Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-22, 08:08 PM
One thing that I always found disappointing about the Sword & Sorcery 3.X Ravenloft books was the lack of any real in-depth treatment about the themes and significances of monsters...
What do you think are appropriate and fitting themes for various Ravenloft monsters?
There's the obvious ones, of course:
Bastelluses, Dreamweavers, Dreamspawn, Tenebris: Nightmares, fear itself.
Elementals, animals, plants: The uncaring hostility or apparent outright malignity of nature.
Golems: Hubris, the danger and moral implications of usurping divine power over life and death.
Liches: Hubris, pride, greed, eternal life.
Lycanthropes: Hunger, lust, desire.
Undead: Fear of death and disease.
Vampires: Obsession, passion.
What about other creatures? Ancient dead (mummies), animators, arak (shadow fey; and fey in general) and their changelings,, backward men (and aberrations in general), bakhna rakhna, broken ones (the creatures of Ravenloft's Doctor Moreau), carrionettes, dhampirs, doppelgangers, ermordenungs (Ivana Boritsi's minions), fiends (outsiders possessing mortals), geists and ghosts, goblyns, hags, lebentod, sea spawn, skin thieves, dread trolls, vampyres, vorlogs, dread wights, wolfweres, zombie lords...
And what about the dreadlords? Some are easy to figure out - Strahd's curse and theme is obsession, Doctor Mordenheim's theme is the hubris of creating unnatural life, Tristen and Malken are about the duality of good and evil in one person, and so on. But what are the themes of Ivana Boritsi, Azalin, Vlad Drakov, Dominic d'Honaire, TRisten ApBlanc, Ankhtepot, Hazlik, Gabrielle Aderre, Harkon Lukas, Tristess, Wilfred Godefroy, Frantisek Markov, the Three Hags of Tepest, or Baron Urik?
What do you think are appropriate and fitting themes for various Ravenloft monsters?
There's the obvious ones, of course:
Bastelluses, Dreamweavers, Dreamspawn, Tenebris: Nightmares, fear itself.
Elementals, animals, plants: The uncaring hostility or apparent outright malignity of nature.
Golems: Hubris, the danger and moral implications of usurping divine power over life and death.
Liches: Hubris, pride, greed, eternal life.
Lycanthropes: Hunger, lust, desire.
Undead: Fear of death and disease.
Vampires: Obsession, passion.
What about other creatures? Ancient dead (mummies), animators, arak (shadow fey; and fey in general) and their changelings,, backward men (and aberrations in general), bakhna rakhna, broken ones (the creatures of Ravenloft's Doctor Moreau), carrionettes, dhampirs, doppelgangers, ermordenungs (Ivana Boritsi's minions), fiends (outsiders possessing mortals), geists and ghosts, goblyns, hags, lebentod, sea spawn, skin thieves, dread trolls, vampyres, vorlogs, dread wights, wolfweres, zombie lords...
And what about the dreadlords? Some are easy to figure out - Strahd's curse and theme is obsession, Doctor Mordenheim's theme is the hubris of creating unnatural life, Tristen and Malken are about the duality of good and evil in one person, and so on. But what are the themes of Ivana Boritsi, Azalin, Vlad Drakov, Dominic d'Honaire, TRisten ApBlanc, Ankhtepot, Hazlik, Gabrielle Aderre, Harkon Lukas, Tristess, Wilfred Godefroy, Frantisek Markov, the Three Hags of Tepest, or Baron Urik?