Tristen Hiregaard

[Vannax]

If I compare the fate of Tristen Hiregaard and fates of all other domain lords, it is not fully clear to me how it is possible that Tristen Hiregaard is a darklord.
First – he inherited his curse from his father and thus his only „evil“ deed is to be son of an evil person. I assume that in the demiplane there are many people with similar fates and they didn´t become darklords.
Second – the schizophrenia within Tristen has let him unaware of his murders for many years as he was convinced that he takes effective measures to protect his evil side to cause harm.

All other darklords had some twisted intentions, made some dark deeds or anything what earned them a darklord status. Tristen Hiregaard had no evil intentions and all his life strive to protect against Malken´s influence. How does it come that he is a darklord? Do you have some convincing explanation?

Do you have some inspiring ideas of how to develop his fate?

[Charney]

For me, it's not Tristen who is the Darklord but rather Malken. He is cursed to share his existence with the, to him, feeble Tristen with his honorable and chivalric virtues.

That's how I see it anyway. Now, why did Malken become cursed in the first place? Because he's actually Romir Hiregaard.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

The way I re-interpreted his story IMC, the son of Romir Hiregaard was actually Lawful Evil when the Dark Powers found him. Yes, he'd inherited his father's curse, but the enjoyment he'd experienced in murdering his lovers was entirely his own sin. That didn't mean he was a sociopath; he despised himself for the murders, but only because he (like Romir) was a control freak, who loathed the lapse in self-discipline which each killing encited in him, not because he cared in the least about his victims' fate.

Intrigued by Hiregaard's contradictory and hypocritical feelings, the Dark Powers snatched him up and split his personality in two: Malken, the Evil side to his nature that enjoyed murder and destruction, and Tristen, the Lawful (though not Good) side that tried to suppress these impulses and win back his self-control. The "Tristen" we know isn't any more the real Sir Hiregaard, in this interpretation, than Malken is!

That's why, despite all his sick games with Tristen, Malken's never gone so far as to discredit his "better half" in the eyes of the Vaasans, even though it would simplify his criminal doings immensely if the world didn't think so well of his opposite ... and why Tristen, though he's well aware that Malken targets every woman who catches his eye, still can't keep his pants on to save his life. Deep down inside each of them, the long-buried essence of the original son of Romir still lingers: a subconscious, nagging presence too proud to let Tristen's nobility be besmirched, and too bloodthristy not to let Malken's warped lusts be aroused.

[Vannax]

RE Charney
Is that just your conception or is that describen somewhere?
(novel Enemy within or something like that? - I didn´t read it. )

The strange is that Tristen is described as a darklord and Malken only as his curse. Why, then, isn´t it reversely?

[VAN]

I always believed that Malken is the darklord and Tristen (and later his son) is only cursed to get him.

[vipera aspis]

It is not Tristin that is the darklord, it is Malken. Malken the cat is very old and very evil; Tristen is mearly the host. If Tristen were to meet an untimely end it would give rise in his son.

The curse he suffers is a very, very classic one; gothic at that too. Maybe the most gothic in the demi-plane. Sins of the father or a ancestral curse is a beautiful gothic plot woven and applied by Ann Radcliffe, Poe, Lovecraft, Lord Byron, Grey, Blackwood, Bram Stoker and of course Robert Louis Stevenson.

But in all cases it is almost always a separate entity. Tristen is the white rook to Malken's black bishop. Even moreso if you take and use the good from Enemy Within.

So yes, Malkens vessel did deserve to be pulled into the mists.

[Sylaire]

I have to agree that yes, Malken is the darklord here (though I have to say, I love Rotipher's ideas above and they dovetail nicely with Vladimir Nabokov's lecture about Jekyll and Hyde's relationship in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which itself is a plus since Hiregaard-Malken is Ravenloft's Jekyll-Hyde analogue). Of course, my impressions of Tris and Malken are permanently tainted by the Black Box description of Nova Vaasa and their portrayal in The Enemy Within, which I always considered a far superior version of this relationship to the Red Box one (I do remember when I first got the Red Box, read the entry on Malken, and promptly reacted with "Don't those idiots at TSR even read their own novels!?").

But yes, I would have to say that Tristen's "evil" doesn't rise to darklord status. Either Malken is the darklord and having to cope with Tristen's remaining goodness/lawful nature is his curse (given his vicious, chaotic nature, having to be trapped part of the time within a prideful, arrogant, controlling other self that not only suppresses Malken's impulses but his very existence would be perfect), or Tristen and Malken combined (as merely fragments of one formerly unified being) are the darklord together. Either interpretation makes sense, but Tris being the darklord and Malken his curse falls flat.

[Mangrum]

Just to confirm, Tristen has never, ever been identified as the darklord of Nova Vaasa. Malken has been explicitly labeled as holding that position.

[Vannax]

RE Mangrum: In Domains of Dread Tristen IS described as a darklord... Malken is described firstly in Encounters section and then as "the second face" of Tristen.

[Charney]

RE Charney
Is that just your conception or is that describen somewhere?
(novel Enemy within or something like that? - I didn´t read it. )

The strange is that Tristen is described as a darklord and Malken only as his curse. Why, then, isn´t it reversely?

I hadn't read that anywhere. I had interpreted that from discussion on the old Kargatane board. JWM answer confirms that I must have overread that on their board.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I've always played Malken as the real DL, and Tristen is part of his curse. I've also played Malken as a fragment of Romir, and IMC he can get stronger by killing his descendants, especially the ones who have failed powers checks. I've been cooking up an adventure where Malken figures this out after the death of Illyana Hiregaard (LotB) gives him more of Romir's memories. The result is a systematic campaign of corruption and extirmination of his progeny with the hopes of getting the upper hand against Tristen

All of this is my interpretation of the line from SotDR: "Only by slaying all of Sir Tristen's male descendants can Malken--and perhaps Romir--finally be laid to rest."

[Bluebomber4evr]

Malken has always been listed as the darklord of Nova Vaasa. Tristen is described along with him because of Malken's nature, much like Dr. Mordenheim is described along with Adam.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Just as an aside: Does anyone else think that Romir's wife, who laid the curse in the first place, got off far too easily for her role in events? Sure, she died, and for something she didn't do ... but the curse she laid on Romir (and, by extension, her own son) was extremely petty and callous, when you think about it. In essence, by cursing them to kill all the men who crossed them and all the women for whom they felt affection, she'd deliberately condemned DPs-know-how-many people -- potentially innocent people, up to and including any man who might try to investigate her own murder -- rather than confining her spiteful retaliation to her killer.

The honest truth is that it was as vicious and scattershot of a curse as the one that Madame Radanavich laid on Van Richten. So why shouldn't she be as subject to the Dark Powers' vindictive, posthumous "justice" as the evil raunie was? There's bound to be a plotline in that.

[Sylaire]

Just as an aside: Does anyone else think that Romir's wife, who laid the curse in the first place, got off far too easily for her role in events? Sure, she died, and for something she didn't do ... but the curse she laid on Romir (and, by extension, her own son) was extremely petty and callous, when you think about it. In essence, by cursing them to kill all the men who crossed them and all the women for whom they felt affection, she'd deliberately condemned DPs-know-how-many people -- potentially innocent people, up to and including any man who might try to investigate her own murder -- rather than confining her spiteful retaliation to her killer.

The honest truth is that it was as vicious and scattershot of a curse as the one that Madame Radanavich laid on Van Richten. So why shouldn't she be as subject to the Dark Powers' vindictive, posthumous "justice" as the evil raunie was? There's bound to be a plotline in that.

I'll second that vote. In a way, everything that's ever happened to every victim of Malken is directly attributable to her malice, since Malken's very existence is due to her curse...and when you consider that since he's a darklord that body count probably runs into the four digits (if you consider the peripheral damage from Nova Vaasa getting sucked--or copied--into a demiplane where the laws of mystical physics are all about abusing the little guy), it becomes even more absurd that she got off scot-free.

On a side note: does anything else think that Van Richten's curse is flagrantly unfair? I mean, wronged person X curses person Y, but the effect of the curse is that persons A, B, C, etc. meet inevitable destruction merely by blundering into the life of Y. I mean, if you truly believe in the level of the curse, then the net result is that the laws of the universe twist themselves in Van Richten's proximity to cause the one-hundred-percent-inescapable death of completely innocent persons? In essence, every so often, the Dark Powers reach into the universe and go "smite" on somebody Van Richten cares about, without even a direct connection between the actions of Madame Rad. and the victims (as opposed to, say, if V.R. radiated a poisonous aura similar to a zombie master's, or that those near him suffered a statistic penalty, or some other defined effect). If a PC tried to intentionally create an effect on that scale outside of Ravenloft it would take a wish at the very least, and might well be disallowed by the DM...

Just a thought there.

[Gwenfloor]

Just as an aside: Does anyone else think that Romir's wife, who laid the curse in the first place, got off far too easily for her role in events? Sure, she died, and for something she didn't do ... but the curse she laid on Romir (and, by extension, her own son) was extremely petty and callous, when you think about it. In essence, by cursing them to kill all the men who crossed them and all the women for whom they felt affection, she'd deliberately condemned DPs-know-how-many people -- potentially innocent people, up to and including any man who might try to investigate her own murder -- rather than confining her spiteful retaliation to her killer.

The honest truth is that it was as vicious and scattershot of a curse as the one that Madame Radanavich laid on Van Richten. So why shouldn't she be as subject to the Dark Powers' vindictive, posthumous "justice" as the evil raunie was? There's bound to be a plotline in that.

I'll second that vote. In a way, everything that's ever happened to every victim of Malken is directly attributable to her malice, since Malken's very existence is due to her curse...and when you consider that since he's a darklord that body count probably runs into the four digits (if you consider the peripheral damage from Nova Vaasa getting sucked--or copied--into a demiplane where the laws of mystical physics are all about abusing the little guy), it becomes even more absurd that she got off scot-free.

On a side note: does anything else think that Van Richten's curse is flagrantly unfair? I mean, wronged person X curses person Y, but the effect of the curse is that persons A, B, C, etc. meet inevitable destruction merely by blundering into the life of Y. I mean, if you truly believe in the level of the curse, then the net result is that the laws of the universe twist themselves in Van Richten's proximity to cause the one-hundred-percent-inescapable death of completely innocent persons? In essence, every so often, the Dark Powers reach into the universe and go "smite" on somebody Van Richten cares about, without even a direct connection between the actions of Madame Rad. and the victims (as opposed to, say, if V.R. radiated a poisonous aura similar to a zombie master's, or that those near him suffered a statistic penalty, or some other defined effect). If a PC tried to intentionally create an effect on that scale outside of Ravenloft it would take a wish at the very least, and might well be disallowed by the DM...

Just a thought there.

Yes. Evil people can curse others, too.