Ender wrote:"A natural beauty in her late 30s, Tara Kolyana has a creamy complexion, full lips, a gentle face, expressive emerald green eyes, and auburn hair, highly unusual traits for an ethnic Barovian." -Gaz 1, pg. 144
"Ireena, a striking young woman with auburn hair, has been bitten twice by Strahd." -CoS, pg. 45
Yep, that makes me have to do some mental retraining because everytime I've ever thought of Tara it has been blonde. xD Time to go back to Gazeteer 1!!!
Edit: I knew all the other incarnations had auburn hair.
I'm sure you are not alone Zilfer. I used to assume that Tatyana was a blonde as well. I also assumed that Tara Kolyana was a brunette because of the sketch in the Realm of Terror sourcebook. This Clyde Cadwell painting has surely imprinted images of both Strahd and Tatyana on quite a few folks...
Well maybe they have hair dye back then? XD Probably easier to dye black but yeah hmmmm.... i'm going to have to give thought to it. I'll probably keep Tara blonde for that campaign where I have her as an NPC accompanying my only PC in that campaign but for others i might change her hair color to auburn. xD
Zilfer wrote:Well maybe they have hair dye back then? XD Probably easier to dye black but yeah hmmmm.... i'm going to have to give thought to it. I'll probably keep Tara blonde for that campaign where I have her as an NPC accompanying my only PC in that campaign but for others i might change her hair color to auburn. xD
Actually, if I recall correctly, the Barovians are aware of the type of girl that draws the...unwanted...kinds of attention in the county. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's a strong demand for even crude hair dyes whenever a daughter with auburn hair is born.
One of the issues with people thinking Tatyana was a blonde is that Virginia Weathermay was a blonde, and the cover to I10: The House on Gryphon Hill (i.e. the above picture) showed Strahd carrying Virginia's unconscious form. A lot of people seem to have mistaken her for Tatyana.
[i]"I too have begun to wonder about the legendary wisdom of our guardian angel and his pet rock."
~ Evee Beiderbecke[/i]
Garudos Celestar wrote:One of the issues with people thinking Tatyana was a blonde is that Virginia Weathermay was a blonde, and the cover to I10: The House on Gryphon Hill (i.e. the above picture) showed Strahd carrying Virginia's unconscious form. A lot of people seem to have mistaken her for Tatyana.
Wow! Thanks for clarifying that bit of trivia, Garudos! I never realized that that image came from Ravenloft II. Back in the 90s I didn't actually get into Ravenloft until the Realm of Terror Boxed Set. It wasn't until much later that I discovered that two precursory modules had been titled Ravenloft before the setting came into being...
Nemesio wrote:Cool Ender. Thanks for your response. So you are saying you would just avoid using Ireena Kolyana, who had lived hundreds of years before Van Richten, according to older Ravenloft products and substitute Tara as the reincarnation in CoS?
I think you could get away with using both, as there's been several reincarnations of Tatyanas existing at once. In Vampire of the Mists, you had an aspect of Tatyana existing as Anna in Faerun the same time as you had another aspect in Ravenloft- they were two halves to the same whole, apparently. Later, you had Kristiana on Prime Material Barovia existing the same time as Tara in the Demiplane, not to mention Strahd's various undead brides still lurking around in his basement.
I think the key would be to have each Tatyana reincarnation hold a sliver of her essence rather than the whole Tatyana.
So you are saying you would just avoid using Ireena Kolyana, who had lived hundreds of years before Van Richten, according to older Ravenloft products and substitute Tara as the reincarnation in CoS?