#Vistana

[akpaley]

Oh Sensation Sharp and snapping Long companion Hold me close Tell me I am bleeding slowly Torn to pieces Broken bones For all of that is just Sensation To hold, to love To live, to know

So the above artwork is a visualization of the above poem, but this whole thing is also... more than that?

Kaijja as a character in her current form draws a lot from my experiences with pain therapy and managing a chronic pain disorder. Half the prompt for her magic was this set of gifs and the other half was my experience of the psychological element of pain. Which is to say that pain is a response to a certain kind of nervous system activation and how manageable it is often depends on whether your brain thinks there's actually something wrong that needs fixing. Pain in erotic circumstances (not a thing I'm into, but) is often converted to pleasure because brain perceiving strong sensation as pleasurable and pain is strong sensation. I have dealt on and off with a chronic pain disorder for years now, and it is never so bad as when my nervous system is highly activated and I am afraid.

When you are thinking about pain all the time and experiencing sometimes very severe pain all the time and you are aware of that psychological piece but your thinking self still can't quite internalize that nothing is actually physically wrong with you, the concept of erotic pain becomes something of a power fantasy. Imagine you could feel this way, register all the sensations, and be able to treat the whole thing with the kind of joyous curiosity or even pleasure that would make this experience empowering instead of scary. Imagine that instead of making your world smaller this kind of sensation could expand it.

Kaijja was always going to be some kind of flesh paladin, but a lot of what is very core to her comes from that power fantasy, the pain that makes me visualize things moving under my skin or my flesh peeling away being both true and also beautiful. Kaijja isn't someone who doesn't experience pain, but the type of neutrality I have spent the last couple years learning and still don't have all the way down is her default. The bodily warning systems are sometimes informative, the texture of the sensations is interesting, and through the last decade or so she has been conditioned to find the extremes of both erotic. When Kaijja is in too much pain to function well it's because the experience is overwhelming and distracting, not excruciating.

Which presents a problem when the cause of that kind of overwhelm is suddenly actual bodily harm instead of being safely taken apart and reassembled by someone who loves you, and all of your instincts still say this is interesting and lovely and you should settle in and ride it out. When you are aware that there is a difference between your body signals and actual reality and on an emotional lizard brain level you can't tell the difference.

This poem is about not being able to tell the difference.

It is also about me. Not being able to tell the difference.

I don't think it would be so gentle as it is if it weren't also a kind of soft, self-soothing reflection. For her, it's the quiet acknowledgement that this is real. For me, it is the gentle reminder that it is not. A statement that I am in love with the wondrous thing of living, even when the hard parts speak to me from underneath my skin.

[aqours]

pssst you! yeah you!!! person who is probably seeing this through looking up Ravenloft related tags!

do you like the Vistani? do you want to expand on the Vistani but also you aren't sure of what to change other than the Obvious Really Bad Problems They Had To Errata And Still Didn't Fully Fix It? not 100% satisfied with the direction they went in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft? want to expand on Vistani culture and ideas but not 100% sure if you want to create a ton of homebrew or not? you interested in seeing Van Richten's 2E character growth where he was a prejudicial man who was a victim of a horrible crime but realized he can't just blame an entire ethnic group for it and gradually learned to overcome that prejudice into becoming a better man?

please consider giving Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani a read, and here's a free link! consider it me just sharing the pdf given i bought it legally so even if you for some reason don't like piracy i'm just sharing what i bought!

it's an old 2E supplement that's completely about fleshing out the Vistani. it's not a perfect guide: it's for 2E so pretty much anything it adds gameplay wise doesn't work with 5e/5.5's mechanics, some of it is still pretty dated (it says gyp*y a few times still). but it still delves a lot into Vistani culture and stories (including some of their origin stories they claim is responsible for the Vistani becoming who they are), and the Tasaques: essentially the three large ethnic clans among the Vistani and the tribes that make up said Tasaques (i say the main group of Vistani in Barovia during CoS are Kaldresh Vatraska), and some other stuff!

nothing's perfect, but if you're looking for a step 1 for fleshing out the Vistani more and you don't want to do a complete homebrew from scratch route, consider giving it a read and see if you can build off of it if you want!

[c-cloudyy]

Fanepov! Fanepov! Fanepov! What if they held hands?!

Karpov is @azrithart ‘s!

[nakitacatart]

I, a foolish mortal- unsatisfied with an Eberron and Strixhaven campaign.

“Can we please run Curse of Strahd”

[baroviablues]

Hey. Tell me about your interpretation of Arrigal Curse of Strahd. One of my players is determined to romance him after meeting him in the tavern, and unfortunately I’ve become moderately obsessed

[xyanmajor]

What my PCs has done in our Curse of Strahd campaign is ok for him.

He regrets nothing of what he did (except maybe the poor and innocent girl he "hunts") and he will be proud of all the way he has achieved for now.

He does not regret helping Lord Strahd to have his tome back.

He does not regret stealing it from his former group of adventurers.

He does not regret his choice becoming the nzw puppet with a collar of the Ancient (he is his new warlock)

He helped her soulmate to be free. He helped himself into not drowning deeper in the abyss he fell and he even made a real friend.

I think his formers companions will kill him if they know all of that. But I think in a way he doesnt care.

He makes his own choices with pride. He will be pride of his own path until the very end. Dare said its not true and he will stab you to death.

#I said.

[xyanmajor]

I like her. My PC doesnt.

But I really like your portrait. Very very much.

Somehow I managed to draw the portrait of Ezmeralda for my game, now that my players won’t see her again before a while. I was supposed to draw the men of Ravenloft, but I kinda lack motivation, so I've decided to clean the sketches I have for Ez.

I tried to stick to a canon-friendly appearance for the portrait, but as her mentor, I don't understand how to properly draw the split-shoulder part. I didn't like the orange hue as well, so I opted for the crimson one she wears on 5e VGtR's cover.

Feel free to use in your own game

[palidoozy-art]

So since we're going back to Curse of Strahd, I figured I'd go back to Kasimir's character design, since honestly he was... woefully under-designed. I don't think I ever even knew what was under that big blanket of his.

In our campaign, his backstory got fleshed out a bit more. When the first genocide occured (Barov's conquering of the dusk elf lands), he was still a child. His parents were killed in the genocide and Patrina was an absolute dogshit parent, leaving him essentially orphaned.

So he wound up being raised mostly by Velikov, a vistana in the camp the group settled by. I realized because of this, he'd probably wind up more culturally vistani than dusk elvish. His reason for being the leader of the Barovian dusk elves in our game was due to the fact that he was the only one fluent in Patterna and was knowledgable of vistani customs, making him great at serving as a mediator between the two groups.

Sadly, the death of Velikov strained his connection to the vistani. It more or less left him culturally without a home -- pushed out by the culture he was raised in and not feeling like he fully fit in with the dusk elves. His current design is to better reflect that change.

Also there's some bonus Patrina and Rahadin because I do love me my dusk elves.

[akpaley]

K: Here and alone I would eventually retain nothing. Not Issanar, not Iokhar, not my colleagues or my siblings or my values or my son. // V: You can’t fight change, whatever kind it may be. I think I chose it before I ever set foot in this city, though I don’t think I realized it then.

Forgetting.

[xyanmajor]

Absolute fan too.

Thats a game that never end.

im an absolute fan of when characters have their own twisted perceptions of love. like holy shit that guy thinks inflicting pain is affection! woah this silly man believes love is a form of ownership! give me more.

[calebisdrawing]

Arabelle the Vistana (her stuffed saber-tooth’s name is Ramses).

Feel free to use in your game if you like!

[c-cloudyy]

Fanepov sketch log no. 8939373759

including future AU headcanons where they finally live a peaceful, happy life. And bonus Lupei family concept (Fane is the squishy little bebe!)

Fane is mine, Karpov is @azrithart ‘s - from a curse of strahd campaign.

[vivtanner]

Ionel on a solo (or not so solo) adventure in Barovia 🎵

These are some previews of part II that is now up for all 5$+ patrons with part III soon to follow... where Ionel spends his day on the road with the flamboyant & flirtatious vistana, Arrigal.

[xyanmajor]

@hikarinokusari this scene has a little vibe of "i will be teaching you :) " ...if you know what i mean 👀

BALDUR'S GATE 3

[revivivivify]

I feel bad for everybody whose curse of strahd game doesn’t replace baba lysaga with an incredibly hot nonbinary vistana who happens to have a house with chicken legs

(and the vistani are cold-resistant variant tieflings. with fuzzy tails. and magic markings they can store weapons in.)

[xyanmajor]

Just in love with the female version of my vistana PC character.

♡

I want to share her with the world ♡

@hikarinokusari when you will be in better health, she'll be yours to see. (Yeah im bothering you again with useless things)