Sadly, Lowder has as tin an ear as
Golden does when it comes to writing dialog. “You have no idea how
angry you've made me,” Soth sulks to Caradoc, his ghostly servant.
Actually, Caradoc does have an idea of how angry Soth is,
particularly as Soth has just crushed the skull of Caradoc's mortal
remains under his boot and is currently throttling Caradoc with a
mailed fist. (Yeah, Soth can strangle ghosts; don't think about that
for too long.) Oddly, despite watching his child die in a fire,
strangling a ghost is what gets Soth sucked into the mists of
Ravenloft. Also, this nets us the weirdest description of the mists
EVER: “It crept through the gaps in Soth's armor and rubbed against
him like a monstrous cat. Tendrils of the milky stuff ventured into
his ears and mouth and nose.” Like...a monstrous cat? Milky stuff
going into his mouth? FUCKING RAVENLOFT!!!
And yet, it's neither Soth nor Strahd
who turn out to be the creepiest character in the novel. Meet
Andari, a gypsy youth who discovers his sister about to be raped by a
boyar. Boy does that get him angry! Only he isn't angry at the
rapist, he is mad that his sister's pleas of “No!” distracted him:
“Look what you've done! Your screeching made me drop my violin!”
The reason why Andari isn't angry about his sister's sexual assault
is that he was the one to pimp her out in the first place; indeed,
since his sister is putting up too much of a fight to be violated for
money, he offers up some other members of his extended family for
sexual defilement: “Or perhaps you would prefer the company of one
of my cousins?” Yeah, that's right, gypsy pimps and
prostitutes—it's like a Tiger Lillies song gone horribly wrong.
Even though we've just read Soth's
back-story in that ridiculous opening prologue, we get it again when
he visits the gypsy encampment. Soth doesn't like people looking in
on his past (he likes to stay on the down low) so he flips out
and burns the fortune teller's wagon down. If you recall how Soth
treated his wife and child, this begins to look like a pattern of how
Soth treats women: can't live with 'em, can definitely light them on
fire. So where does Soth's rage toward women come from? Perhaps we
can glean something from a description of Strahd reading Soth's mind:
“Strahd ventured further, and a wave of seething hatred and
impotent lust broke around him.” IMPOTENT LUST. Yeah, that kind
of explains it. In fact, it explains why Soth smashes three tables,
knocks down a bunch of doors, and squishes a bunch of Strahd's giant
spiders—he is envious of anything that is hard. Soth not only
needs Zoloft, he needs Viagra.
(Strahd keeps reading Soth's mind, by
the way, because it fills him with “the perverse joy of a voyeur.”
Fuck, Ravenloft is yucky.)
Fuck, Ravenloft is yucky
ReplyDelete...and here we just played Ravenloft as D&D with a creepy, pseudo-Eastern European backdrop. Man, we were apparently doing it waaaaaay wrong.
I was in much the same boat as you; not having read the novels, we had a ton of fun with Ravenloft.
DeleteOh, and thanks again for making me remember an awful book that my mind had managed to expunge.
ReplyDeleteI'm all about recalling trauma.
DeleteYour suffering continues to amuse and entertain me. Hmm, I wonder if I could convince any of my friends to read these...
ReplyDeleteHappy to oblige!
DeleteOh wow. That's very Gothic, in the sense that you know something horrible is going to happen if you keep going forward, but you can't just do the sensible thing and turn back.
ReplyDeletePoe called this impulse the "imp of the perverse."
DeleteMan, this reminds me of some of the dialogue and screwball situations in the Star Wars prequels.
ReplyDelete"I wanna be the best Jedi ever!!!" Anakin said to Padme, just after he returned from committing genocide against the Tuskan Raiders to save his mom who died anyway, who had given birth to him spontaneously via midi-chlorines.
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As for the book itself. What the heck was TSR thinking when the came up with the idea of yanking Soth from Krynn and plunking him in Ravenloft? I never quite understood why. He was such an iconic character in Krynn.
I'm guessing it was an ill-conceived attempt at synergy: "We'll get the kids hooked on this Soth guy and they'll buy our Ravenloft *and* Dragonlance stuff!"
DeleteSpelljammer seemed to do a bit of that as well.
Man, I remember reading this back in middle school. At the time, I remember not really noticing the writing, or the sexuality. I sorta just focused on the cool monsters. It was still rough going, as nobody did much of anything. There were two cool parts: one dude was a dwarf, and also a ghost, and also a dark necromancer. That's a pretty rad combo. The other cool part was this one guy where some other guy cut off the soles of his feet and replaced them with zombieflesh. Then, whenever the guy would get attacked by zombies, he would pull out the zombiefeet and the zombies would be all "Whoa, he's one of us! Dude!" So yeah, pretty crap book.
ReplyDeleteHmm, my copy doesn't have a dwarf ghost necromancer in it. The dwarf is a werebadger, which is effed up enough as it is. No zombiefeet guy either!
DeleteFucking zombie feet? That is gamble and swiped.
ReplyDeleteHey, I'm all about necromatic dwarves. For B/X: http://fictivefantasies.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/dwarves-of-death.pdf
ReplyDeleteI think Ravenloft was D&D Halloween, and Soth had a costume and liked candy, so... ::shrug::
Soth would only like soft candy though, like salt water taffy.
DeleteWas all this before or after Vampire?
ReplyDeleteAfter, I think. It doesn't make any reference to the earlier one as far as I remember.
Delete