Azalin Reviews: Darklord Lemot Sediam Juste
Domain: Scaena Domain Formation: 732 BC Power Level: 💀💀💀⚫⚫ Sources: Domains of Dread (2e), Islands of Terror (2e), VRGTR (5e)
Lemot Sediam Juste is the Darklord of the traveling Domain known as Scaena, which means “stage” in Latin. However, this failed playwright and has-been actor may have missed that obvious reference to his eternal prison.
A tall, skeletal-thin man with greasy black hair, Lemot was a renowned actor and writer of the stage known for his dramatic and comedic roles. As with many overinflated egotistic performers, this was not enough for him. He wanted to be known for all styles of writing and acting. Type casting was decidedly NOT for Lemot.
However, he could never portray tragedy without it coming across as melodramatic or unintentionally hilarious. His writing and direction was no better and he deceived himself into believing that it was entirely his troupe’s fault. They enjoyed heightening the comedic aspects of his plays and, to Lemot, they ruined his visions.
A rational man, Lemot decided to seek vengeance for this affront. He wrote a play with countless, horrific death scenes in which the bodies of each victim would lay on the stage for the entire production. The night of the play’s debut, Lemot replaced all of the prop weapons and poisons with real ones.
He joined the audience, watching gleefully as his troupe unknowingly killed one another on stage. It is odd that not a single actor noticed anything amiss that evening. No one, and surly not those that acted under Lemot’s direction, is that good of an actor.
Lemot’s play, which was just a bloody mess, ended with a chorus of boos from the audience. This infuriated the playwright who wanted nothing more than to bask in his revenge. Being the overdramatic has-been that he is, Lemot snuck outside and as the audience waited the final bow, he barred the doors of the playhouse and set it ablaze. Once the constabulary arrived to quell the fire and locate the cause of it, Lemot, in a rare moment of clarity, skulked away and hide in another theater. He fell asleep within and when he came to, he was alone and a thick Mist, in which he could not venture, surrounded the theater. Scaena is one of the smallest Domains in Ravenloft, made up of only a single theater. It can travel to any other Domain as well as any other plane of existence, typically forming over the location of an existing theater. A feat wasted on the showboat Darklord who does not realize where he is. Within Scaena, everything Lemot writes becomes reality upon the stage of the Scaena Theater. Because of this, he believes that every single being that appears on his stage is his creation and are only there to act out his visions. Despite Lemot being nothing more than a spindly writer forever unsatisfied with his creations, he is difficult to defeat. Those that wander onto his stage are forced to enact his visions without seeing Lemot writing behind the scenes, for he is engulfed in layers upon layers of illusions. In fact, Lemot can create an illusionary version of Scaena over the real, making his “creations” believe they are fighting him when they are not. The only limit to his creation is his own imagination, which makes him not only a powerful individual but an entirely annoying one to deal with. Like Lemot himself, many who visit his Domain find themselves constantly questioning reality.
In the “good” doctor’s latest guide, Lemot is now Lemont and instead of replacing the props in his play, he joined the stage after his audience grew bored and demanded blood and gore, which he delivered by brutally murdering the entire cast before their eyes. Here, Scaena was once part of Dementlieu and became its own Domain after Lemont’s bloody debut. It does not appear that this new version of Scaena has the ability to travel through planes of existence.
