Dragonlance Lord Soth in canon

[humble minion]

Hoping there's some Dragonlance loremasters on here who can help me out a bit, as i brainstorm a possible expansion/reinvention/mutilation of SotDQ.

(Note that these are questions about canon, especially pre-5e canon. I know that asking questions about canon on here is just asking for answers along the lines of 'canon is what the DM says it is' or 'if you don't like it, change it' or 'just make it up'. I'll do any or all of those if i have to, but specifically I'd like to know what canon actually is first, because to at least one of my prospective players, this sort of thing matters.)

So, the story of Lord Soth. Knight and jerk of Solamnia. Big renowned hero, married, rescues hot elf cleric Isode from monsters, has affair with her and gets her pregnant, gets expelled from knighthood for this, wife dies very mysteriously and conveniently, marries hot elf a very short time later. Gets message from gods to go to Istar to redeem himself by talking sense into the kingpriest to avert the Cataclysm, rides off intending to do so, hot elf's friends show up and tell him a bunch of fibs about how the hot elf is cheating on him, throws his toys out of the pram, rides back home and kills hot elf and their just-born son just as the Cataclysm kills everyone. Cursed by hot elf as she dies, he becomes undead and feels sorry for himself for 300 years before Kitiara shows up and his entitled stalker jerk side finds a new woman to obsess over.

Some questions about this.

Why did the other elf women lie to Soth about his second wife cheating on him? What was their motivation? It just seems incredibly random. SotDQ said they blame Soth for their friend falling from grace, so they ... tell him a lie which will make HIM angry with HER? That's some really poorly-targeted and poorly-thought-out vengeance right there. Especially when, as elf clerics (Isode was a cleric of Paladine), they quite possibly KNOW that the cataclysm is imminent and that Soth has been sent to try to stop it. This seems a really obvious

Spoiler

question for SotDQ PCs to ask Leedara, once her identity becomes clear. What the hell was she thinking?

Why did Isode stay with this guy? Surely she must have realised he was married at some stage, and didn't she have some questions when his wife suddenly vanished? Wasn't she a cleric of Paladine at this time? All this doesn't sound like very Paladine-approved behaviour. I know that at some point, all the real clerics of the Gods disappeared from Istar as a warning to the Kingpriest (which was ignored) so could Isolde have been an in-name-only cleric with no actual connection/blessing from Paladine. But I thought the elf clerics at least were still around at this point?

I'm probably overthinking this, but the timing of Soth's last ride and the abandonment of his duty. Soth was basically exiled at his home in Dargaard Keep after his expulsion from the knighthood, then the gods send him on a mission to avert the Cataclysm. Looking at the map, to do this he'd have to ride the entire width of modern-day Ansalon (and a bit more, to the now-submerged site where Istar was located). Ansalon is a pretty small continent, but ... really? We're probably talking around 1000 miles here, across country, while Soth is a hunted fugitive from the Knights of Solamnia. But somehow once he turns around and heads back home after being distracted, he arrives just in time for the Cataclysm to occur when he's busy killing his wife for imaginary infidelity? I know that Dragonlance runs on dramatic narrative convenience more than ruthless logic, but that's some seriously precise timing. Did Soth's abandonment of his duty not just prevent the Cataclysm from being averted, but was it in fact the trigger for the Cataclysm? The gods had all their hopes on his shoulders, they see him turn around, and just collectively facepalm and say 'welp, there goes our last chance' and hit the Cataclysm button right then and there?

What does Soth DO all day, after his undeath? He does a lot of brooding, and at nighttime he gets serenaded by the banshees telling him how terrible he is, but what are his goals? Motivations? He's never been a worshipper of Takhisis, so I'm not sure why SotDQ has him involved in the war at this time at all. There's occasional stories in the lore about how some knight or another quests to Dargaard to defeat the legendary betrayer and meets a horrible end thereby, but he's not particularly proactive. What, if anything, does he actually want? How do you involve him in a story?

 

[MGibster]

Why did the other elf women lie to Soth about his second wife cheating on him? What was their motivation? It just seems incredibly random. SotDQ said they blame Soth for their friend falling from grace, so they ... tell him a lie which will make HIM angry with HER? That's some really poorly-targeted and poorly-thought-out vengeance right there. Especially when, as elf clerics (Isode was a cleric of Paladine), they quite possibly KNOW that the cataclysm is imminent and that Soth has been sent to try to stop it. This seems a really obvious

Telling a man his wife is fooling around on him is absolutely Shakespearian. The lie makes Othello, er, Soth miserable and and if that's your goal then there you go. Soth can be in despair and still stop the cataclysm, right? Okay, how were we supposed to know that lies would lead to such a bad outcome?

 

[humble minion]

Telling a man his wife is fooling around on him is absolutely Shakespearian.

99% of the time I'd agree with you. But it's a very weird dynamic when the people telling him that are his wife's friends, and they're doing it because they disapprove of her relationship with him.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Been decades since I read the books and then the different books arent totally consistent so...grains of salt.

Isolde knew Soth the hero, slayer of monsters and villains. Buff and charismatic, like all paladins. She was not a true cleric (or else she would have been raptured) so sh3 was fine with some hanky panky. And besides, she's an elf, he's a mayfly human. It's like what happens in that decade stays in that decade, airtight? So she heads to Dargaard for a a few months of paladin booty calls.

Soth's wife had had trouble conceiving and seen priests and wise women, a d at least one seer said her baby would inherit his soul or some such. Then the baby came out a monster and Soth killed them both as demon & demon-lover. South covers up her murder with help of the midwife who, I think, was all "yep, killing demons, even demon babies, is the right choice."

Now single, angry and weirded out by his wife having a demon lover (in his mind) he winds up with Isolde.

The three elves (who became his banshees) were apparently coaxed to be there by the gods. Either as a test from Paladine, or a trap by Takhisis. Since they got turned to undead, it seems fair to say they knew they were lying. But still, why? I mean, whispers from Takhisis only go so far.

Somehow they must have had a grudge against Isolde. Maybe they were offended she would debase herself with an (ick) human. Or with the real clerics all ruptured, these fake clerics were willing to off Isolde because that made them high priestess or something, and in a non-Cataclysm world, goading Soth into doing it would let them get away scot free. (Not like anyone has truth magic anymore....)

Soth, who already had one wife who (in his mind) have an affair with a demon of all things (no teiflings in this family!), is apparently all "fool me once, I kill her, fool me twice, I kill you!"

Soth kind of knows he did wrong. I mean, the banshees tell him constantly, but those wretches were liars when they were alive, so why trust them now? But still, he did screw up the "avert the apocalypse" mission, so he is an immortal wallowing self-hatred.

Now, I get immortal, he totally screwed things up. Why a powerful immortal? The best I came up with is Paladime said "gonna punish you for centuries, be a rotting corpse of sadness" and Takhisis says "but since Knights will want to come smite you, I am going to supercharge you so that you can slaughter those KoS for me, mmkay?"

My constant refrain in DL is that Paladine is Int 16 while Takhisis is Int 22 but with zero self control. Paladine can't figure out how Takhisis keeps corrupting his plans but fortunately Takhisis has the impulse control of a 13yro, and will do something self defeating.

Back to Soth, he could go kill of a whole legion of KoS, but doesn't. But he's also of the opinion the gods kind of set him up, I mean, his first wife had a monster-baby. Seriously. If she didn't cavorting with demons, what kind of god curses innocent babies for something their father hasnt even done yet?!? And then someone puts a trio of liars in his path with just the right words to set him off. Soth was weak, but would he have killed his first child if it wasn't a monster?

So he is totally willing to kill any self-righteous Paladine worshipers who come knocking on his door while also not being willing to go a-viking. He would like a chance to be not-a-monster but has no idea how to do that.

So he waits In self-imposed exile. Slightly proud of himself for not giving in to be the monster he has the power to be, still knowing he made horrible choices no matter what the gods did.

 

[Alzrius]

Hoping there's some Dragonlance loremasters on here who can help me out a bit, as i brainstorm a possible expansion/reinvention/mutilation of SotDQ.

I never thought of myself as being all that into Dragonlance, but I love Lord Soth as a character, so I'll take a crack at some of these.

Why did the other elf women lie to Soth about his second wife cheating on him? What was their motivation?

The motivations of virtually everyone else involved in Soth's fall from grace are given only modest attention in most canon materials (and the majority are given far less than that). In the case of the thirteen elven women who were Isolde's previous companions, all we can say for sure is that they fed Soth lies about her being unfaithful to him, and that Paladine punished them for this by turning them into banshees. Almost everything else varies depending on which source you read (i.e. compare what's presented in DL16 World of Krynn to Edo van Belkom's novel Lord Soth, though the former is usually accepted as not being canon compared to the latter).

It's worth noting that the most characterization those other elves get is after they turn into banshees. There's some overview of their personalities there (a few even get names in Spectre of the Black Rose), but that's harder to parse, because there's no way of saying whether or not their time as undead creatures has warped their personalities compared to when they were alive.

For my part, I think that this is an expression of elven prejudice toward humans. They saw that Isolde was not only married to a human, but pregnant by one, and were repulsed. Their disdain for that was such that they fed Soth lies as punishment for him and Isolde; by that point, I'd wager that they were so consumed with hatred that they'd lost Paladine as a patron (after all, they obviously hadn't vanished in the Night of Doom, which saw all the true clerics vansh from the world prior to the Cataclysm).

Why did Isode stay with this guy? Surely she must have realised he was married at some stage, and didn't she have some questions when his wife suddenly vanished? Wasn't she a cleric of Paladine at this time? All this doesn't sound like very Paladine-approved behaviour. I know that at some point, all the real clerics of the Gods disappeared from Istar as a warning to the Kingpriest (which was ignored) so could Isolde have been an in-name-only cleric with no actual connection/blessing from Paladine. But I thought the elf clerics at least were still around at this point?

Isolde is given only somewhat more exploration as a character than the rest of her companions, unfortunately. That said, what is there paints a somewhat complicated portrait that boils down to love being blind.

It's possible that Isolde didn't know that Soth was married when they had their initial affair (in the immediate aftermath of his saving her from a group of ogres), as Soth had only been wed for two years at that point and it wasn't like there were newspapers to spread the word. That said, I think her character works better is she did know, and slept with him anyway. Doing so paints her as being complicit in his fall, but I think that works better to explain her part in the story; she was someone who was willfully blind to Soth's faults because she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge her own, i.e. she thought that it was true love, and that such a thing couldn't ever really be wrong.

Now, later on there's material to suggest that the blinders were coming off, but even then she kept trying to see the good in him. In Knight of the Black Rose, during the siege of Dargaard Keep, we see Isolde rebuke Soth when he becomes physically abusive, but also as eager to forgive him when he realizes how far he's fallen. Even when the Cataclysm strikes, it's only when he refuses to save their infant son that she finally curses him.

I'm probably overthinking this, but the timing of Soth's last ride and the abandonment of his duty. Soth was basically exiled at his home in Dargaard Keep after his expulsion from the knighthood, then the gods send him on a mission to avert the Cataclysm. Looking at the map, to do this he'd have to ride the entire width of modern-day Ansalon (and a bit more, to the now-submerged site where Istar was located). Ansalon is a pretty small continent, but ... really? We're probably talking around 1000 miles here, across country, while Soth is a hunted fugitive from the Knights of Solamnia. But somehow once he turns around and heads back home after being distracted, he arrives just in time for the Cataclysm to occur when he's busy killing his wife for imaginary infidelity? I know that Dragonlance runs on dramatic narrative convenience more than ruthless logic, but that's some seriously precise timing. Did Soth's abandonment of his duty not just prevent the Cataclysm from being averted, but was it in fact the trigger for the Cataclysm? The gods had all their hopes on his shoulders, they see him turn around, and just collectively facepalm and say 'welp, there goes our last chance' and hit the Cataclysm button right then and there?

Things like this are why I don't call myself a Dragonlance aficionado. I can't really speak to the logistics involved in the distance. I think that Van Belkom's novel has the knights besieging Dargaard Keep fall into a gods-induced sleep so that Soth can leave to go on his quest, but other than that I can't really say.

What does Soth DO all day, after his undeath? He does a lot of brooding, and at nighttime he gets serenaded by the banshees telling him how terrible he is, but what are his goals? Motivations? He's never been a worshipper of Takhisis, so I'm not sure why SotDQ has him involved in the war at this time at all. There's occasional stories in the lore about how some knight or another quests to Dargaard to defeat the legendary betrayer and meets a horrible end thereby, but he's not particularly proactive. What, if anything, does he actually want? How do you involve him in a story?

In James Lowder's (truly excellent) Knight of the Black Rose novel, it's a fairly important element of Soth's character that he doesn't leave Dargaard Keep much, if at all, for the next three hundred fifty years or so. That's why, in Ravenloft, Nedragaard Keep is so painful for him; it's a mirror of Dargaard, but with numerous minor imperfections that clash with his memories, such as spiral staircases that wind in the wrong direction, or an intact door where a ruined one should be (some books say that the castle goes through continuous minor changes, but that's not correct).

As for Soth's motivations, the only thing we ever see him be proactive for (his time in Ravenloft notwithstanding) is corrupting other women, i.e. his wish to have Laurana for himself after she'd killed, and later his betrayal of Kitiara in an effort to make her into his undead inamorata. From what I can tell, those are presented as being impotent expressions of the lust he still feels (and which played a part in his downfall) but which he can no longer act on. Still, it's notable that he otherwise doesn't seem motivated to do anything with those over the centuries prior to the War of the Lance.

Insofar as why he fights in the war at all, it's because he tells Takhisis that he'll serve whichever of her generals is brave enough to spend an entire night in Dargaard Keep; Kitiara does, and so Soth fights for her. Where Takhisis is concerned, Knight of the Black Rose outright tells us that Soth is one of her champions, which he seems to accept; being a death knight condemned by Paladine seems to make that fait accompli.

 

[humble minion]

First, thanks to @Alzrius and @kigmatzomat for putting in the effort to write long and detailed answers!

The motivations of virtually everyone else involved in Soth's fall from grace are given only modest attention in most canon materials (and the majority are given far less than that). In the case of the thirteen elven women who were Isolde's previous companions, all we can say for sure is that they fed Soth lies about her being unfaithful to him, and that Paladine punished them for this by turning them into banshees. Almost everything else varies depending on which source you read (i.e. compare what's presented in DL16 World of Krynn to Edo van Belkom's novel Lord Soth, though the former is usually accepted as not being canon compared to the latter).

It's worth noting that the most characterization those other elves get is after they turn into banshees. There's some overview of their personalities there (a few even get names in Spectre of the Black Rose), but that's harder to parse, because there's no way of saying whether or not their time as undead creatures has warped their personalities compared to when they were alive.

For my part, I think that this is an expression of elven prejudice toward humans. They saw that Isolde was not only married to a human, but pregnant by one, and were repulsed. Their disdain for that was such that they fed Soth lies as punishment for him and Isolde;

Yeah, it's a tough one. It's never really mattered in the Soth stories that have been told so far, so I suspect nobody really thought too much about it before now, but it does matter once SotDQ comes along given

Spoiler

the prominence of Leedara in the story. But then again, the portrayal of the banshees in prior products has always been wild hateful monsters, so Leedara is pretty much a retcon there already. Honestly, I'm kinda tempted to replace Leedara with Isolde - she's pretty much the only innocent in the story - and it'd drive Soth MAD if he somehow found out she'd appeared to the PCs and not to him. the elf-vs-human angle hadn't occured to me, honestly. Not sure I'd use it because it'd make Leedara much less sympathetic, but it could work.

Now I think of it though, it's a real pity that Soth and Sturm never met in canon - especially if Sturm was with Alhana at the time. There's some really nice parallels you can draw between the situations of the two knights.

by that point, I'd wager that they were so consumed with hatred that they'd lost Paladine as a patron (after all, they obviously hadn't vanished in the Night of Doom, which saw all the true clerics vansh from the world prior to the Cataclysm).

Good point. For some reason i thought they were actually clerics at this point, but i reread the old Ravenloft module When Black Roses Bloom and it says (canonicity is up to you of course) that Isolde and her friends were travelling to Istar to become clerics when they met Soth (which also explains why he had to rescue them when the ogres attacked, cos a dozen-odd clerics could be a pretty formidable prospect). But if they're just wannabe acolytes, and more to the point, wannabe acolytes who thought that Istar at this point in time was a good place to learn about goodness, then that fits ok.

Isolde is given only somewhat more exploration as a character than the rest of her companions, unfortunately. That said, what is there paints a somewhat complicated portrait that boils down to love being blind.

It's possible that Isolde didn't know that Soth was married when they had their initial affair (in the immediate aftermath of his saving her from a group of ogres), as Soth had only been wed for two years at that point and it wasn't like there were newspapers to spread the word. That said, I think her character works better is she did know, and slept with him anyway. Doing so paints her as being complicit in his fall, but I think that works better to explain her part in the story; she was someone who was willfully blind to Soth's faults because she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge her own, i.e. she thought that it was true love, and that such a thing couldn't ever really be wrong.

Now, later on there's material to suggest that the blinders were coming off, but even then she kept trying to see the good in him. In Knight of the Black Rose, during the siege of Dargaard Keep, we see Isolde rebuke Soth when he becomes physically abusive, but also as eager to forgive him when he realizes how far he's fallen. Even when the Cataclysm strikes, it's only when he refuses to save their infant son that she finally curses him.

Yeah, that makes sense. Honestly, if her cleric-ness never happened, then she's just got 'domestic abuse victim' written all over her. He's good underneath, I know it, he does love me I just shouldn't make him angry, you should have seen how romantic he was when we were courting...

Definitely material I'd need to raise in a session zero to see if players are ok with it, but it works as a dynamic.

In James Lowder's (truly excellent) Knight of the Black Rose novel, it's a fairly important element of Soth's character that he doesn't leave Dargaard Keep much, if at all, for the next three hundred fifty years or so. That's why, in Ravenloft, Nedragaard Keep is so painful for him; it's a mirror of Dargaard, but with numerous minor imperfections that clash with his memories, such as spiral staircases that wind in the wrong direction, or an intact door where a ruined one should be (some books say that the castle goes through continuous minor changes, but that's not correct).

I haven't read Knight of the Black Rose for 20 years, and I've never read Spectre of the Black Rose or Lord Soth either. I've got a long overseas flight coming up, I might see if i can track them down for some reading material to pass the time...

Definitely agree that Soth is pretty passive and spends his time brooding in his keep until the War of the Lance. He's not really a proactive plotter. I suppose that makes sense from a world-building point of view. If the area around Dargaard Keep is just a big no-go zone, then the locals can work around it, divert roads to bypass it and so on. If it's actually a base for aggressive plotting by the evil undead, you kinda have to do something about it. It's smack bang in the middle of Solamnia, after all, and Soth is the Solamnic Knights' big shame. If he was more active, running around terrifying peasants and raising undead armies, they'd have been warring against him (probably futilely) for years.

As for Soth's motivations, the only thing we ever see him be proactive for (his time in Ravenloft notwithstanding) is corrupting other women, i.e. his wish to have Laurana for himself after she'd killed, and later his betrayal of Kitiara in an effort to make her into his undead inamorata. From what I can tell, those are presented as being impotent expressions of the lust he still feels (and which played a part in his downfall) but which he can no longer act on. Still, it's notable that he otherwise doesn't seem motivated to do anything with those over the centuries prior to the War of the Lance.

Insofar as why he fights in the war at all, it's because he tells Takhisis that he'll serve whichever of her generals is brave enough to spend an entire night in Dargaard Keep; Kitiara does, and so Soth fights for her. Where Takhisis is concerned, Knight of the Black Rose outright tells us that Soth is one of her champions, which he seems to accept; being a death knight condemned by Paladine seems to make that fait accompli.

Yeah, like so much of Krynn, he seems to exist mostly for the purpose of his role in the story of Tanis et al. It does make him difficult to use in a game that doesn't involve them though. Not sure I'd have him go full obsessive stalkery on a female PC like he does on Kitiara, because Kitiara is kinda his iconic thing and he should have that. I might try to link his backstory to a PC somehow, perhaps if there's a Solamnic PC, their many-times-great grandfather could have been one of the knights judging Soth's trial, or perhaps an elven PC could be a relation of Isolde (or one of the banshees). Everything's always personal for Soth, after all - if he comes across a connection of one of the people he blames for his downfall, that might get his attention. He doesn't really believe in anything except himself, so any hooks to get his interest would have to be personal too. Unfortunately, I DO want to run that great SotDQ set piece where

Spoiler

the PCs struggle home from a losing battle and discover with great relief that Solamnics Knight have arrived as reinforcements - only to slowly discover that in fact it's Soth and his undead who've busted in and murdered everyone

, and there's really no personal motive for him to do any of that. Hmm.

Soth eventually joining up with Takhisis I can understand. At this point, the Dragonarmies are still bargaining with other evil types in order to make alliances, join up with the war etc. They make some sort of deal with the minotaurs, for instance, not just crush them and bind them to servitude. It's not a GOOD deal for the minotaurs in the long run, particularly, but there was a diplomatic process happening there. I figure the same happened with Soth. Ariakas (or Takhisis) showed up and asked him what it'd take for him to join in the war. He makes the stipulation about a night in Dargaard keep, and it's Kitiara who takes up the offer, and the rest is (imaginary) history. He's never been Takhisis's servitor exactly, even less than the evil dragons are. He allies with her because he wants Kitiara.

 

[Seramus]

Yeah, like so much of Krynn, he seems to exist mostly for the purpose of his role in the story of Tanis et al. It does make him difficult to use in a game that doesn't involve them though. Not sure I'd have him go full obsessive stalkery on a female PC like he does on Kitiara, because Kitiara is kinda his iconic thing and he should have that. I might try to link his backstory to a PC somehow, perhaps if there's a Solamnic PC, their many-times-great grandfather could have been one of the knights judging Soth's trial, or perhaps an elven PC could be a relation of Isolde (or one of the banshees). Everything's always personal for Soth, after all - if he comes across a connection of one of the people he blames for his downfall, that might get his attention. He doesn't really believe in anything except himself, so any hooks to get his interest would have to be personal too.

This is probably your best angle. Lord Soth is characterized by incredible stillness until something sets him in motion, and it's usually something that echoes one of the events of his past life (including falling in lust with interesting women). Even his working for Takhisis is practically an afterthought for him - something almost begrudgingly done just because he was angry with Paladine, and even then it came with the condition that a general had to stay in his keep for a night.

So some connection to his past, especially the idea you mentioned about someone being a relation of Isolde, opens the door for him to not just antagonize, but to do so in a way that doesn't immediately result in him slaughtering the player. And it may work best to let that relationship evolve over time. Give Lord Soth a reason to get out of bed and start acting, but as he learns more about the player's connection to his distant past he starts to take an active interest in them. Possibly even testing them repeatedly, since he still values his old Solamnic Vows to an extent and respects those that adhere to them, while simultaneously delighting when he can prove you a hypocrite.

Actually, he has a lot in common with Strahd Von Zarovich and can be run in a fairly similar manner even if his motivations are slightly different. The big roleplaying caveat for him (in my opinion) is that duality I mentioned. He DOES consider himself honorable to a point, and does behave in a generally lawful and dignified way, but he WILL test you and mock you for failing those tests (since it reinforces his hatred). He doesn't rampage around like a blackguard in general, but will if given a personal reason to get involved. He will respect deals you make with him the majority of the time, including even taking his troops and abandoning the field of battle for a while if he judges you to be a righteous and decent person (all while hating himself for failing all those centuries ago). But when pushed very hard he will fail his own standards and do something terrible. Like Darth Vader trying to decide to save his son, but in a bad way.

/ramble

 

[Velderan]

Why did the other elf women lie to Soth about his second wife cheating on him? What was their motivation? It just seems incredibly random. SotDQ said they blame Soth for their friend falling from grace, so they ... tell him a lie which will make HIM angry with HER? That's some really poorly-targeted and poorly-thought-out vengeance right there. Especially when, as elf clerics (Isode was a cleric of Paladine), they quite possibly KNOW that the cataclysm is imminent and that Soth has been sent to try to stop it. This seems a really obvious

Spoiler

question for SotDQ PCs to ask Leedara, once her identity becomes clear. What the hell was she thinking?

Others have mentioned the elf women were clerics, but that's not entirely accurate from what I remember. They were traveling from Silvanesti to Istar to become clerics when they were attacked by ogres and rescued by Soth's group. Whatever messages the gods may have sent to their clerics would not have included Isolde or her elven companions since they were not actually clerics yet. Why did they try to turn Soth against Isolde? I think they just wanted to get her back so they could continue their journey to Istar and they saw redeeming her from Soth's influence as their first major test by Paladine which is probably the angle I'd go with if the PCs have a chance to ask. They wouldn't have known about the Cataclysm IMO.

Why did Isode stay with this guy? Surely she must have realised he was married at some stage, and didn't she have some questions when his wife suddenly vanished? Wasn't she a cleric of Paladine at this time? All this doesn't sound like very Paladine-approved behaviour. I know that at some point, all the real clerics of the Gods disappeared from Istar as a warning to the Kingpriest (which was ignored) so could Isolde have been an in-name-only cleric with no actual connection/blessing from Paladine. But I thought the elf clerics at least were still around at this point?

As noted above, she never actually became a cleric. She likely stayed with him because she was young and likely naive, so she probably overlooked a lot of obvious red flags (pretty much like actual people tend to do when they stay in relationships they probably shouldn't). The 2e Tales of the Lance boxed set does hint that Soth's corrupt steward Caradoc may have been behind Soth and Isolde's affair so the way I've always looked at it was Soth was an extremely proud man who quickly rose through the ranks to become a Knight of the Rose and when he was unable to have a child to pass on his name and lands to, he grew bitter and probably wasn't pleasant to be around for his closest servants. It's reasonable that Caradoc just saw finding a way to get rid of his wife so Soth could marry another woman that may be able to give him a child as part of his steward duties. Important men in history have gone to great lengths to secure the lineage of their family; look at Henry the 8th.

I'm probably overthinking this, but the timing of Soth's last ride and the abandonment of his duty. Soth was basically exiled at his home in Dargaard Keep after his expulsion from the knighthood, then the gods send him on a mission to avert the Cataclysm. Looking at the map, to do this he'd have to ride the entire width of modern-day Ansalon (and a bit more, to the now-submerged site where Istar was located). Ansalon is a pretty small continent, but ... really? We're probably talking around 1000 miles here, across country, while Soth is a hunted fugitive from the Knights of Solamnia. But somehow once he turns around and heads back home after being distracted, he arrives just in time for the Cataclysm to occur when he's busy killing his wife for imaginary infidelity? I know that Dragonlance runs on dramatic narrative convenience more than ruthless logic, but that's some seriously precise timing. Did Soth's abandonment of his duty not just prevent the Cataclysm from being averted, but was it in fact the trigger for the Cataclysm? The gods had all their hopes on his shoulders, they see him turn around, and just collectively facepalm and say 'welp, there goes our last chance' and hit the Cataclysm button right then and there?

There's definitely a certain level of "so the story can happen" to Soth's timeline. That being said, I don't know if I've ever read how far into the journey he was before encountering the elven women but it's likely they didn't stray far from Dargaard if they were hoping to get Isolde out of there somehow. The timing of the Cataclysm and the significance of Soth's failure could certainly be looked at as the final strike that caused the Cataclysm to occur, especially if you consider the curse Isolde placed on him as for him to live a lifetime for every life his failure caused to be lost during the Cataclysm.

What does Soth DO all day, after his undeath? He does a lot of brooding, and at nighttime he gets serenaded by the banshees telling him how terrible he is, but what are his goals? Motivations? He's never been a worshipper of Takhisis, so I'm not sure why SotDQ has him involved in the war at this time at all. There's occasional stories in the lore about how some knight or another quests to Dargaard to defeat the legendary betrayer and meets a horrible end thereby, but he's not particularly proactive. What, if anything, does he actually want? How do you involve him in a story?

Soth's motivation in SotDQ is to be a marketable face that longtime DL fans can remember and tempt them into buying the book.

Soth's motivation was boredom, basically. He sat in his castle and listened to the banshees tell him about his downfall every night. In the novels he initially saw Kitiara's offer of Laurana as a way to get revenge, but that is harder to make work in a game without a prominent female PC, so you could go 1 of 2 ways with this depending on your group's plan. Either existing DL canon sticks and Kitiara lured him out. This works if you're planning to continue the story after SotDQ, since Kitiara could be a key player in continuing the campaign's story. Otherwise if you're only going to run SotDQ and then move on to a new setting, have Kansaldi replace Kitiara as being the one who spent the night in Dargaard and became his new obsession. They didn't really do much of anything in the book to establish Kansaldi IMO, so you could use that to help build her into more of a threat.

Others have said this in other DL threads so it's worth repeating; ignore what's in the novels and stick with what's presented in the gaming material. The gaming material typically provides enough to give a DM an idea of what the character was about without going into so much detail that you can't easily make the material fit in your own campaign since you're playing a game and not reading a novel to the group. The faster you break the "Dragonlance is what's in the novels" shackles, the more you'll enjoy a campaign ran in the setting.

 

[Gadget]

I think it is important to note a few things about the story:

1. Yes, the 13 elven women with her at the time were clerics (or studying to become such), even daughters of Paladine. However, given the state of the Ishtar and the Clerical organization as a whole, that does not mean much. The church of Paladine (and most of the other Gods) had become grossly corrupt, hide-bound, and blind by this time. Most "clerics" did not have clerical powers and were more like government functionaries with an extra helping of superiority. This is one of the things leading to the Cataclysm and is very similar to popular views of the historical medieval Christian Church. As such, the character of such women is hardly recommended by their status within the clerical hierarchy. Likely they were just vain and vindictive women who liked to put others down and relished the misery of others, part Real Housewives and part Mean Girls. The fact that they were made Banshees during the Cataclysm and cursed with forever repeating to Soth his tragic tale is a telling mark about who and what kind of people they were.
2. It is possible for good people to make mistakes in a moment of passion and attraction. Adultery and infidelity are common enough today, though this does not excuse the pair. By all accounts, Soth was one of the greatest and most respected of the Order. But the fact that Soth could not own up to the affair and doubled down by trying to keep things secret and having his wife killed is where things really go off the rails. IIRC, Soth was tried and convicted by the Knights after it came to light that he had not only had an affair, but arranged for his wife's death to clear the way for his new love. It would require quite a change and redemption to recover from that, but that is exactly what he received when given the opportunity to stop the Cataclysm. Unfortunately, with the chance at redemption he was also granted enough rope to hang himself, so to speak. And that is exactly what he did.
3. I don't know about the timing being convenient, just poetic. He was given a chance, and failed that chance and suffered the consequences. Such things tend to be so in epic stories and divine timing. I don't know that the gods place "all their hope" in Soth, they merely gave him an opportunity; they also sent signs and wonders all over the continent.

 

[humble minion]

So some connection to his past, especially the idea you mentioned about someone being a relation of Isolde, opens the door for him to not just antagonize, but to do so in a way that doesn't immediately result in him slaughtering the player. And it may work best to let that relationship evolve over time. Give Lord Soth a reason to get out of bed and start acting, but as he learns more about the player's connection to his distant past he starts to take an active interest in them. Possibly even testing them repeatedly, since he still values his old Solamnic Vows to an extent and respects those that adhere to them, while simultaneously delighting when he can prove you a hypocrite.

That's the sort of angle I'm looking to take. Soth as semi-antagonist who doesn't necessarily want to flat-out murder the PCs. Take some ideas from the old Ravenloft module, where he stews over his past continually, and a PC with a connection to his past would allow him to do that. Plus, if he and the PCs have some sort of truce, I can give him back his old Shadow Walk ability and use that to move PCs around Ansalon quickly without having to give them a teleportation item or making them trek everywhere on foot. It kinda depends on the PCs though - I can't really take this angle if I end up with a party of dwarves, kender, gnomes, and Plainspeople with a minotaur for flavour.

This works if you're planning to continue the story after SotDQ, since Kitiara could be a key player in continuing the campaign's story. Otherwise if you're only going to run SotDQ and then move on to a new setting, have Kansaldi replace Kitiara as being the one who spent the night in Dargaard and became his new obsession. They didn't really do much of anything in the book to establish Kansaldi IMO, so you could use that to help build her into more of a threat.

Honestly, the last couple of chapters of SotDQ do nothing at all for me, and I'll probably chop out Kansaldi and the City of Lost Names completely in favour of sending the PCs off into the wider world, most likely using Nezrah and her egg to get them involved with DL9, perhaps with a stop-off at Wayreth on the way. But if I remove the City of Lost Names then I need a reason for Soth to show up in Kalaman (or be involved in the story at all), hence this thread.

The faster you break the "Dragonlance is what's in the novels" shackles, the more you'll enjoy a campaign ran in the setting.

This is probably very good advice, but 'run a game your players would enjoy' is kinda the #1 rule of DMing and so trumps it in this case. One of my prospective players is a big fan of the novel characters and so I want to respect novel canon to that degree for their sake.

As such, the character of such women is hardly recommended by their status within the clerical hierarchy. Likely they were just vain and vindictive women who liked to put others down and relished the misery of others, part Real Housewives and part Mean Girls. The fact that they were made Banshees during the Cataclysm and cursed with forever repeating to Soth his tragic tale is a telling mark about who and what kind of people they were.

Which entirely makes sense, but leaves us with the unanswered question about, if the banshees were rotten people when they were alive, and then they turned into undead which probably didn't improve them much, why is Leedara helping the PCs now? I mean, just being vindictive and wanting to foil and frustrate Soth is one angle I could go with, but it seems a bit one-dimensional and doesn't really fit with her portrayal in the module. Mind you, there's a big plot hole right at the start of SotDQ where Leedara shows up at Ispin's funeral for no apparent reason. How on earth did she know Ispin? I suppose I could tie those two plots together by saying that at some time in the past Ispin took a shortcut across Dargaard lands in the course of one of his adventures, and encountered Leedara, and perhaps challenged her to a singing contest (my Ispin is a bard) in exchange for his life, and they ended up talking and singing duets until dawn, and this was the catalyst for some sort of steps towards redemption on her part. Though I'd kinda intended to save Leedara for a doomed love story if one of the players was interested in such a thing for their PC.

Although an alternate interpretation I read elsewhere was that Ispin was in fact an avatar of Paladine like Fizban, and that his 'death' was intended to get the PCs into the right place at the right time to fulfill their destinies in the War of the Lance, a bit like his various interventions alongside Tanis and Tasslehof et al..