So what are the Denizens of Ravenloft?

The Vistani would grab interest of the Etherfarer Society, I think anyone looking for Raveloft info would better start there.

Otherwise, here's from the campaign setting

And from the Planewalker's Handbook

This is a little bit of a tangent but does anyone else find the placement of Ravenloft in the Ethereal (IIRC) to be a bit off? To me, Ravenloft was much more about ideas of evil which seem more at home to me on the Outer Planes than on the material physicality of the Inner Planes.
Aside from the "mists" of Ravenloft being like the cloudy Ethereal, I never really saw the logic for its placement there (well, I guess having the Negative Plane nearby, doesn't hurt).
Since I define Carceri as a plane of evil and of confinement/imprisonment; I always liked the idea of placing RL there, but that's just me.

In answer to the original question, the rare resident/visitor that had escaped from Ravenloft to the planes would be uber-clueless. I don't know if there would be enough of these escapees to warrent a separate name but if they got one, I imagine it would be something like "the Lost" (if that hasn't been used elsewhere) to reflect their lack of knowledge and their dark moods due to the emotional scarring they had endured (unless they would contrarily be overly upbeat after having escaped RL)

Well, Ravenloft is basically a prison for those who are particularly dangerous people, i.e. Vecna, and Lord Soth. However, the plane itself seems to be home of the dark powers (an ancient brethren like the Lady). The Dark Powers kind of do whatever they want and usually just bring people to the plane that maybe they feel like? I'm not to keen on that detail.

The Grand conjunction though can disperse many who were originally stuck in Ravenloft back to their respective homes, since Ravenloft is mostly just a mish mash of other prime material world (which is probably one reason it sits on the border ethereal). I personally have had a few Primers and Planars go to Ravenloft and back (although the one planar I've had in Ravenloft has kind of been going on a grand tour of the Multiverse, he's currently in the Far Realm *shudder*) I think.

I'm sure even Planars have vague knowledge of Ravenloft but probably in association with "never ever go there." Besides most of the people that live in Ravenloft probably don't know there's anything wrong with it or that there's anything outside of there homes. Also, I don't think there is anyway to voluntarily go to Ravenloft unless you have been brought there by the dark powers.

It's unknown how the Dark Powers chose their prisoners. But not much is known about the Dark Powers anyway: Good or Evil? One or Many? ...

To say it's an ancient brethren is one theory, nothing more.

I once read a book about Timbuktu and why it has such name recognition.
As far as 19th(?) century Europe was concerned, there was a lot of debate if the place actually existed. The only account of it was a mention by a famous Arab trader that described it as a city filled with riches and exotic wares. But for centuries that was the only mention of the place.
A lot of European scholars lumped it with imaginary locales like Atlantis or Shangri-La.
[And there was a bit of a shock and let-down when it was "discovered" and it was found to have significantly fallen from the granduer it once had]

I imagine that Ravenloft would have a similar position. Since so very few people escape from it to tell others of its existance, I imagine that if the name is well known on the planes, it is largely considered a myth (although it's hard to imagine what kind of myths would take root among planewalkers considering the realities they see). I imagine that only a few scholars or seriously ambitious explorers would take the stories of former Ravenloft residents seriously

I'm going to rock the boat a little here and say that Ravenloft is probably no less well-known than, say, Athas. People talk about it, some people claim to be from there, but it sounds like any other backwater Prime, so who cares? It might have one or two unusual qualities that are of interest to planewalkers, but that's a niche market at best.

You can leave Athas, but you can never find it again. You can go to Ravenloft, but you can never leave...

*Unless* the Dark Powers let you go, that is. And the thing is, they do let people go, all the time. Adventurers are swept up by the Mists for their Weekend in Hell, and then unceremoniously dumped back wherever they came from. The Dark Powers seem to only hold onto things they think they can use, in their ongoing morality plays, the domains. Lord Soth seems to have 'escaped' by refusing to play the part of proper villain, and the Dark Powers got bored of him, and put him back in his castle on Krynn. (Sidenote: What's interesting about Soth is that he didn't really seem to want to escape-- he didn't really seem to want anything. There was seemingly no torment the Dark Powers could put him through that was worse than the torment he was already putting himself through. So they set him free. And later, he died to restore his honour, and to seek redemption in the afterlife. So maybe the Dark Powers really do know a thing or two about a person's character. Interesting if true.)

On the other hand (of Vecna), if you take the events of Die Vecna Die! (with a grain of salt) as canon, the lich-cum-god either outsmarted the Dark Powers or became too much of a nuisance for them to hold onto-- which I suppose amounts to much the same thing, depending on how you look at it. The Dark Powers, like the Lady, don't seem to want the gods interfering with their project. They're happy to use outsiders (Inajira the arcanoloth, Isolde the ghaele eladrin, the Gentleman Caller) as bit players, but the darklords are all mortals, or former mortals. I imagine it's that ability to choose right from wrong, to go against their base nature, that mortals still possess and which fiends, celestials, and powers tend to lack-- because they've already chosen, so to speak.

Even if you strike DVD! entirely from the record-- and well you might-- it does seem like the Dark Powers want to advertise. Maybe they want an audience for their cautionary tales, or else they want to taunt their potential victims, or it could be they just want the whispers and ghost stories to tell the multiverse how nasty and clever they are, but they want witnesses. They want people to know about their existence, for some reason. So on the Outer Planes, at least, plenty of people probably do. Which is to say it's probably not common knowledge, but any old hand at planar travel has probably at least heard the rumours, and it's very possible that there are fiends and celestials who have been there firsthand, only to be discarded by the Dark Powers once they were done with them.

So I would say the mere existence of Ravenloft is probably not a big secret, but its significance-- it's not just some creepy Prime-- is probably almost entirely unknown. And as for getting there (on purpose? why would you want to?) you'd probably need a deal with the devil, a miracle, or a Vistana.

...On which note:

In Ravenloft, outsiders with the Good or Evil descriptor, by their presence alone, create a kind of concentrated miniature domain ('reality wrinkles') that travels with them, disrupting the very reality of Ravenloft. The more powerful the outsider, the more Good or Evil they presumably are, and in the case of solars, high-ranking archons, and some powerful fiends, this can be enough to let them bypass the darklords' closed borders, essentially giving them free run of the demiplane. Can't have that, so not many outsiders are allowed in Ravenloft.

The Dark Powers can't or won't strip outsiders of this effect, though it can be dimmed and sometimes overpowered, especially in the presence of a darklord. At the same time, the Dark Powers do nothing to prevent spellcasters from summoning evil creatures into Ravenloft, but spells which summon good creatures tend to fail, or are distorted in some way.

So the likeliest source for firsthand information on Ravenloft is probably going to be the fiends, particularly mid-ranking fiends who've been there, especially tempters, corruptors, and skilled shapeshifters. The Dark Powers seem to find those the most useful. They're not strong enough to upend the domains or break out of the demiplane, either, which is a bonus. Although depending on how old the Demiplane of Dread actually is in your campaign, the fiend in question might have been promoted several times over by now.

Whether or not even a fiend who'd 'escaped' from Ravenloft would know how to get back is another question. Mask mentioned that plane shift would work, and maybe it should, though I'd be careful about letting the players do that kind of thing with Ravenloft. They should certainly live to regret it, if they do.

Personally, as a DM, I'm inclined to agree with Darsius. I'd say that whatever the sages might suggest, there is no reliable means of reaching Ravenloft outside of the demiplane itself-- unless the Dark Powers want you there already. We don't go to Ravenloft anymore, is what I'm saying. You can't get there on purpose if the Mists bar your passage or divert your plane shift, and you don't get there by accident. If the object of your quest is in Vecna's former domain, then that's not a coincidence, it's by design of the Dark Powers.

And if they want you, then they're going to get you, like it or not. That's what the Mists are for. And the Vistani.

Personally,I like to think that Ravenloft is older than Barovia. I just like to think that none of the earlier Dark Lords were evil enough to really anchor their domain so strongly as to allow a stable "Core" to form around it

It's not quite that clear-cut, because Ravenloft natives usually don't remember not being part of Ravenloft. Sooner or later, and often sooner, domains succumb to Darkon syndrome and start believing that the neighbouring domains have always been there, and it's only the fickle nature of the Mists that might make it seem otherwise. Other planes, dragons, angels-- these are myths in Ravenloft. That can't really be the case if they remember where they came from, so at the very least what's happening is some pretty heavy selective memory-editing.

The Dark Powers definitely can move around vast swaths of land in Ravenloft, but when they steal a domain from the Prime, it's usually a big blank spot, not a crater. And people forget. Maybe we don't really need to explain how they get a hold of the matter they're using, but as long as we're thinking in planes and rules of three, the Inner Planes are right there, conveniently placed.

The domain of Nova Vaasa is a good example, I think-- it would appear to be stitched together out of people from Vaasa, a frontier country in the north of Faerun, spliced with a substantially more urban, pre-industrial kingdom, origin unknown. But the original Vaasa and its people are still intact. And yes, the Dark Powers might have taken this other country and its people and given them these memories. But it does seem like it's within their power to have built the whole thing from scratch.

I like to imagine that there were previous Cores, and that alternate Cores might still exist, just as large, just as stable.

...which is to say, not very stable at all. There might have been any number of Grand Conjunctions, and there might be any number of smaller, less noticeable conjunctions. Maybe the Mists hide the seams that join together this false, cobbled-together world of Ravenloft, or are the seams themselves, the interstices of a person's fraying perception. Maybe Ravenloft is the Matrix, or The Truman Show. Except most people would probably rather it weren't.

So basically the Dark Powers can do whatever they want to their realms?

Someone mentioned the Dark Powers could be one of the Ancient Brethren, how many (theoretically, or course) Ancient Brethren are there?

Also, for Athas, in the Dragon Kings book it states that Athas is on an Alternate Material plane, yet in the Spelljammer Spacefarer's Handbook it states it is in a Closed Crystal Sphere.

True, just interesting that before Planescape (Dragon Kings) it was considered to be separate from the Prime, yet shared the same Astral, Outer, and Inner Planes.

Mostly. (Greater) Powers can enter and leave Ravenloft and even take others with them. (Domains of Dread - Desciption of the "Horn of Valhalla").

It is not known, how much Domains there are. Sometimes domains do get swallowed up by the mists (especially if the Darklord is freed/killed and no one within the domain is a suitable successor), while new domains appear from time to time. There might be another core somewhere within the mists.

Getting there has never been the problem. But a fiend who has been there should be aware that he cannot leave easily. He will do anything to avoid getting there again. (And most chars should feel the same about it.) Being able to get to Ravenloft won't make anyone WANT to get there.

Very cool, thanks for the info, just one more thing, can you turn Ethereal/access the Ethereal Plane from the Astral and Outer Planes?

The usual route is to go to the Prime and from there to the Ethereal. The Ethereal is "on the other side of the Prime" from the Astral and the Outer Planes.

Of course, Sigil has portals to the Ethereal, although they're rarer than others. Sigil has portals everywhere.

As for any other exceptions... who knows? But they are, generally speaking, exceptions. Finding a portal to the Ethereal direct from the Astral should be one weird event for your players.

Right on, what about simply turning ethereal (spell, magic item, monster power, etc), is it possible in the Astral, Sigil, and Outer Planes?

Ah, so your oil of etherealness would not work on The Outlands?

Ah, I thought so, thanks again for clearing things up, and hipping me to the dreamscape demi-plane/border ethereal action, very cool.

The Ethereal Plane is the plane of possibility, the place where dreams, matter, energy, thought, and the planes of existence are born. The misty substance of the plane is continually churning and shaping itself into half-formed things; rarely, it becomes something more solid, and this solid ether slowly accumulates until it forms into demiplanes. Over the eons, it's believed that demiplanes can become full planes, and this is how the elemental planes and the Material Plane came to be. The colorful border region between the Border Ethereal and Deep Ethereal responds to the thoughts of dreaming minds, and sometimes the raw stuff of potential responds to these dreams and creates dreamscapes. These are normally ephemeral things that dissolve as soon as the dreamer wakes, but rarely one will last longer in the form of a demiplane-like region in the Deep Ethereal, possibly evolving into something greater - not places of thought, but new forms of reality. Sages who study the Ethereal Plane (and the Nightmare Lands of Ravenloft) believe that dreams aren't just thoughts, they're a separate level of reality less vivid than our own. And some believe there are further levels of reality that our reality is, in comparison, just a fleeting dream to. One such realm, in Mount Celestia, is the home of the mercurials, who are able to manipulate creatures of our lesser reality as if they were mere fleeting thoughts.

The Astral Plane isn't the plane of the mind, it's just an emptiness between planes where thoughts and beliefs sometimes leak through the holes made by planewalkers. Because time, space, and matter don't truly exist there, these thoughts are effectively as solid as anything else. It's not where thoughts are born, though; it's where thoughts, souls, and even gods go to die, when they can no longer sustain themselves anywhere else. The Astral is thus a place of dead dreams, dreams that have been forgotten, rather than living dreams as they're being experienced.

The Demiplane of Dread is part of the Ethereal Plane because it's a semi-formed plane, still congealing from the raw stuff of possibility. It's not necessarily about "ideas of evil," just a demiplane being toyed with by mysterious dark powers. But to what purpose? Not everything taken into the Demiplane of Dread is evil; good-aligned champions and neutral-aligned innocents are also stolen into the plane. Some believe the Dark Powers are collecting evil beings and testing them, refining them so that they can empower the demiplane's transformation into something greater, a full plane (perhaps an outer plane?). Or perhaps it's the heroes that are being tested, and the Dark Powers are really about refining the nature of good. Perhaps the Demiplane of Dread is a prison plane meant to quarantine great evil from the universe, or perhaps it's a womb plane designed to remake the multiverse into its image. Perhaps the Dark Powers are beyond simplistic notions of good and evil and they simply feed off of the powerful emotions generated when a heart is divided against itself. Perhaps the real purpose of the plane is found not in the dark depths to which some of the darklords descend, but in the fiery passions, aspirations, and love that drove them there.