HuManBing wrote: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.