Café de Nuit

Strahd was a prince too, but he spent so much time commanding troops that he got used to being "General Strahd". There's at least one or two places in the very early products (or maybe just I6) where Sergei is referred to as "Prince", BTW.

FWIW, I've accounted for this discrepancy IMC by saying that Barov had intended to declare Strahd a 'count' once the war ended, to govern the formerly-occupied highlands in his father's name. (Same deal as how the royal heir in Great Britain is generally declared "Prince/Princess of Wales" before inheriting the throne.) Strahd got so used to this idea that, when his parents died before he finished liberating the Balinoks from the Tergs, he chose to call himself "Count" for a while instead of "King": partly out of respect for his father (whom he'd never really had the chance to mourn), and partly to keep from provoking the other noble families' envy until after he'd secured his own clan's grip on power. Had he not fallen, Strahd would most have likely named himself king eventually, but once he became a vampire he no longer saw the point to caring what mortal yokels called him.

Hmm. Perhaps mixing the ideas of the Boyar election and the hereditary ruler is the thing to do. I.e. The boyars *do* get to "vote," but by Strahd's time, it was largely ceremonial--thus, he was a count of his own region until such time as the "vote" occurred.

However, in the case of the Terg invasion, Barov is displaced, the Dilisnyas are making a big for power, etc., so the "vote" was going to matter, etc.. Not that it matters, per se, but I'd like to get my ducks in a row for potential player questions, etc.

Also, if one did want to do the "mongol invasion" thing, (setting up the eventual Von Zarovich line), from what little I looked at it, you could run Red Hand of Doom without changing it much. File the serial numbers off, don't call the orcs "orcs," etc.

In other news, I've had some folks who expressed interest back out, so I'm that much closer to getting a game going. (I had about 15 potential people--highly unusual, i might add--and have been trying to work the diplomacy as far as getting that number down to a manageable group).

Slerm

I tend to think of the initial invading Tergs as being primarily the equivalent of this period of Ottoman military, possibly because of their description in Ravenloft sources as "barbarians":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_o ... .931453.29

As you will note, that military is already not exactly what some folks imagine when they they hear the word "barbarian".

However, compare it with this period:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_o ... 51-1606.29

I currently imagine the Tergs moving between those two phases during Strahd's lifetime, especially since Strahd feels somewhat like a Vlad III Tepes figure (along with Vlad Drakov) and I feel like Vlad III Tepes sort of straddled the two phases.