#also i lied some of these are 2e content but shhhh that's not important

[churchyardgrim]

3e ravenloft’s greatest hits: lady edition

ASK AND YE SHALL RECIEVE 

Natalia Vhorishkova

so we know and love the Weathermay-Foxgrove sisters, 5e actually kept them more or less the same, BUT. what 5e neglected to give much detail on was Natalia, and as soon as i read the dread possibilities in Van Richten’s Arsenal i was obsessed. holy shit! fucknasty sadomasochist werewolf lady, locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the hunter she seduced and betrayed and who has now made it his life’s goal to hunt her down?? give me 40k words about her right now immediately.

Perseyus Lathenna

holy shit yall, i didn’t even know about this character until i went looking, but she’s? amazing?? a tiny-ass grandma wizard who got the goodness traumatized out of her, and was then inspired to try again years later and ended up reclaiming that drive to help people? a disabled woman who innovates a new method of spellcasting that doesn’t need somatic gestures? a respected scholar who keeps her identity close to her chest, as a way to bypass the systematic inequality of the cultures she’s working in? holy shit i love her. put her in your game so help me god.

Tara Kolyana

listen i know we all love Ireena but 5e did her so so dirty, and 3e for all its faults gave us Tara. homegirl’s parents saw the writing on the wall and got the fuck out of dodge, and it fucking? worked?? she’s free? mostly. mostly free. the narrative tugs and tugs like an undertow but she’s had time to grow now, time to become a wholeass person outside of Barovia, outside of her destiny, and who knows what she could do now? who knows what kind of power she could have if she went back to Barovia as an adult, a full-fledged cleric with a solid sense of her self and her duty.

Ebb

literally who doesn’t love a fuckmassive shadow dragon. she’s fantastic, she’s goth, her best friend is a wizard, what more can i say? 

Lyssa von Zarovich

light of my life, girlboss of my heart, this list would not be complete without Lyssa. Strahd’s direct grandniece by way of the oft-forgotten middle brother Sturm, her goals are simple; reduce Strahd to a fine ash for the crime of piledriving the family’s history and reputation, and do some actually functional governing in Barovia. and she’s a genius! she not only found out about Strahd’s Big Oopsie entirely independently of anyone else in the know, she then looked at what uncle dearest had done and said “yeah i’ll have what he’s having” and fuckign followed through. and then! discovered a way to speedrun vampire power levels via a ghost booty call! and then invented vampire mindflayers, just bc she hadn’t broken enough records that week. 

she’s an excellent foil for Strahd, an ambitious, intelligent, and politically savvy woman who took the vampirism deal (literally the only other character to do so besides Strahd) with the full knowledge of what it entailed; as a means to an end, not an impulsive sacrifice. most of the material she’s got (and even in older editions there isn’t much) positions her as a middle-strength villain, but honestly i want to see her as a lesser-of-many-evils ally.

#ravenloft mood #no darklords bc i wanted to focus on lesser-known npcs #i'm drawing from a few sources here but if u want to go digging for more on these ladies i've got the pdfs archived hgdg #also i lied some of these are 2e content but shhhh that's not important