Café de Nuit

Lets put an end to the Lord Soth and Ravenloft controversy. First, lets take Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman at their word that Lord Soth never went to Ravenloft. Or rather, Lord Soth from the ORIGINAL TIMELINE ended up in Ravenloft, while Lord Soth in the ALTERED TIMELINE, what we know as the standard Dragonlance setting, remained on Krynn.



Had the timeline progressed unaltered, Soth would have entered Ravenloft. That it didn't is no problem for the Dark Powers of Ravenloft. They can pull creatures and lands from all time periods and places, including different timelines. Lord Soth was in Ravenloft, it just isn't the Lord Soth that remained on Krynn. Problem solved.

Good point although not necessary since the Mists can drag anybody at any point and return them even after Ravenloft centuries at the exact point of spacetime that they were taken. In a sense it would be like Sothy had a bad dream. If we take in account the memory mirrors and his regular habit of staying motionless on his throne dreaming, it would be a case of a dream within a dream/ Now that I think of it, does anybody think that Christopher Nolan may have played Where the Black Roses Bloom before making Inception? (I have this image in my mind of adventurers bursting into Nedragaard Keep firing arrows everywhere with their crossbows, longbows or using firearms and constantly reloading them)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyWjuiZVdv0

Mephisto wrote:Good point although not necessary since the Mists can drag anybody at any point and return them even after Ravenloft centuries at the exact point of spacetime that they were taken.

Hickman and Weis insist that their canon Soth was never in Ravenloft. Ever. For one second. That is why a work around is necessary. All the time travel shenanigans in Dragonlance means that there are several Soths for the Dark Powers to choose from. The most likely Soth is the one I identified in the OP. We know that the Soth in the War of Souls was not the Soth that went to Ravenloft.

tomokaicho wrote:

Mephisto wrote:Good point although not necessary since the Mists can drag anybody at any point and return them even after Ravenloft centuries at the exact point of spacetime that they were taken.

Hickman and Weis insist that their canon Soth was never in Ravenloft. Ever. For one second. That is why a work around is necessary. All the time travel shenanigans in Dragonlance means that there are several Soths for the Dark Powers to choose from. The most likely Soth is the one I identified in the OP. We know that the Soth in the War of Souls was not the Soth that went to Ravenloft.

So if Soth existed in Ravenloft from a different timeline then since the 5th edition Ravenloft doesn't probably have a Core in 735BC and probably no Soth at all that means that it follows the alternate Dragonlance timeline?

tomokaicho wrote:Hickman and Weis insist that their canon Soth was never in Ravenloft. Ever. For one second. That is why a work around is necessary.

Only if you take their word as canon. They created the character as part of a work-for-hire. WotC owns him, not the authors. If WotC says he was in Ravenloft, he was. I admire the attempt to reconcile things, but I don't see the necessity.

Though I will admit, that diagram only makes me think of this:

tomokaicho wrote:

Mephisto wrote:Good point although not necessary since the Mists can drag anybody at any point and return them even after Ravenloft centuries at the exact point of spacetime that they were taken.

Hickman and Weis insist that their canon Soth was never in Ravenloft. Ever. For one second. That is why a work around is necessary. All the time travel shenanigans in Dragonlance means that there are several Soths for the Dark Powers to choose from. The most likely Soth is the one I identified in the OP. We know that the Soth in the War of Souls was not the Soth that went to Ravenloft.

Hickman and Weis don't have control over canon, though. They weren't employed by TSR when Ravenloft was released, and had no input in Dragonlance canon either following the Summer of Chaos and prior to the Lost Chronicles novels.

And given Weis' contribution to Soth's story after all their protest was to immediately kill him it sounds like all their protesting was just noise.
They were kids who stopped playing with toys, set them aside, and then got angry when someone else started playing with them...

tomokaicho wrote:Had the timeline progressed unaltered, Soth would have entered Ravenloft. That it didn't is no problem for the Dark Powers of Ravenloft. They can pull creatures and lands from all time periods and places, including different timelines. Lord Soth was in Ravenloft, it just isn't the Lord Soth that remained on Krynn. Problem solved.

For me, any wibbly-wobbly-timey-timey nonsense on Krynn has no effect on Ravenloft. If he stepped into Ravenloft, and then time was changed elsewhere, then he's still in Ravenloft. And another him is not in it. DM's discretion on how to handle that, but at least that's my two copper.

Who says the Dark Powers are beholden to events happening on other planets? If they got Soth, of course they would do all they could to prevent him from leaving. (Caveat: I do have the Dark Powers at some point submissive to a world-altering FR event, but that's the creation of the Shadowfell, where the domains are all canonically located. There's not much of a way the Dark Powers won't be affected by that if you're a "slave to canon," as I've been called before.)

— onmyoji

Much as I love Weis and Hickman, they actually don’t determine what’s canon. WoTC does.

I prefer to just look at it from the “Soth was returned to the exact point in time he was taken” point of view anyway.

That little flux capacitor drawing there...holy ****. I now feel justified in my dislike of Dragonlance. Haha

The art was great though. Classic Dungeons and Dragons. Well, minus the dungeons...

Highpoint for me was the short story "The Blood Sea Monster". For whatever reason I can never forget it.

https://dragonlance.fandom.com/wiki/%22 ... ort_story)