#ismark the WEREWOLF

[tofu-bento-box]

Lycanthrope Ismark 🙏

YES.

i was originally going to dhampir him, but the gogy worked better. here’s @thewiglesswonder’s rendition of our boy!! he’s a little messy in this pic but don’t worry we cleaned him up (:

also, i styled barovia after scotland, with the longer bloodlines having tartans as identifications of heritage. so just picture a purple kilt on the above picture lmfao

[bloodfool]

My beloved Curse of Strahd NPCs!

[cassynite]

Wanted to draw Astra and Ismark in his wolf form (because he's a werewolf in our campaign). i DO have confirmation he is big enough that someone could ride on his back like a horse so

[chompbunny]

My Ireena and Ismark NPCs, yes i made him a werewolf I'm a Van Helsing Stan 🤷 🧛

[yuramec]

Just Gisselene and werewolf-Ismark having a really sweet moment of honesty before is full moon OwO ... and he is not the only werewolf in our party.

[mana-garmr]

The baby herself, with a tad longer hair. Her hair stays a tad longer with each transformation into her werewolf form, so that's the current state - and pretty much the look for Strahd's dinner. But alas, for now, this is the look she has for Ismark, as he stitches her after her meeting with a knife.

[gooseontheinternet]

curse of strahd people. very important question

[catmemer]

If you'd like to infodump about Valerie she's been on my mind 👀

Yeah for sure!

I made Valerie back in like 2019. She's basically a witch that escaped a strict puritan-like town so she could study magic and continue her parents research on immortality. During her studies and research, she summoned a demon (named Jasper/Jazz), fell in love with him, and eventually became a demon herself.

In 2020, our previous dnd group started a gothic horror campaign called Curse of Strahd, and I decided to turn her into a dnd character so I could play her! She's a Hexblade Warlock who has pretty much the same backstory, with some minor differences. She makes a pact with an entity that tells her where she can find immortality, and she goes out to travel and find it (and ends up being stuck in Barovia).

She meets the other party members, travels with them, does some adventuring, etc etc dnd stuff. Our campaign didn't finish unfortunately and we left off at the Amber Temple (fucked up ancient place with dark powers), the place where she would've found her patron and talked about how she would be able to earn the immortality she sought out.

A few years ago our current DM (who was a player in our previous game) started a new CoS game and decided to take a few of the previous party members and make them NPCS in our current game. In this version, Valerie and her previous group were at the Amber Temple and something happened (which may or may not have been her fault?) that caused all of them to split. Since Valerie's whole thing was to be at the Amber Temple that's where she resided and slowly went mad over time, forgetting what happened and why she went there in the first place.

Our current party went there a while ago and we found her there. She basically just hosted bingo nights for the creatures that lived there lol. After some exploring and some combat, she decided to follow us so she could try and clear her mind a bit. So now my DM and I take turns playing her as she's with the party lol.

Other facts and info (that I can think of rn lol):

Likes magic (especially dark magic), ancient knowledge, and anything spooky and forbidden. Typical witch stuff.

She magically dyes her hair purple (her favorite color). Her natural hair color is black. 

Favorite animal: bats.

Loves to read gothic romance novels.

Loves to dress in fancy clothes, especially gothic clothing.

Likes drinking wine

Afraid of large bodies of water

And some fun stuff from the campaigns:

In our first playthrough, Valerie got to eldritch blast and smack Strahd in the face. In both campaigns, she is an enemy of Strahd.

Bffs with Escher. Hasn't seen him in forever though and totally wants to have a night on the town with him at some point lol.

In our first playthrough, Valerie got to rip out the soul of the werewolf boss we were fighting and turned it into a specter that obeyed her commands for a short amount of time. Hoping to use this feature again in our current game lol.

Definitely wants to hangout with the Abbot again. I need to see their deranged energies together lol.

In our current game, she was a temporary "caretaker" of Neferon at the Amber Temple. Would always carry hard candies to get him to cooperate.

In our current game, while the party was fighting Baba Lysaga, Valerie went off to the village of Barovia to do her own thing. Went shopping and slept with Ismark while the party was dying lol.

Banned from Castle Ravenloft, Krezk, and Vallaki due to shenanigans with previous party.

She so badly wants to find her previous party members. We met one so far, a deranged and wild gnome (named Briz) that lives in the forest, but she hasn't seen him yet.

[dinfern0]

Drawing Ismark a few moths after the campaign actually ended - for his easter egg on my VTM run as a background werewolf npc :D

[grimseverity]

So I ’m going to be playing in a CoS game and I always try to have my Characters be tied to the main stories and plots of campaign if possible, to make it easier for the DM to nudge the party in proper directions. A couple of ideas I had based on the natural osmosis and memes that have gone around in Strahd are as follows;

For context; I’ve run Curse of Strahd for a group before but I’ve never played in it, and my DM likes to change modules around in ways that are very different from my own. So I am aware of some of the module’s plots and not others (due to the players never touching on them). But here are some of my current ideas for a PC:

SPOILERS BELOW;

• A Hexblood related to the Old Bonegrinder plot

• A shifter or dhampir beast barbarian related to the werewolf plot or to the vampires of Ravenloft themselves

• A fighter or blood hunter training under Van Richten

• A Vistani divination wizard

• turning maybe one of the NPCs into a PC like Izek, Ismark, Ireena etc.

• A Dragonborn Paladin to Bahamut for Argynvost

If you guys have any other ideas to throw my way please I’d love to hear them. I want to tie my PC to the module as easily as possible to make less work on my DM’s part.

[dunmeshi]

advice on running curse of strahd that no one asked for. my credentials are having ran it, it becoming the thing my group compares all other campaigns against, and ravenloft being one of my spins.

1st pc that dies should be offered a dark gift resurrection, especially if if it happens early on. the horror of barovia's soul bubble is important and should communicated to your heroes early as part of motivation. nobody wants to be caught in the soul blender. it also gives great character/backstory opportunity

rig the cards lightly. they aren't equal and you should not have them drag along an 8 year old just because thats the card they got.

don't hesitate to introduce ez early. also ignore the bit abt rvr sparing her parents and let her be his fucked up adoptee. or straight up give her arturi's backstory/make her arturi. as written contradicts his backstory and vrgtr and general radanovich lore anyways.

steal from reddit; a lot of people have shared their really fun and creative ideas. use them.

ignore reddit; a lot of people have really stupid ideas

don't ignore the flavorful random little scary illusions. it really fucks with the players. (also i recommend ismark for argynvostholt)

oh my god change the good ending scene. so many dms express difficulty with ireena and getting players to care about her and it's because the campaign pulls this shit. she is someone who is faced with so many forces and people trying to define who she is and what her destiny should be and so her motivation, her arc, should be one of seizing agency. she doesn't need to be cruel, but give her the chance to live her own life. what's a couple more decades?

be a little silly. the scariness will run out if everything is always at 11. have strahd's organ music be a cover of like megalovania. let npcs be bitchy and stupid and ridiculous. insert jokes. trust me

session 0 wise, every pc should have a connection to barovia. they have lost loved ones who were taken by the mists or were given a "beware of crimson peak" moment or had an encounter with a werewolf. give something to gain/lose on this adventure

strahd is an understimulated large predator and the pcs are new enrichment in his enclosure. he will play with them in the most fucked up and often surprising ways because he is so goddamn bored.

[curseofsergei]

i need a fucking relationship map to explain just how deep the shit has gotten

strahda and ireena are “dating” (aka ireena kind of got groomed and doesn’t yet see how much of monster strahda really is)

the party convinced ireena to go into hiding even though she didn’t want to/understand why she should

leif (our barbarian) has been flirting with ireena

ilyana (our bard) got seduced by strahda and fucked her

while ilyana was with strahda and ireena was with leif, ismark got kidnapped and handed over to the werewolf pack

ilyana plans to confess to the party tomorrow… effectively admitting to sleeping with the woman she knew was ireena’s girlfriend WHILE her brother was getting kidnapped

it’s going to be an absolute shitshow and i cannot wait

I love the drama. It sounds super exciting to work with >:DD

[bloodfool]

can I inquire about your campaigns Ismark and how he got to be so gruff & weathered? I love him 👉🏼👈🏼

He's so rancid ❤️‍🔥 At the start of the campaign he went off on his own since he wanted to look for Ireena. Yea. I guess I don't need to tell you that it's a absolutely horrible idea to go roam Barovia on your own 💔 He got bit by a werewolf and mauled us right in front of Vallakis Gates. My Paladin struck him down and as Ismark transformed back to his human form... we just realized we had killed fucking ISMARK... Big F Afterwards we took him with us and wanted to get him all fresh and clean so we can bury him but surprise, he was gone. He actually woke up again as a Revenant Werewolf Zombie. He showed up again later as a hungry Revanant Werewolf to attempt to murder my Paladin. Yea, didn't work out that well since I killed him again... sigh Ismark pls I just wanna be your friend. And it goes on and on, since Ismark comes back again and again. And everytime he comes back again as Revenant he becomes a bit more putrid on the outside lol. But on the inside he's still just Ismark and tries to be a good Mayor for Barovia... sad thing his undead tendencies drive him to do horrible stuff every now and then

[cassynite]

I did some value practice (and, let's be honest, drawing masculine people practice) with our curse of strahd campaign's Ismark. He looks like that because Rahadin took his eyes and our party replaced them with werewolf eyes, he's fine, don't worry about it

[loafrolls]

HELLO IM BACK AND MY PARTY IS INTO SOME SHIT

How is Loaf’s CoS Party Doing:

Lost a party member (player issues)

Losing a party member may have slightly involved tearing the fabric of reality (consequences)

Van Richten cut off their cleric’s arm

Ez made them a badass prosthetic replacement

Said Cleric then got real pushy with Ez about werewolf stuff and got fucking punched

Ismark has photo-reflective eyes now! This is normal and nothing to be concerned about

Cleric and Paladin/Warlock asked for a metaphysics lesson from Van Richten then got mad when he suggested that the gods are also natural beings that reside in their own plane of existence

Cleric got REAL pushy about what Van Richten got up to when he got stuck in Ravenloft a few decades back (this happened in this universe I think it’s funny)

VR has zero shame, and proceeded to explain both his, and Strahd’s sexual interests in GREAT detail

Cleric painted a crossbow bolt to shoot Strahd in the dick with

Paladin/Warlock got some backstory out of Ez (uh oh maybe we shouldn’t have told her that she’s gone through very little compared to their Cleric huh)

Cleric discovers there is a ghost

[tofu-bento-box]

curse of strahd run by a DM that likes the idea of the plot and very little of the sourcebook let’s gooooo

ireena’s bi

we have Countess Strahda instead of strahd. she’s a lesbian who fell into the evil side of gaslight gatekeep girlboss

uhhhhhh can’t talk much about sergei and tatyana cause the lore has drastically changed

i looked away from ezmerelda for too long and now she’s a social justice druid? queen shit but girl what?

victor vallakovich. what to say about him. 5’2, emo kid haircut despite being like 27, trans guy who created an “instant top surgery” spell called the Titripper (and has way more top surgery scars than usual as a result), only bad at magic because he’s dyslexic, probably a wild magic/shadow sorcerer who just hasn’t realized the books are harming rather than helping

the brides all got their own backstories outside of strahda because we respect women having their own narrative. unfortunately i forgot to actually decide what the current relationships are so god only knows their identities

we’re getting off-topic

the Abbot is some form of nb but doesn’t have a design yet so idrk

lady wachter has an Understanding with strahda and may have killed her husband i have no idea. she’ll tell me when she’s ready

OH our female bard got seduced by strahda and it went exactly as well as you’re expecting

i kicked van richten out for being a racist fuck and his replacement is a 217-year-old half-drow named nyro, who is going to end up in some undefinable qpp with the 650-year-old elf PC

we have a he/they barbarian who is both the smartest and most emotionally intelligent party member. everyone clap for leif

mt. ghakis is solely being referred to as Mount Gay Kiss cause i couldn’t figure out how to say it

ismark. straight man, but also a werewolf now, so i think he’s a pretty damn strong trans ally lmfao

anyway i accidentally bowled my whole party over with ireena’s own personal hell last session (pov your girlfriend sleeps with your new friend to keep her busy while your gf’s stank-ass butler kidnaps your brother and you find out about this because your friend comes and confesses this to you while sobbing). shoutout to victor who heard that whole confession with zero context and has been pantsless for about a third of the time he’s known the party

In honor of pride month I want to hear about how queer you made Barovia please and thank you.

For my game:

Strahd is an obvious bisexual king.

Rahadin is asexual, but not in like, an ace kind of way. Like in a single-celled organism kind of way.

Ireena is aroace! A decision partly inspired by a certain pool of water (iykyk), and also because she’s a little bit my self-insert. A PC hit on her in like session four and was immediately told, “Do not ever speak to me that way again.” She’s iconic and I adore her.

IZMARK. IZ. GAY. And madly in love with the druid. Unfortunately Izmark does not know he is gay. He believes it is very normal to lovingly stare into your homie's eyes and look down at his lips and imagine what it would be like to kiss him. And it is very normal to comment on how attractive your homie is, cause that's just what bros do.

Vollenta is a beautiful lesbian who refuses to let the fact that she is married to Strahd change the fact that she is a lesbian and nobody will tell her or her pile of bodies otherwise.

Ludmilla is on the ace spectrum. I mean, come on. She's with the guy for power and grant money. She says she loves him, and they're definitely intimate, but she's the kind of girly to take notes before during and after, you know?

Escher. What even needs to be said about Escher. He's Ravenloft's resident twink and proud of it. He's a little lonely and can't stop thinking about the boy he was in love with when he was young, who is now old and grizzled from age, while Escher himself remains the same age he was when he betrayed his lover and chose Strahd instead, but like... he's also pretty and immortal, so who cares?

(Escher Bonus Content: Two moms! They loved him very much and were upsettingly supportive of his decision to become Strahd's newest consort)

Anastrasya: idk she's dead pre-campaign in mine so if you came here looking for commentary on her you will not get it.

Ezmerelda is a trans lesbian! She's gorgeous and I adore her. She's just so confident that she can kill Strahd on her own and I think she's right for that. I knew I wanted her to be a love interest for one of my PCs, and it just so happens that the player in question has a type.

Danika is also bi, and she's very happily married to her wonderful little husband. This hasn't come up in the campaign at all it's just something I know to be true in my heart.

The Abbot: Gender! Fluid! Call them whatever you want. He/him when you want to play on ideas of masculinity in religious circles, they/them when you want to make them seem undefinable, she/her when you want your PCs to reflect on how much mom trauma they all have :)

Sergei is straight but that man loves the queer community so much and he deserves an honorable mention.

Arrigal is gay and very pissed that the party keeps knocking on his wagon door at 3am. His ex-husband/current boyfriend has been coerced into co-parenting a child with the cleric.

There's definitely others but these are my versions of the little guys. I am so interested to hear other people's takes on them.