D&D: In Ravenloft, Even The Dream Realm Has A Darklord – Tsien Chiang
The Darklord of a realm of labyrinths and deadly dreamlike sleep, Tsien Chiang has turned a dream life into an inescapable nightmare.
It says a lot about Ravenloft that even a place that’s supposed to be all about dreams is instead a place of unending nightmares. And yet, that’s exactly what the Dread Domain called I’Cath is. It’s worse, even, because I’Cath is two places. Part of it exists in the physical world. The rest lies in a twisting dream, conjured by its Darklord, Tisen Chiang.
In one world, the city is perfect and idyllic, a near-perfect expression of beauty and efficiency where inhabitants toil away in pursuit of perfection. In the other? It is silent, empty but for the trapped, sleeping people. All at the behest of one dreaming tyrant, obsessed with perfection.
The Dreamer and the Dragon – Tisen Chiang
The story of I’Cath, like all Dread Domains, begins with the Darklord, Tsien Chiang. Before she was the dreaming tyrant, she was a carefree mortal, living an idyllic life until a colonizing force destroyed her home and forced her to flee into the frozen, icy mountains.
Chiang expected to find her death there. Instead, she found a gold dragon, who took pity upon the young girl and gave her shelter. Grateful for her rescuer, Chiang pledged to serve the dragon. And in the years that followed, she learned at the dragon’s side. Magic and medicine were her forte, and before long, she was a powerful wizard.
But still, Tsien Chiang’s heart beat to one drum: the seductive rhythm of revenge. She clung tightly to the hatred she harbored in her heart, hatred for those who forced her out of her ancestral home. And there, it festered until the day her desire for revenge took its horrendous root.
An Untimely Death
Among the many records in her mentor’s care were tinctures and lists of artifacts. Tsien Chiang happened to come across records of a magic bell that could make its ringers’ dreams come true. However, the bell could not be created without the scale of a gold dragon.
Believing her mentor would never provide a scale willingly, Chiang brewed a powerful concoction to drug the dragon into slumber, hoping to steal a scale while the great wyrm slumbered. But the concoction Chiang brewed was made in haste, and the recipe was plagued with deadly mistakes. The dragon’s body and everything nearby aged and decayed quickly, taking out a hoard filled with ages of treasures and wisdom as well.
Once more, Chiang’s home had been destroyed. But on the ground where the proud wyrm had once stood, she found a single golden scale.
And with that, Chiang had what she needed: the Nightingale Bell, which, with a single ring, could return her city.
Tsien Chiang – The Darklord of I’Cath
Chiang took the Nightingale Bell into her city and rang it, wishing for a city free of invaders. Immediately, they vanished. And the inhabitants of the city executed the few lingering invaders and made Tsien Chiang their queen.
She ruled for years, enacting reforms and laws to design her own perfect empire. But in time, the laws grew stricter. Her grasp tightened, gripping the people, metaphorically, until they were choking under her restrictions. When revolution broke out, Chiang cracked down hard, ordering the execution of all insurrectionists.
Assassins struck, and though Chiang survived, her family did not. Chiang, instead, climbed to the highest tower of her palace, and, gazing out over a city aflame with revolution, rang the Nightingale Bell once more. But this time, the bell did not ring. With her vengeful wish, the bell cracked, and a mist spread out across the city, trapping all within an unreal prison city.
Now, Chiang is haunted by the loss of her daughters and the perfect ideal city that is forever out of her grasp. She traps her inhabitants every night, unleashing a horde of hungry jiangshi upon any who would challenge her rule. Any imperfection in her city, she ruthlessly stamps out.
And she will spend the rest of her existence trying to perfect a fiction, a dream that even she knows is not real, but is unable to let go of.
A nightmare and, of course, a waking realm full of hungry vampires!
