Weird Headcanons Thread

[Mistmaster]

Like a lot of folks, I feel like Mordenheim makes a better Darklord than Adam.

Ugh... Am I the only one who actually likes the idea of a domain where the darklord isn't the main villain? The twist, the bait-and-switch.
I get why people think Adam doesn't deserve darklordhood. I sympathise with him too. But reading about him made me realise that there's a limit to how much we can blame the people who wronged us in the past for what we do in the present. Trauma can make you think some really messed-up things, but part of recovery, part of retaking control over your life, is taking responsibility for what you do with these thoughts. Adam isn't irredeemably evil, but he has to actively choose redemption - and I feel like the Dark Powers have done everything short of shouting at him to make that clear, and now they're just waiting for him to get the clue. This isn't what darklordhood normally means, but every rule has an exception.

Victor Mordenheim should be the darklord of Lamordia, but, his monomaniacal obsession with restoring Elise limits the evil and suffering he can cause, and, more importantly, limits the entertainment value he poses to the Dark Powers.
Adam, on the other hand, is ambitious, and on top of his all-consuming grudge against his creator, he's also saddled with a crippling snake pit of self-entitlement, martyr complex and Pinocchio syndrome. Infinitely more entertaining.

That is the reason I made Mordenheim the Headmaster of a prestigious university and a famous, reckognized scientist with a lot of prestige, involved in several political plots.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Like a lot of folks, I feel like Mordenheim makes a better Darklord than Adam.

Ugh... Am I the only one who actually likes the idea of a domain where the darklord isn't the main villain? The twist, the bait-and-switch.
I get why people think Adam doesn't deserve darklordhood. I sympathise with him too. But reading about him made me realise that there's a limit to how much we can blame the people who wronged us in the past for what we do in the present. Trauma can make you think some really messed-up things, but part of recovery, part of retaking control over your life, is taking responsibility for what you do with these thoughts. Adam isn't irredeemably evil, but he has to actively choose redemption - and I feel like the Dark Powers have done everything short of shouting at him to make that clear, and now they're just waiting for him to get the clue. This isn't what darklordhood normally means, but every rule has an exception.

Victor Mordenheim should be the darklord of Lamordia, but, his monomaniacal obsession with restoring Elise limits the evil and suffering he can cause, and, more importantly, limits the entertainment value he poses to the Dark Powers.
Adam, on the other hand, is ambitious, and on top of his all-consuming grudge against his creator, he's also saddled with a crippling snake pit of self-entitlement, martyr complex and Pinocchio syndrome. Infinitely more entertaining.

It really all comes down to your interpretation of the DPs. Are they these ultimate judges of the multiverse, punishing villains cause they deserve it, or just a bunch of sadists with too much power in their hands and a weird sense of humour?

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

My weird head canon involves reconciling the god-awful Sherrif von Zarovich, the Ebon Gargoyle from CoD and Telena von Zarovich from LotB.

My head canon is this;

All the fan-wanky grim dark stuff of the Sheriff in CoD only exists in his mind. The Ebon Gargoyle aren’t an elite cadre of Kargat hunters, they’re a band of thugs who extort the population of Barovia for personal gain.

The Sheriff is a von Zarovich; Telena’s older brother Grigori. Only his family name has stopped Strahd personally interfering, as he is in a quandary as to how to handle the rogue Sheriff.

Enter Telena. She is Grigori’s youngest sister, and she is aghast at how he is behaving. When she uncovered that the Ebon Gargoyle are being funded by the black sheep of the Von Zarovich family, Lyssa, she petitioned her elderly father to intervene lest Strahd bring his wrath on the whole household. When her father refused, Telena took matters into her own hands.

She publicly disowned her father and brother. She researched her “cousin” Strahd and found what she thought was a fitting solution. Telena travelled the Core until she found the item she sought; a Ba’al Verzi dagger. She returned to Barovia and orchestrated a meeting of reconciliation with Grigori.

When he agreed and they were alone, she struck. She murdered her brother, denounced Lyssa and pledged her loyalty to Strahd.

The vampire was amused, but also angry at the infighting within his heirs. He made Telena head of the Ebon Gargoyle and gave her one mandate: reform the organisation into something befitting the Von Zarovich name, or suffer the same fate as her brother.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

My weird head canon involves reconciling the god-awful Sherrif von Zarovich, the Ebon Gargoyle from CoD and Telena von Zarovich from LotB.

My head canon is this;

All the fan-wanky grim dark stuff of the Sheriff in CoD only exists in his mind. The Ebon Gargoyle aren’t an elite cadre of Kargat hunters, they’re a band of thugs who extort the population of Barovia for personal gain.

The Sheriff is a von Zarovich; Telena’s older brother Grigori. Only his family name has stopped Strahd personally interfering, as he is in a quandary as to how to handle the rogue Sheriff.

Enter Telena. She is Grigori’s youngest sister, and she is aghast at how he is behaving. When she uncovered that the Ebon Gargoyle are being funded by the black sheep of the Von Zarovich family, Lyssa, she petitioned her elderly father to intervene lest Strahd bring his wrath on the whole household. When her father refused, Telena took matters into her own hands.

She publicly disowned her father and brother. She researched her “cousin” Strahd and found what she thought was a fitting solution. Telena travelled the Core until she found the item she sought; a Ba’al Verzi dagger. She returned to Barovia and orchestrated a meeting of reconciliation with Grigori.

When he agreed and they were alone, she struck. She murdered her brother, denounced Lyssa and pledged her loyalty to Strahd.

The vampire was amused, but also angry at the infighting within his heirs. He made Telena head of the Ebon Gargoyle and gave her one mandate: reform the organisation into something befitting the Von Zarovich name, or suffer the same fate as her brother.

Cool.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

My head cannon is that Romir Hiregaard is not the sole source of Malken, he is the source of the curse, but the other source was his father Edmund Hiregaard, a renowned alchemist and doctor, who accidentally created a prototype Malken with his experimentations. The good doctor was responsible for creating the half-golem Desmond LaRouche, like his son he took his life, after Desmond left him leaving behind a son, Romir.
Romir inherited his father’s taint, dormant and inactive until the curse, which reacted with the dormant taint, and this taint has been passed down with each successive generation blending with the curse to create Malken.

Ugh...
I get the will to bring Tristen/Malken closer to his literary origin (I think there was even an official novel that tried to do that). We recognise a reference and try to take it to the next level.
But Tristen/Malken is actually one of the cases where I'm really glad an adaptation made a significant change from the origin, cause the change makes it deeper.
Like, I'm not saying Jekyll and Hyde wasn't deep. I haven't read it yet, so I can't judge, but the theme of the dark urges we suppress and the evil a normative person could do if they let this darkness out is already pretty based.
But Tristen and Malken are a lot better in terms of realism. Like, of course it's a fantasy setting and we can make stuff up, but Dissociative Identity Disorder is a real phenomenon.
And what causes it IRL?
Severe childood trauma, usually from domestic abuse.
The psychological explanation is that the child can't do anything about the abuse, and has no way to comfort themselves as the person supposed to be their source of comfort is instead their source of trauma, so their brain's only way to cope is to dissociate, to separate the part of their consciousness experiencing the abuse from the rest of their mind. And when that happens over and over again, the separated part sometimes develops an identity of its own.
From what I read so far - that is, Gaz version - Tristen himself wasn't abused by Romir.
But if you think about the situation of an orphan teenager who suddenly loses control over his own body and is magically forced to kill the people he loves... It's completely outside of his control, and it's an even higher level of 'what's meant to be your source of comfort is instead your source of trauma'. It makes perfect sense he'd develop DID, even if it's not a textbook case. It's still not exactly the most accurate representation, but it's so much better than 'weird scientific experiment got out of control'.
And I think this shift from Sci-Fi plot excuse to real-life psychology emphasizes Malken's real theme: Generational trauma, the cycle of abuse and whether or not it can be broken.

[brothersale]

Ugh...
I get the will to bring Tristen/Malken closer to his literary origin (I think there was even an official novel that tried to do that). We recognise a reference and try to take it to the next level.

its not so much tie in to the literary origin, but more of a tie in to one of the original second edition sources, that of Desmond LaRouche the half-golem from the Ravenloft monster compendium II. At the time of its publishing Malken's other half had not been fleshed out or even given a first name (hence Edmund Hiregaard was the name given in the section on desmond). Since then further rewrites occurred and Tristen created and fleshed out, but as Desmond may have been intended to return as the Mudman of Bergovitsa in dread posiblities, blending elements from the orginal source with the current one adds, a in my believe, an explanation for reintroducing Desmond without redoing his entire background. My head cannon also explains, why the curse would generate a simliar look for all of the Hiregaards for their Malken (albeit not the same interests), like i said Edmund was not the source of the Curse (thats Romir), but his experimentations on himself left something in their genetics that interacts with the curse creating a similar look.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Ugh...
I get the will to bring Tristen/Malken closer to his literary origin (I think there was even an official novel that tried to do that). We recognise a reference and try to take it to the next level.

its not so much tie in to the literary origin, but more of a tie in to one of the original second edition sources, that of Desmond LaRouche the half-golem from the Ravenloft monster compendium II. At the time of its publishing Malken's other half had not been fleshed out or even given a first name (hence Edmund Hiregaard was the name given in the section on desmond). Since then further rewrites occurred and Tristen created and fleshed out, but as Desmond may have been intended to return as the Mudman of Bergovitsa in dread posiblities, blending elements from the orginal source with the current one adds, a in my believe, an explanation for reintroducing Desmond without redoing his entire background. My head cannon also explains, why the curse would generate a simliar look for all of the Hiregaards for their Malken (albeit not the same interests), like i said Edmund was not the source of the Curse (thats Romir), but his experimentations on himself left something in their genetics that interacts with the curse creating a similar look.

Oh, cool.

[Mistmaster]

Well, about Malken, I decided to change his domain, after reading the idea from Carrion Crown here on the site. I will use his ideas fot my Zherisia.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Okay.
Anyone has headcanons that aren't about darklords? Or at least not the ones we always debate about?

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Also, I almost misspelled 'darklord' as 'ducklord' writing that last comment...

[brothersale]

is that because "they are the terror that flaps in the night"

[order99]

"That sound! Quick, we must hide!"
"Dmitri, it's only the bardic contest from the pub...Oh, I like that part, nice wailing bit-"
"Roman you idiot! That music belongs to only one waterfowl! We are doomed!"
"God's Teeth,Dmitri ! The Dark-winged Duck of Omen is a myth! It's an old wives' tale! Stop getting so worked-"

(A shadow falls across them both. They scream, briefly.)

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

"That sound! Quick, we must hide!"
"Dmitri, it's only the bardic contest rom the pub...Oh, I like that part, nice wailing bit-"
"Roman you idiot! That music belongs to only one waterfowl! We are doomed!"
"God's Teeth,Dmitri ! The Dark-winged Duck of Omen is a myth! It's an old wives' tale! Stop getting so worked-"

(A shadow falls across them both. They scream, briefly.)

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

So...
Funny story, there's a bar/restaurant a few streets away ftom my school called Nocturno.
And for a long while I had it mixed up with Nosferato. So I had this idea for an urban fantasy story where that bar has a secret floor serving flavoured blood for vampire clients. I might still write that story some day, though the name pun won't work as well as I wanted.

But now I think...
Well, let's say there's this tavern in Martira Bay called 'The Lonely Nosferato'. It's one of the best places to hang out in in the city (not like there's too little of those, though), but few know it's especially popular among the Kagrat.
The basement floor's menu caters for all sorts of undead palates, and mortal clients who aren't careful might end up in someone's cocktail.
WDYT?

[Mistmaster]

"That sound! Quick, we must hide!"
"Dmitri, it's only the bardic contest from the pub...Oh, I like that part, nice wailing bit-"
"Roman you idiot! That music belongs to only one waterfowl! We are doomed!"
"God's Teeth,Dmitri ! The Dark-winged Duck of Omen is a myth! It's an old wives' tale! Stop getting so worked-"

(A shadow falls across them both. They scream, briefly.)

QUAAAAACK