#that's my tag for anything elrod strahd related

[theoscout]

So I finished reading all three of the Strahd stories written by PN Elrod and I have a lot of thoughts (btw I call her version 'Caretaker Strahd' and consider him a different character to 5e Strahd)

SPOILERS FOR THE STORIES UNDER THE CUT

strahd is so definitely a gamer, I could totally imagine him showing off his setup and pc if he lived in modern times

he'd have those cool ones that flash when you type on them and really expensive gear too, he's somehow found out how to play video games despite computers not even being invented in his time

That thing he does where he possess someone else is SO UNDERUSED omg, what are the limits? Can he possess wolves and bats if he turned into them first? Possess dire wolves?? Dragons???

since vampiric charm in 5e only works on humanoids I'd assume that his version of it also only works on humanoids, except that he was able to possess another vampire in the same way so maybe his works on undead too

WHICH MEANS HE CAN BUILD A FLESH GOLEM AND POSSESS IT

fanfic where Strahd builds a mecha and kicks ass

i'd imagine his first mecha would be a robotic version of himself that uses the weird potion as fuel so he can go to other domains (and also has a self destruct button to avoid another 'Azalin's ANGY' incident

his second one might be a giant wolf with him in wolf form piloting it with the magic ball, because a four legged mecha is easier to build than one with 2 legs

also I can't shake the thought of him asking for Barovians to pay taxes in the form of blood donations

I mean for one thing he wants to survive and not let people know he's a vampire but come on are you going to eat your townsfolk when you run out of prisoners?

it's slightly better when he says that he can use his mind control powers to make them forget that he drank from them but stillllllll :(

according to Azalin the most experimentation he's done about going into the mists is the thing with holding a string and running in, and tbh that's like the only thing I agree with Darcelus on

like dude you've been alive for hundreds of years and you're too horny about some redhead to investigate wtf is going on?

makes you wonder how much he knows about the sunlight burning him as well

if I were a vampire I would be testing this out every day and try to develop some kind of sunlight proof outfit to go outside with, and if people ask what I'm wearing I'll just say I have a skin condition

OH and since people are bound to take notice of his mechas he's building, maybe he can excuse this by saying he needs blood to power his mechas

so now he doesn't need to bite his villagers :D

and about the way he can make an outfit that sunlight proofs him- I have an experiment in mind. If he can metabolise, then he can cut pieces of his hair and put them under sunlight and look at them under a magnifying glass to see how they burn. And he can slot materials such as cloth etc between the sunlight and his hair to see if it blocks out the sun, and maybe he leaves it there for a few hours to see if it ACTUALLY blocks out the sun and isn't just burning there but slower

maybe the vision part will be harder to do since IDK if UV ray resistant glass even exists here, but maybe he just casts a spell on the costume so he can see out of it

and he can just put on an entire suit of armor over it assuming it's cloth and then he can go out in public in daylight- he doesn't need to breathe so suffocation isn't a problem

alternatively he can hide his ridiculous clothing by casting disguise self but he probably has already solved that problem

i sure hope vampires don't sweat

I don't think they do but if he does, I don't think he'll like it one bit

I lowkey headcanon him as autistic because he's good at keeping a straight face, hates being social (to the point where he will throw letters at people from the shadows rather than talking to them directly), once stared for ages at a wall because he was angy, identifies with animals more than people, and idk he probably has some sensory issues from how strongly he reacts to certain smells

or maybe I just can't feel pain idk lol

i wonder if Sergei and/or Tatyana were polyamorous, he sure as hell never asked them first

wonder how much it would explode his head if it turns out centuries later that they were poly all along and he killed Alek and Sergei for nothing

:(

but also >:]

Strahd said that kissing women felt nice but he doesn't really want to do it because he hungers for blood and he has to repress it, why does he hunger for people aside from Tatyana it seems?

hmmmmmm I have never ever seen ANYONE react to a person irl like how Strahd reacts to Tatyana, and it seems like I'm not the only one who finds it sus. Not just like in 'gee you really shouldn't be this obsessed over a girl' kind of sus, sus to the point where people theorise that she's a succubus or something. SO I'm thinking, does Strahd look inside and wonder why he's so attracted to Tatyana? like... he's not very curious or scientific the way Azalin is, so he probably didn't investigate it and he isn't the introspective type AT ALL so there maybe isn't a lot of looking into it that he did

my headcanon is that something happened between him and Tatyana in another life, maybe he was already cursed from there or something

because his crime wasn't that bad in comparison to other darklords.... killing two people vs mass murder

crack theory- Tatyana is a darklord as well and stuck in the same domain as Strahd, in a past life she cast a spell on him that made him fall in love with her madly, but her curse is that he will never be able to be with her and that she won't recognise him from the past life

because ngl her situation seems worse than Strahd in some ways

still I would REALLY love to know if there was any more background to Strahd's obsession over her other than 'tatyana's hot'

just scrolled to the top and remembered that since Strahd has some sick writing skillz, he would make an amazing youtuber as well

he'd be able to write something like the DSMP for money and entertainment purposes

that is a cursed line why did i write that lmao

wonder how he'd do as a streamer

I don't think he'd be a streamer since he seems to love his privacy and his autobiographies seem reserved for meeting people he really trusts and showing them his life story without having to sit down and explain it through because he hates social stuff

so his autobiographies are partially propaganda but really it has a lot of secrets so it's possibly to get people to like him

Azalin said that Strahd had a weird/ random sense of humor so I would really like to see how he responds to memes or if he would make them

Strahd REALLY goes out of his way whenever possible in his autobiographies to be like "actually no I'm not that nice, I'm doing this semi nice thing because of xyz" to the point where I'm suspecting he's trying to cover up the fact that he cares about stuff more than he actually does but he's trying to be intimidating

he obviously feels emotions and is sad about Sergei and Alek but he's an emotional repression person and probably tries to hide ANY kind of pain that isn't Tatyana related

I really want to know what would happen if he met Sergei or Alek's ghost.................................................

I feel like a bunch of scenes in the books may have been for fanservice to some degree lol (cough cough strahd taking off his shirt cause he doesn't want it to get ruined by swords cough)

idk what Strahd has going on for Van Richten but it's funny how he just saw one random guy and went 'ok I trust you, here's my entire life story' twice

another user said Strahd was trying to seduce Van Richten because of how he let him go free after Van Richten read his first autobiography, then probably arranged an illiterate thief to carry his other autobiography to the exact bookstore where Van Richten likes to hang out so he could read it in the perfect time frame, and then send a minion to pick it up afterwards lol

TWAA was so full of cartoon physics it was funny to imagine lol

Why did Strahd imagine such oddly specific scenarios such as Azalin going mountain climbing while casting spells and himself trying to grab a carrot off Azalin while Azalin twirls it around on a fishing rod like Strahd's a minecraft pig

Strahd's so done with Azalin by the end he just lets Azalin bow his spectral form like a sockpuppet :sob emoji: