Café de Nuit

I just got done with the valachan section of Gaz IV and read the Baron's char history. I really like him as a darklord but am confused about what he did to deserve such a position.

First he was manipulated by a mage and killed somone through no real fault of his own. Then in attempt to forever banish the beast within he tried to become a vamp...where he ended up being a slave for a while.

Was he an especially crule member of the kargat or somthing, from the info given I would only have guessed at perhaps one DP check without even that high a percent

His darklord act is very similer to what makes Adam a darklord. Urik had the chance to live a semi normal life after he excaped from the kargat but he could not (and in many ways did not truely want to) controll the beast within.

Every time the mists let him out into the real world he tried to start up normal relationships but as he had no true experiances with human interactions it allways ended up in bloodshed. No matter what he tries he is too week to control the beastial urges but he is too stuburn to stop. This stuburness is what the DPs latched on to when they forced him into his own domain.

Not to mention,

He was a Panther, who wanted to be human, so he became a vampire...
Umm, did I miss something? Its sort of like:
So you have Herpes, and you want to be cured of it, so you get syphillis.

As a DP, I'd be tempted to trap him for his utter stupidity. But then again, as Jasper put it, he had no clue how to be 'human' (and ignorance doesn't necessarily make you a DL). Now, how funny would it be to put Urik in Paridon, where they celebrate their humanity religiously (thus rubbing it in his face)?

I always figured the DPs wondered about Urik's semi-human (and not even a near-human like elves, dwarves, etc.) psychology and decided to make him a darklord just to see what pushes his buttons. I also figure this is why Harkon Lukas is a darklord.

Urik is also cruel and sadistic. Don't forget that. He could have done something good for his domain in his years as a Baron except of mourning that women won't love him and that he will never be a human.

You should check out the short story on Urik in the Tales of Ravenloft anthology! It relates how he became a darklord and what tests the Mists gave him.

As for more sources there's an adventure called Felkovics'Cat in Dungeon #50 which has quite some background info on the domain.

I also figure this is why Harkon Lukas is a darklord.

I always saw the reasoning behind Harkons descension into becoming a DL was that he would often take his anger out of those who were 'non-social'. IMO, Harkon is sociable to a fault, and detests anything that reminds him of how isolated he is.

Urik is also cruel and sadistic. Don't forget that. He could have done something good for his domain in his years as a Baron except of mourning that women won't love him and that he will never be a human.

Once again, I relate to Urik's incompetence. He really does still have the mentality of a panther, in that I doubt he'll ever be able to lead his domain in a 'just' way. I doubt he'll ever even know was 'just' trully mens. He is just a panther, after all.

Adam was "just" a creature cobbled together from component parts of dead men. He didn't ask for Mordenheim to create him.

Yet, when Adam had a choice (and he did have choices), he made the evil ones. Urik von Kharkov has done the same thing. He may have begun life as "just" a panther, but he has become so much more. And just because his beginnings were humble, it doesn't change what he's done. When the wizard made him human, Urik gained the sensibilities of a man, and the ability to determine the difference between right and wrong.

Mortavius has it exactly right: it's his hypocrisy that damns Von Kharkov, not his maliciousness per se. He's a being which was given the capacity to make moral choices, and who wants to truly be human (or at least to be loved and accepted like a human), yet he's unwilling to accept that this means living within the rules of human society, i.e. no ripping his enemies into raw meat or preying on the helpless as either panther or vampire. He can't have it both ways: either he's a man bound by the morality of men, or he's a monster and should quit lying to himself and go back to the jungle.

This, to a greater or lesser degree, can be said of every darklord who is inhuman, yet longs to participate in human society. Adam grouses about how everyone loathes him for his appearance, yet refuses to go out of his way to avert others' fears; plenty of good-aligned calibans and Carnival freaks look far worse than he does, after all, and they don't hesitate to work off their Outcast Ratings with good deeds! Harkon Lukas wants to savor the pleasures of human culture -- power, women, adoration -- yet he still hides behind the claim that his "hunting instincts" make him kill ... even though such "instincts" are easily-enough overcome when he's mixing with humans to get what he wants. The Reniers play at nobility and graciousness, leeching off humans' sophistication and creativity, even though their natural "habitat" as rats is in the freakin' sewers ... and then have the gall to call humans lowly, and to claim credit for all that the human folk of their land have accomplished.

The best example of all of hypocrisy-as-nonhuman-darklord? None other than the self-proclaimed culler of humanity, Alfred Timothy. I mean, think about it: here's a guy who claims he's the chosen voice of the Wolf God, and that all humanity is corrupt and should be destroyed or reduced to naked, harried prey ... yet his whole concept of the "Wolf God", and of what wolves "ought to be", is entirely rooted in HUMAN superstitions and fears about wolves, not in realistic lupine behavior! Real wolves don't actively prey upon humans, they're scared of them; real wolves don't follow leaders because of fanatical religious indoctrination or personality-cults, they follow the strongest breeding male (neither of which Alfred qualifies as); real wolves don't concern themselves with genocide or hatred or evil, they just survive as best they can. If the darklord of Verbrek's vindictive hatred and fury come from anything, it's from the human side of his werewolf heritage -- the side which, unlike his wolf-side, has the capacity for evil -- and if he wasn't such an incurable hypocrite as to merit his darklord status, he'd realize that's exactly what his curse has been showing him, all along.

Which, in a way, brings us back to Von Kharkov. He had his chance -- had it twice, in fact; nobody forced him to seek vampirism from the Kargat -- to set aside his latent predatory nature and live as a man, with the free will and moral responsibilities of a man, and he did not take that chance. He could have run away from his lover, instead of shredding her when his panther-shape reasserted itself; he could have remained as a mortal, once he had the opportunity for a new life in Ravenloft, and led a moral man's existence in Darkon until his very memory he'd ever been anything else would have been leeched away by that domain. But he did not override his panther's urges to hunt and kill, and he did not content himself with a man's weaker physique, when he had to choose between the humanity he thought he desired, and living outside humans' physical and moral restrictions. He chose a predatory nature over the chance at a human nature ... and every time the Cat of Felkovic forces him to experience the terror and helplessness of prey, he shares in the fate which Von Kharkov's choice has cost so many humans he'd thought to join.

Rotipher wrote:Mortavius has it exactly right: it's his hypocrisy that damns Von Kharkov, not his maliciousness per se. He's a being which was given the capacity to make moral choices, and who wants to truly be human (or at least to be loved and accepted like a human), yet he's unwilling to accept that this means living within the rules of human society, i.e. no ripping his enemies into raw meat or preying on the helpless as either panther or vampire. He can't have it both ways: either he's a man bound by the morality of men, or he's a monster and should quit lying to himself and go back to the jungle.

Wow! Bang on!

That's really it - these characters want the trappings ohumanity, but they don't want TRUE humanity because being human is a state of moral responsibility and accountability. You do things, and you do them knowingly for the right reasons or the wrong ones. You may make mistakes, and humans may disagree about what IS right and what IS wrong, but in the end, you believe that there IS such a thing and you live your life in accordance with that.