#dominia

Magic the Gathering The Shadow Mage #1 (July 1995) by Acclaim and Armada

Domain: Dominia Formation: 740 BC Power Level: 💀💀💀💀 ⚫ Sources: 2e: Bleak House, Domains of Dread, Feast of Goblyns, Ravenloft Campaign Setting: Domains and Denizens; 3e: Ravenloft 3e (brief description of the Domain in the Sea of Sorrows write up)

“Doctor” Daclaud Heinfroth is the Darklord of Dominia and debatably ruled over Gundarak for a brief period of time. Heinfroth is a rather hairy individual with a heavy bread and eyebrows that could use a fair amount of sculpting. In fact, his overall appearance is much like a stereotypically werewolf in their human form…Except this particular wolf like man eventually became a vampire.

Heinfroth grew up in Gundarak and became obsessed with mental illness after witnessing the mental decline and eventual death of his mother when he was a child. Heinfroth researched the cause of his mother’s mortality and soon discovered that psychiatric illness and mental disability ran in his family.

Convinced that one day he would meet the same fate as his mother, Heinfroth obsessively studied mental illness with the goal of curing the condition before it had the chance to take hold of him. However, as the years passed by in diligent study, he was no closer to a cure.

Eventually he became haunted by a voice that filled his head and visions of horrors just in the corners of his eyes. Believing this to be the first signs of his declining mental health, Heinfroth panicked and began to conduct experiments that certainly would not pass any ethical boards of health.

Heinfroth performed direct transfusions of the spinal and cerebral fluid from who those he deemed as “sane” to those he deemed “insane”. This process left many of his ‘patients’ incoherent and in a debilitated mental state. This mattered little to the ‘doctor’ and Heinfroth saw his experimentations as great successes. In fact, he decided to perform the procedure on himself before he had definitive results as all good ‘mad’ scientists do...

He kidnaped a young woman to fulfill the role of ‘cerebral fluid donator’ and after draining her fluid, injected it into himself. As chance would have it, this young woman was in the process of becoming one of Duke Gundar’s vampire brides. Perhaps Gundar should have watched over her more closely? The amount of vampires that lose their would be ‘brides’ to random kidnappings and supposed do-gooders is staggering. They certainly do not know how to take care of their investments.

Regardless, injecting the cerebral fluid of a half-turned vampire resulted in a rather unique transformation in our hairy doctor. He became a cerebral vampire, a vampire that feeds on the cerebral fluid of the brain instead of blood. Cerebral vampires slowly drain their victim’s mental capacities, eventually leaving them with nothing but the haunting echoes of their former mind. They are, in some ways, stronger than your typical vampire – they are unharmed by the sun (though some sources indicate that they eventually begin to burn), cannot be harmed by non-magical weapons, their gaze is akin to the hypnotic pattern spell, and their touch acts as the confusion spell. Heinfroth has been known to flaunt his love for garlic to confuse any potential hunters.

They, naturally, have their own weaknesses. Cerebral vampires must sleep in a coffin for 8 hours over the course of a 24 hour period, though this does not need to be during the day. They are repelled by the scent of pure alcohol and holy symbols, though neither can destroy them. There’s something to be said about  a doctor that’s unable to use pure alcohol to sterilize their equipment…

The only proven way to destroy a cerebral vampire completely is to bind them in a straitjacket, cut off their head, and stuff their mouth with holy wafers.

Now that I’ve discussed what a cerebral vampire is, let us return to Heinfroth’s origins. When Gundar discovered what Heinfroth had done to his future bride, he was enraged and planned on killing him in a most violent fashion. That is, until Gundar realized that because Heinfroth took his future bride’s cerebral fluid, Gundar could use his mental domination on the ‘doctor’.

Gundar forced Heinfroth to serve him for decades. In 735 BC, Gundar and Heinfroth plotted to overthrow Harkon Lukas and enlist Heinfroth as Kartakass’s new lord. Now, just because one looks like a werewolf doesn’t mean they are suited to rule over a Domain of wolves. Do you have any musical talent, Heinfroth? I think not and Harkon, rightfully so, foiled their plot with a bit of trickery of his own…that and the assistance of a party of adventurers.

Heinfroth never wanted Kartakass, however, and planned on overthrowing Gundar himself. Gundar is an idiot. He trusted Heinfroth explicitly and lured the adventurer who foiled his plans into a trap – a trap in which Gundar himself was rather helpless within. Now, he was only to appear helpless and Heinfroth was supposed to dominate the group of ‘heroes’ once they were properly lured in, but instead Heinfroth did nothing and watched as the ‘heroes’ destroyed his master.

Heinfroth claimed lordship of Gundarak, but shirked his duties in favor of feeding upon more victims at his asylum.  When the Grand Conjunction of 740 BC occurred, through no fault of my own, Gundarak was absorbed by Barovia and Invidia and Heinfroth was gifted his own domain – a small island known as Dominia. Dominia only contains Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth’s Asylum for the Mentally Disturbed and wolf-infested woods. In another event that many scholars are still trying to understand, Dominia was dragged into the Core and is now an island within the Sea of Sorrows.