Mordenheim Bloodline issue (warning: mature discussion)

[ewancummins]

That's a spooky, weird Dread Possibility.

While my own conception of Adam and Mordenheim differs, something like that could work well in another campaign.

It plays up the father and son elements of the darklord's backstory.

It also further develops Adam, adding some differences from Frankenstein's Monster.

[thekristhomas]

Interesting isn't it, in D&D we have had an entire PC race that is essentially the product of rape, namely the half orc but this one makes us uncomfortable.

I think rather than it being any reflection on the subject matter (after all Vlad Drakov is a serial rapist, albeit one with the law on his side), it is the character performing the act which has caused difficulty.

As has been pointed out, there are several versions of Adam, but unlike Sir Tristen, whose differing versions differ a great deal and on specific issues, the versions of Adam seem to be more like differing perspectives. Few of the sources differ on the basics of canon, but many offer different judgements as to who was to blame.

Ultimately, we are left with the possibility that Adam was entirely innocent in causing harm to Eva, and only injured Elise out of grief and self defence, turning that character into a rapist would remove any sympathy, as has been pointed out.

On the other end of the spectrum however, we have the possibility the Elise was entirely correct about Adam. In this case, her concerns for the attention that Adam was showing to Eva had foundation in the foul creature's plan to father a new race (Adam & Eva, get it?) that horror being thwarted by the child throwing herself into oblivion when he came to abduct her.

That second Adam, he'd be a rapist.

But that second Adam is, I imagine, quite rare. It seems to me that, as screen adaptations of Frankenstein struggle as to who is the villain, Frankenstein or his Monster, so to do we struggle with the core difficulty of Adam, was he really just "born" bad?

It is a subject that I find fascinating, partly because Mary Shelley was absolutely clear on the subject, the Monster was evil, Frankenstein was the hero, and it is the modern audience who feels empathy for the abandoned child in the body of a man and justifies his rages as tantrums, or the disfigured man raging against being made "wrong".

For that reason I think most DMs tend toward the non-rapey Adam, bad now, after being attacked by the person closest to a mother, which led to the presumed death of the person most like a sister, trapped in a cycle of revenge against his creator because who else is there left to blame, but not bad then.

Of course, if we believe VRGttC, then his descent into evil would have been inevitable, but maybe his justifications are enough to keep brooding, rather than the relentless pursuit which the golems in that book exhibit.

Which still leaves us with the problem of the bloodline, I would suggest that all members of the bloodline are direct descendants of both Victor and Elise. In an effort to repair Elise's broken body, Victor realised that he would need compatible organs, he carefully harvested as many of Elise's eggs as possible, fertilised them in vitro, and implanted them in unknowing surrogates. By the time the prospective organ donors were of an age to be useful in Victors work his research into tissue growth had made them unnecessary. He harvested a few anyway, just so the procedure had not been a total waste.

[ewancummins]

I am not "uncomfortable" with Adam as a rapist.

It has nothing to do with discomfort for me.
I simply prefer flesh golems to be impotent and infertile. They are not undead, but they are also not alive in the true, biological sense. They are constructs.

[Ender]

Interesting isn't it, in D&D we have had an entire PC race that is essentially the product of rape, namely the half orc but this one makes us uncomfortable.

Perhaps I miss something in the description of Half-Orcs, but where is this stated? (Certainly in 3.0 onward, I can find no real mention of this, though it is certainly one potential option for their birth).

(after all Vlad Drakov is a serial rapist, albeit one with the law on his side)

Truth.

It seems to me that, as screen adaptations of Frankenstein struggle as to who is the villain, Frankenstein or his Monster, so to do we struggle with the core difficulty of Adam, was he really just "born" bad?

It is a subject that I find fascinating, partly because Mary Shelley was absolutely clear on the subject, the Monster was evil, Frankenstein was the hero, and it is the modern audience who feels empathy for the abandoned child in the body of a man and justifies his rages as tantrums, or the disfigured man raging against being made "wrong".

Though it has been some time since I read the novel, the impression I've always had was that both Frankenstein and his Monster were evil in their own rights, but for differing reasons, and equally tragic. Frankenstein was the man who toyed with life and callously rejected the thing he created, though soon regretting his actions and feeling guilty about bringing the Monster into the world. The Monster began life as an innocent (as evidenced by his friendship with the blind man and his attempt to save the little girl), but Frankenstein's rejection and the reaction of the people who met him fostered a more violent and vengeful personality, resulting in the Monster murdering Frankenstein's friends and loved ones. The two die equally alone, never understanding their own culpability in the events that lead to this outcome.

Which still leaves us with the problem of the bloodline, I would suggest that all members of the bloodline are direct descendants of both Victor and Elise. In an effort to repair Elise's broken body, Victor realised that he would need compatible organs, he carefully harvested as many of Elise's eggs as possible, fertilised them in vitro, and implanted them in unknowing surrogates. By the time the prospective organ donors were of an age to be useful in Victors work his research into tissue growth had made them unnecessary. He harvested a few anyway, just so the procedure had not been a total waste.

I rather like the idea of a Mordenheim bloodline directly springing from Victor and Elise. My only question here is why would Victor completely abandon those who grew in surrogates? If he sought a child so desperately that he created Adam, wouldn't it seem a bit out of character for him to ignore the other potential children?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Yes, part of the problem is that a lot of people like an innocent or mostly innocent Adam. Part of it is that even if he is seen as evil, he is often seen as child-like in his evil, and that meshes uncomfortably with rape. And part of it is that yes, rape makes people uncomfortable, and a lot of people simply don't want it in their game, or if it's there, not in such focus as saying that all offspring of Mordenheim would be victims of rape.

The issue with rape is that you really never know who sitting around your table might have been a victim thereof, no matter how well you think you know them. So, yeah, I'm willing to throw murder around in my game freely, because I know none of my players have ever been murdered, but I can't say the same for rape, so I give it a wide berth.


(I will note on the Hammer front that Skyrock mentioned, in Frankenstein must be destroyed...

VIEW CONTENT:

Dr. Frankenstein rapes his assistant's fiancee, in a very disturbing scene, which personally I found out of character. (I'm pleased to see from wikipedia that the actors and director thought so too, but the scene was forced in " to keep American distributors happy," which is a bizarrely odd reason. What about that made them "happy" and why weren't they locked up because of it?) bleah...

)

Which still leaves us with the problem of the bloodline, I would suggest that all members of the bloodline are direct descendants of both Victor and Elise. In an effort to repair Elise's broken body, Victor realised that he would need compatible organs, he carefully harvested as many of Elise's eggs as possible, fertilised them in vitro, and implanted them in unknowing surrogates. By the time the prospective organ donors were of an age to be useful in Victors work his research into tissue growth had made them unnecessary. He harvested a few anyway, just so the procedure had not been a total waste.

I rather like the idea of a Mordenheim bloodline directly springing from Victor and Elise. My only question here is why would Victor completely abandon those who grew in surrogates? If he sought a child so desperately that he created Adam, wouldn't it seem a bit out of character for him to ignore the other potential children?

Not at all... he suffers from hyper-focus and only can concentrate on one obsession at a time. I find it nicely ironic if in pursuit of curing Elise, he neglects the miracle that he finally got what they'd both wanted, relegating the children to a side-effect, watching them distantly from afar and waiting to harvest their organs when they reach the right age. Alternately, if he latched onto some other means of curing her, he might have forgotten all about them, chalking the idea up as a folly, and content to not waste any attention on them lest they distract him from his current theories.


But the point is: There are any number of ways to justify a Mordenheim bloodline, and they don't all have to be about rape.

[Ender]

Not at all... he suffers from hyper-focus and only can concentrate on one obsession at a time. I find it nicely ironic if in pursuit of curing Elise, he neglects the miracle that he finally got what they'd both wanted, relegating the children to a side-effect, watching them distantly from afar and waiting to harvest their organs when they reach the right age. Alternately, if he latched onto some other means of curing her, he might have forgotten all about them, chalking the idea up as a folly, and content to not waste any attention on them lest they distract him from his current theories.

Ah, good call. That seems like pretty good reasoning.

[thekristhomas]

Interesting isn't it, in D&D we have had an entire PC race that is essentially the product of rape, namely the half orc but this one makes us uncomfortable.

Perhaps I miss something in the description of Half-Orcs, but where is this stated? (Certainly in 3.0 onward, I can find no real mention of this, though it is certainly one potential option for their birth).

It's rarely pointed out (again PG-13) but I would suggest that in D&D worlds as written, rape is the main option for the birth of half-orcs, though it will often be euphamised into the more acceptable (and more consensual sounding) "ravished"

Which still leaves us with the problem of the bloodline, I would suggest that all members of the bloodline are direct descendants of both Victor and Elise. In an effort to repair Elise's broken body, Victor realised that he would need compatible organs, he carefully harvested as many of Elise's eggs as possible, fertilised them in vitro, and implanted them in unknowing surrogates. By the time the prospective organ donors were of an age to be useful in Victors work his research into tissue growth had made them unnecessary. He harvested a few anyway, just so the procedure had not been a total waste.

I rather like the idea of a Mordenheim bloodline directly springing from Victor and Elise. My only question here is why would Victor completely abandon those who grew in surrogates? If he sought a child so desperately that he created Adam, wouldn't it seem a bit out of character for him to ignore the other potential children?

As Ron said hyper-focus, or you could go with Mordenheim not "really" wanting a child, it was simply a problem to be solved

[thekristhomas]

I simply prefer flesh golems to be impotent and infertile. They are not undead, but they are also not alive in the true, biological sense. They are constructs.

I entirely agree, surely part of the point of Adam is his alienation from ALL others, the kinship that he would feel towards an infant, even one that more closely resembled Victor (many people see their parents in their children after all) would go too far to remove that IMHO.

Also it kinda makes the whole Adam is cursed never to be able to make more of his kind and will therefore never have a mate/companionship thing a bit pointless.

Although, if you consider the near all male makeup of the monastery of the quickening thunderbolt, maybe a mate wasn't what Adam was going for...

Actually, thinking about it, something that's never really sat right and I never realised, is that Adams children are closer to "traditional" golems, passionless constructs, where all the other golems in Ravenloft are closer to Adam, passionate, hate fuelled constructs. As of the Black Box, that is before all the other golems, when only Victor Mordenheim had the skill and audacity to defy the gods, Adams curse made sense as that bridge was burnt. But it a world where Emil Bollenbach, and others can and do create golems that rival Adam in passion and intellect, what's to stop Adam kidnapping a travelling anatomist and setting him to work? And if the DPs chose to interfere there are still many golems already extant for Adam to seek a kindred spirit among, thereby circumventing the curse altogether.

I hope you'll forgive the digression, it seemed relevant as to Adam's proposed fertility

[Manofevil]

This entire exchange is driving me CRAZY because some years ago I wrote a story about Adam rescuing a village prostitute (read multiple rape victim) from a freezing river and she becomes his first sexual experience. I tried to post it here but it was taken down for being too hardcore, even though some people liked it. Also, I've noticed that no one here has pointed out that whether or not a couple conceives in RavenLoft boils down to DP's choice. (i.e. GM's choice) If the DPs decide to create misery by giving a couple a pregnancy, or even a baby, then it probably will happen regardless of who's a Mordenheim and who's a flesh golem. I seem to recall reading someone gave Strahd and Tatyana a child once somehow.

[ewancummins]

Obviously Adam was not trying to create a mate. Not if he built male (or neuter) flesh golems.

Probably more along the lines of an army of obedient sons.

What he intends to do with such an army...

[thekristhomas]

Obviously Adam was not trying to create a mate. Not if he built male (or neuter) flesh golems.

Probably more along the lines of an army of obedient sons.

What he intends to do with such an army...

An army was what sprang into my mind also, but then why reject his "emotionless" creations? After all, they would serve perfectly well as foot soldiers.

What task or position might Adam have in mind that would require emotional range?

[ewancummins]

Obviously Adam was not trying to create a mate. Not if he built male (or neuter) flesh golems.

Probably more along the lines of an army of obedient sons.

What he intends to do with such an army...

An army was what sprang into my mind also, but then why reject his "emotionless" creations? After all, they would serve perfectly well as foot soldiers.

What task or position might Adam have in mind that would require emotional range?

Emotionless creatures might actually be crappy soldiers. No strong bonds of loyalty and love. No elan.

If he wants an army to conquer first Lamordia and then the rest of the Core (after which conquest he can remake the broken bodies of men in his own image) he needs a force of fighters who share his passion.

[Cromstar]

But that second Adam is, I imagine, quite rare. It seems to me that, as screen adaptations of Frankenstein struggle as to who is the villain, Frankenstein or his Monster, so to do we struggle with the core difficulty of Adam, was he really just "born" bad?

It is a subject that I find fascinating, partly because Mary Shelley was absolutely clear on the subject, the Monster was evil, Frankenstein was the hero, and it is the modern audience who feels empathy for the abandoned child in the body of a man and justifies his rages as tantrums, or the disfigured man raging against being made "wrong".

I have to ask about this because I have never seen and cannot find anything about Shelley herself directly commenting on the story like that. Without such, the only direct source I have to draw on is the novel...which is very much clear that the Creature was not born evil, but chose evil as the result of how it was treated by others.

Ignoring the possibility of the unreliable narrator (b/c the entire story is told through the lenses of not one, not two, but THREE narrators) and taking the words as written as gospel, the Creature does not turn to evil until a very specific moment: when he rescues a drowning girl. He uses "extreme labour" to rescue her from drowning, and is then beset upon by the villagers for supposedly attempting to kill her. Up until this point, he's acted well, become self-educated, and had good interactions with the only person who never saw what he looked like. Then this happened and, in his own words:

This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.

There's debate as to whether or not Frankenstein is evil per se, but he's very clearly not a hero (at least after the first act)...he decides, deliberately and knowing that other people will die unless he warns them, NOT to warn others around him repeatedly. The interesting part is how both Victor and the Creature are, originally, presented as near perfect ideals of the Romantic hero: they are both bright, intelligent, independent, and willing to seek out the mysteries of the world and life itself...but by the end, they've both become twisted, obsessed with vengeance, and responsible for plenty of deaths. Ultimately, Victor and the Creature are the same: possessed of both good and evil, their own (very, very, very terrible) decisions ultimately lead to an unhappy and ignoble death.

[thekristhomas]

But that second Adam is, I imagine, quite rare. It seems to me that, as screen adaptations of Frankenstein struggle as to who is the villain, Frankenstein or his Monster, so to do we struggle with the core difficulty of Adam, was he really just "born" bad?

It is a subject that I find fascinating, partly because Mary Shelley was absolutely clear on the subject, the Monster was evil, Frankenstein was the hero, and it is the modern audience who feels empathy for the abandoned child in the body of a man and justifies his rages as tantrums, or the disfigured man raging against being made "wrong".

I have to ask about this because I have never seen and cannot find anything about Shelley herself directly commenting on the story like that. Without such, the only direct source I have to draw on is the novel...which is very much clear that the Creature was not born evil, but chose evil as the result of how it was treated by others.

Ignoring the possibility of the unreliable narrator (b/c the entire story is told through the lenses of not one, not two, but THREE narrators) and taking the words as written as gospel, the Creature does not turn to evil until a very specific moment: when he rescues a drowning girl. He uses "extreme labour" to rescue her from drowning, and is then beset upon by the villagers for supposedly attempting to kill her. Up until this point, he's acted well, become self-educated, and had good interactions with the only person who never saw what he looked like. Then this happened and, in his own words:

This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.

There's debate as to whether or not Frankenstein is evil per se, but he's very clearly not a hero (at least after the first act)...he decides, deliberately and knowing that other people will die unless he warns them, NOT to warn others around him repeatedly. The interesting part is how both Victor and the Creature are, originally, presented as near perfect ideals of the Romantic hero: they are both bright, intelligent, independent, and willing to seek out the mysteries of the world and life itself...but by the end, they've both become twisted, obsessed with vengeance, and responsible for plenty of deaths. Ultimately, Victor and the Creature are the same: possessed of both good and evil, their own (very, very, very terrible) decisions ultimately lead to an unhappy and ignoble death.

I may have been guilty of being overly declarative, I probably should have said "by my reading Mary Shelley was absolutely clear on this" by which I mean, though the use of language, adjective and description, I believe, that she was consistent in her depiction of Frankenstein as heroic, noble and good throughout the telling, despite his making decisions which we, as the modern reader/audience, see as irresponsible if not evil. I would point out that the only "independent" voice that we hear is that of the ship's captain, who is relaying the information to us, importantly, after he himself has heard the tale in it's entirety, and he holds the man in high esteem.

I also think the books subtitle, by referring to Prometheus, sometimes called the first hero, suggests (to me) that the agonies and presumed icy death that Frankenstein goes through are not being presented as the consequences of his wrongdoing, but as the consequences of his heroism, and as such are to be borne as Prometheus endured on the rock.

The moral environment into which the book was published was shockingly different to our own, and the social group to which Mary Shelley belonged was both alienated from and firmly entrenched within that environment, so it becomes difficult to judge how the book would have been read and understood by the readership it was intended for based on the bare "facts" of the plot. When the plot is presented to you without embellishment, as it is on screen or in a treatment, the viewer can judge for themselves based on their own morals/prejudices, but in reading prose one is, to some extent, being led by the author though description, to a perspective where Frankenstein is hero, IMO. I get, though, that this anthropologically influenced approach runs dangerously close to intentionalism and is not necessarily the most orthodox.

[Mortavius]

Interesting isn't it, in D&D we have had an entire PC race that is essentially the product of rape, namely the half orc but this one makes us uncomfortable.

Perhaps I miss something in the description of Half-Orcs, but where is this stated? (Certainly in 3.0 onward, I can find no real mention of this, though it is certainly one potential option for their birth).

It's rarely pointed out (again PG-13) but I would suggest that in D&D worlds as written, rape is the main option for the birth of half-orcs, though it will often be euphamised into the more acceptable (and more consensual sounding) "ravished"

Not to get too off-topic, but I know I've seen other explanations in D&D works. I've seen some where they actually say the humans and orcs came together willingly, when the two communities lived side-by-side peacefully for extended periods of time. 4E talked about Half-Orcs originally coming from a breeding program instituted by Hobgoblins (which really isn't much better than rape, I admit).

In my experience, the general unspoken consensus seemed to be that Half-Orcs were the product of rape, but that idea has been gotten away from and more possibilities explored as time went on.