Lord Soth, the iconic Dragonlance villain, appears to be trapped in Ravenloft once more. Wizards of the Coast has released several big hints that Lord Soth will be featured in the Ravenloft: The Horrors Within book due for release later this year. For one, Wizards of the Coast is releasing a D&D Encounters: Shadows of Sithicus mini-adventure as a pre-order bonus for the book. Sithicus, of course, is the Domain of Dread Lord Soth was trapped in. Additionally, the upcoming Actual Play series Dungeon Masters will feature “a fractured band of unlikely allies becoming trapped in a haunted land ruled by the infamous fallen paladin, Lord Soth.” One of the selling points of Dungeon Masters is that it will feature unreleased content from Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, with some content available to those who pre-order the book early as mini-encounters.
Lord Soth has an interesting history with Ravenloft. The character was pulled from Krynn (home of the Dragonlance campaign setting) to star in the Ravenloft novel Knight of the Black Rose. However, Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis later returned to TSR to write more Dragonlance novels and were reportedly unhappy with Soth’s inclusion in Ravenloft. The pair featured Soth in a Dragonlance novel and an explanation was given that Soth had been returned to Krynn at the moment of his departure by the Dark Powers that govern Ravenloft. Soth’s departure from Ravenloft was eventually shown in the 1999 novel Spectre of the Black Rose.
The previous Ravenloft book, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, did not feature Soth as the designers wished to keep Soth’s freedom from the realm (and his subsequent death in Dragonlance novels) canon. Lord Soth has since appeared in two campaign books – Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and the mulitversal Vecna: Eve of Ruin, both of which were set during the War of the Lance. More Dragonlance content seems to be on the way, as Hickman and Weis recently publicized that they were working with Wizards again.
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