How do you see Drakov

[brilliantlight]

The way I see Drakov is that although he is a murderous nutjob he is an intelligent murderous nutjob. His knowledge of tactics and strategy is probably 2nd to none in the core, although Strahd might give him a good run for his money. It's his insanity that limits him. It is his megalomania that causes him to lose his wars. He thinks he has to win by sheer tactical brilliance alone or he hasn't proved anything. He is unwilling to "cheat" by using magic and he doesn't want to use gunpowder because then there will be too many muskets around (and even he is enough in the real world to realize that some of the guns will either be stolen by peasants or "go missing" and sold to rebels) and rebel peasants can learn how to use a musket much quicker than they can learn how to use a bow or a sword. He also has a certain sense of honor in that you can trust his sworn word and doesn't expect his soldiers to do anything he wouldn't do. He doesn't care if his soldiers rape women or get drunk but he does care if they keep their sworn word. The only exception is impaling which he reserves for himself as he doesn't want to run out of population.

[HuManBing]

Drakov, to me, thinks entirely like a rational man would think - in the middle of open war. Essentially, this means many of his decisions would appear to be completely irrational in a peacetime context.

(Edit: this post looks very long and blocky, so I'll put some text in spoilers so you can open and close the segments like menus.)

Early life on Krynn:

VIEW CONTENT:

My canon holds that he was born in a village with rich iron deposits, which grew throughout his life into a major city, sustained by the iron trade. He was raised in a period of civil war against the rebel lord Malarchus, losing his father before he ever knew him, and witnessing terrible atrocities by whimsical warlords throughout his childhood. Before adolescence, he saw his adoptive aunt's unborn child cut out from her womb by soldiers. He had survived flight and relocation as a child refugee, with a younger adoptive sister in tow, as well as very callous treatment by family members. His first employment was actually as a bricklayer's apprentice, but he quickly gravitated to militia training. He distinguished himself in competitive martial arts (spearplay and mounted combat) but the arrival of total war ended all that. At one point, he was sentenced to beheading for murder, escaping only through the intercession of the local Temple.

By the time he was physically mature, he had become convinced that strength was the ultimate arbiter. His early philosophy was "never ever back down from a fight - win or die trying". His creed was to become the biggest, baddest, most feared son-of-a-bitch in the area and the rest would fall into place. Physically, I do not hold him to be inhumanly strong or quick (although he is impressive on both counts) - his main inhuman trait is his ability to withstand pain. This developed after an entire childhood of mistreatment at the hands of his adoptive father. At about this time, he also developed an unthinking hatred of undead, after Malarchus sent undead armies against him and claimed some of his childhood friends.

Later years on Taladas altered him somewhat. He first became paranoid with several personal betrayals - his adoptive sister denounced him as a rapist, his adoptive father betrayed him and estranged him from his native village, and his military patrons abandoned him to public opprobrium. Eventually he mended the rift with one of his military leaders, who took him back in campaigns and then mysteriously disappeared in a bloody battle. Drakov at this point briefly served as the supreme military commander of his nation's forces, but was quickly out maneuvered politically. Drakov changed his credo from "win at all costs or die trying" to a more sinister "outlast the enemy, endure at all costs, and return to prevail". At all times, he was close with the priests of the Temple and relied on them for political guidance - though he was never a spiritual man himself.

The final great schism that shook Drakov's trust was the sudden revelation that the Temple was to a dark god. This was realized when the king died, and the Temple's Bishop raised an undead army overnight and marched on the capital. Drakov had been far from the capital at this time, and although the Temple assumed him to be loyal, he had sworn to do everything in his power to wipe the undead from the land. The kingdom fragmented into three parts - one part loyal to a theocracy ruling in the name of a dead king and served by raised undead soldiers, one part ruled by Malarchus, and one part of free allied cities. He was appointed as supreme military commander to the free allied cities and delivered several important victorious defenses. He attempted to assassinate the Temple head, but failed as the Bishop changed his travel plans at the last minute. He did once face Malarchus in single combat, and apparently killed him - but the Count returned on the battlefield shortly thereafter apparently unharmed.

Fall to the Dark Powers

VIEW CONTENT:

Drakov's final act of infamy was a stark illustration of the tensions between a military mindset and a civilian one. He had been sent to his hometown (one of the free cities) to commandeer their iron for his troops. Time was tight in order for the supply wagons to make it to the front before Malarchus attacked again. Instead of obeying, the free city's counsel debated their allegiance and made demands of Drakov for their sovereignty. Drakov argued with them for two days before deciding the needs of his army outweighed the academic concerns of the counsel. He brought his men into the counsel chamber and arrested the counsel. Public indignation led the citizens to close the gates, leading to another day wasted. By that point, Drakov had failed - the iron would never reach his army in time, and Malarchus would likely rout his army at the battle to come.

Drakov instituted martial law and executed the entire counsel and the main coordinators of the civilians. He staked his hated adoptive father, and when his ageing mother railed at him, he crowded her into a corner and beat her to death with his armored fists. He tracked down his adoptive sister, and heard convincing evidence that she had never actually denounced him. By that time, he knew was lost to redemption - as a purely practical measure, he had her thrown to her death down a mineshaft. The mists claimed him and when he and his men regained their bearings, they were in Ravenloft.

Ravenloft - history in Darkon

VIEW CONTENT:

In Ravenloft, he attempted to interact with the local Darkonians, who misheard his Taladan name and called him Vlad Drakov. (His original name was a matronymic - he was named after his mother, Bela.) Cultural misunderstandings led to a bloody massacre of the Darkonians, whom Drakov mistook for Malarchus' men. At that point, King Azalin himself met with Drakov under an assumed disguise and spoke with him, pressing him for information about Taladas. Finally, Azalin established an invasive mental link to Drakov, reading his memories and thoughts in search of information about the world of Krynn and whether he could escape there.

Drakov broke away, but Azalin had already acquired full access to his memories. Azalin "revealed" himself to be Trandamere, claiming that the land of Barovia to the south was the last bulwark of "the Count" (he meant Strahd, knowing that Drakov would immediately think of Malarchus). He then chased Drakov out of Darkon with limitless waves of undead, with a mocking reminder not to bother him again until he had unseated his first nemesis, the Count. Azalin may have hoped to pit Drakov against Strahd, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Drakov crossed the border, expecting to reach Barovia. He never did - the Mists of Ravenloft rose and created Falkovnia for him, splitting Darkon and Barovia forever. His goals in running Falkovnia are twofold: a) to establish a nation glorifying the strong and doing away with the weak, and b) to overthrow the false Trandamere, who is actually an undead lich. Drakov's four invasions of Darkon were conducted because he knew the ruler to be a lich and he wanted to eradicate all undead. His later invasions of neighboring human leaders' realms was conducted after they rebuffed his overtures to ally against Darkon. He believes all nations must unify to destroy Azalin, and if their leaders were too weak or frightened to rise to the call, he would change their regimes and put a more worthy leader in place.

Current sketch

VIEW CONTENT:

Drakov is a plain-speaking man with charisma more from force of personality than honeyed words. He has been married once before coming to Ravenloft and recounts it as his happiest years - although the wife later remarried ailing nobleman while Drakov was presumed dead in battle. His daughter from that marriage ran away from home to follow him on the battlefield as a shieldbearer. Her brutal death at the hands of Malarchus devastated Drakov psychologically and made him swear never to allow a woman near the battlefield again. Drakov is cautious about wine - his first wife was an alcoholic and drinking eventually drove her insane. He had a son with the first wife who rose in courtly ranks and eventually ruled as a lord, although Drakov considered him a puppet ruler who had never seen a battlefield in his life.

Drakov's plain speech owes much of its cause to the fact that he did not learn to read until his first wife taught him how, at the age of 20, when she was writing his biography. He is reasonably articulate, but very sensitive about his semi-literacy. He has a keen fascination with codes, as his first wife once snuck coded messages to him at the battlefront - the cypher to the codes could be deduced from erotic passages expurgated from the biography's final published version. Drakov is now polyamorous but views most of his current paramours as poor substitutes for his first wife. He puts up with the practice because one village on Krynn had observed polygamous traditions, offering their wives to him and his soldiers as they passed through - ostensibly to conceive strong warriors in the next generation. Drakov adopted this as official policy for Falkovnia, although he is sometimes more interested in fathering strong Falkovnian sons than he is in the women he lies with.

Drakov distrusts religion, seeing it as a method of controlling people. This derives from his dealings with the Temple, which ultimately turned out to be a malevolent entity. The Temple also had caused trouble for his first wife, threatening to ban her books and even putting her on trial for reasons related to her unchaste relations with Drakov - they only escaped punishment by getting married and proving her pregnancy was conceived inside the Temple grounds itself.

Drakov has met undead on the battlefield and hates them. He has also met some live minotaurs on Krynn - as battlefield enemies. He met an elf once in Krynn's forests, who nursed him back to health. When he fled to the same forests later, he sought out the elf in desperation but it did not appear to him. Both these experiences left him with a distrust of demihumans.

Drakov, perhaps surprisingly, does not have any particular animosity against homosexuals. One of his trusted Temple priest friends eventually seduced a rival warlord and then murdered him, helping Drakov's cause immensely. Drakov's opinion of female homosexuality is general indifference, putting it down as yet another inscrutable feminine whimsy. His opinion of male homosexuality is more subtle - rather like the Spartans, he holds it mildly virtuous to avoid the company of women when in warlike situations. Years of fighting have shown him that the desire to protect a loved one is a powerful motivator - and if his men have lovers in the same army, that motivates them all the moreso. It is unknown whether he has ever taken a male lover; in my canon he has often shared a bed with his bodyguard or inner circle, but in medieval times this was not unusual, given the expense of bedding, and did not de facto mean a sexual relationship had taken place. A very small number of his oldest Talons recall his relationship with his first wife, which was fairly debauched and immoderate.

Drakov also recalls that his greatest triumphs were in times of crisis, and his greatest humiliations happened in relatively civil spells. Fatally for a ruler, he has a deep distrust of peace. Like Mao Zedong, he feels useless without a revolution, and thus he often acts to sustain a crisis situation - believing that his chosen destiny is to lead his people through it. This is probably his greatest failing of all as a leader, and the tragedy of his situation is that he is genuinely trying his best and ruling as effectively as he knows how.

In the words of the Temple, he has become "The warrior who has forgotten how to sheathe his sword at battle's end."

Much of this and more is available at my fan fiction, The Bladeforge.

[ewancummins]

Interesting stuff, HumanBing.

As a pretty big fan of Time of the Dragon, I'm pleased to see that you make full use of Thenol, Bishop Trandamere, Count Malarchus, etc.

[brilliantlight]

Drakov, to me, thinks entirely like a rational man would think - in the middle of open war. Essentially, this means many of his decisions would appear to be completely irrational in a peacetime context.

Early life on Krynn:

My canon holds that he was born in a village with rich iron deposits, which grew throughout his life into a major city, sustained by the iron trade. He was raised in a period of civil war against the rebel lord Malarchus, losing his father before he ever knew him, and witnessing terrible atrocities by whimsical warlords throughout his childhood. Before adolescence, he saw his adoptive aunt's unborn child cut out from her womb by soldiers. He had survived flight and relocation as a child refugee, with a younger adoptive sister in tow, as well as very callous treatment by family members. His first employment was actually as a bricklayer's apprentice, but he quickly gravitated to militia training. He distinguished himself in competitive martial arts (spearplay and mounted combat) but the arrival of total war ended all that. At one point, he was sentenced to beheading for murder, escaping only through the intercession of the local Temple.

By the time he was physically mature, he had become convinced that strength was the ultimate arbiter. His early philosophy was "never ever back down from a fight - win or die trying". His creed was to become the biggest, baddest, most feared son-of-a-bitch in the area and the rest would fall into place. Physically, I do not hold him to be inhumanly strong or quick (although he is impressive on both counts) - his main inhuman trait is his ability to withstand pain. This developed after an entire childhood of mistreatment at the hands of his adoptive father. At about this time, he also developed an unthinking hatred of undead, after Malarchus sent undead armies against him and claimed some of his childhood friends.

Later years on Taladas altered him somewhat. He first became paranoid with several personal betrayals - his adoptive sister denounced him as a rapist, his adoptive father betrayed him and estranged him from his native village, and his military patrons abandoned him to public opprobrium. Eventually he mended the rift with one of his military leaders, who took him back in campaigns and then mysteriously disappeared in a bloody battle. Drakov at this point briefly served as the supreme military commander of his nation's forces, but was quickly out maneuvered politically. Drakov changed his credo from "win at all costs or die trying" to a more sinister "outlast the enemy, endure at all costs, and return to prevail". At all times, he was close with the priests of the Temple and relied on them for political guidance - though he was never a spiritual man himself.

The final great schism that shook Drakov's trust was the sudden revelation that the Temple was to a dark god. This was realized when the king died, and the Temple's Bishop raised an undead army overnight and marched on the capital. Drakov had been far from the capital at this time, and although the Temple assumed him to be loyal, he had sworn to do everything in his power to wipe the undead from the land. The kingdom fragmented into three parts - one part loyal to a theocracy ruling in the name of a dead king and served by raised undead soldiers, one part ruled by Malarchus, and one part of free allied cities. He was appointed as supreme military commander to the free allied cities and delivered several important victorious defenses. He attempted to assassinate the Temple head, but failed as the Bishop changed his travel plans at the last minute. He did once face Malarchus in single combat, and apparently killed him - but the Count returned on the battlefield shortly thereafter apparently unharmed.

Fall to the Dark Powers

Drakov's final act of infamy was a stark illustration of the tensions between a military mindset and a civilian one. He had been sent to his hometown (one of the free cities) to commandeer their iron for his troops. Time was tight in order for the supply wagons to make it to the front before Malarchus attacked again. Instead of obeying, the free city's counsel debated their allegiance and made demands of Drakov for their sovereignty. Drakov argued with them for two days before deciding the needs of his army outweighed the academic concerns of the counsel. He brought his men into the counsel chamber and arrested the counsel. Public indignation led the citizens to close the gates, leading to another day wasted. By that point, Drakov had failed - the iron would never reach his army in time, and Malarchus would likely rout his army at the battle to come.

Drakov instituted martial law and executed the entire counsel and the main coordinators of the civilians. He staked his hated adoptive father, and when his ageing mother railed at him, he crowded her into a corner and beat her to death with his armored fists. He tracked down his adoptive sister, and heard convincing evidence that she had never actually denounced him. By that time, he knew was lost to redemption - as a purely practical measure, he had her thrown to her death down a mineshaft. The mists claimed him and when he and his men regained their bearings, they were in Ravenloft.

Ravenloft - history in Darkon

In Ravenloft, he attempted to interact with the local Darkonians, who misheard his Taladan name and called him Vlad Drakov. (His original name was a matronymic - he was named after his mother, Bela.) Cultural misunderstandings led to a bloody massacre of the Darkonians, whom Drakov mistook for Malarchus' men. At that point, King Azalin himself met with Drakov under an assumed disguise and spoke with him, pressing him for information about Taladas. Finally, Azalin established an invasive mental link to Drakov, reading his memories and thoughts in search of information about the world of Krynn and whether he could escape there.

Drakov broke away, but Azalin had already acquired full access to his memories. Azalin "revealed" himself to be Trandamere, claiming that the land of Barovia to the south was the last bulwark of "the Count" (he meant Strahd, knowing that Drakov would immediately think of Malarchus). He then chased Drakov out of Darkon with limitless waves of undead, with a mocking reminder not to bother him again until he had unseated his first nemesis, the Count. Azalin may have hoped to pit Drakov against Strahd, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Drakov crossed the border, expecting to reach Barovia. He never did - the Mists of Ravenloft rose and created Falkovnia for him, splitting Darkon and Barovia forever. His goals in running Falkovnia are twofold: a) to establish a nation glorifying the strong and doing away with the weak, and b) to overthrow the false Trandamere, who is actually an undead lich. Drakov's four invasions of Darkon were conducted because he knew the ruler to be a lich and he wanted to eradicate all undead. His later invasions of neighboring human leaders' realms was conducted after they rebuffed his overtures to ally against Darkon. He believes all nations must unify to destroy Azalin, and if their leaders were too weak or frightened to rise to the call, he would change their regimes and put a more worthy leader in place.

Current sketch

Drakov is a plain-speaking man with charisma more from force of personality than honeyed words. He has been married once before coming to Ravenloft and recounts it as his happiest years - although the wife later remarried ailing nobleman while Drakov was presumed dead in battle. His daughter from that marriage ran away from home to follow him on the battlefield as a shieldbearer. Her brutal death at the hands of Malarchus devastated Drakov psychologically and made him swear never to allow a woman near the battlefield again. Drakov is cautious about wine - his first wife was an alcoholic and drinking eventually drove her insane. He had a son with the first wife who rose in courtly ranks and eventually ruled as a lord, although Drakov considered him a puppet ruler who had never seen a battlefield in his life.

Drakov's plain speech owes much of its cause to the fact that he did not learn to read until his first wife taught him how, at the age of 20, when she was writing his biography. He is reasonably articulate, but very sensitive about his semi-literacy. He has a keen fascination with codes, as his first wife once snuck coded messages to him at the battlefront - the cypher to the codes could be deduced from erotic passages expurgated from the biography's final published version. Drakov is now polyamorous but views most of his current paramours as poor substitutes for his first wife. He puts up with the practice because one village on Krynn had observed polygamous traditions, offering their wives to him and his soldiers as they passed through - ostensibly to conceive strong warriors in the next generation. Drakov adopted this as official policy for Falkovnia, although he is sometimes more interested in fathering strong Falkovnian sons than he is in the women he lies with.

Drakov distrusts religion, seeing it as a method of controlling people. This derives from his dealings with the Temple, which ultimately turned out to be a malevolent entity. The Temple also had caused trouble for his first wife, threatening to ban her books and even putting her on trial for reasons related to her unchaste relations with Drakov - they only escaped punishment by getting married and proving her pregnancy was conceived inside the Temple grounds itself.

Drakov has met undead on the battlefield and hates them. He has also met some live minotaurs on Krynn - as battlefield enemies. He met an elf once in Krynn's forests, who nursed him back to health. When he fled to the same forests later, he sought out the elf in desperation but it did not appear to him. Both these experiences left him with a distrust of demihumans.

Drakov, perhaps surprisingly, does not have any particular animosity against homosexuals. One of his trusted Temple priest friends eventually seduced a rival warlord and then murdered him, helping Drakov's cause immensely. Drakov's opinion of female homosexuality is general indifference, putting it down as yet another inscrutable feminine whimsy. His opinion of male homosexuality is more subtle - rather like the Spartans, he holds it mildly virtuous to avoid the company of women when in warlike situations. Years of fighting have shown him that the desire to protect a loved one is a powerful motivator - and if his men have lovers in the same army, that motivates them all the moreso. It is unknown whether he has ever taken a male lover; in my canon he has often shared a bed with his bodyguard or inner circle, but in medieval times this was not unusual, given the expense of bedding, and did not de facto mean a sexual relationship had taken place. A very small number of his oldest Talons recall his relationship with his first wife, which was fairly debauched and immoderate.

Drakov also recalls that his greatest triumphs were in times of crisis, and his greatest humiliations happened in relatively civil spells. Fatally for a ruler, he has a deep distrust of peace. Like Mao Zedong, he feels useless without a revolution, and thus he often acts to sustain a crisis situation - believing that his chosen destiny is to lead his people through it. This is probably his greatest failing of all as a leader, and the tragedy of his situation is that he is genuinely trying his best and ruling as effectively as he knows how.

In the words of the Temple, he has become "The warrior who has forgotten how to sheathe his sword at battle's end."



Much of this and more is available at my fan fiction, The Bladeforge.

I hate to say this but he is too different from the canon for my taste. You story line does not explain why he enjoys impalement and why he imediately impaled Darkonian citizens. Canon Drakov is an extreme sadist who enjoys impaling people so much he requires to have them when having dinner.

[Nathan of the FoS]

I doubt you could beat HuManBing's portrayal for psychological depth and detail of Drakov's personal history, but I see him pretty differently.

I think of him as a psychopath (in the strict medical sense) who was smart enough and strong enough to turn his utter lack of empathy to his advantage. His monstrous brutality is part policy--he knows how terrifying and debilitating others find it--and part boredom; like a boy frying ants with a magnifying glass, but on a huge scale. He's very good at manipulating people; he's quite intelligent, but not at all imaginative. If it weren't for his curse he would probably roll up most of the western Core pretty handily (and then lose it all to revolution and guerrilla warfare, but you can't have everything). The idea of being "permanently at war" is relevant to my conception of him, too, but maybe on kinda a different level. To Drakov, his country is an army. All of his goals are essentially military, and all of his solutions to problems are military. Why doesn't he just stop grain shipments to Dementlieu and watch them starve? Because he's literally unable to imagine that something that simple could work. That it would not furnish any glorious military exploits is also a big problem, but secondary to the real problem, which is that his mindset is a hammer labeled "BLOOD AND IRON", and he sees all his neighbors as nails who manage to escape being pounded flat mostly through dumb luck (or, in the case of Azalin, cheating).

[HuManBing]

I hate to say this but he is too different from the canon for my taste. You story line does not explain why he enjoys impalement and why he imediately impaled Darkonian citizens. Canon Drakov is an extreme sadist who enjoys impaling people so much he requires to have them when having dinner.

Learn to quote selectively. Copying an entire post just to make a three-sentence general observation is unfocused and vague. If you're responding to a user rather than specific content, just use their name so it's clear what you're responding to.

You're free to use or ignore whatever you like from my ideas - I will not be offended. But let me clarify some of the purported weaknesses you claim exist with my outline: they exist merely because I haven't gotten around to writing them yet in the story, but the story outline is detailed (21 pages long on my computer) and it does attempt to provide some background to all this.

The extended story does already address the origins of the impalement practice, but I left it out of the summary. In my canon, he started it off as impaling dead enemy soldiers as an example to others, ahead of a battle. This practice actually had some merit to it because Drakov's military superiors tended to offer the enemy fairly generous surrender terms - this impalement was the stick to his masters' carrot to further encourage the enemy to surrender first.

Later on (not in the Bladeforge story yet) Drakov goes up against female enemies who refuse to meet his forces in direct combat, preferring instead to strike and fade like the Viet Cong did. These attacks were effective, and Drakov personally became so frustrated with his inability to force a direct fight, that he began using terror tactics against the enemy female soldiers. It started off as staking the dead captives after execution, and progressed on to live impalements and rapes. In fact, these practices are what caused the most damage to Drakov's profile among the soldiers - even friendly soldiers considered this too much. (The female enemy soldiers were the same who had claimed his daughter's life, so Drakov approached this with considerably less sympathy than most would hold.) These hit-and-fade attacks also humiliated Drakov and further cemented his belief that women have no place on the battlefield. Eventually, he succeeded in capturing them and rigging a battlefield court-martial, resulting in a mass execution by crossbow squad. One woman survived the execution and got away, forcing Drakov yet another lengthy digression before he eliminated their regiment entirely.

The canonical stories about Drakov's various excesses I hold to be propaganda spread by other nations. They probably have some root in fact (as most effective lies do) but Drakov does not, for example, execute a citizen by impaling every night in order to enjoy his dinner - the general wisdom may hold that to be true, but general wisdom also holds Dracula to be an undead flying monster which is not in any way factually accurate. Azalin would also have compelling reason to paint Drakov as a drooling bogeyman whose first action in Darkon was fighting rather than talking. In my campaign it's further evidence that Drakov's illiteracy makes him less able to counteract the negative propaganda others spread about him.

The Ravenloft canon Drakov I find completely unconvincing, with absolutely no tragic dimension to his status as a darklord. The proposals I've made above may be radical or extreme, and I agree they are unfamiliar to most gamers - but whatever their shortcomings, they are also very thorough. They are the collective ruminations of me and my gaming group (and other nongamers who are just into gothic fantasy) over the past five years or so, beginning a full two years before I even began writing the Bladeforge.

My canon may not persuade you, and that's fine. But also recognize that Ravenloft's canonical portrayal of Drakov will never persuade me. That ship sailed a very long time ago.

[brilliantlight]

I don't have a problem with canon Drakov. He would hardly be the only vicious, sadistic tyrant in history. Look at Caligula, Vlad Tempes, Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot. They are far from the only ones.

[HuManBing]

I wrote out a long reply but decided it's probably not necessary. The gist of it was:

Conflating Drakov with Hitler is a mistake. Hitler is far more believable a human being than Drakov.

We have access to the backstories of people like Mao, Hitler, and Stalin - and these backstories humanize them and show us where their pathological behavior comes from. It may not necessarily excuse them, but it explains them. And it gives them enough in common with the average man that we might think "there, but for the grace of the gods, go I". An average person growing up in the life that Stalin had might very well become something similar to Stalin himself... if he could even survive at all.

This was the central message I was trying to get across with my Drakov backstory. As it stands, I think the canon Drakov is purely described in his immediate depravity, without much description of how he turned that way.

Apply this to Hitler - take away all his past and just look at the final result - and yes, you have a personality that looks monstrous, aberrant, inhuman. But it's also the easy way out, to draw a line between him and us and to say "We could never be that way". Look instead at the utterly ordinary, everyday, and mundane things that slowly made him into that monster, the childhood beatings, the pain of his mother's breast cancer, the inability to find employment in Germany's shattered economy, and you'll realize that Hitler too started off just like any other average man. It is this realization that feeds both the pity and sympathy for the normal person he could have been, and also the revulsion and horror that such a monstrous person could have grown from somebody just like us.

That was the goal of my project for Drakov. To lend context, to show the process by which he became this way. I preferred to look beyond the superficial and ask "why?".

Naturally, your mileage may vary. But if you start a thread asking what variations we've made to canon Drakov, then it's disingenuous to respond to those variants with statements like "I don't have a problem with canon Drakov". You requested variants, and we have merely answered your request.

[herkles]

I like your view of Drakov, but one thing that makes me curious is, if he can not conquer places due to his curse, how he is scary to people in dementlieu, borca and so on. A warlord like him that can not wage a successful war once in and a while doesn't seem to be much trouble for the people of other lands to concern themselves about.

I do have a suggestion, modify his curse a bit. Instead of it being that he can't conquer places. what of he can not keep the places he conquered, due to rebellions and so forth, but he is able if for some time take it over? this is also including the fact that he can not even visit the places he takes over since they are still part of another domain.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

A warlord like him that can not wage a successful war once in and a while doesn't seem to be much trouble for the people of other lands to concern themselves about.

Kim Jong-Il has never conquered anything, but he's a scary bastard. Drakov just has to convince his neighbors that he can take them, and not knowing about his curse, they can't be sure that he won't.

[HuManBing]

One interesting thing is that Falkovnia actually has vast tracts of fertile cropland. Falkovnia is the breadbasket of the Core. Other nations don't have much choice but to do business with him, and that's arguably an even more humiliating undertaking. It's all fine and good to raise and army and meet a tinpot dictator on the battlefield, strength to strength and arm to arm. It's quite another to have to send your diplomats and trade negotiators to be civil to him and sweet talk him into business deals.

I also echo Gonzoron's observation that a purely domestic dictator can still be rightly feared. Mao, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin all rightly belong in the pantheon of brutal dictators, despite focusing most of their tyranny inwards. The same could be said of Marcos, Mobutu, and Chiang Kai-shek (even though they were allies of the western democracies).

That having been said, I do like Herkles' idea of modifying Drakov's curse to allow incursions into other lands. I myself have toyed with a similar idea in the past, that Drakov himself could physically go into other domains, but could not keep up with his men. Some dimensional warping would take place, meaning he would always fall back further and further as his men went on without him, leaderless. This also plays into Drakov's talents on the battlefield - if only he could accompany his men to the fray, they might well triumph. Without him, though, they lack the greatest tactical mind in the Core to lead them.

The old thread is probably still in the Fraternity forums somewhere... along with the considerable amount of popular opposition it encountered.

[brilliantlight]

I wrote out a long reply but decided it's probably not necessary. The gist of it was:

Conflating Drakov with Hitler is a mistake. Hitler is far more believable a human being than Drakov.

We have access to the backstories of people like Mao, Hitler, and Stalin - and these backstories humanize them and show us where their pathological behavior comes from. It may not necessarily excuse them, but it explains them. And it gives them enough in common with the average man that we might think "there, but for the grace of the gods, go I". An average person growing up in the life that Stalin had might very well become something similar to Stalin himself... if he could even survive at all.

This was the central message I was trying to get across with my Drakov backstory. As it stands, I think the canon Drakov is purely described in his immediate depravity, without much description of how he turned that way.

Apply this to Hitler - take away all his past and just look at the final result - and yes, you have a personality that looks monstrous, aberrant, inhuman. But it's also the easy way out, to draw a line between him and us and to say "We could never be that way". Look instead at the utterly ordinary, everyday, and mundane things that slowly made him into that monster, the childhood beatings, the pain of his mother's breast cancer, the inability to find employment in Germany's shattered economy, and you'll realize that Hitler too started off just like any other average man. It is this realization that feeds both the pity and sympathy for the normal person he could have been, and also the revulsion and horror that such a monstrous person could have grown from somebody just like us.

That was the goal of my project for Drakov. To lend context, to show the process by which he became this way. I preferred to look beyond the superficial and ask "why?".

Naturally, your mileage may vary. But if you start a thread asking what variations we've made to canon Drakov, then it's disingenuous to respond to those variants with statements like "I don't have a problem with canon Drakov". You requested variants, and we have merely answered your request.

There were a considerable number of men in German who had childhood beatings, the pain of their mother's early death , and the inability to find employment in Germany's shattered economy. Believe me their have been people who have had even worse childhoods that didn't turn out as bad. What I was looking for is how you expand the character not change it. What I did to the character added to it but did nothing to change it fundementally. What other traits he might have etc. Making impalings at dinners mere propeganda changes the character fundementally.

[brilliantlight]

A warlord like him that can not wage a successful war once in and a while doesn't seem to be much trouble for the people of other lands to concern themselves about.

Kim Jong-Il has never conquered anything, but he's a scary bastard. Drakov just has to convince his neighbors that he can take them, and not knowing about his curse, they can't be sure that he won't.

He also can wreck havoc even if he doesn't succeed. He will still leave behind a lot of dead bodies in his wake even if he can't actually succeed in the conquest.

[brilliantlight]

One interesting thing is that Falkovnia actually has vast tracts of fertile cropland. Falkovnia is the breadbasket of the Core. Other nations don't have much choice but to do business with him, and that's arguably an even more humiliating undertaking. It's all fine and good to raise and army and meet a tinpot dictator on the battlefield, strength to strength and arm to arm. It's quite another to have to send your diplomats and trade negotiators to be civil to him and sweet talk him into business deals.

I also echo Gonzoron's observation that a purely domestic dictator can still be rightly feared. Mao, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin all rightly belong in the pantheon of brutal dictators, despite focusing most of their tyranny inwards. The same could be said of Marcos, Mobutu, and Chiang Kai-shek (even though they were allies of the western democracies).

That having been said, I do like Herkles' idea of modifying Drakov's curse to allow incursions into other lands. I myself have toyed with a similar idea in the past, that Drakov himself could physically go into other domains, but could not keep up with his men. Some dimensional warping would take place, meaning he would always fall back further and further as his men went on without him, leaderless. This also plays into Drakov's talents on the battlefield - if only he could accompany his men to the fray, they might well triumph. Without him, though, they lack the greatest tactical mind in the Core to lead them.

The old thread is probably still in the Fraternity forums somewhere... along with the considerable amount of popular opposition it encountered.

That would break the "Darklords can't leave their domain" rule pretty badly though.

[Nathan of the FoS]

I am a pretty big fan of having domains be somewhat fungible in extent; persistent effort sees your domain get bigger, persistent ignoring it and it may get taken out from underneath you. For Drakov and the Dead Man's Campaigns that means that land really has changed hands in each of the Dead Man's Campaigns...not necessarily a lot of land, but enough that you could show it on a map.

Basically, the borders are slightly fluid, and if you push hard enough they'll bend. Most Darklords neither know nor care about this effect; Drakov grasps it intuitively but thinks they're more fluid than they really are; Azalin knows but only cares when the matter is, shall we say, actively brought to his attention.