Claude's Curse?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

The trouble with cursing Claude into either fearing plots everywhere, or being the actual object of plots, is that we're talking about a family of natural-born wererats here: creatures which, by their very nature, will be conspiring against one another non-stop anyway. In Scholar of Decay, it's clear that the Reniers fully expect and even enjoy such mind-games, while deeming humans' tendency not to betray one another at the drop of a hat to be insipid and idiotic.

So where's the "curse" in making Claude a target of intrafamilial betrayal, if that's just normal and expected wererat behavior...? It's like cursing a vampyre to enjoy drinking blood. I think Claude's curse ought to be more personal and unique than that, that barred him from something the old rat used to take pleasure in. (Not sure what that would be, but that's because we know so little about the guy.)

[cure]

As I recall (which is to say correct me if I am wrong) love is a concept alien to wererats and the perculiarity of Jacqueline is that she loves. For her trouble (and her bad behaviour) the Dark Powers cursed her to transform out of human form at the most inopportune of moments when standing before the human who she loves.

It is not implausible the Jacqueline shares the perculiarity of being capable of love with Claude and, if so, it is not implausible that his curse is tied up with the perculiarity too. (Depending upon when Jacqueline first falls in love, her curse may even be not only the transformation before the human object of her love but also the very propensity to love. Either way, she is exposed as a monster precisely in the moment when she is most human.)

Now imagine that Claude was cursed to be betrayed by those he loves (or better and more simply was cursed to be undone by love). He knew full well that love was an exploitable weakness so far as his species was concerned. So he variously denied it to himself, pursued it far out of the sight of beady little eyes, and passed it off as mere patriarchical fondness (in the case of Jacqueline). But despite his best efforts, each of the manifestations of his love invariably ended up biting him in the back until Jacqueline at last dealt the killing blow. (What made the monster most human got it killed.)

Claude could be perfectly conscious that love exposed him to risk but still, with ever more caution, choose to run that risk. And one of his precautions, hiding from everyone, including its object, his paternal love for Jacqueline, yielded the tragedy and crime of her killing the only one of her species who truly caresd for her, condemning herself ultimately to a solitude that she alone of her kind can suffer.

So we have a theme here of the Dark Powers exploring what humanity does to monsterousness, rather than the more typical theme of what monsterousness does to humanity.

[A G Thing]

Claude could just be proud of his achievements and that is why they are taken. He is proud of his manipulations, proud of his more cunning blood line, proud of his leadership position, and proud of the gains... Then in a cunning swoop all of them are stripped away when they should be under his thumb. In essence it could be his curse to always have his achevements and things he is most proud of disrupted and turned against him when he least expects it...

[alhoon]

Necropost, I know. But it eats me that I don't know Claude's curse.
I read the thread but I can't find one curse that I would go for. The "betrayed by those he loves" doesn't bode well with the master manipulator thing if he loves/cares often; he wouldn't be as successful. On the other hand, it bodes even worse IMO if "betrayed by those he cares about" = "Jaquiline offed him after 20 years" because he was happy in the mean time, while Strahd for example is constantly tormented by his lust for Tatyana, Azalin fumes that he's not becoming more powerfu, Malken shares a body with an old dude that is not evil, Sodo is trolled by the DPowers constantly unable to be a proper serial killer etc.

Perhaps a good curse for Claude would be to be "constantly disappointed and shamed by his kin; he's never happy with what they accomplish and sees them all as totally unworthy heirs. Every generation he rises, turns up to be as disappointing. Jaquiline and Louise seem kinda promising... till Jaquiline axes him disappointing him too"

In Scholar of Decay, it's clear that the Reniers fully expect and even enjoy such mind-games, while deeming humans' tendency not to betray one another at the drop of a hat to be insipid and idiotic.

Still, the Reniers of SoD thrive on brutality and violent killings instead of whispers, secrets, blackmail and plots. Even random people on the street know that Reniers are wererats; they're not the monsters that rule society from the shadows, using lies, secrets, blackmail and a dagger in the back.
They would be a great disappointment for Claude IMO. Most of them (according to SoD) don't even know how to read or write! They could well be seen as sub-lycanthropes and an embarassment for a megalomaniac aging wererat.

[Intrepid]

We know that Claude is a domineering and manipulative individual and while this is "normal" for wererats, he might have been even more prone to these type of actions. Now if he was human, then we could surmise that he either A: he is domineering and manipulative out of fear (most likely of the curese) or B: that because he was domineering and manipulative to the nth degree he was cursed by the dark powers. Yet while this works for humans, it would seem not be a potent enough thing for a wererat to draw the attention of the dark powers.

So maybe, Claude wanted to be human. He looked at humans as better than squabbling rats (kind of the oppisite of Alfred Timothy), but knew that if anyone in his family ever found this out he would be murdered. This led to him not just being a normal wererat but attempting to be even more so. Now he is in a situation in which he doesn't just commit attrocious acts, but such henieous acts that he actually draws the attentions of the dark powers and his curse is that he is forced to place himself further and further away from the humanity he so desires in order to protect himself from his own kin (which consequently would be his last worry IF he were human).

With this particular curse you have a really interesting drama that shows how dangerous the need for humanity can be. How while all of us want to be better humans, our fear of each other stops us from being as human as we could.

[alhoon]

Interesting take on a possible curse. Yet, IMO that seems to be more of Adam's perview

[Intrepid]

Yeah I realize it is a bit, but I don't know sometimes I think having some overlap but a bit of a twist on those things is okay.

[Hazgarn]

Have not read deeply into this, nor am I overly familiar with Richemulot, but I liked the earlier theory of Claude and Jacqueline having the peculiarity of being capable of and/or wanting love.

Perhaps it is in a wererat's basic nature to be manipulative, but normally it is to the end of gaining power over a person, but what if because of Claude's peculiarity his motives related to wanting to actually being loved or respected? Under normal circumstances, gaining a person's trust/respect/love would be a means to the end of having control over them, but what if Claude desires more. But manipulating someone into giving you their love or trust is still manipulation, and no matter how much he might crave having love and respect that is genuine, it's simply impossible for it to ever be genuine when it is based on deceit. His manipulations might earn him what he wants for a time, but as soon as the efforts behind those manipulations are uncovered, those things are easily lost...

It's a little late, and I'm not sure if that makes any sense. TL;DR: The curse is desiring genuine love/trust/respect, but being unable to earn it save through lies manipulation, and when those manipulations are revealed losing those things completely.

(And perhaps, because of his nature, completely unable to understand why things keep consistently blowing up in his face.)

[alhoon]

Interesting suggestion too. A more elegant Jaquiline-like curse, not about love of a person but love from his family for all that he has done for them.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

To toss in an idea from a completely different angle, maybe Claude's curse could be rooted in his rat side more than his human side. I've kept pet rats for years, and one interesting possibility for Claude might be if, like many male rats, he was naturally inclined to be a bit lazy and easy-going, putting up a front of brutal aggressiveness merely to maintain his position. (Rats of either sex can get rough when they bicker, but it's nearly always the females who can't sit still for more than a few seconds when they're awake.) He secretly wants to just be left alone to savor his food, his comforts, his occasional victim or concubine, but his status as Top Rat constantly demands he forsake this contented lifestyle to beat the living daylights out of yet another challenger or upstart within the wererats' ranks. Real rats don't even have a hierarchy within their colonies -- with so many individuals in a group, the effort required to dominate all the others is more trouble than it's worth -- and Claude could've been too much rat, too little human, to enjoy the status he'd acquired more or less by default, simply because he was big and experienced.

This wasn't much of a problem when the Reniers were still hiding out from humans in a sewer somewhere, as the family was still small and there weren't many luxuries for its members to challenge the boss over. But when Richemulot appeared and Claude found himself in charge of it, suddenly the stakes were much higher -- potential challengers wouldn't just gain status among their fellows, but power over the humans and the Land itself -- and every litter of young born there turned out to be sneakier and more ambitious than the last. Claude has to watch his underlings grow progressively more energetic and cunning, knowing his pose of brute domination was a bluff that some shrewd youngster was bound to call him on sooner or later, and all too aware that anyone who deposed him wouldn't dare leave him alive to nurture a grudge.

One advantage of this approach might be that it'd help resolve the difference between how the wererats were depicted in Scholar of Decay -- more brutal, more open, more gang-like and animalistic -- and how much more subtle and scheming they are in the 3E products. In the novel, set early in Jacqueline's reign, the wererats' society is still mostly geared to keep Claude stressed, fearfully awaiting the next challenger or irate mob of younglings to come rip his face off and take control. By the Gaz era, the Land has adapted fully to her reign, and is more about secrets and blackmail -- something Jackie herself has cause to fear, given how her kin might exploit her hidden "weakness" of true love -- than mere physical domination-games.

[alhoon]

Another interesting take, and yes, it solves a lot of the brutal instead of blackmail thing. Oh, and memories and personalities change too. When a domain enters with false memories and all, people tend to forget it wasn't there 1 month ago. So, perhaps it goes in-domain too; Within a few years the wererats became less brutal and more cunning and the people of Richemulot started forgetting (with a bit of culling of those that insisted to remember) WHAT their lords were.
I also love the approach that Claude wanted to enjoy his station and the luxuries and being the Mafya boss and not do the work... but he couldn't because of the nature of his family and perhaps some extra paranoia. After all, it wasn't just his family that he had to content with now; rich human nobles, ambitious councilors, brave humans... Too many problems for the poor old man to sit down and take a bit of rest.

The only problem I see in this, is that in Nocturne, Claude seems anything but violent. Which of course could be his approach on the problem at hand. It's not like the councilors weren't afraid of him.


I'm leaning somewhat towards Roti's take. We have Adam already for the human-envy and Roti's suggestion solves some problems that have been bothering me with Richemulot's depictions in the novels compared to the description in the Gaz. It also fits with Claude running his family through hoops and loops; He wanted to keep them busy and away from his throat.
And I just love the "No vacations ever buddy" part of the curse along with finding very... fitting for Ravenloft someone cursed with "You have all you wished for and you can't enjoy it; happiness actually is in simpler things". At least Strahd (and Jaquiline) have figured that out.
And in afterlife some rest at last? Nooope. Pushing rocks for ever like Sissifus and denied food or water like Tantalus.