#victor vallakovich my beloved

[vanhelsingapologist]

Like a lamb to the slaughter.

Slight spoilers below!

Local idiot wizards can’t admit their feelings of friendship or romance without vulnerability so instead one manipulates the other into becoming Burgomaster (something he emphatically hates the idea of) while the other manipulates the manipulator into murdering his dad.

Vallaki is fine. Victor is fine. Emilia is fine.

[stinkbrat]

Victor vallakovich my beloved cringe fail boy would not be caught dead looking like this but I have hands and I can draw so I’ll do whatever I want

[mountainashfae]

Victor Vallakovich my beloved. My little meow meow. My favorite NPC.

I’m going to befriend you in every Curse of Strahd campaign I play and there’s nothing that can stop me.

feat. Chloe Sialia the Tiefling Wizard and the 90s fashion design from the modern era CoS campaign.

[vanhelsingapologist]

Vallaki coup went really well and now two of the most unempathetic, sleep deprived wizards are in charge of a populace, which is only a slight step up from a bloodthirsty vampire obsessed with a dead woman.

updates and spoilers for our game in the tags!

[vanhelsingapologist]

“What he calls kindness is cruelty. Ignorance. Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.”

Victor Vallakovich is about to get a lot more relevant in our campaign. Complete with eyeliner and dark circles, of course. We’re about to have a high-stakes dinner with the Baron about the status of some bones…

[vanhelsingapologist]

I am more than a little obsessed with how you draw Victor Vallakovich, I cannot lie, and also pardon finding your blog and then spamming notifications a lil bit, but dang I love your art and the designs for CoS characters you’ve done are just *chef kiss.*

Our DM did Victor from a completely different angle (like very different) from RAW, so I’m always curious about the Victors done a little closer to original, and the design you gave him, oh wow, I love him, I lowkey wanna adopt him a little bit not going to lie. But yeah I just needed to state as such and ramble! How’s his tenure as burgomeister (apparently?) going? 👀

This is so kind! Thank you! Spam all you like, it has no negative effect on me. Also, I love talking character analysis from our games, so if you wanted, I’d be more than happy to provide you with how we interpreted him, if you’re cool reading it!

Spoilers, as always, for our campaign.

Design

My DM has our Victor in his early 20’s. They wanted to play Victor as someone who was a victim of his dad’s abuse, and they thought that the trope of shutting one’s child away in their home for ‘protection’ would hit our party harder if he was a young adult. It became more controlling. So when designing him, it was important that he maintained a gaunt, haunted look. Almost Tim Burton-y. I combined Victorian, Traditional Slavic, and modern gothic influences to really hit Victor’s style. If you like the chains on his belt but want a younger look at him, @tantaliax has an INCREDIBLE design that utilizes a lot of these influences too.

As for the hair, our Vallakoviches canonically have vitiligo, passed down through Vargas. If I ever drew Victor from the back, his neck would have some. I think he also has some local vitiligo on his chest. I wanted Victor to have a couple streaks to set him apart from Vargas, but not too much

As for his tenure as Burgomaster…

Now that Vargas is good and dead, Victor’s a bit distracted by the power, enforcing odd laws and taking long, brooding walks in the dark that are probably illegal to interrupt him on, but he really has no idea what he’s doing. He sees it as a temporary distraction before he fucks off and leaves Barovia forever.

He likes to do the fun stuff. The being mean, the soirées, the gothifying his ancestral home, the BANNING OF THE FESTIVALS. But he hates the administration, which is funny because he’s actually pretty good at it. And he won’t give speeches. No speeches.

He repurposed the reformation center into a school and when people were like “weren’t people tortured there?” Victor was like “UGH I would’ve loved to learn in a place where people were tortured.” No one really knows what to do with that, but Victor spearheading the Barovian public education platform was whiplash inducing.

For the most part? He lets Emilia do most of it. She’s like, his shadow government while he acts as the face. He happily miserably sits in his attic and experiments or paints when we aren’t plucking him up and companion-izing him.

The main problem? Lady Wachter. He has her under house arrest for riot reasons, but “his” hesitance to decisively end anything has let her cult run amok. People in Vallaki are starting to say he’s too young, weak, and scared to do anything, which is once again garnering support to her.

I think Strahd’s also going to start tempting him with more power or the ability to leave to get him off the party’s side. Vallaki is super Pro-Party right now, and if Wachter’s second bid falls flat, I think Strahd will get that foothold in.