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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9350079" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Here's where I seriously disagree.Urik von Kharkov, as had been written, was an animal who had been changed into a human--but not just any human but specifically a Black man--and he was one of a very tiny number of POCs in the setting at the time, and the only one in the Core. And his shtick is that because of his animalistic nature, he rapes and abuses his wives until they either die from their injuries or commit suicide out of despair. While I'm sure that whoever created him specifically didn't intend for anything other than a "one's true nature always comes through" type of story, what they got was pretty much the embodiment of some very racist ideas about Black men and violence that are still believed by far too many people.WotC obviously couldn't include this as-is. They could whitewash von Kharkov so he's no longer a POC, but that wouldn't be any better (and in a way would be worse, because there aren't many of the darklords they could make not-white in exchange--and anyway, this would also anger the purists). They could tone it down or change it so that he's actually not a horrible husband but his wives are cursed to die anyway, which changes the racism to sexism by turning the fridging the wives. They could just not include the domain but make a new domain that's also cat-themed, and have everyone complain that they should have just included Valachan--and that would leave Valachan open to people who want to write 3pp for the DM's Guild, which doesn't solve the problem at all.So they did the only thing they could do: rewrite the domain from the ground up. Here's 5e's Valachan. You don't like it? Go grab one of your 2e and 3e books and use that version instead.</blockquote>

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