#cosspoilers

[scalpelsister]

god i love strahd. dude keeps a journal and has 29 fucking capes. what a man.

[scalpelsister]

this is a really fun and unique one!! I had a lot of fun tossing together this npc from my dnd campaign!

Hello! This is my first maker, please have fun :)

- Feel free to use it for your characters in any setting, for personal and non-commercial purposes  - Only minor editing allowed - filters, skin tone, color changes, scars and such feachures - I don’t need to be credit, but if you wish just leave link to this maker :)

Link is here :)

[sneeple-confirmed]

COS Quotes

Hi all! Mod Mom Friend here! So in between our homebrew ish, I'm taking Mod Lizard Wizard, Mod Meme Damage, and Corn Husker through Curse of Strahd! Most quotes will be out of context but since some are dependent on context, they will be tagged as #cosspoilers and #curseofstrahdspoilers. Blacklist those if you're gonna play CoS and want it secret!

[scalpelsister]

Scrapped art of the Abbot and Vasilka

[scalpelsister]

omg wait I just realized I really revamped Patrina and now Patrina and Ireena could not only meet but also be allies in a pc+ friends vs strahd battle..... 🥰

[scalpelsister]

wanting to explore the narrative similarities between Patrina Valikovna and Sylvanas Windrunner, both elven banshees who's death is connected to the genocide of their people at the hands of a human man whos into necromancy VS my deep seated urge not to liken Strahd to Arthas fight

[scalpelsister]

Rewriting Gertruda in Curse Of Strahd

So in RAW cos, Gertruda is a teenager who is missing from the village of Barovia, and is found in Strahd's bed chambers later by the party (or otherwise rescued). I for one, hate the implication of pedophilia here- Strahd is a predator, yes, but just because hes manipulative and conniving does not mean hes a pedophile.

So, lets tweak this a bit. First of all, we know Strahd does not sleep in his bed chambers, so she can stay there as a red herring (do your players assume the worst about him? does anyone defend him? hopefully your party ends up with doubts and confusion about his character and nature. Keep in mind, Strahd can be both the bbeg, but also a party ally against a worse threat). But why did she come to the castle in the first place?

Well, perhaps she is sick with consumption (for those gothic victorian vibes), and is seeking a cure- eternal life. No 16 year old wants to die, much less one with an older mother they feel beholden to look after. Thus she ran away to the castle, and has been set up in the finest chamber as a show of hospitality. (side bar, but tuberculosis going around also explains the lack of villagers in Barovia proper- yes they are victims of vampire attacks as well, but Strahd is a smart guy- if you eat all your village, you're going to end up starving to death. But if you eat plague victims who are dying anyways.... no loss. I imagine he culls the population very deliberately, treating them more like a herd of cattle- it also reminds me a bit of how I care for my reptiles feeder insect colony, with a lot of care to prevent both over predation and over crowding, and culling parts of the breeding population every few years to replace them with fresh blood, as to prevent incest).

So... why hasn't he just killed her or turned her? Set it up as something the players control via butterfly effect- if they visit the castle early on, or otherwise have diplomatic relations with Strahd, give them a chance to either know about a sick Gertruda in the castle, or to 'save' her by returning her to her mother (still alive and unvampired). If the party kills a great number of vampire spawn- Gertruda is turned as part of an effort to replace those ranks. If the party does a great deal of damage to Strahd (physically or emotionally), and Gertruda is not yet turned, she is killed, both to regen hitpoints, but also for him to vent frustration and feel powerful again. Feeling out of control, weak, or helpless, are all things that are going to make him fly off the deep end a bit- and a sick girl in his room is a very easy outlet.

But- this is just my advice as a dm on how that plotline could be tweaked into being a bit better. There are many other ways to tailor it to your ideas, or to play it as written :)

[scalpelsister]

oke oke next cos npc bingo ask, Rahadin

ngl rahadin is... tough for me. I haven't fully figured out how he ticks. all that said though... sort of the anti sergei. that alone makes him interesting enough.

[scalpelsister]

CoS' Abbot for charcter bingo?

really interesting one to do! none of my parties have gotten anywhere close to the abbot yet, so I am yet to do much with that character in terms of futzing / homebrew / my own take on him, but I love our lil victor frankenstein angel 🖤 (also dnd / cos npcs is such a fun and unique spin on this ask? mostly bc i have Opinions about them sjshshshsh)

[scalpelsister]

brainstorming-

-rahadin attacks dusk elves, kills patrina during it on purpose which is what triggers said fight (character motivation shaky, but what if rahadin is both insecure AND resents patrina for introducing strahd to the amber temple? yes rahadin is evil and likely always has been, but he may resent strahds recent vamprism / his best friend/brother like figure both rapidly passing him up in martial ability ['he doesnt need me anymore'] and also have some level of distrust- mind you, strahd killed the one brother and his other best friend already, rahadin may feel hes next. it seems logical for him to blame patrina enough to kill her out of some level of revenge, thinking strahd would kill him soon regardless)

- rahadin sends a message to strahd falsifying intel- doesnt think it will work, but hopes. the dusk elves have killed patrina for associating with strahd.

- strahd comes in murder rage crazy as he do. the two of them commit genocide (no longer gendered- it just kills so many of them that only a very small number of elderly, very young adults, and kids escape to the woods (this is why the population is what it is in the book- those kids and young adults are now 450-650 years old, the elderly have long since died. some of the elves refuse to have kids just out of trauma and fear (much as people these days arent keen on kids), and those that do are few and far between- I would imagine half elves are the most common dusk elf children being born.

- he revives patrina, via necromancy, but due to the curse. kind of an oopsie. to him, reviving her was a token of genuine affection. to her, the entire thing was a betrayal- if your close friends other friend kills you, and then ur best friend kills your family and raises you from the dead but makes you a monstrous undead... yeah hard feelings may occur.

- patrina... struggled with sentience for a while. not inherently due to strahd or the curse, so much as her form as a banshee. I tend to write ghosts / ghost like undead as being foggy, disconnected. They are sentient, but they struggle with it- with staying grounded or aware. Adding the banshee element of that (dnd banshee/pop culture, not og myths) with rage, I imagine much of her early days as an undead would have been.... a bit feral. this alone would have made strahd retreat- keep in mind this is all not too long after tatyanna (in my canon at least), and so hes now just like. traumatized by both the transformation, loss of two of his best friends, and tatyanna. not that I see him as like, a cry baby, but his spirit is broken at this point- hes probably brooding in his castle and dramatically having a mental breakdown about how hes cursed and everything sucks rather than trouble shooting why patrina came up a whoopsie.

- the dusk elves become undead not long after patrina does. I imagine strahd likely raised some during the genocide because a) sounds like his brand of fucked up, and b) action economy lol. but whatever he didnt raise mid battle, rose regardless. Many of the undead encountered both in ravenloft, as well as the general area the original dusk elf settlement was, are dusk elves. They are not sentient.

- patrina has, over the years, both managed to improve her sentience, and has begun experimenting with possessing bodies. If met, one of her quests for the players may well be to help her get her body back from the crypts of ravenloft (where strahd buried her- again he viewed it as honoring a friend, she views it as theft and just another shitty thing hes done). Her goals in the modern era include: a) getting her body back, b) hurting the men who hurt her, c) freeing the other undead under his rule. She does not want to be found or known by strahd until shes accomplished regaining her body. (this is where i am taking cues from what I like of sylvanas windrunner, and I do plan to site my own fanon version of sylvie here pretty extensively for characterization. However, of note, is that patrina is much more alone- she has avoided the living dusk elves both as arrigal lives near them (she has figured out he is a spy for strahd via her own spy work), and out of low self esteem. She has tried, and failed, to help your average zombie- there is nothing to help, the spirit has already passed on into the rebirth cycle, and the body is just a body. I think she might make moves towards helping vampire spawn during the game- her big play would be escher, of course. player choice here is key imo- the more players feed into her and help her and escher, the more likely it becomes. if she is largely left to do her own thing, she may still succeed, however it may not go the way players would want. I do not want Patrina to ever be a damsel though- i simply mean that she might get to certain magical items before the party does, or get certain undead to be her ally behind the parties back. Not in a way that ruins things for the party, but frankly, if the party does not care to help her or escher, they may help each other- in that case, they may be better allies to each other than they would ever be to the party, etc.

I think... this how the rewrite makes the most sense to me. It lets me explore compelling themes (fan service to myself in how bad blizzard treats sylvanas), it lets me explore ways in which strahd IS bad/faults (selfish, quick to anger to the degree of killing hundreds on impulse, sometimes blind about people he idolizes), without breaking characterization or enforcing extra gendered violence. It sets up both sides as having points or being sympathetic, as well as potential for allyship between them, or a battle to the death. Also it lets me play as a cool undead elf ranger 👉👈