#doru donavich

[kikimoras-world]

Just wanted to show my interpretation on Doru Donavich being alive

[silvisays]

idk what other parties do with their Doru, but ours got a bath and also adopted.

i for real have a lot of Doru feelings. he's just ... so sad and little. i wanna tuck him into bed and make him some soup.

also thats one of ismark's shirts btw! its too big for him but he looks so handsome 😭😭😭

[ashslayswrites]

Commissioned @niacart_ on Instagram to draw my sweet sad nightmare son Doru from Curse of Strahd (and the fanfic he bullied me into writing for him two years after my party left him stuck in the basement).

It’s almost impossible for Doru Lukavich to remember anything before the hunger set in. He knows there were days spent dreaming with Ismark, but he can’t recall those dreams anymore. Hunger is a millstone that’s ground him to nothing. It’s stolen any sense of past or future and trapped him within a dark present, where all that exists is a constant and unrelenting need for blood.

Read Into Unmapped Darkness on Ao3!

(yes I gave him a last name)

[bloodfool]

My beloved Curse of Strahd NPCs!

[kikillustrate]

one of my players struggle with names and faces of NPCs so I made a handy drawing. hopefully it gets easier with time

[inkycapomen]

Doru and Victor

Because I have not done art of anyone else I can post with Victor. The Doru art is a bit older than the other portraits, but I still like it enough to not redraw him.

In the campaign I am dming the party has decided to bring Doru along with them because they have heard of a miracle healer in Krezk. Hopefully this mysterious Abbot can cure vampirism. :)

Victor, on the other hand, has become a dear friend of one of the PCs (although he would never admit it). Hopefully nothing terrible happens in Vallaki that puts him in danger. :3c

[the-pale-chancellor]

Strahdtober 2024: Holy Symbol and Madness promts feat the Abbot and Doru. Yes, the Abbot looks like the Kingpriest, no I will not elaborate.

[anantplayingdnd]

one of the very very horrible things about strahd is how he just doesn’t give a shit about other people and what they want. it comes out in my games through the brides’ sexualities. of them, only escher would consider himself even attracted to men, but his biggest need is attention and Strahd isn’t giving him that. our ludmilla is aro, volenta is a lesbian, doru would mostly label himself as straight. and strahd just, doesn’t care. he both intentionally and unintentionally forces the people around him to compromise on who they are in order to please him. don’t get me wrong, all of the brides willingly and freely chose to serve him, and it doesn’t get any less fucked up because of that.

[coral-under-stress]

the silliest of boys doru donavich, based on @demynom’s design!! love love love my son

[qusok]

Showed my bestie (one of my future CoS players) artworks of some NPCs. Her opinion:

Ireena: "She looks like a sunshine"

Ismark: "He looks like he was run over by a bulldozer"

Strahd: Se says he's the hottest one. I'm already sorry for her character. "Can I get someone Strahd-like, but not Strahd?"

Arrigal: "He's got some pirate vibes"

Godfrey: "Someone's got their nose stolen"

Victor: "I want skeleton cats, I'm gonna steal them from him"

Vladimir: "He looks like he had some children for breakfast"

Gulthias: "It's like if someone's ass came to life"

The Abbot: Was compared to uhhhhh some creature from some piece of media i don't know and then to Omega Flowey from Undertale

Vargas: "He looks like an evil circus owner"

Doru "He's a CoS player realizing what he got himself into"

Rudolph: "He came straight out of steampunk"

[nevermoretoleave]

dead, and dying, and dead again. — on doru donavich.

12.3.21, silas denver melvin / dead air, chvrches / save a prayer, duran duran / icarus, the crane wives / murder song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1), aurora / the lion in winter / space dog, alan shapiro / baldur's gate 3 / @ inkskinned / personal inventory: fearless (temporis fila), kaveh akbar / all the king's horses, karmina / decode, paramore / sunlit lovers, m. j. pearl / a life worthy of our breath, ocean vuong / @ roach-works / is it okay to say this?, trista masteer / courtney love prays to oregon, clementine von radics / fallen debris from the burnt out roof structure sits near the high altar inside notre dame cathedral in paris, christophe morin / @ rbhvleo / rapture, m. j. pearl

[froogie-art]

My Curse of Strahd character. Her name is You. I haven’t done much art of her but I’m working on it😅

[k0xytocin]

3 and 6???

Hey, thanks for asking me!

I wasn't expecting any asks but I can go for it. :)

I rambled a lot haha. Curse of Strahd spoilers below.

So, I DM Curse of Strahd for two different groups of players. I'll call them A and B.

3. What did your players do with Doru?

A: My players' characters are very sweet and are trying to help Doru.

They've been taking him along with them and protecting him. They tend to keep him out of conflicts, even though he's still stronger than them by this point. The Warlock (Great Old One) has even been giving Doru vials of his blood to keep him fed.

They recently met Van Richten (who is very against vampires regardless of the context in my game) and managed to persuade him to spare Doru so long as he doesn't harm anyone.

The party heard about the Abbot from Donavich, so their plan is to try and take Doru to him. In my game, there is a "cure" for vampirism, but it involves fully killing the vampire and reviving them as a mortal once more. Since Doru sees himself as an abomination in the eyes of the Morninglord (who hates undead in the lore), he agreed to it.

B: Most of my players' characters are unhinged lmao.

They're also taking Doru with them. The Warlock (Raven Queen) is mostly in charge of him, and she always intimidates him into listening to her. They mostly get him to do silly things, like wear the "maid outfit" in the Death House (Durst Mansion).

But they take good enough care of him lol. The Artificer in the group is very sweet to him, too.

Like my other group, they heard about the Abbot from Donavich. They have a similar plan. However, the Warlock intends to kill him if he endangers them or if the "cure" doesn't work. Her patron, the Raven Queen, doesn't like undead because they defy the natural order of life and death. So if the cure doesn't restore Doru's mortality, she'll just make him dead-dead.

6. Did you make any NPCs more sympathetic than in canon? Or less sympathetic?

I'm using the same lore for both groups so I don't have different answers for this one.

In general, I made the characters more sympathetic. I feel like a lot of the characters are badly written in 5e, they feel too one-dimensional and one-note. Somehow, so many characters are just secretly irredeemably evil. Like, that's their whole thing, and that' s all they get to be.

Even someone like the Abbot who is built up as this light in the oppressive darkness is secretly evil and unreasonable. I expanded his backstory to be more sympathetic and changed his goals. He's still cooking up flesh golems, but for a different reason (in summary: he thinks if he can recreate the night of Sergei's murder and have Strahd see the error of his ways and choose differently, he can lift the curse). He's also actually reasonable in my game lol.

And don't even get me started on Strahd! I could write an essay about him, haha. When it comes to the I, Strahd Novels, he has a lot of depth, and his evil actions are given a lot of sympathetic context. Meanwhile in 5e, he's just this emotionless husk who couldn't be reasoned with to save his life (unlife?). I won't go off here, but suffice it to say, when it comes to Strahd, I'm much more inspired by the I, Strahd Novels.

I made Rahadin much more sympathetic, and not outrageously evil. I removed the whole "Patrina is killed, which leads to Strahd ordering Rahadin to punish the dusk elves, which leads to Rahadin killing all the dusk elf women so they can't have anymore children" thing. It wasn't just to make Rahadin more sympathetic, but also because I just despise how women are treated in this module lol. (I'm even keeping Patrina alive and plan on doing something completely different with her).

I'm making Baba Lysaga more sympathetic by expanding on her backstory and having her motives of love and protection come through. But she operates from the shadows, because she knows deep down Strahd wouldn't accept her and it breaks her heart.

The Vistani as a whole got a revamp. I wanted to characterise them as a people with their own history, culture, and reasons for being in Barovia. Not just a bunch of messed up stereotypes Wizards of the Coasts defined them as.

My one exception is Van Richten, I guess. I'm keeping his backstory as sympathetic as it's described (with what happened to his family). But, given that he's planning a hate crime on the Vistani (who are already handled horribly in the module lol), I really don't see a way to make that sympathetic. When it comes to racism, I wouldn't want to spin it in a sympathetic way, either. I could just remove that from his story, but I feel like this type of story (with Van Richten being more of an antagonist) resonates more with my players.

Thanks for the ask! And thanks for reading.

I love Curse of Strahd so I could go on and on lmao.

[ashslayswrites]

Hi! ✨ My name is AshSlays!

I'm a fic writer, currently working on a Ravenloft/ Curse of Strahd-set story!

It’s an “after the adventure” hurt/ comfort, found family, idiots-in-love fic starring a traumatized rebel-turned-vampire, a bleeding heart who needs a nap, and a delusionally optimistic grave cleric.

🥀 INTO UNMAPPED DARKNESS: Start reading now on Ao3! 🥀

Synopsis: Ever since Ismark Kolyanovich discovered his best friend Doru did not die in a failed uprising, but was instead turned into vampire spawn, Ismark has been doing everything he can to keep Doru satiated with animal blood. He knows it can’t go on like this forever. Sooner or later, Doru will have to feed on human blood, or risk the hunger breaking him for good.

Then the sun rises in Barovia for the first time in centuries. That can only mean one thing—the devil Strahd has been slain—yet Doru remains cursed. Ismark journeys to Castle Ravenloft to meet its new owner and perhaps even find a cure, only to discover an eccentric girl with big plans to turn Barovia into a home for all things living and undead.

I lovingly call it "Legends & Lattes" but instead of Starbucks, they found the Barovian Red Cross.

✨ Read if you love ✨

Angst with a Happy Ending

Blood Drinking

Big Gay Love Story

Feels, Fluff

Friends to Lovers

Found Family

Grumpy/ Sunshine

Healing

Hurt/ Comfort

Idiots in Love

(And of course!) Vampires

I'm active on Instagram as well @AshSlaysWrites! I love to connect with folks, and thank you so much for reading!

[ashbyyyrose]

hello! i’m back sharing my ship playlists, this time my ismark x doru one for all you curse of strahd fans! no spoilers unless you literally haven’t started the game yet

[dacrethehalls]

I love making fanart of the dnd campaign im in.

We are playing curse of strahd and currently my character and Doru (who my dm, has made in the likes of every shadow daddy in romantasy books) are together (finally ive been waiting months) and she’s a bit of a brat so sometimes he has to kiss her to shut her up.

Giggling, screaming, crying, throwing up AND kicking my feet.