Five wrote:
This last bit got me thinking: those exact reasons applied to crossbows as well, only in regards to the longbow. So if Vlad doesn't have an issue with crossbows in the hands of his soldiers (he doesn't; it's the officers and Talons that carry longbows), then what's his issue with firearms?
Is it an oversight by the developers? Or is it a DM lead that Drakov's horseblinds are starting to loosen?
I'm going to give the same sort of answer about guns that is given in Terry Pratchett's works.
A crossbow is a device that stores up human muscle energy (the energy used to pull the string taut) to be released later. A gun is a weapon that uses CHEMICAL energy on command.
Vlad probably hates guns more than he hates crossbows because there is inherently something "otherworldy" something "mystical" about the firearm.
Also keep the following in mind please.
Vlad comes from Krynn.
There are no firearms in Krynn, while there are crossbows. The moment that Vlad accepts Firearms, he's accepting that the people of Ravenloft, have created a superior weapon for making war than he or the people of his own homeworld have ever been able to make.
So while reducing the amount of training needed is part of the reason that Vlad hates guns, another part is that they're something new and different and if huge blocks of infantry with horsemen to harry the flanks was good enough on Krynn then by the non existence gods it'll be good enough here!
Yeah, I forgot to throw that queer little tidbit out there. Drakov is seemingly a bit of a hypocrite, if not as you say pushing for unconventional units. That, or the War Machine he created is starting to slip away from his clutches. It's the one instance that I've read where the majority are written to somewhat stand against the man and his will.
"Drakov encourages human Falkovnians to mate with half-elves and quarter elves, so as to "breed out the taint". Unfortunately, Falkovnian custom forbids these inter-racial relationships, and thus far the state has not pushed the issue." - Gaz II, p. 102.
I could be reading into it though.
I say hypocrite for if he is truly against the "taint" of demi-humans then why bother keeping them around at all? Why have them as state property? Why not just stake them all and be done with it? There's apparently not enough of them for major public works, so what other use for them would there be? They may be used to supplement the human Falkovnian slaves, but outside of that I'm drawing blanks. Right now anyway.
Could he be playing the racist card and hitting all the key words and phrases to achieve but the opposite, in the hopes of developing human-looking soldiers with extended lifespans and nightvision? Is he mentally capable of such a thing? He is written to be very charismatic. And he, of all people, would fully understand the depravities and sometimes insubordinate streaks that idle soldiers can develop...
Vlad wants humans to mate with demi-humans as a way to breed out the taint.
He's a racist, and he uses elves and dwarves and so on for slave labor, but he hasn't ever hit on the idea of exterminating them entirely/genocide. Instead he'd prefer to get rid of them by constantly breeding them with humans until the end result has so little elf/dwarf/whatever blood in it that you can't tell the difference from baseline humans.
It isn't about special units that can fight at night, he has the "Sandmen" for that situation, and it isn't about people with superhuman abilities, he has the Primal Serum for that, it is about what he says it is about, racisim.
"When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.”
― Maya Angelou
The reason he hasn't simply murdered all the demi-humans is because they're more useful dead than alive, look at how much war effort got actively wasted committing genocide by the Nazis, and its obvious that this is one of the few areas where Vlad has actually come to a reasonable(ish) decision.
Or maybe he fears that an open genocide of demi-humans would unite all the demi-humans of the core against him to a point that they'd actually start to do something... the elves of Sithicus mostly sit around and mope, but an open genocide would probably bring them into the Invidian civil war on Gabrielle's side as a way of punishing Falkovnia for their actions.
At least that is my argument, but then I tend to favor the "What explanation will make Darkov suffer the most/make him look like the biggest idiot" explanation to most things.