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lordsothofsithicus · 7 months

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A Serious Review of Knight of the Black Rose, Cont.

Strahd just will not cut his losses with Lord Soth. Despite Soth literally hacking his way out of Castle Ravenloft, killing Strahd's pet Red Dragon in truly epic fashion (the narrator makes a point of noting it's the most astonishingly badass thing Magda has ever seen) and before that taking a detour through Strahd's pantry to KILL ALL HIS FOOD Strahd just thinks he can keep yanking Lord Soth's chain. Dude, Strahd, even Azalin didn't stop to kill all your food on his way out the door.

So basically headed into the second half of the book we have an acknowledgement that Soth is really too powerful to be controlled and too dangerous to safely be handled. This is a guy who knows when he's being manipulated and he... doesn't like it. He's also growing increasingly frustrated with the futility of the whole thing; after the SECOND portal in Gundarak turns out to be a dud that takes him back to Barovia Soth goes on a murderous rampage. Which Azrael approves of.

Magda continues to grow in courage and bravery, until finallly she becomes brave enough to - just leave. Given how relentless he is, it's a given that Soth could catch her but instead he lets her go, and the narrator notes he's a little disappointed to lose her. I'm not sure if Lowder decided her competing narrative was too much to continue with or not, but I know she reappears and figures prominently in Spectre of the Black Rose. It's an interesting arc through it ends abruptly.

Azrael's not a deep character, but you can only do so much with a guy who considers killing people to be his greatest talent and whose response to the discovery that he has no soul is happiness because he gets to duck punishment for all the terrible, awful things he's done. He's quintessentially chaotic evil.

The creepiest scene in the book was Medraut Gundar playing Snakes and Ladders with people he'd Reduced as the playing pieces. That's messed up. Duke Gundar himself is an uninteresting character - another ho-hum vampire - which is probably why Gundarak was cycled out when the Ravenloft setting was revised via the Grand Conjunction.

So as we wrap up the plot, Strahd realizes he has only one thing left to lead Lord Soth around by, and that's Caradoc. Strahd might be powerful enough to destroy Soth in a fight but it's obvious he's not confident enough that he could pull it off to take the risk. So instead he plays his last card pretty cleverly, by revealing Caradoc to Lord Soth but promising to protect him, discerning pretty astutely that Caradoc will go neener neener neener at Soth from what he perceives as a position of safety. Which he does. Then Strahd kicks Caradoc out. And since Caradoc was one of the two things he wanted all along, Soth goes right after him, chasing him all the way into the Mists before he gets his hands on him.

How much must you hate a guy to actually physically strangle his GHOST to death? Because Lord Soth hates Caradoc that much plus one.

The ending of the book is the Dark Powers taunting Soth with an offer of salvation they know he'll never take - this is noted as Soth "Failing his Final Test" but really there are sinister overtones to the whole thing that make it pretty clear he was being set up to fail. The Dark Powers in Action I suppose. This segues into the formation of Sithicus, with Soth in power and Azrael as his hatchetman while he scours the domain looking for Magda and Kitiara.

Final thoughts: I need to read more of the Dragonlance novels to understand Soth's fascination with Kitiara, but it's not a focus of this book anyway. It's the least of his three motivations, those being "Return to Krynn", "Throttle Caramon" and "Possess Kitiara". It's easy to have sympathy for Soth, because juxtaposed to Strahd he's a straight-shooter and much less self-aggrandizing. But while he lacks bloodthirst, he's also a vicious, remorseless killer with an icy nasty streak. I think the reason Magda chooses to leave is because she comes to understand that he's a vicious killer and that the only way she's likely to survive his conflict with Strahd is to get out while she can.

Final thoughts: Knight of the Black Rose is one of the better Ravenloft books. It stands out as unique among them because the main protagonist matches or exceeds the power level of all the antagonists. Its flaws are that Lowder decides to excise the character he was using to ground the story and more clearly define the horror element of what was happening before the end of the book, and there are a few bumpy elements to the plot. Soth is shown to be powerful, dangerous but also understandable in his towering sins; Strahd is decadent, cunning, and knowledgeable. He ultimately rids himself of his Death Knight problem because he understands what will happen when something that evil with a will that strong walks into the Mists.

It makes me wish that somehow, Soth had met Azalin; I bet that would've been fun.

#ravenloft #lord soth #dragonlance #dungeons and dragons #darklordreviews #dnd #knight of the black rose #darklords

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churchyardgrim · 3 years

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BARONESS OF BLOOD by Elaine Bergstrom

[intro post]

so this one isssss alright. solid 7/10, a decent palate cleanser between more high-octane books

it's lots of political machinations, scheming and manipulating and just so much poison you guys, just a frankly irresponsible amount of poison.

we open with some vaguely european country undergoing a bloody civil war, the current baron handling it about as badly as anyone can expect. point of advice, maybe don't knuckle down into brutal despotism when ppl are understandably unhappy about all the executions you keep ordering. Azalin can get away with it bc he can vaporize ppl from three miles away; you, my dude, cannot.

having finally murdered anyone willing to admit to disagreeing with him, the baron then decides the best course of action going forward is to immediately invade his wealthy neighbor in order to pay for all the damage he did to his own lands. brilliant, right! why has no one ever thought of this before!

so he ends up conquered and beheaded, naturally. i could see this one coming my guy, and i've only been here for thirty pages.

the conqueror, a responsible-looking guy called Peto, feels obligated to stick around and try to fix this place instead of handing the governorship off to an underling, or just annexing the place into his own country. two out of three of the old baron's kids are willing to work with him on the Fixing Shit front, being more or less happy to see open warfare end.

the third kid… well. Ilsabet is a fantastic protag in my humble onion, bc she's like what you'd get if Ianthe Tridentarius was about 60% subtlety by volume; vicious, ambitious, and very fuckign interested in her father's best friend's poison collection.

the first chunk of this book is mostly establishing almost everyone else in the plot as Largely Well Adjusted And Willing To Work Together, and Ilsabet as the outlier who shouldn't have been counted and who is seething with vengeance and feminine rage for her father's death

Ilsabet starts learning herblore and how to handle toxic substances from her dad's advisor, a guy called Jorani, and boy howdy the whole plot coulda been a lot shorter if this guy had just seen the writing on the wall a liiiiittle bit sooner, before he got attached

bc he does get attached! and by the time he realizes that Ilsabet is a vicious lil sadist he's too much in his feelings to do anything about it. i have some amount of sympathy for the guy, bc he's not totally useless, but also like. dude. come on. a little bit of arsenic goes a long way here.

our protag starts experimenting on her own time without lab instructor supervision, and honestly the horror in this one is actually quite well done! it lingers on the gruesome details of death by poison or infection, and in the confused obliviousness of good-hearted ppl who just don't get why terrible sickness keeps happening for no reason

i suppose in a setting where Shit Yourself To Death Soup is just what happens when you don't boil your drinking water well enough, instead of something advertised on instagram as a hot new diet fad, it's a lot easier to get away with poisoning ppl

and Ilsabet, just for fun, is apparently a fuckign psychopomp? every time she kills or causes suffering, or even witnesses it, the book describes bystanders noticing that she seems mysteriously more beautiful and radiant, as if she's literally absorbing the suffering of those around her as life energy

she's not doing this intentionally! it takes her till the last third of the book to even make the connection! she's just a natural sadist and i'm kind of into it

like damn woman just find a bdsm club that'll work with your specialties and have a career

anyway she offs her siblings for cooperating with the enemy, offs her maid for maybe being within spitting distance of making a connection here, offs just so many prisoners in the course of scientific inquiry, its bad yall, its baaaaaaad

she also seduces lingering conqueror Peto by way of poisonous aphrodisiacs, for political machinations! the plan is apparently, use him to get an heir that's got title to both their kingdoms, and then poison him slowly and horrifically over a period of years

talk about a toxic relationship, smh

she also manages to dig up a tasty forbidden text about even worse poisons, and also fucken…. Potion of Makes Vampires?

legit, she can raise corpses into vampiric servants now. what *can't* this woman do.

escape from her sins, apparently

bc yes, this wouldn't be a Ravenloft book without horrible comeuppance, so Ilsabet is plagued with ghosts in the mists that are mysteriously growing ever thicker over this wretched year, seeping in through the windows and open doors and seeming to disorientate and confuse those lost within them, i wonder why that could be....

anyway Ilsabet's reign of terror slowly gains momentum until her son is born and she decides it's time to do her husband in finally and avenge her father's death. she intends the poison to be of the slow, intermittent variety to slowly sicken him over a period of months -- a genuinely horrifying prospect, actually! anyone who's dealt with environmental toxins or sudden onset food sensitivities knows how bad shit can get before you isolate the cause, and this is on purpose, with malicious intent

buuuut she misjudges the dose just a wee bit and ends up paralyzing the man instead. it's at this point Jorani decides enough is enough, and starts trying to reverse the paralysis in between Ilsabet's gloating sessions

too little too late my dude

things eventually come to a head as Peto's personal guards decide the place is mega cursed and try to get their king the fuck out of there, Ilsabet kills just so many ppl by contact poison, including Jorani, and the mists finally take the castle in the chaos.

so now her country is part of the dread domains, and Ilsabet is trapped in something of a personal time loop; every night she kills her husband in rage, and every morning he's alive again in his sickbed. no one seems to notice this, save Ilsabet, and she certainly doesn't appreciate the opportunity to have her revenge a hundred times over. guess she really got attached to making it stick.

overall its a hard book to make fun of! it's not as exciting as goth vampires and wizard kings, but honestly it's really well done for what it is, and it leans very satisfyingly into the horror of poisonings. if you're after more dramatic plots with magic n wars n shit this one might be a bit dull for you, but i find its paced really well to keep my interest, and i have a soft spot for vicious lil sadists

#church's ravenloft reviews #yea this one's pretty good actually #ya girl ilsabet is definitely an avatar of the web hghdf its manipulation and toxic influence all the way down

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