Café de Nuit

I just bought it and I checked a few things here and there. I plan to use this thread to explore the book, discuss it and expand my understanding of it, as I have questions from the very first page.

Note: Haven't finished the book, so if the answer is later on, don't be too judgy.

Question 1: Who is Ez? Is she someone that I have forgot from the previous editions? I didn't have VRGtVampires nor I have read all VR books. Her backstory in chapter 4 makes her seem vaguely familiar, or at least recognizable, but I can't place her.
And since when Erasmus van Richten is a ghost?! Man, that's good stuff.

"Ez" is the newly renamed/retconned Ezemeralda, the Radanavich Vistani apprentice to Van Richten introduced in Curse of Strahd, now given a new/retconned backstory, largely by turning the Radanaviches from an actual Vistani clan into a human tribe of brigands who pretended to be Vistani and removing Van Richten's zombie massacre.

Dark gifts left me unimpressed. I prefer the 3E version of curse progress.
There are salvageable things from there but generally, I am better off rebranding 3E paths to 5e rules.

To be honest, I prefer Jaqueline's curse and it can be combined with the long-for-love curse she had and her fear of loneliness. Can't say I liked the quarantine thing too much despite it reminding me of Jaqueline's plot in 3e. It needs some work because emulating the Black Plague means that, like the plague, you would lose 3/4 of the population within less than a century. Even if that plague is less deadly (as it seems to be) outbreaks are more frequent. Which frankly disrupts life and causes too many problems. If you are quarantined for 2 months every 6 months, society would collapse.

I like how Darkon's fate, salvation etc is open to interpretation.

alhoon wrote:If you are quarantined for 2 months every 6 months, society would collapse.

So far we 've made it and society didn't collapse... although after the 1st quarantine the rest were pseudo-quarantines...

Hell_Born wrote:"Ez" is the newly renamed/retconned Ezemeralda, the Radanavich Vistani apprentice to Van Richten introduced in Curse of Strahd, now given a new/retconned backstory, largely by turning the Radanaviches from an actual Vistani clan into a human tribe of brigands who pretended to be Vistani and removing Van Richten's zombie massacre.

Yes that's correct, although I believe Ezmeralda Radanavich was the first sex change of a character in 5th edition Ravenloft. In VRGttV in is Arturi Radanavich who reconciles with Van Richten.

Mephisto wrote:

alhoon wrote:If you are quarantined for 2 months every 6 months, society would collapse.

So far we 've made it and society didn't collapse... although after the 1st quarantine the rest were pseudo-quarantines...

We didn't have a real, Medieval quarantine. And we also have smartphones to communicate with the world and deliveries. Consider sitting in your house without internet and you will see what I mean.

Mephisto wrote:

Hell_Born wrote:"Ez" is the newly renamed/retconned Ezemeralda, the Radanavich Vistani apprentice to Van Richten introduced in Curse of Strahd, now given a new/retconned backstory, largely by turning the Radanaviches from an actual Vistani clan into a human tribe of brigands who pretended to be Vistani and removing Van Richten's zombie massacre.

Yes that's correct, although I believe Ezmeralda Radanavich was the first sex change of a character in 5th edition Ravenloft. In VRGttV in is Arturi Radanavich who reconciles with Van Richten.

I think Arturi is mentioned somewhere and also Mordenheim has changed to a woman IIRC. A lot of people changed.

I am not going to lie, while I dislike SJW staff in general, the idea of a family of con-artists pretending to be vistani to take advantage of mist-travelers is not a bad idea.

BRAIN IN A JAR:
Not impressed. Too generic. Certainly not good enough for the Brain.
I may simply have someone have a bunch of those interconnected to do stuff. Control them somehow. Use them as big psionic batteries etc.

Pretending to be Vistani only looks like a good idea until you make trouble for real Vistani... and they catch up to you.

Rock wrote:Pretending to be Vistani only looks like a good idea until you make trouble for real Vistani... and they catch up to you.

I am not so sure. There are very real vistani that cause trouble for the vistani and the get away scotch free. Well, much of the time, not all times. After all, I saw that the Carnival is still around so I guess the Vistani-cursed-by-vistani are still a thing.

Also, why the Gentleman Caller lost his Gentleman title?

alhoon wrote:

Rock wrote:Pretending to be Vistani only looks like a good idea until you make trouble for real Vistani... and they catch up to you.

I am not so sure. There are very real vistani that cause trouble for the vistani and the get away scotch free. Well, much of the time, not all times. After all, I saw that the Carnival is still around so I guess the Vistani-cursed-by-vistani are still a thing.

Most of the time they get away with it because they are Vistani. They know how to avoid their own. Also, the Vistani tend to be just ad biased against giorgio as giorgio are against Vistani. If a Vistana gets blamed for anything, Vistani default to assuming it's giorgio racism and slander at work.

Also, why the Gentleman Caller lost his Gentleman title?

I hear it's because 5e incubi are supposed to be genderfluid. Which rather takes away from a classic euphemism and supposes gender issues ever stopped an incubus doing whatever it wanted to whoever it wanted...

Rock wrote:

alhoon wrote:Also, why the Gentleman Caller lost his Gentleman title?

I hear it's because 5e incubi are supposed to be genderfluid. Which rather takes away from a classic euphemism and supposes gender issues ever stopped an incubus doing whatever it wanted to whoever it wanted...

If I remember correctly from my speed-read, later on, it's stated that "the Caller" appears as an incubi or succubi as it wills, which I'm fine with, though I also mourn the loss of "Gentleman" in its name. I might just rebrand it with "Gentleman" or "Lady" in its name depending on how it chooses to appear.

They also added a part where it cannot be truly killed; it just keeps coming back. So that's fun.

— onmyoji

Ech, the 'Undying' trait rides again! And the GC isn't even a Darklord...

Calling him the Caller is stupid because a Gentleman Caller is an actual thing.

It was what a man who visitors a lady’s boudoir in the middle of the night was known as. And being a sex demon, it made sense, was logical and added both flavour and mystery to the setting. Which is of course why the new authors felt the need to change it.

Drinnik Shoehorn wrote:Calling him the Caller is stupid because a Gentleman Caller is an actual thing.

It was what a man who visitors a lady’s boudoir in the middle of the night was known as. And being a sex demon, it made sense, was logical and added both flavour and mystery to the setting. Which is of course why the new authors felt the need to change it.

I agree!!!

Drinnik Shoehorn wrote:Calling him the Caller is stupid because a Gentleman Caller is an actual thing.

It was what a man who visitors a lady’s boudoir in the middle of the night was known as. And being a sex demon, it made sense, was logical and added both flavour and mystery to the setting. Which is of course why the new authors felt the need to change it.

Yeah, that's really the reason I'm not going to change it.

— onmyoji