I’Cath is a realm with two sides, one of which is trapped in the throes of an eternal dream. Its duality makes it perhaps the most unpredictable of the many Domains of Dread featured in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. For explorers undaunted by an ever-changing city defined by insomniacs, jiangshi, and a ruler obsessed with perfection, read on, and be wary of spoilers!
- Tsien Chiang: The Dream-Weaving Darklord
- The Real I’Cath vs. the I’Cath in Dreams
- The Darklord’s Daughters
- Defying the Dream I’Cath
Tsien Chiang: The Dream-Weaving Darklord
The Darklord of I’Cath is Tsien Chiang, who was introduced in the 1992 Ravenloft sourcebook Islands of Terror as a misandrist sorceress who ruled a small island and had the unusual ability to transform into a treant. Her depiction in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft is much deeper, nuanced, and plentiful with storytelling possibilities. In it, she uses the statistics of a mage, except she has access to various magic items.
When Tsien Chiang was a child, her home was ravaged by colonizers. This event left an indelible impression upon her. Upon retreating to the mountains for safety, Tsien Chiang allied herself with a gold dragon, who taught her the ways of wizardry and urged her to let go of the bitter hatred that festered in her heart.
Tsien Chiang’s thirst for revenge never abated, and eventually she learned of the Nightingale Bell, an instrument that could make its ringer’s dreams come true. The main component needed to construct this bell was a gold dragon scale. Knowing that her draconic mentor would never provide her with what she needed, Chiang drugged him with an herbal concoction, which she unfortunately mixed too hastily.
Chiang inadvertently killed her dragon mentor with the flawed concoction, losing her home and family for the second time in her life. With no other recourse, Chiang finished constructing the Nightingale Bell, took it to the city of her childhood, and wished for the annihilation of the invaders.
In her newly created utopia, Tsien Chiang ruled as queen. She had four daughters, numerous subjects, and a mighty empire at her fingertips. Yet, the stern laws and many executions that Chiang enacted — perhaps to ensure that her kingdom would not fall to another colonizing force — led to rebellion. Eventually, a group of assassins entered her palace and murdered her daughters, leaving Chiang utterly distraught.
Chiang rang the Nightingale Bell, wishing for a perfect city completely under her control. The Dark Powers of Ravenloft heard her wish, and engulfed her kingdom with mist, rebirthing it as a world with a lingering dream.
Tsien Chiang now rules over dual realms — the physical version of I’Cath, and the surreal I’Cath dreamworld. The physical I’Cath is a muted place filled with a drowsy populace that can no longer discern what is real and what is a dream. Once these people go to sleep, they’re transported to a shining city. There, subjects toil to create a metropolis that matches Chiang’s ever-changing view of perfection.
Tsien Chiang is a Darklord who desires control. By day, Tsien Chiang studies I’Cath’s imperfections and devises plans to improve her city, and by night, she basks in the splendors of an illusion where these plans come to fruition. Then she wakes, realizes that none of her progress has truly manifested, and the process begins anew by ringing the Nightingale Bell.
The Real I’Cath vs. the I’Cath in Dreams
Last night, I dreamed the dream of I’Cath once again. The cobblestones shone bright in the sun, and the ministers told me my job was to keep them pristine. I set to work, my only hope that Lady Tsien Chiang herself — or perhaps one of her daughters — might cross my path and acknowledge my small role in keeping our city beautiful.
Alas, no such meeting occurred. And as the sun set in the dream, I found my mind passing through the veil, returning to the dreariness of the real I’Cath. Here, the streets are dull, their only color coming from the footprints of the hopping jiangshi or the shimmer of a passing ghost.
Lately, I struggle at differentiating what is real and what is not. Am I a vagrant of ruined I’Cath, dreaming of an existence as a street sweeper in a golden era? Or am I a street sweeper dreaming of an existence as a vagrant?
— From the diary of Wong Git-Yan, resident of I’Cath
The Real I’Cath
The real I’Cath is a dreary and decrepit city. Most of its people have chosen to surrender to the throes of the dreamworld, only occasionally waking to a feeling of great hunger. Food is a scarcity, and more highly valued than gold.
I’Cath is under constant change. Every evening, Tsien Chiang orders her head assistant, Minister Suen, to lead a team of jiangshi in renovating aspects of the city that she deems inferior. These jiangshi are quick to attack any awake bystanders as they tear down and rebuild alleyways, gardens, and major thoroughfares. The result is a dangerous metropolis that changes on a nightly basis, with streets morphing like an M.C. Escher painting.
There are only a few landmarks that remain untouched by the jiangshi architects, including:
- Palace of Bones: The palace is Tsien Chiang's living quarters, and it was constructed with the bones of those executed under her reign.
- Ping’On Tower: This tower is inhabited by hundreds of hungry spirits, with the Nightingale Bell resting on the topmost floor.
The I’Cath in Dreams
The dream I’Cath might be more vibrant and less labyrinthine than its counterpart, but the dreamers within it are not necessarily happier.
Tsien Chiang’s utopia is one where she rules with an iron fist, and her ministers force citizens to carry out menial tasks in Chiang’s pursuit of a perfect city. Protestors are tossed into prison or executed immediately, causing them to rudely awaken back in the real I’Cath.
Thus, life in this nightmarish land forces one to choose between enduring a painful existence in a city where food is scarce and jiangshi rearrange the streets, or submitting to a fancier but ultimately draconian illusion.
The Darklord’s Daughters
Tsien Chiang’s daughters are the most compelling figures in I’Cath aside from the Darklord herself. Originally depicted in old Ravenloft lore as henchwomen who largely shared their mother’s hatred of men, Chiang’s daughters are now twisted manifestations of their former selves.
Chiang used the Nightingale Bell to bring her children back to life. These four girls exist as their mother remembers them in the dream I’Cath. But in the real I’Cath, each has taken on a disturbing form that shatters their mother’s view of perfection and brings a twisted body horror flair to this Domain of Dread:
- Tsien Lei-An is composed entirely of eyes, and wanders the corridors of I’Cath’s row homes, searching through the belongings of sleeping residents. She has the statistics of a scarecrow.
- Tsien Man-Yi is made of wood and resides by a willow tree near the Palace of Bones, hoping for a friend to rest under its boughs alongside her. She has the statistics of a dryad.
- Tsien Seu-Mei has a body made entirely of teeth, and meanders the stalls of I’Cath’s market district, looking for food. She has the statistics of a ghoul.
- Tsien Wai-Ching has a spectral form made of fog, and hopes to reunite one of the hungry spirits from Ping’On Tower with its family. She has the statistics of a specter.
Despite their frightening appearances, the daughters are benevolent insomniacs who only desire to win kindness from their mother, who ignores them in favor of their dream counterparts. If befriended by a party of adventurers and convinced to fall asleep, these “imperfect” daughters will replace their “perfect” counterparts in the dream world — a gripping development that just might shatter Tsien Chiang’s hold on I'Cath itself.
Defying the Dream I’Cath
I’Cath offers a multitude of opportunities for gripping D&D adventures, ranging from tales of revolution to dark psychological dives. Dungeon Masters seeking to guide their players into this phantasmagorical domain should consider the following:
- Don’t immediately reveal the dual nature of I’Cath. Adventurers pulled into I’Cath by the Mists of the Domains of Dread should be fed bread crumbs until they can uncover its duality for themselves. Perhaps they might first encounter jiangshi and assume that they’re in a domain haunted by ghosts from Chinese legend. After fighting off these undead, have them retreat to a safe spot for some rest only to awaken, completely baffled, in the dreamworld. Following their dream adventures, have them reawaken in a completely different section of the city, as if they’re in a procedurally generated video game like Darkest Dungeon or Hades. Once players discern I’Cath’s duality, you can bet that they’ll want to explore every nook and cranny of both the waking world and its sleeping counterpart.
- Create a party composed of local insomniacs. Tsien Chiang has always crushed revolutionaries, and the majority of her subjects have given up hope and sworn themselves to the dream. But a team of hard-headed insomniacs who are tired of injustice might be just the group needed to topple Tsien Chiang and wrest the Nightingale Bell from her hands. Party members might be forced to endure exhaustion from lack of sleep, battle hallucinations a la the Friday the 13th franchise and the film The Machinist, or even gain fear and stress at the very thought of putting their heads to a pillow.
- Redeem Tsien Chiang by convincing her that perfection is unattainable. Empathic adventurers could earn Tsien Chiang’s attention by convincing her that in her desperate bid to protect I’Cath from invaders, she has become little more than a dictator chasing after an impossible goal. The easiest way to do so might be by reminding her of the genuine love she once had for her children, though this will require the Darklord to accept their unnatural forms in the waking world. Perhaps the ghostly spirit of Chiang’s dragon mentor could also be summoned from the Nightingale Bell. How might the I’Cath Darklord react when seeing a figure from her past?
- Consider adding a dream within a dream. If the real world and the dreamworld aren’t enough for you, devise what might happen when residents already in the dream version of I’Cath go to sleep! Maybe the most devoted followers of Tsien Chiang who succeed in their jiangshi-assigned tasks are allowed to gather in a communal space where they doze off and travel to an exclusive dream sanctum that the Darklord herself frequents. Navigating the dream layers and confronting Chiang in this sanctum is essentially the plot of Inception translated to D&D, and what a campaign that would be!
Dare to Dream
Whether you hope to vindicate Tsien Chiang or defy her, be sure to check out Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft for more details on the surreal realm of I’Cath and other Domains of Dread. Master-tier subscribers can share content they have unlocked with people in their campaigns!
Jeremy Blum (@PixelGrotto) is a journalist, gaming blogger, comic book aficionado, and fan of all forms of storytelling who rolled his first polyhedral dice while living in Hong Kong in 2017. Since then, he's never looked back and loves roleplaying games for the chance to tell the tales that have been swirling in his head since childhood.
Wow, great article. I love this idea, and really enjoyed the movie Inception, so this will be fun to put into my campaign.
Are Jiangshi supposed to be guengsi?
No they are Jiangshi:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangshi
This is a great idea for a Domain of Dread and I think the concepts of entering a dream world and entering a dream within a dream is just genius and will be very fun for players.
This is really cool! I love the idea of a world in which it becomes hard to determine what your dreams and realities are. I also want to get the players caught up in a rebuilding session in either the dream or real I'Cath, with swarms of jiangshi attempting to destroy the very ground underneath them. They'd have to get above or away from the rebuilding, and if they get caught up in the jiangshi, they might be spontaneously transported to the other world (whichever one they're in), or they might be built into the new city area, trapped and suffocating until the other party members bring them out. They might also just die to the swarm of hungry jiangshi. This would be such a fun area to use.
Whoops, my bad :).
Also, they left out some stuff from the traditional folklore Jiangshi like the fact they can't touch chicken blood or that a dagger made of coins tied together with string knock them unconscious, I could be wrong about the last one though.
But, then again, they aren't supposed to be exactly like traditional Jiangshi ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry if I'm being a little bit spammy but here's my million-dollar idea: A Matrix-styled campaign where party are a group of special agents of a god or guild and have to take down Chiang in the dream-world and get out in time for the portal out of the Shadowfell to be opened by a mage.
I see your Cantonese and salute you!
I think they just went with the name Jiangshi since it's a little more internationally known these days.
Also, Matrix campaign idea is rad.
I feel like this is just a few back stories.
Hmm... this would make for an amazing mystery campaign. Maybe the dream daughters go missing and Tsien rips up all she's created looking for them. The PCs have to figure out where they are before Tsien destroys everyone (and everything) in the city.
For this one, I wish they had given us a slightly more detailed description of the daughters. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how a walking (crawling?) mess of eyes would actually work, and that's just the first daughter. Likewise I would've appreciated a bit more description of their dream selves as well. What we get seems to imply that they are to be treated as two separate characters instead of simply the waking and dream forms of one individual. But we don't even get any characterization for them at all.
Theme wise, I honestly feel like this one isn't even that good of a horror story. Sure there are undead hopping around and they'll attack you at certain points. But it basically boils down to "here's a weird city, and oh look! A even weirder city! Enjoy."
There's bones here for something great, but they should have given us a bit more to go on to make the domain itself worth playing in. As is the only idea I could come up with for this one is to take inspiration from Bloodborne and feature a invasion from the Illithid's domain of Bluetspur.
I wonder how the dream spell would work in the dream realm.
I would say that if you want to make it a real horror story, you have to lean into the whole "dreams and reality blending together" thing. Make it so that the players can't tell when they're in a dream or in the real world. You could also make sleep-inducing monsters a big part of this world, attempting to send the players to sleep so that they enter the dream world. Make the city full of illusions, transmutations, and things that just look... off. You could also play up the fact that the players are starving. Food is rare in this world, and eating in a dream doesn't satisfy you. You could also start having players randomly take damage in the dream world, unable to see the source. Their sleeping body is being attacked by a jiangshi. If the player survives or finds a way to wake up, they are now in constant doubt of whether or not their sleeping bodies are safe whenever they're in the dream world. You could also have the party split in dual versions of terror, as two members frantically try to keep the sleeping bodies of their comrades safe from jiangshi and the other two try to evade the Darklord's troops as they try to find something that doesn't change under their feet, unable to figure out what is happening in the world around them.
Edit: TLDR: Try to create a feeling of never being safe and never being sure of what's real or not, a general tension and feeling of constant risks.
I have many questions, but the first one is how to make someone who a level 3 party could kill in a single round a challenging boss without including too many mooks.
Give em' a mech suit. Or have the nightengale bell give her special powers. Maybe she can use ancient gold dragon breath weapons and fly? Shapeshift into something stronger? Use your DM mind here, you can modify the stats or use different stats.
I also wish the book had supplied us with art of the sisters, but as I wrote this I began visualizing them in my head as walking versions of Junji Ito's art and that's how I'm seeing them now.
As for the horror side of I'Cath, the domain is classified under cosmic horror within the book, so I think the idea here is to really amp up the nebulous nature of dreams and the inability of PCs to tell what's real and what's not. Also, players in this domain are supposed to consistently accrue levels of exhaustion if they try to defy the dream, and they can't remove this exhaustion if they fail a saving throw to try and wake up, so you're dealing with the concept of players becoming gradually more and more battered, which is horrifying in itself.
There's a creepy anime short from 1995, "Magnetic Rose," that might serve as good inspiration for how to run this. It's sci-fi instead of fantasy but features similar themes of a team venturing into a long-dead spaceship that has been taken over by a rogue AI who's re-created the memories of the opera songstress who once owned the ship. Lots of blurring between reality and dreamy hallucination.
Really cool. But there's a huge oversight no one has pointed out. What if you're an elf, a Warforged, or a Kalashtar?
You can enter the dream willingly if you meditate. Even if you don't sleep, you'll probably need to venture into the dream to find a way out of I'Cath.
Basically yes, Jiangshi would simply be the mandarin pronunciation.