Scholar of Decay makes me hate Legacy of Blood...

[jamesfirecat]

Really if I didn't know this book was outhere I'd be much happier and I'm tempted to declare it non-canon in my campaign or at least everything that it has to say about Jacques Renier (the second/the wererat son of Jacqueline not the original guy who founded Mordent and built the House on Gryphon Hill).

According to my Ebook copy of Scholar of Decay on page 205 the following conversation takes place between Jacques an a visiting noble from Borca.

"What are you thinking about?" Jacques demanded, unused to being ignored.
"My brother."
"You have a brother and a sister?"
"I have four sisters."
Jacques sighed, thin shoulders lifting and falling melodramatically.
"I have only me..."
"You must have lots of cousins," Dmitri offered. It seemed a fair guess as nearly everyone he met professed to be one of the Renier family.
"It's not the same as having a brother."



Throughout this book Jacques is displayed as being conniving and troublesome, but no more so than most spoiled child of royalty. We actually get to see inside his head and he has to at least make an effort to stay one lie ahead of Dmitri when talking about wererats, and that says something about how he has a long way to go to be a proper Renier (granted he's only ten in the book) given that most people in the book stay two or three lies ahead of Dmitri pretty effortlessly.

Let me give you an example there from page 199

[Jacques] "Who bit you."
[Dmitri]"A wererat."
"I know. Which one?"
"There's more than one?"
"Of course there's..." Then just in time he stopped himself. his mama had said never to tell the humans anything they hadn't already worked out for themselves, and this human obviously hadn't worked out anything. The idiot, he added silently.
"... always more than one." That seemed safe enough.

So in the novel when Jacques needs to openly lie or change his train of thought, we're allowed to see him doing it.

So the only way I can assume the novel is internally consistent with itself is if I assume that given the ease with which Jacques says "I have only me" that he really and truly thinks of himself an only child.

Now of course that in turn conflicts with the very first Ravenloft source book (Black Box isn't that what it's called) which shows Jacqueline having four children with Dominic Soufel though only Jacques is named.

Don't worry, I actually have a perfectly logical reasoning behind how she can have four children but Jacques is an only child.

Jacqueline murdered the other three, shortly after they were born when we she decided they weren't worthy heirs.

I'm totally serious. Please keep in mind that Dominic Soufel was born a normal human so according to Van Richten's Guide to Werebeasts any children he has with Jacqueline had a 50% chance of being a true wererat and a 50% chance of being an infected wererat who would turn into a mindless beast whenever they transformed.

What does Jacqueline scolds Jacques about when we see the two meeting for the first time in Scholar of Decay? (Page 18 in my Ebook)

[Jacqueline] "You must learn control. Lack of it was your father's greatest fault."

At some point Dominic was made an infected lycanthrope, but eventually Jacqueline grew tired of the fact that he had no control of his shape or anything more than bestial urges when he did transform, thus leading to her getting rid of him. It might even have also been prompted by the fact that he had "failed the odds" in that after Jacques the next three children he gave her were all infected rather than true lycanthropes.

A father can be a true human or an infected lycanthrope and it will have no impact on if their children are born without or without lycanthropy, thus I think I can reasonably assume that an infected male lycanthrope and a true female lycanthrope breeding have the same 50-50 split between infected and true lycanthropes.

So shortly after the children were born Jacqueline preformed some kind of "knife test" with all of her children (slice the palm of child's hand with knife, watch how long it takes to heal, an infected lycanthrope will heal like a normal human, a true lycanthrope will heal much quicker) and any who didn't "pass" were quietly and quickly done away with, and it was blamed on either some various childhood disease or even the "snatchings" which already plague Richemulot.

Because they were killed shortly after birth Jacques never got to know them, and thus was never overmuch affected by their deaths. This to me is really the only way to reconcile the idea that Jacques clearly considers himself to be a sole child with Jacqueline having given birth to four children. Scholar of Decay and Legacy of Blood directly contradict each other, and I'm going with Scholar of Decay.

The other part of Legacy of Blood that really grinds my gears is the suggestion that Jacques is plotting against Jacqueline. I'm sorry, I liked that story of a Darklord's own offspring turning against them better when it was called the Evil Eye, and I liked that better when it was called Dark of the Moon, and I liked that better when it was called Feast of Goblyns.

Also Wrath of Adam though that was a Darklord turning against their father/creator, but you get the idea.

To oppose all the above look at Neither Man Nor Beast, in that book Frantisek Markov is actually able to have a functioning loving relationship with Delphi in his Doctor Fran persona and given that she already knew that he still vivisected people he probably could have done it without needing to hide his real name from her also.

Darklords are horrible people who do horrible things, but it's those tiny specks of what might once be recognizable as humanity that make them interesting characters. Jacqueline love for Jacques (said love being somewhat smothering/designed to insure he never turns on her) and Jacques' love and loyalty for her in turn makes both of them much more interesting characters than any set up where Jacques is one more wererat waiting for a chance to use his position close to Jacqueline to drive a silver knife into his mother's back, that's supposed to be Louise's job!

I also am none to fond of the idea of just glossing over Jacques getting married/having kids. Jacques Renier should be/have been one of the core's most eligible bachelors (according to Scholar of Decay his got most of his looks from his mom so he's probably between 16-18 charisma), he's rich, and in theory any children he had would be directly in line for control of an entire nation.

I could easily design an entire Richemulot campaign around just Jacques dealing with suitors from all over the Core, and the possibility of their plummeting lifespans if Louise doesn't like the idea of Jacqueline's brat having even more brats of his own with which to push her further out of the line of succession (moving directly against Jacques would be impossible to do without drawing Jacqueline's wrath but she might be able to arrange for the subtle death of anyone he starts to show an interest in). Hell just the question of if Jacques would want to look for a bride whose already a natural wererat, or a human is an interesting question that deserves some thinking about!

In short, I feel the portions of Legacy of Blood which deal with the Renier family advances Jacques Renier's character in a direction I don't like and glosses over interesting ideas that would be more useful to campaign building if they'd only been hinted at.

Sorry just had to get this off my chest, because it's been bouncing around in my head for a while and writing it all out helps me get my thoughts in order/see if anyone else thinks along similar lines to me.

[alhoon]

I would actually consider non-canon the part of "only me" and assume Jaquiline had at least 5-6 children, many of which survived to adulthood.

PS. Scholar of decay was an excellent book although it had some jarring loopholes that made me flinch. Like portraying something on par of 100 murders/month (3-4/night) in a town of 30K people which simply is not sustainable in such a small town or wererats being semi-open about it with a random old man able to tell who's a Renier cousin and who is not.

[jamesfirecat]

I would actually consider non-canon the part of "only me" and assume Jaquiline had at least 5-6 children, many of which survived to adulthood.

PS. Scholar of decay was an excellent book although it had some jarring loopholes that made me flinch. Like portraying something on par of 100 murders/month (3-4/night) in a town of 30K people which simply is not sustainable in such a small town or wererats being semi-open about it with a random old man able to tell who's a Renier cousin and who is not.

To each his own, I just think Jacqueline having only one obvious heir to her power makes for more interesting stories than if she has several.

Anyway, for me there were two things that failed to make sense/stuck in my craw.

A: Way too many examples of true lycanthropes eating bread, cooked/steamed meat, fruits, basically stuff that wasn't raw meat of one form or another (up to them hassling an vendor for free stuff when it would have made so much more sense to it to a butcher instead). Van Richten's Guide to werebeasts came out in 1993 and Scholar of Decay in 1995, so if you're going to be true to D&D spell casting to the point that you include guano for fireballs and a leather loop for levitate, you should be aware that true lycanthropes in Ravenloft only gain sustenance from eating uncooked meat!

B: Lycanthropes not returning to human form when they die. Come on that's one of the staples of Gothic Horror, it's in no way limited just to semi-obscure Ravenloft books, this one has been around as long as there have been stories of werewolves! Why would you design a story that only worked if lycanthropes did not revert to human form when they're killed?

[alhoon]

A: Way too many examples of true lycanthropes eating bread, cooked/steamed meat, fruits, basically stuff that wasn't raw meat of one form or another (up to them hassling an vendor for free stuff when it would have made so much more sense to it to a butcher instead). Van Richten's Guide to werebeasts came out in 1993 and Scholar of Decay in 1995, so if you're going to be true to D&D spell casting to the point that you include guano for fireballs and a leather loop for levitate, you should be aware that true lycanthropes in Ravenloft only gain sustenance from eating uncooked meat!

B: Lycanthropes not returning to human form when they die. Come on that's one of the staples of Gothic Horror, it's in no way limited just to semi-obscure Ravenloft books, this one has been around as long as there have been stories of werewolves! Why would you design a story that only worked if lycanthropes did not revert to human form when they're killed?

A doesn't bother me too much. I always found peculiar that werecreatures would gain sustenance ONLY from raw meat. I prefer the SoD and 3E approach of "you need twice as much" with not raw meat. As such, we see the Reniers eating a lot.

B however... you're right. I have missed that. It would make a very powerful scene in the book when a certain wererat died, if she has transformed back to her form immediately. It's not like the one that killed said wererat couldn't be fooled that she was infected wererat.

[jamesfirecat]

A doesn't bother me too much. I always found peculiar that werecreatures would gain sustenance ONLY from raw meat. I prefer the SoD and 3E approach of "you need twice as much" with not raw meat. As such, we see the Reniers eating a lot.

B however... you're right. I have missed that. It would make a very powerful scene in the book when a certain wererat died, if she has transformed back to her form immediately. It's not like the one that killed said wererat couldn't be fooled that she was infected wererat.

I like/love the raw/fresh meat restriction, because it is a lovely way to f**k with the heads/stomachs of a lycanthropic PC/characters.

If you read my Monster Party stories one of the protagonists is a Chaotic Good true werehousecat who only needs about a pound of fresh meat or so a day. Making him need to eat twice as much as a normal person would just means you pack more rations in your bag of holding/whatever you use to hold your bread/cast summon food more frequently.

Needing to eat raw fresh meat on the other hand is a lot harder to get, so the character has to be constantly getting in touch with his animal side to do some hunting just about every day. Being a werehousecat he specialized in vermin control, (a rat a day keeps the bloodlust away) and in doing a playful write up/novelized version of Neither Man Nor Beast, I decided that Markov had also made Rat Broken Ones so the hero who wanting to remain CG always asks his prey to talk/transform/show itself to be sentient before he eats it, is shocked out of his mind/driven into a funk when he discovers that every rat he catches on the island is sentient.

In short, the meat restriction is a much more serious problem than just needing to eat twice as much, which is why I prefer it/think it makes for more interesting characters.

You are right about point B though, given that low wisdom scores seem to run in a certain family's blood, he probably could have been mislead, or simply had the wererat get crippled in the room and then killed outside of it/out of his sight, but either way the story would have been more interesting if that particular detail had held true.

Also for what it's worth on the subject of murders and not maintaining a sustainable population, I manage to handwave that away by imagining that Pont-a-Museau is the Ravenloft equivalent of Ankh-Morpork (though on the other hand as I've said before I prefer my Gothic Horror with a touch of farce/humor), very few people get murdered in Pont-a-Museau, but there are a lot of ways to commit "suicide" if you're not careful. Walking around at night on your own is suicide. Drawing any sort of comparison between a member of the Renier family and rats is suicide. Going into the sewers without a half a dozen companions to back you up is suicide. Starting to court Jacqueline or Louise Renier is suicide. So on and so forth. Luckily the city maintains a stable population because despite how many suicides there are, more people are always ready to move right on in since there's always plenty of empty homes for people to claim as their own and there are also a great many fortunes to be made/pasts to be escaped if you know what you're doing.

[Dark Angel]

PS. Scholar of decay was an excellent book although it had some jarring loopholes that made me flinch. Like portraying something on par of 100 murders/month (3-4/night) in a town of 30K people which simply is not sustainable in such a small town or wererats being semi-open about it with a random old man able to tell who's a Renier cousin and who is not.

That is one of the many reasons why I upped the populations (especially in the Northwest Core), but the 3-4 murders could be an exaggeration of sorts. That figure could be representative of warmer summer months when many are out later than in the cooler times of the year or on weekends when more revelry (and those enjoying that revelry) likely leave others incapacitated. That number likely drops at other points in the year. Now disappearances would be a big thing and I don't see the wererats leaving bodies behind (especially for those new to the city).

And a quick note, like some vampires, there are werecreatures who can (and do) consume food less suitable for their condition, but still need to consume the required, raw meat. While this is a technicality, it keeps with the monstrous natures and I find a human form less likely able to consume 100 pounds of cooked meat that its weretiger form would better be able to do. This is more an intent than the letter of the law, but, regardless, even the best masters of the masquerade would be hard pressed to be ignored as a potential werewolf who orders in hundreds of pounds of meat a week from the city butcher.

[jamesfirecat]

That is one of the many reasons why I upped the populations (especially in the Northwest Core), but the 3-4 murders could be an exaggeration of sorts. That figure could be representative of warmer summer months when many are out later than in the cooler times of the year or on weekends when more revelry (and those enjoying that revelry) likely leave others incapacitated. That number likely drops at other points in the year. Now disappearances would be a big thing and I don't see the wererats leaving bodies behind (especially for those new to the city).

And a quick note, like some vampires, there are werecreatures who can (and do) consume food less suitable for their condition, but still need to consume the required, raw meat. While this is a technicality, it keeps with the monstrous natures and I find a human form less likely able to consume 100 pounds of cooked meat that its weretiger form would better be able to do. This is more an intent than the letter of the law, but, regardless, even the best masters of the masquerade would be hard pressed to be ignored as a potential werewolf who orders in hundreds of pounds of meat a week from the city butcher.

As I understand it, werecreatures can always eat anything a human can eat and will never have an adverse reaction to it. They can eat cooked meat/bread/fruits without throwing it up again later the way that vampires would if they ate human food/drank substances other than blood, it just doesn't count towards how much food they've eaten (sort of like how humans can eat grass and it won't make us sick, but at the same time it also doesn't make us full in any useful way)

That said, the Gazetteer 3 has a special wererat ability called Garbage Gorger which basically lets wererats eat just about ANYTHING semi-organic in nature (no metals, no stone) including raw sewage (which is disgusting but would go hand in hand Richemulot's cities being somewhat cleaner/less plague ridden than those of most other nations) at the rate of a pound of whatever counting for half a pound of raw flesh. If that ability is quite wide spread among the wererats of Richemulot (though obvious the more wealthy members of the Renier family can easily afford the two pounds of meat a day their rat form desires) then it explains how you could have so many wererats living below the city without the entire population getting killed for food. (I also assume that wererats being lawfully evil are actually fairly good at sharing among their respective warrens and one full grown human will provide enough meat to feed fifty wererats for a day)

[alhoon]

My point about the murders wasn't the "covering up". Which in Scholar of decay isn't really an issue as we're usually led to believe that screams of horror at night are common, the Renier servants rarely survive for more than a year etc.
PS. the book takes place in the Autumn IIRC, with ice in the river etc and bodies flowing down along the ice being a common sight as if we're in 3-million-population-and-high-crime Chicago of the 60s.

My point about the murders is... 100 murders per month in a town of 16500 people would actually depopulate Pont-A-Museau!
Immigrants are coming, yes. The mists bring people, yes. Births take place, yes. But with infant mortality at such a society being like 70% or something, and other reasons of death (disease, famine etc) of the era into account... births and immigrants couldn't overcome so many murders. Disease, famine, etc would also claim a lot of lives, it's not that people would just die from wererats.

100 murders/month in such a city means that if you don't die by other reasons within 10 years, you have a 52% chance to die by... wererats. Add all the other reasons of death and you have virtually nobody older than 50 in Richemulot.

A more analytic example: Let's say that the median life expectancy without wererats in Richemulot would be 45-50 years. That would mean that in Pont-a-Museau we would have on average 21 deaths/month from disease, famine, accidents, old age, infant mortality etc. That's how many deaths/month are needed in a town of 16500 people to have a median life expectancy 45-50 years.
Now, add 100 deaths by wererats.
That means that 5 out of 6 people would be dying at the paws of wererats. Isn't that a bit too extreme? Not to mention that once you settle or are born in Richemulot, the chance the you would survive 10 years is a bit over 40%. The chance that you would survive 25 years is 11%.

Pont-a-museu isn't Chicago. It's not Medieval venice with 200K people. It's not Constantinople.

Now... if P-a-M had 45000 people and 30-40 murders/month, ~60 people would die from natural causes and 30-40 from wererats. That leads to a life expectancy of ~26 years. At least, you'll have time to have children, and there are people that were born in Richemulot and reached old age.

[jamesfirecat]

My point about the murders wasn't the "covering up". Which in Scholar of decay isn't really an issue as we're usually led to believe that screams of horror at night are common, the Renier servants rarely survive for more than a year etc.
PS. the book takes place in the Autumn IIRC, with ice in the river etc and bodies flowing down along the ice being a common sight as if we're in 3-million-population-and-high-crime Chicago of the 60s.

My point about the murders is... 100 murders per month in a town of 16500 people would actually depopulate Pont-A-Museau!
Immigrants are coming, yes. The mists bring people, yes. Births take place, yes. But with infant mortality at such a society being like 70% or something, and other reasons of death (disease, famine etc) of the era into account... births and immigrants couldn't overcome so many murders. Disease, famine, etc would also claim a lot of lives, it's not that people would just die from wererats.

100 murders/month in such a city means that if you don't die by other reasons within 10 years, you have a 52% chance to die by... wererats. Add all the other reasons of death and you have virtually nobody older than 50 in Richemulot.

A more analytic example: Let's say that the median life expectancy without wererats in Richemulot would be 45-50 years. That would mean that in Pont-a-Museau we would have on average 21 deaths/month from disease, famine, accidents, old age, infant mortality etc. That's how many deaths/month are needed in a town of 16500 people to have a median life expectancy 45-50 years.
Now, add 100 deaths by wererats.
That means that 5 out of 6 people would be dying at the paws of wererats. Isn't that a bit too extreme? Not to mention that once you settle or are born in Richemulot, the chance the you would survive 10 years is a bit over 40%. The chance that you would survive 25 years is 11%.

Pont-a-museu isn't Chicago. It's not Medieval venice with 200K people. It's not Constantinople.

Now... if P-a-M had 45000 people and 30-40 murders/month, ~60 people would die from natural causes and 30-40 from wererats. That leads to a life expectancy of ~26 years. At least, you'll have time to have children, and there are people that were born in Richemulot and reached old age.

I've never studied the sorts of fields necessary for this sort of equation, but I can without hesitation admit that Ravenloft is prone to a "More Predators than Prey" related problems so I agree you've got a strong argument for population related numbers needing to be rejiggered.

[Zilfer]

I'm sure the wererat's managed to make sure they don't.... "over hunt" humans which is probably a good deal of their food source. Keep in mind... and easy way for a Lycanthrope getting around the Raw Meat is just to eat Sushi. That's an easy way around the 2 pounds of Raw Meat Deal, since at the core raw meat is just uncooked animal muscle. Considering a large river runs through the middle of the city as well, I really doubt the Wererat's go without food for long.

I've always liked Richemulot myself and the book Scholar of Decay was a very good read out of the Ravenloft books I have read thus far.

[jamesfirecat]

I'm sure the wererat's managed to make sure they don't.... "over hunt" humans which is probably a good deal of their food source. Keep in mind... and easy way for a Lycanthrope getting around the Raw Meat is just to eat Sushi. That's an easy way around the 2 pounds of Raw Meat Deal, since at the core raw meat is just uncooked animal muscle. Considering a large river runs through the middle of the city as well, I really doubt the Wererat's go without food for long.

I've always liked Richemulot myself and the book Scholar of Decay was a very good read out of the Ravenloft books I have read thus far.

Lycanthropes eating Sushi is now going up there with "vampires claiming to be followers of Zhakata" ("No I simply couldn't eat even the smallest morsel of bread or drink a sip of wine, I'm fasting in reverence for the Devourer") on my list "ways monsters in Ravenloft try to look more human" headcannon.

I find Richemulot interesting if only because it's one of the few places in Ravenloft where people actually tend to like the person in charge and view them as a net positive force in the country (I think Kartakass, Mordent, and Lamordia are the other three but that's primarily becuase in Mordent and Lamordia the darklord has nothing to do with politics) as opposed to the grudging obedience to authority you see just about everywhere else.

Honestly at times I wonder if that isn't part of Jacqueline's curse, to have a population of humans who are not just obedient but out and out adoring, and she'd actually live a much happier life if she was the only wererat in the entire nation (possibly barring Jacques) but she's such a wererat supremacist that she can't help but try to run her nation for the benefit of those who only want to ultimately stab her in the back instead of those who are actually loyal to her.

[alhoon]

I'm sure the wererat's managed to make sure they don't.... "over hunt" humans which is probably a good deal of their food source. Keep in mind... and easy way for a Lycanthrope getting around the Raw Meat is just to eat Sushi. That's an easy way around the 2 pounds of Raw Meat Deal, since at the core raw meat is just uncooked animal muscle. Considering a large river runs through the middle of the city as well, I really doubt the Wererat's go without food for long.

I've always liked Richemulot myself and the book Scholar of Decay was a very good read out of the Ravenloft books I have read thus far.

Well, according to the book, Wererats are just as happy to eat goblins from the sewers.

Honestly at times I wonder if that isn't part of Jacqueline's curse, to have a population of humans who are not just obedient but out and out adoring, and she'd actually live a much happier life if she was the only wererat in the entire nation (possibly barring Jacques) but she's such a wererat supremacist that she can't help but try to run her nation for the benefit of those who only want to ultimately stab her in the back instead of those who are actually loyal to her.

I wouldn't say the Richemulot folk are "adoring" of Jacqueline. They generally like her, but that doesn't mean they don't plot to overthrow her...

[jamesfirecat]

I wouldn't say the Richemulot folk are "adoring" of Jacqueline. They generally like her, but that doesn't mean they don't plot to overthrow her...

Everything is relative, compared to Black Widow and her mad cousin, or Vlad Drakov (a "zero percent approval rating" holder if ever I saw one) or "the devil Strahd", or Elena "Strangle-hold" or Dominic d'Honaire.... who is the greatest guy I have ever met and would you please excuse me while I go clean my hands with a wire brush for ever thinking was anything less then perfect I mean...... as I was saying Dominic d'Honaire is a tyrant who must be brought low as with every passing moment he chokes the life from our fair country! To the barricades!

(Yes I know Dominic doesn't technically hold the highest office in his country, but he clearly does hold what amounts to the second highest and why let a little thing like facts get in the way of a good mental manipulation joke?)

Where was I?


Yes some of the nobles and some of the wererats (and especially the wererat nobles) have plots to overthrow Jacqueline, but your average Richemuloise citizen is quite favorably disposed to her.

To quote directly from Gazetter 3 (page 98)

"Jacqueline Renier is widely revered by the common people under her dominion. The Richemuloise look upon Jacqueline with pride, considering her a patriot, a maternal figure, and a cunning ruler."

That's a lot better rep than most darklords have among their subjects.

[Zilfer]

Save for everyone suspecting or knowing they are wererats, I'm pretty sure she's seen as one of the least worrisome compared to what her other kind do to people. And goblins in the sewers! Ha! I need to remember that for when I do a Richemulot game.

[Dark Angel]

Of course, an appropriate contact could be set up with a sadistically inclined, but of a trustworthy nature (is there such a thing for the latter?) of a person with a ring of regeneration and one unlucky bastard.