Since I didn't know of Khemenu as a god I made a check and it is a city, the word means "the Eightfold" reffering to eight primordial deities. Thoth is more commonly used because of being more easily pronounced than the real Ancient Egyptian name not because of orientalism. Orientalism is an 19th century term while the Greek name "Thoth" was used in ancient times. As for the stereotype for hags you mentioned at first glance you are right.
"Though marvelous at birth, they tend to become unpleasant children as they age. Those of low intelligence are bullies and overly violent, while those who are smarter tend to terrorize other children when no adults are around, and vent their aggression by torturing small animals in secret. As they grow into womanhood, they develop what some would consider personalities defined by low moral character, although many of them manage to lead normal lives. Some even take husbands."
Although it doesn't exactly refer to what is defined as low moral character, the ending sentence does make you speculate what the writer means...
... and having a husband seems like an accomplishment.
But then it writes for each hag their role (in a way defining their imoralities)
"Annis born into cultures where such activities (women fighting) are frowned on will often leave their homes at a young age, or become murderers or rogues, living at the edge of society."
So it mentions how society in the game expects them to behave.
"young greenhags are desired by men and envied by women: their dark hearts, however, cause them to use their beauty to break hearts and ruin lives,"
"They are exceedingly vain and self-absorbed creatures who live equally for the joy that performing brings them and for the adoration of the crowds. They are also renowned for having many lovers at one time and for tiring of them rapidly (...) However, greenhags are also intensely jealous, and they are willing to go to great lengths to ruin someone they fear might present a competition for the limelight. This extends to paramours more flighty than they are."
I don't think it focuses on the polyamorous nature of greenhags that makes them evil but rather their vanity and jelousy.
"They are strong, healthy women of the type a matchmaker would describe as "ideal for childbearing." This often makes the years of a young sea hag's life a time of frustration and heartbreak, because they are never able to provide the children that they and their husbands want."
Using quotes in "ideal for childbearing" I think makes it obvious that the writer hasn't a misogynistic view of women.
"They are often married and appear for the most part to be happy in domestic life, with the exception of their apparent infertility. Still, their evil nature is often evident early on, as they are frequently numbered among the most vicious of gossips in the community."
For Sea hags it is not their infertility that makes them evil but their gossiping.
Conduct disorder when they are young , preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love, being interpersonally exploitative, lacking empathy since they are bullies and violent, being envious of others or believing that others are envious of them, showing arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes (as in the case of greenhags), (I would also add believing that they are "special" as they really are, but more because of overpamperring because of their marvelousness birth). All these are psychopathic or narcissistic tendencies I don't think there is something misogynistic about someone having those characteristics since these characteristics make anyone being either man, woman or transgender be identified as having antisocial personality disorder. The book is about monsters who take the form of women, who display antisocial tendencies, not women in general.
Now if you see that it is written from the view of how women were being expected to behave in the Middle Ages, then you are correct, but it doesn't mean that this is the writer's view and I don't believe it promotes misogyny.
My view is that the Demiplane of Dread is full of injustice and evil prevails in the Land of Mists so why make evil more tolerant.
Leliel wrote:Oh, and I can't help but notice, when defending Victor Mordenheim's masculinity, you seemed to have missed something: In OG Ravenloft, the darklord of Lamordia was the mad scientist's monster. That's not just a waste of potential - that's outright ignoring Mary Shelly, the original creator herself. The very fact the darklord is the person who actually holds the blame seems to imply that no, if it's a chainsaw they're using, it's because they're amputating a dead limb and giving the tree more room to grow. In fact, the doctor being a woman might actually be a better Frankenstein stand-in, if you take the theory that the Monster was a metaphor for an unwanted pregnancy and parental abandonment. (Byron was a jerk.).
For that I have to say that Adam is the darklord because Mordenheim's soul resides in him while Mordenheim himself is souless, having the knowledge and inteligence to create life but not the passion to create it (this is the reason they are psychically linked: the soul resides in the creature, the souless creature resides in the creator). And although Byron was a jerk I don't think that he was the father of Mary Shelley's child, she also started writting the book after the loss of a child not an unwanted pregnancy. Pregnant again only weeks later, she was likely still nursing her second baby when she started writing “Frankenstein,” and pregnant with her third by the time she finished.
“Nurse the baby, read,” she had written in her diary, day after day, until the eleventh day:
“I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it,” and then, in the morning,
“Find my baby dead.” With grief at that loss came a fear of
“a fever from the milk.” Her breasts were swollen, inflamed, unsucked; her sleep, too, grew fevered.
“Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived,” she wrote in her diary.
“Awake and find no baby.”
And the whole concept of a creature being sewn together by dead parts came to her in a dream.
“I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision,—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together”.
Also Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (a famous 18th century feminist), died of an infection contracted during childbirth eleven days after MAry Shelley was born.
Awoke and found no mother.
If any man served as an inspiration for Victor Frankenstein, it was Lord Byron, who followed his imagination, indulged his passions, and abandoned his children. He was
“mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” as one of his lovers pronounced, mainly because of his many affairs, which likely included sleeping with his half sister, Augusta Leigh. In the spring of 1816, Byron, fleeing scandal, left England for Geneva, and it was there that he met up with Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Claire Clairmont (Mary's stepsister). Moralizers called them the League of Incest. By summer, Clairmont,
not Mary, was pregnant by Byron.
Lord Byron for instance could have been a psychopath (as much as a young hag would be), even if he is an acknowledged poet and Greek national hero.
Info on Mary Shelley found here
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018 ... ankenstein
PS
Leliel wrote:That it wasn't okay to reduce an entire living country to a background for a single village in the desert it was damn hard to actually be from?
Har'Akir is a backward village to make a contrast with the glory and majesty of the land of Akir and a part of Ankhtepot's curse. As the darklord of Har'Akir his domain is not in the least a reflection of his inflated self image, it is a land much too small for him. He craves to be mortal again and can achieve mortality for some time (as a Male Human, Aristocrat 1, Lawful Evil, CR 1/2) but even in this form what he craves is to be pharaoh of a large nation not a small village.
And why is it hard to be from there? Someone could be a Green Hand and you have the Akiri pantheon in the 3E setting book, also someone could be the child of slaves, since Har'Akir is one of the domains promoting slavery (half-elf Akiri desert ranger, halfling rogue acrobat etc). Why was it less likely to be from there than now? at least there at some time it became part of cluster of domains while in 5E it is again an island of Terror.
Karloff playing an Arab or Ancient Egyptian is not because of Orientalism but because of racism, as were face painted actors playing Native Americans,
blackface makeup and ALL actors playing Fu Manchu. Orientalism is based on the racist idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior.
But the mention of Karlof was "Have you seen this movie? Then play this Har'Akir adventure." in the interview is problematic, because you create an adventure based on the story of the film not on it's depiction by the actor.
Wes Schneider:
“I think you’ll even see from the image that we have of Anhktepot that this is not Boris Karloff,”
Well it could...
If Karlof was alive and you asked him to play Xerxes in a multimillion dollar film I think he would accept...
BTW I am Greek and to have Althea as the only "Greek" reference with it's Santorini-like caldera and "Minonian" labyrinth or a stone giant-ghost from CotNGhosts is OK by me (still better than Hercules or Xena the Warrior Princess mythologicaly-wise). But anyway modern Greeks have culturally more in common with the Ottoman Empire based Hazlan than Althea's labyrinh, unless if you live next to a Greek restaurant in Astoria (Queens), even if the country just escaped from a labyrinth of economic turmoil to re-enter a pandemic and economic one...
