Character from Curse of Strahd by Tracy & Laura Hickman, Chris Perkins / Wizards of the Coast
The mysterious entities that created the Domains of Dread and imprisoned Strahd in Barovia — they feed on suffering and offer dark gifts to those foolish enough to accept them.
The Dark Powers are the meta-threat of Barovia — the unseen architects of the demiplane, the jailers who built Strahd's prison and turned it into a self-sustaining engine of misery. They are not gods in any conventional sense. They are something older and stranger — entities that exist in the spaces between realities, drawn to suffering the way moths are drawn to flame. They created the mists that seal Barovia from the outside world. They perpetuate the cycle of Tatyana's reincarnation to torment Strahd. They fill the Amber Temple's sarcophagi with vestiges that offer power at terrible cost. Everything in Barovia — every curse, every tragedy, every flicker of false hope — serves their appetite. The Dark Powers never appear directly. They act through the land itself: the mist that swallows travelers, the soil that won't grow healthy crops, the sun that never fully shines. They are the reason Barovia feels malevolent. Because it is.
Also known as: The Dark Powers, the Powers, the entities behind the mist