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Message: <blockquote data-quote="knasser" data-source="post: 6924550" data-attributes="member: 65151">A slightly old thread - like Strahd it has its dormant times - but a good one. I noticed a lot of debate over when Strahd "went bad" and why. The old notion of him going bad because he was rejected by the one he loves has fallen from favour these days (despite it being a long-standing trope). I think in large part because some feel it implies fault on the part of the woman who rejects and that someone who reacts that way must already be bad and their behaviour simply confirms it. Others like the traditional and original story of Strahd snapping in one moment because of love. Ravenloft is, after all, a Gothic horror.I don't think either quite works in such abstract detail to show what provoked a pact with "Death". My take on it is the traditional and original story, but I think when you truly step into the mind of Strahd, it can start to make sense. The following is the original story of Strahd (i.e. module and AD&D 2nd boxed set version) as I interpret it.It wasn't love or its loss that turned Strahd to the night. It wasn't slow erosion of his morals through years of cruel warfare, either. It was something far more classic - betrayal. Strahd was the eldest, the heir and the lord to be. It was on his shoulders as a youth that duty fell the hardest. He learnt war young, but he did not love it. He fought many battles over many years to keep his family safe and his land in the hands of his people. His returns were fleeting, a year at most when he got to be with his young brother, his mother and to go amongst the villagers - The people for whom he spent long months trudging across battlefields, slaying their enemies with his own sword and watching his brothers in arms die. The wars took from him his youth, his gentleness, his friends. But on those occasions when he would return to his villages and his castle, or thought back to them from some windswept field, he knew why he fought. He fought for them. And he returned when he could. Village girls would throw flowers for him and one, not yet a woman but with a delicate face and sweet looks, smiled at him, told him she longed to see him return. The only tenderness in his life. He spared her brother from military service and he made sure that she and her parents had all that she needed before he left to repel the invaders once again, and he took with him a locket containing a small portrait of her face and carried it with him always.The war was one to end all wars. He broke the enemy and in doing so nearly broke himself. When he returned, his hair was grey at the temples, his face worn like a cliff from too many winters in open fields, and his hands strong and calloused, arms hardened from sword and bow. The castle, long cherished in his memories, was decked with flowers and the smell of feasting drifted on smoke through the crisp autumn air. Here was the land he had guarded, here was the family he had sworn to protect. But the celebrations were not to welcome him home. Instead he found his younger brother at ease with petty nobles, drunk, his hair coiffed and dressed in finery as befit a groom. And when he went to find Tatyana, he found she was to be the bride. Then, he declared his love for her, his desire. But she turned from him, called him old, called him cold. Even the people seemed to shun him. They had grown used to his younger brother as their lord. They had forgotten their distant guardian who had no heir, and they fawned on the younger brother. Strahd found himself shunned, overlooked. A stranger and a soldier not fit for their lavish parties and not suited to the indulgent lifestyle they had grown used to and to which they had introduced the young Tatyana.All this Strahd saw and knew that he had given his youth and the best parts of his life to protect these people and that in return they had forgotten him, whilst his own brother had taken the one dream he had left. Gone was the girl who prayed for his safe return, replaced by this woman who sought a life of idleness with his brother and looked on him like some aged uncle. Strahd looked at the hands she had refused to take, at the scars and the first creases of age and cursed them. He begged for the life and years that he had lost to be given back to him. He damned his brother for taking Tatyana from him and all those who lived because of him but would barely look at him.  And at that instant, Death came to him and struck a bargain.It wasn't love or its loss that turned Strahd to the night. It wasn't  slow erosion of his morals through years of cruel warfare, either. It  was something far more classic - betrayal. To be forgotten and discarded by those he and his brothers in arms had given up their lives for, and everything he longed for taken for themselves who had so much already only because of him. Betrayal. That, is something that can turn someone to darkness in a moment.</blockquote>

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