Remedial Ravenloft: Darkon

TL;DR Version - What happens when an undead Etruscan sorcerer conquers Russia?

The Land - Darkon is easily the largest nation in the Core and the largest continuous domain, and it sports a wide diversity of terrain and climate.  Central and western plains, northern and southern forests, mountains in the far north and southeast.  The most distinct settings in Darkon, however are manmade.  Darkon is unique among nations in that it retained the ancient formula for concrete and still employs it, widely, creating massive, small windowed slab buildings totally devoid of charm.  A sort of early modern take on Soviet Brutalism.  The other distinctive feature of Darkon is the scattering of ruins throughout the nation, some revealed by sinkholes and miles wide, ancient, extensive mines and underground highways as well as more modest temples that reflect the spiritual practices of the king's original home, which was far distant from the original Darkon he ruled.

The People - Darkon is the most diverse nation in the Core, boasting all skin, hair and eye colors, all features and in any combination.  Despite difference in appearance, Darkonese share a fairly strong sense of national character and are often weirdly ignorant of their own ethnic descent (as well as visibly uncomfortable speaking on the subject).  Darkon also boasts high populations of human-resembling, alien species, particularly a species of semi-subterranean, stout bodied craftsmen and miners and a very closely related human species that is proportioned to about half the standard size.  Smaller populations of more distinct species live in Darkon as well, a handful of them quite alien in appearance or outlook.  Members of these species likewise share their human neighbors' sense of national unity and discomfort over their own origins.  Another trait Darkonese all seem to attempt to cultivate is a sense of reserve and equanimity in the face of life's events.  Foreigners complain that Darkonese are very hard to know, almost unfeeling, unless the feeling is a vague suspicion and unease, but it seems a fairly well adapted behavior for living in a kingdom ruled for centuries by an immortal and paranoid sorcerer with a love of secret police.

Darkonese speak Voron, though some in the west speak Rabben or Korpsvart.  A variant of Corvus gets used for state functions, so most Darkonese have at least some command of the language.  Despite the extensive use of Corvus, Ezraism has almost no influence in Darkon (some small Vausland and Borcan congregations do exist, poorly maintained and attended).  Darkonese tend to follow an elaborate system of signs and divinations to determine the actions and attitudes of their ancestors, and the great among the dead (Aita and Orcus, Mania and Mantus, Vanth, Leinth, Turms and all the rest - even the most devout haruspex will be quick to tell you they aren't gods, the only God is Death, blah blah blah, "Not today," sing along if you've heard the song).  Azalin did attempt to codify these practices into a religion called the Eternal Order, but he and the Darkonese abandoned that project around the time he accidentally blew up himself along with the former capital.  Most Darkonese lack much in the way of religious conviction.

The Boring Stuff - Darkon is a kingdom that, in its modern form, has only ever had one king, the immortal Azalin Rex.  Azalin is a distant sort of ruler, intervening once a generation or so to induct members into his secret police and clear deadwood out of the senate.  The Senate oversees most of the actual running of the country, with large landowning families taking care of their own parcels at the local level.  There is a large and well equipped secret police, the Kargat, which mostly intervenes on Azalin's personal behalf.  Most of its members are powerful supernatural beings in their own right, and you're probably doing the right thing if you're terrified of them.  Darkon has both rich natural resources and strong manufacturing so it is an economic powerhouse, and possesses the only military in the Core capable of going toe-to-toe with Falkovnia or Nova Sarcosa (both of those nations discovered that attacking Darkon only swells the ranks of their military with risen corpses).  Darkon has, however, shown little interest in intervening in the political affairs of the Core and some of their trade in the west has been complicated by the fact that many of those routes used to go through Ilaluk, which now glows with a toxic gray light and crawls with the animated corpese of its former residents.

Don't Talk of Worlds that Never Were.  In the End, that's All that's Ever True - Azalin was a haruspex of the ancient world, the kind who made enough enemies in the afterworld that there was never any doubt that he was going to have to give Death a very large payment of "Not Todays," if he wanted to accomplish anything but suffering beyond his allotment.  His search for solutions hit a serious snag near the end of his living days as he began to get forgetful, confused; suffering from precipitous cognitive decline, Azalin grew desperate and hit on an imperfect solution to his plight, which was lichdom.  This kept him on our side of That Old River, but it also made him unfit for polite company.  So he bided his time, looking for better forms of immortality he might reach from his apparent dead end (*cough*).  His culture fell, supplanted by another.  That one fell, and Azalin began to wander.  Somehow he got up north into a large nation.

Azalin was looking for ruins and secrets, but he found that his reasearch required a lot of resources, so he conquered the country and set himself up as king with enough bureaucracy to minimize the necessities of actual rule and enough secret police to keep the bureaucracy from forcing him to kill them all.  Once ensconced, he went back to his work.  It was during one of these experiments that the sorcerer found himself wandering into Barovia, then a solitary island in the Mists.  Azalin had a brief alliance with the Count, but both now believe the other profitted from that alliance at the one's expense and personally despise one another.  Azalin walked into the Mists, hoping to find his way back to his kingdom, but instead found his way into a cunning but obvious fake, which, as it happens was just waiting for its king eternal.  Azalin has been looking for a way out of the Realm ever since.

The Darklord Could be... It could be Azalin Rex.  In his attempts to learn the nature and means of escape from his prison, Azalin has become responsible for most of the information that scholars possess on the nature of the Realm (It's worht noting that most scholars aren't even aware of things like Domains, Darklords or Dark Powers, and those who are consider it Azalin's pet hypothesis, and will believe it or not as their own experiments and observations seem to concur or refute.  We know he's dead [*cough*] on, but this is not common or authoritative knowledge within the setting).  Azalin has discovered that he is once again suffering from the cognitive degeneration that plagued him at the end of his living years.  Worse, this sort of decline is much more profound than what will torment and kill a living person, this kind of decline is the end of lichdom, which eventually leads to total spiritual dissolution.  As such, and even with centuries left, Azalin is starting to panic.  Actually, panic set in around the time he started the experiment that destroyed his capital, his body, at least two other Domains, and caused earthquakes across the Core (his body and one of the two Domains has since recovered, the Domain relocated into the Mists somewhere, so there's a possibility that the other one might still reside elsewhere).  Azalin has only recently reformed his physical body and returned to his throne, so no one is sure what changes the experience might have caused in him.

Azalin believes himself to be the Darklord of the Domain of Darkon, though he and anyone else who's made a study of his hypothesis will note that he was not taken directly from his world with his Domain as many Darklords are.  He wandered in by accident and found no means of egress.  The possibility that he might not have been chosen by the Realm or its masters (Azalin had a long and accomplished career as a monster before coming to the Realm, and the act that precipitated his arrival was a fairly standard penetration into the invisible world, which is not, in itself, that evil an act), but is stuck here anyway, apparently really galls him.

Police Yourself (Police Me!) - Darkon is unique among Domains in that, given the blase that the Darkonese try to cultivate and the diversity of the population, an adventurer could become a citizen, hell, even a legitimate landowner or senator before Azalin noticed they were there and recruited them to the Kargat.  Azalin shares his former ally's relative esteem for powerful murderous hobos but is not as permissive as the Count.  Adventurers can easily find work as junior Kargat agents or independent contractors.  Azalin needs both hard-to-obtain resources and any and all information, and will pay well to get his bony hands on it.  He's also kind of easy to annoy and kills things that annoy him as a matter of course, so do be polite and honest or do be very elsewhere.  Darkon shows evidence of massive and extensive subterranean construction similar to that of its modern resident aliens, and those people are quite interested in exploring those ruins.  They are also more than willing to hire specialists to aid in their expeditions.  Finally, there is the remains of Ilaluk, and things within that, thus far, the living cannot access due to the the toxic light, and the dead cannot access because of an authority within that supplants their will.  If a person could figure out how to penetrate the city safely, Azalin would be very interested.

Closing the Borders - As far as we know, Azalin never has.  If he want's you, he'll send Kargat to fetch you, and you will be fetched.