#and elves don't talk in equivalents either anyway

[the-unconquered-queen]

Thinking about the age gap between Tyril x elf!MC.

Thinking about how Tyril is the elven equivalent of 25 even though he's about 75 actual years old.

Thinking about how we don't know how old MC is but we do know that they are within two years of Kade's age (or even the same age—I think I found an inconsistency) and that the two of them were orphaned and subsequently adopted about 20 years ago, which MC says is as long as they remember (despite the fact that on more than one occasion MC has mentioned remembering their parents, most notably in b2 they mention remembering their parents' teachings, which means MC wasn’t an infant when they were killed).

Thinking about how Tyril said MC is young for an elf.

Thinking about how by elven standards, 20 human years makes one "very small" (equivalent of a 6 y/o).

Thinking about how elven years must work very oddly because if their average lifespan is 300 years, then an elf who is 30 (random guesstimate for MC—they're likely a little bit younger) would be the equivalent of 10, which tracks with the "very small" comment, but which would not make MC the adult they very clearly are (and keep in mind that elves reach maturity at 50, which would be the equivalent of 16 in human years).

And also thinking about how I either have MC's backstory mixed up or there are some small inconsistencies that make it very difficult to tell but even disregarding the math above, the best I can reason is that Tyril is one of those dudes in their 20s who goes after the barely legal teenagers 😬

[dexadin]

I just found your post on how to run Strahd safely (it's really good btw!) and I was wondering if you could talk about how you fixed Rahadin and the Dusk elves? I really want to run COS but I don't like how Mandymods handles them

Sorry for taking literal months to respond to this, I was working a seasonal job that was SUPER taxing but I am glad to be back to talking about Curse of Strahd on the internet :3c

Obviously, spoilers for the module below!

So I super don't like the way Rahadin and the dusk elves are in the text. I think that the module is incredibly gratuitous with violence against women in a way that is exploitative and gross, and Rahadin's betrayal leading to the genocide of the dusk elves is one of the most egregious examples of this. For that reason, I knew it had to go. However, I did like the idea that Rahadin still betrayed his people for Strahd, so I wanted to keep that. I've also been listening to a friend talk about his RAW CoS game, and Rahadin has been diminished to being Strahd's inconvenient and annoying manservant who keeps showing up for no reason. I think that Rahadin's relationship to Strahd has a lot to chew on that doesn't get delved into. After all, why would he keep making the harrowing journey to the Amber Temple to pray to his master if they aren't a much more significant relationship than the text portrays?

I've seen a lot of interesting ways to fix this. I think leaning into a brotherly relationship between Strahd and Rahadin could be really good in the right hands, especially if you play with Strahd "replacing" Sergei with Rahadin, who is endlessly loyal unlike his supposedly treacherous born brother. I've also seen some people just have the dusk elves relocated, which is.... fine? I think that you'd still need to consider the real-world implications of displaced people and not just disappear them, but if you're just trying to clean up the genocide, then sure. I really wanted to tie Tatyana, Kasimir, and Patrina into the plot more actively, while also centering Rahadin as one of, if not the primary agent, of the module.

Anyway, all the theoreticals out of the way, this is the hefty rewritten lore for how I actually did it in ATSBB (heavily inspired by "I, Strahd.)

TLDR: Despite Rahadin being in love with Strahd, he is ultimately the reason that Strahd ever meets Tatyana (who is Rahadin's best friend). Rahadin sells out his family (Kasimir and Patrina) in a failed attempt to make Strahd less interested in Tatyana, but the plan fails, resulting in tragedy across the board. I fully removed the racial aspects of dusk elves, and replaced their genocide with regional (not racial) military conflict that ends in most of them either fleeing to the underdark for safety or banding with my campaign's equivelent of the Vistani.

Rahadin was a young soldier for the country that was in the Valley before Strahd conquered it. This country was incredibly unstable, warmongering, and corrupt, so when a young Strahd swooped in with his armies in an attempt to impress his parents with his military prowess, it wasn't hard to crush his enemy and conquer the Valley, and many of his opponents were captured or killed in battle, including most of Rahadin's hometown. The survivors largely flee to the underdark and ally with the drow, or otherwise band with my campaign's equivalent of the Vistani.

Rather than kill Rahadin when he was captured, Strahd found himself impressed by his battle strategy, and took him in as his military captain. Eventually, Rahadin became Strahd's right-hand-man, and in spite of himself, Strahd eventually began to trust him. He even offers Rahadin's siblings, Kasimir and Patrina, a place to stay in his castle. Rahadin asks Strahd if he would be willing to extend the offer to his childhood best friend, Tatyana, which Strahd obliges. Meanwhile, Rahadin began to find himself catching feelings for Strahd, which manifested in unwavering loyalty and devotion. Strahd begins to court Tatyana, but is unsuccessful because 1. Strahd is a Weird Dude, and 2. Tatyana knows that Rahadin is in love with Strahd.

Once Castle Ravenloft is built, Sergei visits Strahd from their shared home country with the news that he would be staying to test his resolve and explore the world before completing his training as a cleric. Sergei is much more friendly and normal than his brother, who is businesslike and curt, and when he meets Tatyana in town, they immediately hit it off.

Strahd is immediately gets madly jealous of his charming younger brother. In his mind, Sergei represents everything he could have had-- a life away from the battlefield, literally full of love, healing, and the nurturing presence of his parents. Strahd begins to fixate on Tatyana and becomes desperate to win her over Sergei.

Meanwhile, Rahadin does not want Strahd, the dude he's in love with, to fall for his best friend in all the world, but more importantly does not want his best friend Tatyana to be miserably dodging his advances. He decides he needs to turn Strahd's attention elsewhere, and makes the choice to try to hook Strahd up with Patrina, against the wishes of Kasimir, who correctly thinks Strahd is bad news.

The rest of the story plays out as written: Strahd seeths in relative silence until the wedding between Sergei and Tatyana, in which he absolutely loses his shit. In his rampage, Strahd kills not only Sergei and Tatyana, but Patrina. Rahadin watches on in silence as the man he devoted his life to kills his best friend, her lover, and his own sister. He chooses to stay with Strahd as his chamberlain out of twisted devotion, but also because Patrina's death estranges Rahadin from the rest of his family.

In the actual campaign, Rahadin is a loyal servant to Strahd, who Strahd carelessly takes for granted in favor of his search for Tatyana, much to Rahadin's chagrin. Rahadin genuinely wants what is best for Strahd, and will occasionally take the risk to aid the party on the down low if he thinks it will make Strahd happier in the long run, or stop the party from making the same mistakes he feels he did. This dynamic keeps the party on their toes--they know that Rahadin would and could kill them in a heartbeat if they make an attempt to harm Strahd, but find themselves with a hesitant understanding when Rahadin will go out of his way to help them keep critical secrets from Strahd.

[missnight0wl]

Since the topic of Ismelda came up and no one ever talks about her 🙈😅 I feel like JC doesn't know what to do with her (?). Like they didn't know what to do with Tulip so she appeared less and less, only like a cameo, there was the Cook Off but that tlsq came and went, and she was the least memorable character in there.

But Ismelda is weird cause they seem like they want to include her but don't know how? They can't decide whether she's getting nicer or is still the same old Ismelda. If she's over Barnaby or not. If she's Merula's friend or not.

One of the SQ that most gives me this feeling is The Quibbler - that no one talks about it ever, but I loved that tlsq - in which we see her doing something half understandable (a werewolf in school is dangerous and Dumbledore is an idiot), half unacceptable (especially because it's Chiara we're talking about).

But the thing is, we see her hanging out with a different pair of kids every scene like little henchmen, which is already unlike her, but also several of them were Gryffindors, and it's so OoC.

And I also didn't entirely understand her purpose here. Was it for the money? The pleasure of screwing over Dumbledore? Screwing over the werewolf? It was a really bad thing she almost did and I don't get how JC wants us to view her, because then we get her really friendly in other tlsqs of the same year, which returns with my theory of they're confused about what to do with her.

(Sorry this is stupidly long).

No worries about it being long! In return, you’re getting a pretty long answer. Apologies in advance because I’m gonna be very critical about “The Quibbler” TLSQ as it’s one of my least favourite quests, and I believe that Ismelda is not even its biggest problem.

But first things first. It’s probably just my nit-picking, but I still want to talk about it. I wouldn’t really compare the situations between Tulip and Ismelda. I believe that the main reason why Tulip was moved to the side is her strong connection to the main story. It was revealed by Matt London that her wand is a hand-me-down from her grandmother who attended Mahoutokoro, her parents work at the Ministry (where R might have bigger or smaller influence), there was the whole thing with her friendship with Merula, and Matt London just seemed to be fond of her in general. The problem is that Jam City got lost with their main story at some point. I believe that some of the elements I mentioned about Tulip might still be important, but I think that the problem is not necessarily that Jam City doesn’t know what to do with Tulip – they don’t know what to do with the main story. And Tulip suffers because of that.

I mean, look at Tulip in Y4. She had her whole investigation on Rakepick and the Cursed Vault which led her from House-Elves to Hogsmeade. Then, it was just dropped like a hot potato. Sure, there might be an in-game explanation for that: she was silenced by Rakepick. I mean, there’s no way Patricia didn’t learn about her investigation, and if she was discovering things faster than MC was supposed to, then Rakepick might’ve done something with it. It’s more likely, though, that JC started getting confused with the main story. Too bad that all notes they have on Tulip when it comes to future plans are about that. Anyway, the end result is kind of the same: that they don’t know what to do with Tulip. But as I said, I’m nit-picking.

Now, the situation with Ismelda is very different, in my opinion, because I don’t think she has much direct connection to the main story at all. What I mean by that is that she’s not really interested in the Cursed Vaults, for example. I believe that she joined Merula mainly because she wanted to belong. I don’t know, she just never really showed that she might care about the treasure or even the search itself. Because of that, the writers could work on her just as a character: someone who’s not exactly MC’s friend, but also is not as antagonistic as Merula. And that’s good! But ultimately, I suppose that Ismelda became a victim of the major change in the writing team by the end of Y5.

I talked about it a bit in my analysis on how MC was supposed to use Crucio on Rakepick, perhaps you recall. Either way, I strongly believe that there was some big change around that time. It even can be seen in our recent discussion about Rowan and Barnaby: how the writers seemingly don’t remember that Rowan tutored Barnaby for years etc. And I suppose it’s just the same with Ismelda. Notice how at the beginning of Y6, MC doesn’t remember at all that Ismelda is not that bad. We also totally abandoned the conflict between Ismelda and Merula. It’s not exactly that they grew apart because in Y6Ch13, there’s a scene where we learn that Ismelda still spies for Merula, for example. On the other hand, Merula hangs out with Ben suspiciously often – and Ismelda seemingly doesn’t have any reaction to that. Their relationship is still weird like that in Y7, actually. But what happened with Ismelda’s jealousy from Y5?

Now, the thing with her crush on Barnaby actually seems pretty realistic to me personally. I mean, as someone who used to have a big crush on their friend, I have to say – it’s not that easy to simply say: “Oh, I’m over with that!”, but also you want to be over with that, so it just ends up being very confusing. Of course, it could be as well the case of inconsistent writing, too, but that one thing doesn’t bother me much.

Moving to “The Quibbler” TLSQ, though… I don’t want to sound dismissive or anything, but I honestly don’t think there’s any point in trying to understand Ismelda’s motivation there or what the writers wanted us to think – and that’s simply because I doubt that its creator put much thought into it at all, to begin with. And the most problematic part of it is actually Chiara.

First of all, Chiara was super OoC in this quest. We know from the main story that she likes Divination very much, she’s very serious about it, she even believes Trelawney is a real Seer. There are even parts in Divination classes where she enjoys reading The Quibbler. But here, she suddenly laughs at the magazine? Why? Her strong scepticism makes absolutely no sense! Sure, you could argue that this story change her perspective on Divination and all of that, but the problem is that there’s no such conclusion in this quest. At any point, Chiara didn’t say: “Perhaps I shouldn’t make fun of The Quibbler after all” or anything like that. So, I’m sorry, but I just can’t accept this explanation.

Secondly, Chiara wanted to win money for the ingredients for Wolfsbane Potion, right? And we even had this scene:

But then, as soon as Chiara gets money, she’s all happy that she’ll be able to get ingredients in time. So… Chiara needed only money to get ingredients? So, the quest basically implies that DUMBLEDORE DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE CHIARA MONEY FOR INGREDIENTS? I mean, if Chiara needed only money to be sure that she’ll make it in time, what exactly was stopping Dumbledore from getting the ingredients from the same source?

I’m sorry, but it’s so bullshit. You can say a lot about Dumbledore, but he wouldn’t refuse to give Chiara money in a situation like that. You also can’t tell me that he didn’t have money. And even if you want to believe that Albus would be a scumbag like that, we saw in the “Lone Wolf” TLSQ that Snape cares about Chiara a lot, so he would give her money. Hell, Snape would buy the ingredients himself, brew the Potion and deliver it to Chiara.

The way I see it, someone really wanted to put Chiara in this quest for some reason, but they knew it doesn’t exactly make sense – so they needed a scapegoat. Sadly, Ismelda was the easiest to turn into a bad guy of the story. Honestly, I don’t think that the writer of this quest was thinking anything about how we’re gonna view Ismelda. They just needed to distract the players. I hate to say it, but it’s kind of an equivalent of Merula’s sad backstory. Just in this case, it was rather: “Let’s not care about writing a logical side quest. Let’s make everyone worried about precious cinnamon roll Chiara instead”.

I’m sorry if these statements sound a bit too strong, but I’m really annoyed thinking about how many people were hating on Ismelda after this quest while I didn’t see much on how little sense this story made in general. And truth be told, this whole situation kind of made me dislike Chiara…

Overall, I hope that “The Quibbler” TLSQ was an exception when it comes to Ismelda’s character. I assume that her role will still be somewhere between [MC’s friend] and [Merula]. I mean, I believe that that’s how she is usually (“The Quibbler” TLSQ aside). That being said, I also expect that Jam City is not gonna remember all of the past stories, so I suppose that Ismelda will never be truly consistent.

I have no idea if I addressed your concerns properly. I hope I did. If not, as always, feel free to ask for clarification.