Ummm...Strahd was casting spells long before Jander arrived. He cast spells in I, Strahd, actually, before he became a vampire. And I'd like a source on this "White Light" reference.
Unless everything you've been saying is just how you handle things in your campaign.
What do we know about Strahd's homeplane?
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DeepShadow of FoS
- Evil Genius
- Posts: 2923
- Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2003 1:43 pm
- Location: Heinfroth's Asylum
The Avariel has borrowed wings,
The Puppeteer must cut the strings
The Orphan Queen must take the throne
The Queen of Orphans calls them home
The Puppeteer must cut the strings
The Orphan Queen must take the throne
The Queen of Orphans calls them home
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Rotipher of the FoS
- Thieving Crow
- Posts: 4683
- Joined: Sat Dec 06, 2003 4:18 pm
We actually see the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind being created in "Vampire of the Mists", which is a canon source of Ravenloft info. This must have happened some time before Barovia was pulled into the Mists, as Sergei was wearing the darn thing (though its power wasn't recognized, at the time; he only knew it as "the Priest's Pendant) when Strahd murdered him.
While Andral is the only god from Material Plane Barovia that we actually know a name and portfolio for, he wasn't the only benevolent god known to the region. "VotM" also contains references to "the gods" (plural), and it's hard to believe that Sergei (for example) would have credited the Evil god of the Tergs with bringing Tatyana into his life! So Barovians had an actual pantheon, not just Andral, to worship; whether Andral was their chief deity, or just the one whose memory survived the longest in Barovia (understandable given his association with sunlight), is undetermined.
Priests of Andral could quite definitely use magic, even if truly *powerful* magic was a rarity. A spellcasting female priestess of Andral appears in "I, Strahd", and more recently we've seen such a character ruling the modern Material Plane Barovia: its Queen.
Note that it's never actually been stated that Sergei von Zarovich was ever a paladin. Such references as exist in canon products describe him as having trained for the priesthood, which (especially in 2nd Edition, when "priest" was an exclusive term for clerics, druids, or specialty priest classes) is an entirely different career. The widespread misconception that Sergei was a paladin-in-training seems to be a legacy from the 1st Edition game rules, in which a cleric wouldn't have been allowed to wield the sunsword ... as well as, I suspect, an old-school-D&D bias that Lawful Good was somehow more "Good" than any other alignment. It's just my opinion, but deducing such a critical NPC's background solely on the basis of game mechanics -- and outdated game mechanics, at that; nowadays, we can explain Sergei's swordsmanship merely by assuming he'd possessed a level or two as an aristocrat, before his clerical training began -- seems overly picky and pedantic.
FWIW, I've never been 100% convinced that Sergei was Lawful Good, to begin with. His few comments in "VotM" and "I, Strahd" -- which are really all we have, to draw conclusions from -- seem more Neutral Good to me: a firmly Lawful person wouldn't have so-casually abandoned years of training, and forsaken his commitment to the church, merely to marry for love's sake (and a commoner, no less!), without at least some hesitancy or remorse at betraying tradition. IIRC, he even questions the validity of church policy, to whit, its prohibition against marriage. As it turned out, he was right -- that stricture was abandoned, in Material Plane Barovia, in the centuries after Sergei's death -- but that doesn't change the fact that he questions authority and social conventions an awful lot of the time. If nothing else, the fact he did forsake his intended role in the church would, in itself, disqualify him for paladinhood: after all, that class isn't even allowed to multi-class, let alone permanently forsake its holy responsibilities (which, in his day, included remaining unwed) for romance's sake!
So, I'd more likely rate Sergei's alignment as Neutral Good, in that he's not reluctant to question traditions that seem to be stifling Goodness by their strictness. In 3E, that's no problem: a NG character can train as a priest of a Lawful Good faith ... or even fall in love with a Lawful Good woman (Tatyana, whose aligment is LG), and vice versa.
While Andral is the only god from Material Plane Barovia that we actually know a name and portfolio for, he wasn't the only benevolent god known to the region. "VotM" also contains references to "the gods" (plural), and it's hard to believe that Sergei (for example) would have credited the Evil god of the Tergs with bringing Tatyana into his life! So Barovians had an actual pantheon, not just Andral, to worship; whether Andral was their chief deity, or just the one whose memory survived the longest in Barovia (understandable given his association with sunlight), is undetermined.
Priests of Andral could quite definitely use magic, even if truly *powerful* magic was a rarity. A spellcasting female priestess of Andral appears in "I, Strahd", and more recently we've seen such a character ruling the modern Material Plane Barovia: its Queen.
Note that it's never actually been stated that Sergei von Zarovich was ever a paladin. Such references as exist in canon products describe him as having trained for the priesthood, which (especially in 2nd Edition, when "priest" was an exclusive term for clerics, druids, or specialty priest classes) is an entirely different career. The widespread misconception that Sergei was a paladin-in-training seems to be a legacy from the 1st Edition game rules, in which a cleric wouldn't have been allowed to wield the sunsword ... as well as, I suspect, an old-school-D&D bias that Lawful Good was somehow more "Good" than any other alignment. It's just my opinion, but deducing such a critical NPC's background solely on the basis of game mechanics -- and outdated game mechanics, at that; nowadays, we can explain Sergei's swordsmanship merely by assuming he'd possessed a level or two as an aristocrat, before his clerical training began -- seems overly picky and pedantic.
FWIW, I've never been 100% convinced that Sergei was Lawful Good, to begin with. His few comments in "VotM" and "I, Strahd" -- which are really all we have, to draw conclusions from -- seem more Neutral Good to me: a firmly Lawful person wouldn't have so-casually abandoned years of training, and forsaken his commitment to the church, merely to marry for love's sake (and a commoner, no less!), without at least some hesitancy or remorse at betraying tradition. IIRC, he even questions the validity of church policy, to whit, its prohibition against marriage. As it turned out, he was right -- that stricture was abandoned, in Material Plane Barovia, in the centuries after Sergei's death -- but that doesn't change the fact that he questions authority and social conventions an awful lot of the time. If nothing else, the fact he did forsake his intended role in the church would, in itself, disqualify him for paladinhood: after all, that class isn't even allowed to multi-class, let alone permanently forsake its holy responsibilities (which, in his day, included remaining unwed) for romance's sake!
So, I'd more likely rate Sergei's alignment as Neutral Good, in that he's not reluctant to question traditions that seem to be stifling Goodness by their strictness. In 3E, that's no problem: a NG character can train as a priest of a Lawful Good faith ... or even fall in love with a Lawful Good woman (Tatyana, whose aligment is LG), and vice versa.