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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8229557" data-attributes="member: 2209">Madness is what comes to mind.She was staked out to be dissolved in the sun with her child next to her for not sacrificing her child herself. She was driven mad with grief and that has defined her. "One should not imagine that Keening's banshee is simple-minded. She is more like a mother gone mad with grief. In lucid moments, she remembers what happened in Arak. Revenge upon the drow, then, becomes her main objective."She sometimes does not realize her wail will kill people and she just does. She sometimes is in delusional denial and rocks her bloody baby shroud as if she has her child, killing any who point out the reality.Her madness is very strongly tied to her wanting her child, but it is a strong aspect on its own.Azalin's child thing is a big add on motivation to his existing character. The son is not mentioned at all until you get to the novel line during mid 2e Ravenloft and Azalin got his own full length novel. It became a big deal, but it was still an add on to flesh out an existing more central character.First he was just a powerful lich who doesn't want to keep working for Strahd in 1e's Ravenloft II. In 2e Realms of Terror he is the lich who rules Darkon as a wizard king. "More than anything else, Azalin desires power." This is where you get the rulership, the secret police, the spies in other lands and his realm rewriting people to believe they are his subjects. His magic and intelligence are a big part of his power and his self image of his power, so you get his personal curse of no new magical knowledge or power. That's all pretty thematically unified and covers a lot for a very central Ravenloft personality who predates the 2e setting. But it is also not particularly gothic or much of a personality to go on so adding on something about his son when developing his personal backstory later works and gets incorporated from its introduction on through the S story framing of the Gazetteers.</blockquote>

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