Hiregaards treat their peasants with fairness and dignity. On occasion. Sir Hiregaard has even been known to show kindness, but he rarely has an opportunity to put his charitable impulses into practice. Bound by a strict set of rules that demand obedience to his ruler and his laws, he collects every coin of tax due. He is never brutal in his collection methods, but he is always very thorough. Further, he argues for lower taxes at every yearly Council of Lords, even though his arguments always fall on deaf ears. Some of his peasants revere him as their champion, while others despise him as much as they would any other overlord.
Even in his twilight years, Sir Hiregaard is very much the ladies' man, and many women - peasants and nobles alike - vie for his favors, for he showers them with expensive gifts. Still, others do their best to avoid his attention. After all, several of his past lovers have died mysterious, violent deaths, and even more have been left maimed and scarred beyond recognition.
Sir Hiregaard lives in Castle Faerhaaven with his sons Yorgi, Sasha, and Myar (all in their early fifties) and their wives and families. His wife of a forty-year, loveless marriage died three years ago when she gave birth to yet another son, Mikhail. The young boy is being raised by his older brothers, who dote upon him as one would expect old maids to do.
To all appearances, Sir Hiregaard is simply the head of a noble household that pays allegiance to Prince Othmar. Not even Hiregaard himself realizes that he is the darklord of the domain.
Whenever he begins to feel the stirrings of jealousy or anger, Sir Hiregaard orders his guards to lock him into his personal chambers, high in the master's tower of Castle Faerhaaven. There, sometimes for days on end, he waits until his passions have cooled. He believes that for seventy years he has controlled his lust for murder in this fashion and that he has made a new life for himself in Nova Vaasa, but he is wrong.
In fact Sir Hiregaard undergoes a hideous transformation when the rages strike. His hair becomes stark white, his frame gnarled and misshapen. His pockmarked face twists into a hideous leer, and his eyes burn with fury. He becomes the fiend Malken.
Malken is devilishly clever and frequently escapes his tower prison. He takes great care to return there before the rage subsides and Sir Hiregaard emerges. Recently, despite Malken's precautions, Tristen has begun to realize that perhaps his carefully laid strategy has been less than successful. Too many murders have coincided with his self confinement, and one of his guards has even admitted to entering the chamber early in violation of Tristen's orders and finding it curiously empty. Recognizing the clever nature of the beast within him, Tristen is seeking supernatural means to rid himself of this evil and quell his murderous passions.
Closing the Borders: The dual nature of Sir Hiregaard/Malken makes it impossible to seal the borders of the domain. Sir Hiregaard is struggling against the evil within himself, and in doing so, he robs his darker side of some of the powers enjoyed by most darklords.
Combat: Sir Hiregaard is proficient in four weapons: the long sword, composite short bow, horseman's pick, and horseman's mace. Additionally, he is specialized in the mancatcher. When using this unusual weapon, he gets two attacks per round, gains a +1 bonus to his attack rolls, and adds a +2 bonus to his damage rolls (in addition to his normal Strength bonus). Malken shares these proficiencies, although he prefers to attack his victims (who are usually far weaker than he is) with his bare hands.
Sir Hiregaard's long sword is a defender +4 with a hilt shaped like a silver horse's head. He also wears chain mail +2.
The Hiregaard family commands sixty foot soldiers (1st-level fighters) equipped with ring mail, short swords, and shields. He also commands twenty knights (3rd-level fighters), who fight on horseback with horseman's picks or maces and wear scale mail.
Should Sir Hiregaard ever be killed, his curse will attach itself to his oldest son, Yorgi. A new "Malken" will be born, and his first act will be the killing of Yorgi's wife. Should Yorgi die, the curse will be transferred to Sasha, then Myar, and-finally little Mikhail. Should all brothers be slain, the curse will transfer itself to Sasha's 25-year-old son.
