Café de Nuit

Question for those who know the lore better than I do.

So one of my players for a future campaign decided he wanted to be from Ravenloft. Back when we were planning to run the campaign in 5E, he wanted to be a "Reanimator," a subclass from a third-party "Alchemist," built well before 5E officially created that class. Anyway, the player wanted to leave the background up to me and just write in some really cool surprises for him.

Since he was going to be a reanimator and already start him in Ravenloft, I thought I would make one of his big plot twists that he himself was reanimated. Clearly he wouldn't become an actual golem or something like that, but narratively, he might instead have been some first actual perfect creation from one of Ravenloft's two pioneering experts on golems—Victor Mordenheim and Emil Bollenbach. A creation that somehow escaped, and yet one that fate somehow returned to the Core.

Unfortunately, I have yet to read into the backstories of either figure outside of the wiki on this site. There are a few pros for Bollenbach, given the campaign interest. Much of the campaign will take place in Barovia, and based on canonical sources, he might still be there after the bit with Lyssa von Zarovich. Bollenbach also provides good reasoning to involve Van Richten, who will be important therein also. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any pros for Mordenheim, as I wasn't planning any kind of sojourn to Lamordia. However, as Mordenheim isn't the darklord there, he can presumably travel outside the domain. While Barovia might be a stretch, it's certainly possible. Clearly, Bollenbach would be "easier," but if I could tell a more compelling story with Mordenheim, then I'm more than happy to do it that way. Or maybe one of the two would be more likely to craft the sort of player character I mentioned above. Or perhaps only a being so seemingly perfect as a human could be created by both Mordenheim and Bollenbach working together. While any of these are options, I certainly don't know enough about the two characters in question to determine behind which door lies the greatest narrative potential.

So, are there any huge pros or cons one way or the other? Opinions? Criticisms?

(Also, now that we're in Pathfinder 2, it'll be harder to reconstruct a "reanimator" class/subclass, but that has no bearing on the PC's background. He's still pushing for the same character, narratively speaking.)

— onmyoji

Adam would not let Mordenheim leave Lamordia- tormenting Mordenheim is one of Adam's driving forces, and IIRC Adam could detect if he tried given their psychic link. So you would need to explain how (and why, given his obsession with Elise) Mordenheim flew the coop.

On the other hand, Mordenheim might be the candidate for trying to create a perfect/nearly perfect artificial body given his ultimate obsession of restoring Elise back to a stable human form. Bollenbach would be harder to explain, as his reason for creating all these dread golems is to develop the perfect one to destroy all the others or to receive funding for doing so (as is the case with his work for Strahd). Making a golem that resembles a living human might not be a top priority, unless for some reason he pivoted to believing a hidden cache of sleeper agents would collectively be a better weapon at destroying golems than his other ideas.

Thematically, it's just my personal taste that I like Bollenbach a bit better in that he's the ultimate hypocrite. Bollenbach's ambiguous relationship with his creations could be an intersting point to explore-

Adam may be the darklord but Mordenheim can not leave the domain because they are connected. In a way when they entered the Demiplane Mordenheim lost his soul his soul to Adam. In a way Adam has the the creative spark of life while Mordenheim the creative knowledge, Adam has the soul of Mordenheim while Mordenheim is his own empty souless body. Mordenheim is more appropriate to create what you describe, he has done it before in Adam's Wrath and his knowledge and semi-darklordship give him the means to do it in perfection. I agree that Bollenbach's purpose is basically the destruction of gollems, although he can make some exceptions to gain the funds to continue his research, a means to an end. It depends how much involved you want the PC's background to be with the campaign. I personally prefer Mordenheim, more cold and uninvolved even with his creations, Bollenbach is an obsessed nutjob.

The Lesser Evil wrote:Bollenbach would be harder to explain, as his reason for creating all these dread golems is to develop the perfect one to destroy all the others or to receive funding for doing so (as is the case with his work for Strahd). Making a golem that resembles a living human might not be a top priority

Might not be a top priority, but he's already successfully done it! His work for Strahd was exactly that, replacing a guy named Thomas with an exact golem replica to fool Lyssa into feeding on the golem, which had a powerful sleeping potion in place of its blood. (see CotN:Vampires)

So this PC could be a prototype of this work, or a follow-on. Maybe Emil made a few "Thomas"'s before getting it just right. (Or one escaped?)

Thanks everyone! I didn't realize that Mordenheim was bound to Lamordia despite not being the darklord. That might be critical in determining which of them to use. Unless I want my players to go out to Lamordia, which is doable if necessary.

I did know about "Tom the Golem" already, but it's an -excellent- point that Bollenbach has already succeeded in making a nearly indistinguishable human-looking golem that is good enough to convince a vampire. Might have to change his name though when I get there, since "Tom" doesn't sound particularly Barovian, haha.

Also, who's to say that Bollenbach didn't learn how to create something this close by looking at what Mordenheim might've been working on since Adam, and potentially working with him for a bit? Even if Mordenheim can't leave Lamordia, Bollenbach is not thusly hindered.

Thanks everyone. This gives me a lot more to think about. Much appreciated!

— onmyoji

onmyoji wrote:Also, who's to say that Bollenbach didn't learn how to create something this close by looking at what Mordenheim might've been working on since Adam, and potentially working with him for a bit?

Bollenbach learned about golems in VRGttCreated and it is implied that he may also found there ways to create them. He is feautered in Chilling Tales in one of the adventures involving Van Richten, though I think it is set in Southern Lamordia you could place that anywhere. Then he is feautered in the forementioned Children of the Night (Vampires) but also Children of the Night (Created). So you have three already written adventures involving Emil. This is a plus if you want to use him in your campaign but I still prefer the cast out experiment of Mordenheim background

Well, I'll definitely review all the materials and give it a look. I think, given all this info, it might be wisest to make my PC's creation to be a joint effort on the part of both Modernheim and Bollenbach. It's supposed to happen around 740, and neither is accounted for that year, so that makes sense. Further, as you said, Bollenbach has a Lamordian headquarters, making their joint participation more possible, even as mad as Emil is.

— onmyoji