Dark Powers vs. Amber Temple Vestiges: What's the difference? | Running Curse of Strahd 5e

What is the difference between The Dark Powers and the Vestiges of the Amber Temple? Let's find out!
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The Curse of Strahd adventure module for Dungeons & Dragons 5e has some conflicting information about the Dark Powers and the Vestiges of the Amber Temple. I'm here to set the record straight and fill you in on how they differ from one another.
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Cover art by reddit.com/u/sneaky49
#dnd #rpg #dungeonsanddragons
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[@tanukioh]

I view the dark power as a primal force of horror. Anything that interests it, it tries to corrupt to build something even more terrifying. It collects the best of these monsters to play with forever

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

Like a tiny terrarium of terror.

[@Grimlore82]

This was crucial situations which should have been caught. Oh well. That is what the community is for! ❤

[@theeye8276]

The dark powers and amber vestiges are in fact one and the same according to the designers. In the adventure the house of lament, a new vestige is found in an amber monolith in the basement of the house.The adventure tells you to "use the Entity as a lurking manifestation of the Dark Powers, a vague glimpse of a terror even the house’s spirits fear.". So it's even more clear now that they are the same. Even the mara the ghost thinks that this entity can free her from the house as a manifestation of the dark powers.

[@ANDELE3025]

Year late, but its important to note only some of the vestiges are the actual ravenloft dark powers. Others are their "fellows in delight" that got stuck via the 4e collapse of the plane of shadow and dark side of the plane of the faerie into the shadowfell with bits of the astral plane and negative energy plane also leaking in there. IIRC Orcus slim side and the 2nd Nullifications high priest necrowyrm being examples of non-dark-power-but-approximate lads hanging out there.

[@andersschmich8600]

As someone who has played and ran a lot of Call of Cthulhu i'm going to suggest that the Dark Powers are some facet on Nyarlothotep in my game I think. A vague, ill defined sentient darkness from the edges of reality.

[@theperses3692]

I love your videos. They are really helping me with preparing for running Strahd. The dark powers whisking the vistiges to this demiplane could almost put the vestiges and dark powers on antagonist I terms. While the dark powers do not care what the vestiges do, they are preventing them from escaping to a larger world. In fact, they are even restricting the amount of Souls that they can feed on. This could put the vestiges on the same side as the players. If the players were to help them escape to faerun, the vestiges could help the players escape this world. I may present this to my players. They can consider releasing weakened evil gods, but save the whole of Borovia.

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

Nice idea!

[@josephsarrouh5371]

It is the nature of evil to prey on itself. It is constantly seeking dominance. Relentless and without remorse, without guilt, it will tear away at lesser evils as a way to assert itself. The nature of good is to heal, enlighten and bridge the gap between peoples, to bring about understanding and mutual growth. To be evil is to live as the one above all, essentially, pure pride is evil at its core, and that is why evil creatures always end up destroying one another and themselves.

[@momokol366]

I like how the Domains of Dread 2nd edition book has options and ideas for running the Dark Powers as any alignment.

[@fluffymcmittens]

This was great, I was actually really struggling with the mixing up of these two elements. Now I have a clearer idea of how to proceed

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

Thank you! I really appreciate it!

[@davidbrotherton789]

I know it is late, but here it goes. Perhaps the lich in the temple is so eager to help the party because he made a deal to become a lich and his end of the bargain is to free it from both the amber AND the domain of dread. Maybe he cannot perform the ritual to seal Vampyr, thus permanently exposing the vestiges to the material plane, which is what they want.

[@Konjirmos]

I've tried to make the vestiges more involved from the get go. My take on them is they are retired playthings. Strahd will be a vestige in another's plane once the dark powers grow bored of him. My players recently TPK'd so upon being resurrected each lost a sliver of it's soul to a particular vestige. When the amber temple is up they will have the chance to make the pact complete and gain a boon/curse more in line with their character than what vanilla offers. Good video, I'm glad someone finally put together a solid explanation of the powers.

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

Thank you! I really appreciate that you're watching all of the videos. Be sure to share with others that may enjoy them, too!

[@MunoBars]

In my home game I have equated the Dark Powers to the Great Old Ones or likewise Outer Will of Elden Ring and I have posited the Amber sarcophagi house their own vassal “Elden Beast”called a vestige, and that there are few that have been either dead for not as long as others or worship for them continues to exist which raises their godhood. These are the nodes by which the Dark Powers exercise their will depending upon the strength of a domains vestige, and some domains have multiple.

[@MoonDoon]

Great vid. I think this is one of the most important aspects to think on as you get further into the game. You really want your players to get entwined in the darkness, whether they are trying to be righteous and fight or succumb to the evil, it's super important to have it fleshed out in your head at the very least. Love it.

[@damiancameron5495]

ok, that makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE!

[@cleaver3519]

The way ive differentiates it is that the dark powers are intangible fragments of Bhall, Bane and Cyric after they died originally that were pulled into the shadowfell and dispersed. These spirit fragments have an aspect of each of the gods powers making demigods/minor gods of those that interact with them. Vampyr was once a warrior like strahd whos act of evil drew in a fragment creating a vestige after he passed or was sealed. The dark powers create domains inside the shadowfell using corrupted individuals in an attempt to wrest control from the raven queen.

[@paulcoy9060]

Awesome. Simply awesome. So many good ideas, can't wait to throw my Players into Ravenloft. This is a short video compared to an AJ or WebDM version, but it explains a Core Concept that has to be recognized before you start the campaign, to get your head around how The Land works. To be honest, I missed it when I first read through the hardcover, because there's so much material crammed into it. Lesson #1 -- Read It All, Then Read It Again. Even stuff you don't think you're going to be running, because there is a lot of Lore to consume.

[@Aspensauce64]

I always imagine the dark powers as neutral. Their whole thing is punishing evil but they go super overkill as well as relying on tempting these villains into their own imprisonment. It’s like they try to be good but they get bored.

[@nickbrown638]

My interpretation of the dark powers is that they are not necessarily people, more forces of nature. To apply morality to them would be like applying morality to the concept of death itself. We know the powers (seemingly) only take in people who have committed sufficient acts of villainy to catch their attention, but they suck in good natured people as well. Why is Tatyana’s soul in Ravenloft? Why the people of Barovia who were nothing more than victims to Strahd’s conquest and regime? Or even the player characters who were sucked in long after Strahd’s ascension in the first place?

[@ademiranda2]

Great video like always. I am still looking forward to a Vallaki video.

[@jamesonstalanthasyu]

I am in the midst of watching these series of videos, and now D&D announced the new Ravenloft book. Hopefully we get good dark power information on the other locales in the dreaded mists. :D I hope you will be able to give some good reviews and insight into using that eventual book.

[@silvertheelf]

I see the dark powers as neutral leaning towards evil as they also, be it seemingly unintentionally, torture the followers of these evil beings by proximity.

[@JackError787]

I always pictured the dark powers as many that yet are one. Legion.

[@jsl8461]

The Golden Rule can be considered a universal ethic in modern times, in that it is present in almost all major religions and philosophies. Of course, it receives differing degrees of emphasis depending on the religion/philosophy, regional/sectarian interpretation, and individual interpretation, but developed societies will tend to emphasize it more. If the Golden Rule is the one thing that everyone (in theory) should be able to agree on, then the Dark Powers are clearly not embodiments of modern morality (or "Good"). In criminal law, which does not have a "good" or "evil" concept, punitive measures are designed to achieve one or more of the following aims: 1) deterrence of future criminal acts, 2) achieving retributive justice and satisfying the peoples' desire for avengement, 3) incapacitating the offender or altering his/her behavior such that he/she will not commit future offenses, and 4) providing restitution to the injured party. The Dark Powers' psychological torturing of Strahd does not seem to achieve any of these ends, and in fact the Dark Powers even *enable* Strahd to commit further blights upon Barovia's society. I guess this is obvious and probably isn't even worth writing down, but the extra-legal nature of the Dark Powers' modus operandi is not in line with modern legal design.

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

Hey, I could totally go for a modern-day legal analysis of the Dark Powers and the dark lords of the Shadowfell!

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

Players of the computer game Mass Effect will be familiar with the concept of "Paragon vs. Renegade", which is a variant on Fable's good/evil or KOTOR's Lightside/Darkside, in which the character is always "good" but pursues that agenda through either diplomacy, empathy, and patience, or else with an aggressive no-nonsense hardline approach. I'd love to make a Bioware game set in Ravenloft, where the game's ethical axis would be Justice vs. Passion instead. The Dark Powers are the embodiment of justice; they will make thousands of innocent people suffer if necessary, in order to continue ironically punishing a single Darklord with the torment of tantalus, in the hope that this one black-stained soul will accept the principles of reciprocity into its heart of hearts, breaking the cycle of rebirth which their ego otherwise trap them in. Passion, by contrast, is the will of the individual, their ego and their emotional core and everything that makes them who they are; it's not some abstract system of morality or karmic burdens, it's simply being a person, with all the good and all the bad...and the ATVs are the ultimate example of evil passions, while the purest good expressions of Passion would be true love and debatably innocence. Passion is also the energy that makes curses possible, although justice governs the rules those curses follow. Either way, the nuances and complexities of Justice vs. Passion make it a far more appropriate duality for the Ravenloft setting than Good vs. Evil.

[@jamesgordon364]

The dark powers must be using the condemned, and their demiplanes to funnel off negative energy. Like a dark battery.

[@RichardDuryea]

The way I’m doing the Dark Powers in my game is that they feed on misery. They don’t have forms to create misery themselves and so they employ Strahd to do it for them.

[@miriamfeldhausen9402]

Good succinct description. Thank you!

[@inversenexarus9152]

"The Forces of Evil and The Forces of Darkness are very different trust me. It's basically like East Coast vs West Coast. One is nothing but beatboxing and looping the tracks like wish-wish-wish kindalike. But more importantly the forces of Evil and Darkness hate each other! Okay let's cut to a training montage or something cuz now I'm talking nonsense again." ~Master Princess Robot Bubblegum

[@wander1139]

i got a question does the vestiges mess with a character after the deal is maid like having your character fly into a rage or lose intelligence each day till they die

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

I recommend against something that can kill them, like draining intelligence. But the vestige can bestow upon them a flaw, such as "I am quick to anger and prone to violence." It's up to the player to RP that flaw, however. The vestige's real trick comes in the loss of the soul and reincarnation capabilities of the character, should the character use their dark gift enough times.

I ran with MandyMods idea of having personalized Dark Powers - each character has an entity that solely exists to corrupt them. Tempting them with power against the Devil Strahd and if they take up the offer, slowly sliding down the moral scale. On a side note: Could you inverse the order of videos on your playlist? So that you can watch the entire list in order old to new instead of the other way round as it is currently? I would prefer not to have to go baack and click the right video every few minutes :D

[@seejee1]

Thanks for the video. I really appreciate your work, but this video left me wanting more. You unequivocally claim that the vestiges and dark powers are different entities, but you don't really explain why you believe that or where you derive your certainty on the matter. Do you mind providing some reasons or sources for why you believe these entities to be distinct from one another? Do you think there's harm in running the module where the vestiges and dark powers are the same entities? Thanks again for your videos!

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/3084/what-are-the-dark-powers That gives a fairly concise explanation as to what they are. They're the rulers. The big bosses. They are not prisoners of a bunch of wizards. On the other hand, it won't hurt one bit if they're one and the same in your game.

[@asahinainu]

There isn't really any harm in running the module anyway you like. It's more along the lines that Curse of Strahd, as written, pretty much has to be in an Alternate Universe from the Ravenloft Campaign Setting that evolved out of the original I6: Ravenloft module. It mucks about with the core foundations the old setting were build up from, and has a habit of just inserting characters and events out of context just to get name drops in, and changes up things just for the sake of being different at times. They may have gotten assistance from the I6 writers with the rewrite, but much of the expanded portions of Curse of Strahd pull on things that were not even present in the original I6 module and are features of the Ravenloft Campaign setting and are used in a way that contradicts their initial purpose or lore. The Dark Powers, not present in the original module, are one of these things. In the original campaign setting the Dark Powers are less a thing and more of a concept. A completely unknowable concept that many have different theories on, and no one has any concrete evidence for. One of the central pillars of the setting was that they are powerful, unknowable, and that the writers would NEVER EVER tell you what they are and possibly didn't even know themselves. The very fact that the vestiges are defined runs contrary to this idea. Many dms and players have speculated or defined what they are for their own games over the years, but its pretty well agreed upon that whatever their true form or lack their of may be that the Dark Powers are of an existential level of power as far as the Demiplane of Dread goes. They are functionally omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent with regards to the plane itself and can literally interfere with the core metaphysics of the cosmos that in some ways , at least in appearance, outclass the powers of the gods in the other realms. They are able to offhandedly imprison incredibly powerful cosmic beings, and can literally snatch sections of reality from other settings for themselves with no obligation to ever give anything back. In fact the only known being that was ever able to ever escape the clutches of the setting through their own machinations, rather than the plane just letting them go, was a god. This god being Vecna, and the reason he was able to escape was less about power than the fact that his divine purview is specifically knowing things not meant to be known, which allowed him to navigate the rules of the demiplane in such a way that he could free himself, but only after a long period of careful planning and possible help from the Serpent, an entity that's above the gods. Keep in mind that Vecna, even at the relatively low level of godhood that he was at the time, immediately afterwards followed through on a plan that almost had him succeed in a plan to ursurp the Lady of Pain, of the Planescape setting, and put himself at the center of , and destroy, ALL of the D&D multiverse should say something here as the Lady of Pain is herself as a being that outclasses gods having been around since before the gods existed. Note that Vecna ability to escape Ravenloft was considered questionable even at the time, and this was a being who almost destroyed D&D as a whole in universe. Basically the Dark Powers of the Ravenloft Campaign Setting, whether they be singular or plural, intelligent entities or merely a force of metaphysics, are on a scope that puts them on an unfathomable scale of power and influence within the setting that and places them side by side with the elder entities of the multiverse. Vestiges are much lower on that totem pole of cosmic power, them being of less power than influence than gods, and usually even less powerful than the beings that grant patronage to warlocks. In 4th edition, a warlock that drew power from vestiges had to draw power from an entire host of vestiges to get the same amount of power that another warlock could get from having one powerful patron. You can make a pact with a solar, you can make a pact with a greater demon, you can make pacts with legendary lords of the few, you can make pacts with ancient malevolent artifacts, you can even make a pact with an Great Old One from beyond the realms of reality. Guess what types of beings that the Dark Powers have managed to entrap... all of them. Even the greatest among them, whose literal presence can warp reality to an extent that the borders between domains can't hold them fully, have no greater means to actually escape the demiplane than your average Barovian villager. That being said, none of this applies to the Curse of Strahd module, and you are free to use it as you see fit. Its a re-imagining of the module, not the setting, it just so happens to have a compulsive need to name drop stuff from the expanded setting without keeping the context intact. When somebody says that the Dark Powers aren't the Vestiges they are mainly coming from a standpoint that if you were to want to adapt Curse of Strahd for use in a larger campaign that takes place in the Ravenloft Campaign Setting proper, and want it to fit in with the established setting that there are certain things in Curse of Strahd that need to be reconciled. One last thing. A thing the canon Dark Powers would DEFINITELY do is place these vestiges here as a red herring, as there is one thing that is universally accepted about them in that they love to make you think that you are more knowledgeable and more in control than you really are.

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

@@asahinainu *slow clap*

[@companyoflosers]

personal theory: Barovia was never a part of the material plain. it canonically became trapped as its own demiplane of dread after strahd turned vampir, roughly 400 years before the events of the 5e book. no matter the setting you start in, if you ask anyone on the material plane, theyll say theyve never heard of such a place. but 400 years is too short a time to have forgotten about a land just disappearing. if it were on the prime material, people would have been all " oh yeah, that place that disappeared 400 years ago! how do i know this?, well the common people in the forgotten realms have heard of places like Netheril and it fell to ruin FAR before barovia canonically disappeared. so to say people forgot about this place that was there 400 years ago, but remember a civilization that fell to ruin 1000 years ago, is a bit far fetched. we can only conclude that barovia was never on the prime material, but in fact on another plane of existence, but it had human natives who lived there before strahd came. the only two other planes of existence would be the feywild and the shadowfell and the feywild has been known to be the home of elves and is too manic and nonsensical to have been where barovia is from, so we have narrowed it down to the shadowfell. clues seem to point towards barovia always having been rather gloomy and its geography fits well with what the shadowfell has been known to be like in certain places. hence my theory, barovia originated in the shadowfell but was ripped away from it when the dark powers quarantined strahd and his people there. also a minor note, strahd is not trapped in barovia. he clearly has the power to grant the vistani the ability to come and go as they please. logic would dictate then that he can do the same if he wished. he simply just does not wish to leave. he is far too preoccupied with trying to find the reincarnated soul of tatyana. he would also much rather lure characters onto his home turf where he has all the power he needs to mess with them to find a replacement.

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

I'm with you up until the part about Strahd being able to leave, but just not wanting to. Granted, if that's the flavor you want for your game, go right ahead! As written, though, Strahd literally can't leave because The Dark Powers won't let him. He's their plaything. Barovia is part of a larger landmass called "The Core", which was defined in 2nd edition (I think). The Core is made up of many "domains of dread", of which Barovia was but the first. Each domain has its own dark lord, and none of them can cross their own borders-they're prevented by a sort of invisible wall. Other denizens of The Core can travel freely across the borders, however. Fifth edition doesn't carry over the concept of The Core or other domains, due to CoS not being a full-fledged adventure setting like the old Ravenloft setting books. However, they exist at least in the backstory of Rudolph van Richten, who is a native of another domain (I forget its name right now).

[@Toughguygames]

id say they are evil as innocents are caught up in their schemes

[@jwscofield8131]

Since the dark powers are committing acts of evil for good purposes, they don't count as good. The acts are still evil. In story telling, this is the definition of an Antihero. Now, looking at it deeper, the way the lore was spread out over the years since I6: castle ravenloft was first penned in 1982, It is implied that the dark powers actually feed off this strife. It is the conflict that the darklords create feed the dark powers. Hence why the land grew in include other lands/prisons and the darklords of which only got stronger and strong. Vecna and Lord Soth were both once trapped by this realm. The largest realm in all of the demiplane of Dread is ruled by a lich --Darkon. It is for this that teh dark powers can only be seen as one thing: evil incarnate. They themselves are not doing these acts of justice by imprisoning these evil people away from their homelands. That is purely an accident of how they feed.

[@SuperCyberSubzero]

Is there any lore on Vampyr at all? I cannot find a thing

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

There is no official lore on the vestige Vampyr at all. In the module, he's a stand-in for what Strahd calls "Death" in the book, "I, Strahd: Memoirs of a Vampire". If you want to flesh out Vampyr, I recommend taking a look at this post by Reddit user MandyMod: www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/comments/a4lj86/fleshing_out_curse_of_strahd_the_amber_temple/

[@sophiacozzo8964]

Don't the dark powers teleported everyone on Barovia? Regardless if you think it is good or bad to spirit way the BBE to their personal hell, you got to adimit that to do tge same with everyone that happen to also be on the same land is kind of rude.

[@sophiacozzo8964]

Btw sorry for any bad spelling, english is not my first language

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

Ravenloft is the Land of the MISTS, so it's only appropriate that it remain MYSTerious. Perhaps you might even call it "nebulous".

[@dagaspadini]

Dark Powers sounds like a force similar to Devils: they seem to punish or trap a terrible person in a perverted way, dragging innocents people with them, and make bargains with the person that piqued their interest. The fact they are so undefined is what makes them so interesting and scary at the same time, while you know what a devil can be and guess what their goals might be.

[@LunchBreakHeroes]

Absolutely, you got it! Except Dark Powers are infinitely more powerful.

[@autumnfrost4522]

@@LunchBreakHeroes ooolll…bbb bbb not no 0’d.,

[@theophrastusbombastus1359]

Intrigued, i looked to see if i could find _I, Srrahd_ online and, erm... nope. I'm not paying that kind of money for a paperback that's almost as old as i am First edition? Hardcover? Maybe. Trade paperback? What a joke. Good luck finsing someone to pay those kind of prices

[@jasminereimon5610]

Thanks for the video. Please normalize the audio volume of your videos. Especially those "three-seconds intros" are really too loud.

[@matthewsinclair4322]

Personally, I understand the dark powers or at least some of them to be the vestiges. Although one thing that annoys me is that one is called Tenebrous. Tenebrous is an alias used by Orcus when he was a god. The problem is that the temple is over 2,000 years old but Tenebrous is nowhere near that old. I know I shouldn’t think that much about it, but I’m so confused how Tenebrous was imprisoned in amber before he even existed separately from Orcus.

[@matthewsinclair4322]

@@LunchBreakHeroes I’ve just accepted that the Domains of Dread aren’t meant to make perfect sense and this is just the Dark powers bending the rules to allow Tenebrous to be there as if he always was.

[@tylerhulbert9529]

@@matthewsinclair4322 It is worth noting that the passage of time in the Domains of Dread could certainly be distorted and far off from time elsewhere. A year in Barovia could be equivalent to a single day in the Material Plane, for example.

[@Zionswasd]

Time dilation my friend

[@GaryStango]

The dark powers scooped up good souls too while bringing Barovia into the Dread plane. They are indiscriminate and therefore evil.