Dragonlance Introducing Dragonlance's Iconic - And Upgraded! - Death Knight, Lord Soth!

WotC has posted a video introducing the iconic Dragonlance villain Lord Soth (albeit with the words "Lord Soth is Tiamat's favourite death knight"....)

Upgraded from the original Dragonlance adventures and novels, Soth now rides on a death dragon! In fact he is able to resurrect dead dragons as death dragons under his command. The SSI gold box video game, Death Knights of Krynn, was an inspiration for parts of this adventure.

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One of the most iconic images of Lord Soth was painted by Keith Parkinson (and you can buy a print from his website). It features Soth aboard his nightmare steed, leading his legion of skeletal warriors into battle.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I just bought the lot of them off GOG right before my system went belly up.
I never got a chance to play The Dark Queen of Krynn back in 93 but a friend of mine said it never loaded right or something.

They're available on Steam now at a pretty good price, with the Gold Box Companion UI add-on included.

DQK had a major bug that basically blocked off most of the second half of the game, but it's been fixed, and it's easy to avoid anyway.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I enjoyed all three as a teen, but Death Knights was my favourite.

Out of curiosity, where did Dark Queen go wrong in your experience?

1. It lacked a cohesive plot. It's sort of vaguely obvious that you have to stop Takhisis, but the plot meanders wildly without giving you much information on what you're trying to stop. It's a bunch of fetch quests and "go here and talk to some random person to get a vaguely worded clue or directions on where to get the next mcguffin". All the rest of the Gold Box games have pretty well defined goals from at or near the start, while DQK doesn't really give you info on the endgame until you're basically there.

2. Those damn magic users with ridiculous amounts of protection spells. It would be fine if there were just a few scattered about as bosses for an extra challenge, but they are everywhere. It's hugely difficult to damage them, meaning your group is likely going to eat some delayed blast fireballs, which means lots of character deaths (if not immediately, then after a few further hits by other foes), which means reload after reload. At least power word kill takes them out, but that's a 9th level spell with a very short range. Things got much better after the mid-game when they became much less common.

 

[Andvari]

2. Those damn magic users with ridiculous amounts of protection spells. It would be fine if there were just a few scattered about as bosses for an extra challenge, but they are everywhere. It's hugely difficult to damage them, meaning your group is likely going to eat some delayed blast fireballs, which means lots of character deaths (if not immediately, then after a few further hits by other foes), which means reload after reload. At least power word kill takes them out, but that's a 9th level spell with a very short range. Things got much better after the mid-game when they became much less common.

There were two really tough battles near the end where I had to reduce the difficulty from Veteran, though both loaded with those enchanted draconians that are just painful to kill, rather than the dark mages. Especially the fight in the no-magic zone was tough, because arrows just aren't enough to kill them before they close while also dealing with the death dragons

 

[Reynard]

Lord Soth.
History's most powerful incel.

No, that's Thanos.

 

[FoolishFrost]

Just to be clear, Soth’s undead army was a curse, not a boon. They were there to remind him of how far he had fallen, and how many he took with him on his way down. Heck, the banshees that prowled his courtroom were there to sing about everything he ever did to get them all there.

On the other hand, his wife and child were not cursed this way, just leaving an ashen stand on the floor in front of his throne that could never be cleaned.

They mention his whole series of boneheaded flaws when they described his fall from grace, but pride was chief among them.

The gods were just a tad miffed at him, Yano?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Soth didn't need to raise undead dragons or other undead.

I don't NEED a lot of things things that I want... maybe soth saw that death dragon and was like "I deserve a new mount"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Did you mean to imply that Strahd and Vecna are Soth’s wives and Acererak is his son? Cause that’s what I’m getting from this sentence.

new head canon confirmed

 

[Vaalingrade]

Just to be clear, Soth’s undead army was a curse, not a boon.

People who lay curses need to stop providing 'punishments' that turn the target into unstoppable badasses.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

People who lay curses need to stop providing 'punishments' that turn the target into unstoppable badasses.

The Brendon Frasiar Mummy series was on the other day and my fiancé and I were joking about curse with awesome

 

[DarkCrisis]

People who lay curses need to stop providing 'punishments' that turn the target into unstoppable badasses.

I always figured it was the only way all of the Gods could agree on a punishment for him.

Good gods wanted him to always see all the ways he’s failed. Evil gods were like okay sure but he gets to be autonomous and is still the lord of his undead army.

Mostly he just stayed to himself until the War of the Lance and then he fell in love again. So it sort of worked fine until then.