Episode 19: Hercules

Welcome to Wonderful World of Darklords! In this episode, we're going from talking tigers to literal freaking gods with what might be our most powerful darklord to date: Hades. (We don't know whether we'd back Hades, Elsa, or Maleficent in a fight, and we don't want to be anywhere in a hundred-mile radius if that ever happens.) Making the god of the underworld a darklord was a tricky proposition; after all, the Dark Powers weren't able to hang onto Vecna. We figured out a solution that lets us bring everyone's favorite evil motor-mouth in without having to shatter the demiplane in the process. Topics discussed include:

• How Hercules works in some of the dark, horrifying themes of Greek mythology despite being a bowdlerization, and how to generalize those themes to an entire domain;
• How to make your PCs the main characters of a Hercules domain even though the movie has a full-on prophesied Chosen One (it doesn't have to involve killing him this time, we promise!);
• Monsters and characters from Greek mythology that lend themselves beautifully to a sprawling domain that still keeps Hades as its primary mover and shaker;
• Serious geeking out over the gods of Ravenloft and how the gods of Olympus fit into their metaphysic;
• and more!

(We don't actually discuss Vecna. We're sorry. Rachel keeps forgetting Vecna was a darklord because he's connected to so much non-Ravenloft material that the idea of diving into all of it causes her to automatically fail a Fear save. Please don't @ us; it's taking all her willpower not to rerecord the entire episode.)

The full writeup for Olympus is available for free on DM's Guild: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/467315/Olympus-A-Ravenloft-Domain-of-Dread-2-13?affiliate_id=241770

All music recordings are in the public domain (mark 1.0) and are licensed through https://musopen.org:

Chopin Nocturne in B-Flat Minor, Op. 9 No.1 (main theme), performed by Eduardo Vinuela

Chopin Etude Op. 25, No. 12 in C Minor: “Ocean” (darklord theme), performed by Edward Neeman

Chopin Nocturne in F Minor, Op. 55 No. 1 (land theme), performed by Luke Faulkner

Rachmaninoff Morceaux de Fantaisie, Op. 3 - 2. Prélude in C sharp minor (Dread Possibilities), performed by Sergei Rachmaninoff

Chopin Nocturne in E Minor, Op. 72 No. 1 (parting thoughts), performed by Luke Faulkner

Dialog for Yensid was written by Azalin Rex himself: http://www.tumblr.com/darklordazalin

The Wonderful World of Darklords logo was designed by Halite Jones, whom you can find on Tumblr and Instagram: https://www.tumblr.com/halite-jones and http://www.instagram.com/insta_halite

Contact us on:

Gmail: wonderfulworldofdarklords@gmail.com

Facebook: @wonderfulworldofdarklords

Tumblr: @wonderfulworldofdarklords

Patreon: www.patreon.com/WonderfulWorldofDarklords

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-wonderful-world-of-darklords/exclusive-content