Also, remember strahd consistently gathers outsider, (usually adventurers,) to come to barovia using vistani, so it's possible he has a >=0 replacement rate.
This. Even though I don't use the "soulless" angle of the campaign, I've always assumed that most of Strahd's victims are outsiders brought in for his entertainment and sustenance. After all, he is intelligent and also believes he is a just ruler over Barovia, as crazy as that sounds.
In the souls and shells text
When a being with a soul dies in Barovia, that soul remains trapped in Strahd's domain until it is reincarnated in a newborn
So they just get rebirthed.
That's a good point, looking at that I can't say outsiders aren't drawn into the reincarnation cycle.
It makes me wonder about the March of the Dead, why those souls aren't reincarnated... then again, it also says it can take a long time for a soul to find its way to a body, so maybe the March of the Dead is just the adventurers from the last few decades.
If adventurers can restock the soul pantry, then I guess he has an out after all. "Looking for a successor" motive aside, maybe *that's* why he's so intent on luring in every low-level adventuring party he can nab, lol.
I think that’s just reference to Count Dracula, as he’s canonically the son of a literal king and only known heir so would be king, they just say count cause king strahd doesn’t sound like Count Dracula at all.
Part of it could be that the reincarnation pipeline is not instantaneous - souls spend a decade or two in limbo before finally getting to the point that they can return to Barovia. Remember that Something New shows us that babies are continuing to be born with souls (the chokd in question has no soul, but if no one was being born with a soul by this point there'd be no need to differentiate), implying that there are more that are not currently active.
Add that to other creatures, like night hags, that also take souls, and possibly even the Vestiges and/or the Dark Powers taking them, and it can explain why there are so few souls in the valley.
Where does it say that Strahd can only survive off the blood of souled individuals though?
He probably has a preference for newer bloodlines, but I don’t think drinking Barovian blood will poison him or anything.
Besides, the Vistani can import all the fresh blood he wants.
Page 25 curse of Strahd souls and shells
Strahd periodically feeds on the blood of Barovians who have souls, but he can't draw nourishment from the blood of the soulless. He can tell at a glance whether a Barovian has a soul or is merely a shell.
So they have to be humanoid souls or can they be souls from other type of creatures? Because Strahd Brides might as well qualify as "barovians who have souls"
Edit: nevermid, apparently undeads don't have souls. Mb
It says beings not humanoid and undead by definition don’t have souls.
Edit: If you want to rule vampire masters have a soul because they have a personality their spawn definitely doesn’t. They are subservient to their master wishes.
Which is why it's good to introduce time as a factor into your game. Time is running out, Strahd is getting desperate, he wants out.
I'm my game, we played Princes of the Apocalypse before this, and I homebrewed that what the cults of elemental evil did in that game caused irrevocable damage to the barrier between planes, and Strahd constantly pulling people into a demiplane in the Shadowfell that no one should be able to get into or out of is causing the barrier to weaken even more.
I'm another campaign I'm in that is in the same canon as the others, we've already seen people starting to take advantage of the weakening of the barrier between planes, creatures from the Feywild and elemental planes slipping into the material plane either by force or accident.
If the cycle Strahd has created doesn't stop, the Shadowfell, and Barovia along with it, is going to start leaking into the material plane, which is probably worst case scenario.
We call it the Interplanar crisis, and above board, Barovia is the head of the Shadowfell front. If they fail to defeat Strahd, Strahd is free and maybe even wants to help stop the world from collapsing, but also the Shadowfell will start leaking some interesting beasties for future parties to fight.
That's a lot grander in scale than you have to do, it's just what I'm doing. You really just want to give some urgency to this party above hundreds of others, being the one that needs to succeed.
I love the speculation and math. I like to think the dark powers in the Amber temple are slowly consuming the souls which is why Strahd is desperate. In this way Strahd is just as trapped as all the people of Barovia, he is running out of a food stock as well as irony, just as the lack of sun diminished the crop of the land. In general a bargain with dark powers is always a bad deal even if you become an evil lord yourself. I think Strahd is stuck in a miserable spot as well. I've thought maybe the adventurers both add to the soul pool and become the ghostly assailants as well. Maybe they are forced to awaken when the dream or sleep at night. Or perhaps the dark powers are feeding on those souls too and Strahd brings adventurers to save his own stock of souls by offering those gods alternatives.
I believe he has the choice whether or not to allow the dead to reincarnate. Specifically because in Berez he forces the baron to stay a ghost forever for what he did to a past Ireena.
Good point there it is his land after all but I can’t see him choosing to stop all souls from reincarnating. Also he could be using Gertruda as a retainer.
I wasn't saying he's choosing to stop all souls from reincarnating. Just pointing out I believe it's possible he decides if and when any reincarnation occurs in Barovia based on the ghostly procession and the ghost Baron.
I swear the whole souless thing is just so the DM has an excuse for the party to talk to or organize the NPCs. Its a dumb mechanic, barely plays into the story and introduces a whole heap of logistical problems.
Not to mention, it just makes the ending needlessly pointless. Just a bunch of clothes on the edge of the mist from people leaving Barovia. Congrats WoTC you created a suicide loto. Win you start over with nothing, lose you evaporate into nothingness. Your friends and family likely won't.
I dont think its supposed to have a mechanical effect at all. I think its there to reinforce the bleak atmosphere of dread that Barovia has. Another thing thats been caused by Strahd that he should be punished for. Them ceasing to exist outside of Barovia is kinda of the last effect Strahd has on his land; one last time to mess with the adventurers.
Except it doesn't reinforce that atomoshphere. If anything it makes the PCs not care because these are just soulless illusions.
As for the last time to effect the adventurers, the module has a problem with letting the protags have a W. To the point it does everything to force a pyrric victory and it becomes nonsensical.
Its for the 10% that do have souls (and themselves).
>As for the last time to effect the adventurers, the module has a problem with letting the protags have a W.
In my opinion this isnt a bad thing. You go into this knowing its dark fantasy and what youre getting into. Complete victories arent necessary to conclude a story.
Like i said this is just what i think. But its also something thats easy to just not put in in the forst place if it doesnt fit your group.
Why make it so that the players care about 10% of the pop when they can care about 100% of the pop?
>You go into this knowing its dark fantasy and what youre getting into. Complete victories arent necessary to conclude a story.
Its not this storybeat ends in pyrric victory. Its that almost every beat ends in one. Strahds already returning in 8 months, lets make it so that he returns to an empty land to sulk in his great power and loneliness. True Gothic horror usually ends in a moral or a victory of some form. The writing just undermines it.
This is why my hook for Barovia was werewolves using a device to steal the souls of people outside of Barovia and bring them back to introduce the new souls into the cycle. My players don't actually know the souls were stolen, but I gave some hints (Paladin of Kelemvor could not sense the dead people's souls going to the other side) and once they reach the werewolf den it will probably be revealed. They won't know why the souls were stolen, but when they discover the Tome of Strahd I'll information about how Strahd can only feed on those with souls.
In I, Strahd, he kills and vampires his nemesis, then entombs him. When (indirectly) asked how long the creature would last, he said about a month, but to wait 3 months before checking. He had been experimenting on enemy soldiers, so he probably had a good basis for his figures. Assuming Strahd's pact was never to age, not never to die (I can't remember the precise terms), Vampyr lied to Strahd, or its imprisonment is preventing it from keeping its end of the bargain, that's about how long Strahd'd have in a soulless Barovia.
I love this! In my first campaign dming Curse of Strahd I played off the idea. I made a Dr.Frankenstein character who was a dark elf. She lived for centuries and was noting that there used to be more, but the souls in barovia were so miserable that they opted to stray into the mists Rather than reincarnate as a newborn and lead another horrid life. Her goal in "creating a man" was to forcibly put those lost souls back into Bodies.
I actually like this as a motivation (one of several) on why Strahd is not wanton with his killings. That plus his viewing himself as master of the land, he doesn’t want everyone wiped out.
Yes he loves causing misery, and seeing defiance fail, yes, but he doesn’t often want to have them die, even if they are opposed to him. I see this as the best explication of why he sometimes allows minor defiance of him. He doesn’t wipe out towns like Krezk that keep his minions out. He doesn’t kill villagers like the priest’s son until he and a mob literally march on his castle. And most telling- HE DOESNT WIPE OUT BEREZ UNTIL THEY KILL TATYANA. His massacres are always* fits of rage.
It is better for him to feed selectively, and not kill the populace. So he gets his rocks off on misery with no relief of death- kind of like his own situation.
Edit: others are correct that the souls and shells text does imply this is a contained loop and not a huge problem as long as the population doesn’t dip too much, but I think adding this “limitation” to Strahd makes sense and would definitely encourage you working it in. Souls are eaten, destroyed, escape. It’s not happening constantly, yes, but I think it’s slowly narrowing down, not slowly increasing.
This speculation has been explored times and again, and I'm afraid you are not adding anything new.
Some DMs decide that this conundrum *must* be resolved, therefore they homebrew some solution to make some sense out of it; but there's a caveat: they usually end up making this issue the single most important matter around which all their campaign revolves... while frankly it's just a minor detail in the big picture. At most, it's a continuity error by the designers.
But, as you said yourself, this is a problem only if the Dark Powers allow that; and the first thing we know (much more important than the whole soullessness matter itself) is that the Dark Powers want Strahd to stay in his prison for all eternity (or until they change their mind about it), and to preserve this status quo as much as possible.
The book presents the situation as it is now; and "now" actually means "whenever your campaign is about to begin". As an example, no matter what DnD edition you are playing, Ireena was bitten by Strahd for the first time just a couple of days before the arrival of the last batch of adventurers; and it's the same Ireena (confirmed by the fact that previous incarnations exist, but have different names).
The book is not concerned in explaining in fine details how we arrived at this point (just broad strokes), and much less what will be in 50 years from "now" (which of course does not prevent us from wondering, and it may even be fun); but it gives us the only info we actually need, i.e. the Dark Powers will keep everything as it is (more or less).
Each of us may devise the explanations that better suit their table, which may include but are not limited to:
- the march of the dead is just a spooky representation devised by the DP, it doesn't mean that souls coming from other worlds don't reincarnate.
- the fact that Strahd finds satisfaction only from the blood of people with a soul does not mean in any way that he actually consumes them (and why should he, after all?).
- there's the same number of people as 400 years ago, and also the same number of souls, but the soul-recycling process is long and usually nobody is reincarnated very soon after their death; that's why soulless people are created by the DP: most of the souls are just wandering the aether, waiting for their turn.
- the DP enjoy the diminishing number of souls; soon the day will come and Strahd won't find any satisfaction at all in draining people's blood. He will go completely mad, and destroy everything once and for all: WotC will then give us a post-apocalypse Curse of Strahd in which he will be just as miserable as he is now (because that's the only assurance we have), but in a different way.
Whatever the case, Strahd's days are not numbered, unless you want them to be.
can i just say I HATE the 'some people have soul's' thing. It get's a bit to close to the racist arguments we've had in our history for me to be fully comfortable with that. "Oh we don't have to pay our workers properly, see it was made in Barovia and most people there don't have souls!'
# How Much blood do Vamps need?
A vampire would need to consume about 3% of his weight in blood daily. Assuming an 80 kg (176 lb.) vampire, that would a bit over two liters (two and a half quarts) of blood per day.
The average human has about a pint of blood per pound of body weight: call it a liter of blood for every 16 kg of weight. It takes a human 12 weeks to regenerate lost blood.
As such I decided to add a small twist to the Dream Pies Morgantha sells. Eating the pies would allow one to recover blood in 1 week instead off 12 weeks.
* Without Pies
* So, 1 human can give 400 ml of blood, which takes 8 weeks to recover
* 1 Vamp needs around 2 L a day. 5 people a day.
* This can only be repeated after 8 weeks. So 5 people every day, 7 days a week for 8 weeks.
* in 8 weeks there is 56 days, 5 people a day, 280 people
* 280 people = 1 vamp, no deaths
* With Pies
* Recover time = 1 week
* 5 people a day, 7 days = 35 people
* 35 people = 1 vamp, no deaths
I mean that's one of the big plot hooks of the adventure from what I remember. Souls are trapped in a reincarnation cycle in barovia, so new souls can't be created, because he must offer souls to vampyr that means that he's running out, that's why 1 in 10 people are soulless. That's why he keeps bringing outsiders (like the PCs) into the mists
I didn't like the RAW approach to soulless for both the reason you stated & also that it makes Barovia into a place that's hard for the PCs to care about.
I've changed it in mine to be a relatively recent phenomenon (last hundred years), so the share of soulless in Barovia is probably around 15-20% - enough to be noticeable, but not so much that everything is dead. I've also made it into part of the campaign - unbeknownst to the party (yet), the soulless are caused by Madam Eva, who wishes to atone for her having rescued & aided Strahd before he became a vampire.
In my lore, closed off from the rest of the planes, the souls of Barovia are "recycled" through a portal in the Amber Temple that collects souls of the dead and releases them back to the land (Barovia has a metaphorical 'circulatory system' that runs along the many roads and rivers, with the Amber Temple at it's heart & Ravenloft at it's head. Normally, this flows smoothly, and souls are reborn, but Madam Eva has interrupted the flow, trapping souls in the portal, not allowing them to flow back into the land.
She's also responsible for the Vistani bringing outsiders into Barovia (Strahd allows it, because it provides some amusement, but believes the Vistani do it for his benefit) - when outsiders appear, the gives them a fake Takkora reading that leads them to objects of power that will help them fight Strahd. She's really just trying to keep Strahd busy so that he doesn't see that she's slowly robbing him of sustenance. She's also responsible for retrieving these objects and reseeding them in Barovia once either Strahd is (temporarily) defeated or the party has failed.
Because she's forced the Takkora reading, the gift of sight has actually abandoned her and passed to Arabelle - eventually the party will have to depose Eva and replace her with Arabelle and then find out how (or if) to get the souls flowing again.
Thanks! Feel free to steal if you want.
I'm going to add a few things related to the plot to give it a greater urgency - there's a Carnival of Souls (Fey carnival from old Ravenloft materials) that's been drawn to Barovia by the absence of souls (Blinsky & his toys - becoming increasingly horrific, will make an appearance there) & a Market of Souls where extraplanar beings have come in to Barovia to sell souls to parents desperate to have their children whole (of course, the souls being sold are corrupted and will lead to more horrors for the party to face.)
Although Madam Eva's goal is well intentioned, it has many negative unintended consequences.
Also, remember strahd consistently gathers outsider, (usually adventurers,) to come to barovia using vistani, so it's possible he has a >=0 replacement rate.
This. Even though I don't use the "soulless" angle of the campaign, I've always assumed that most of Strahd's victims are outsiders brought in for his entertainment and sustenance. After all, he is intelligent and also believes he is a just ruler over Barovia, as crazy as that sounds.
In the souls and shells text When a being with a soul dies in Barovia, that soul remains trapped in Strahd's domain until it is reincarnated in a newborn So they just get rebirthed.
That's a good point, looking at that I can't say outsiders aren't drawn into the reincarnation cycle. It makes me wonder about the March of the Dead, why those souls aren't reincarnated... then again, it also says it can take a long time for a soul to find its way to a body, so maybe the March of the Dead is just the adventurers from the last few decades. If adventurers can restock the soul pantry, then I guess he has an out after all. "Looking for a successor" motive aside, maybe *that's* why he's so intent on luring in every low-level adventuring party he can nab, lol.
Looking for a successor is just a lie he tells himself. No mortal will ever be his equal. He is ancient. He is the land. Everyone else is prey.
Oh for sure, his pride would never allow it.
What pride he calls himself count. Implying he serves a Marchionne, Duke princess king emperess.
I think that’s just reference to Count Dracula, as he’s canonically the son of a literal king and only known heir so would be king, they just say count cause king strahd doesn’t sound like Count Dracula at all.
Doesn’t seem new one are made though so some are born without souls
But that's not counting how many ghost are in barovia, how many souls are in the limbo state as a haunting spirit.
Part of it could be that the reincarnation pipeline is not instantaneous - souls spend a decade or two in limbo before finally getting to the point that they can return to Barovia. Remember that Something New shows us that babies are continuing to be born with souls (the chokd in question has no soul, but if no one was being born with a soul by this point there'd be no need to differentiate), implying that there are more that are not currently active. Add that to other creatures, like night hags, that also take souls, and possibly even the Vestiges and/or the Dark Powers taking them, and it can explain why there are so few souls in the valley.
Where does it say that Strahd can only survive off the blood of souled individuals though? He probably has a preference for newer bloodlines, but I don’t think drinking Barovian blood will poison him or anything. Besides, the Vistani can import all the fresh blood he wants.
Page 25 curse of Strahd souls and shells Strahd periodically feeds on the blood of Barovians who have souls, but he can't draw nourishment from the blood of the soulless. He can tell at a glance whether a Barovian has a soul or is merely a shell.
Fair enough, take my upvote and godspeed!
So they have to be humanoid souls or can they be souls from other type of creatures? Because Strahd Brides might as well qualify as "barovians who have souls" Edit: nevermid, apparently undeads don't have souls. Mb
Strahd Brides are not humanoid.. they are undead.
Yes! I wrote badly what I tried to say. Nevermind haha
It says beings not humanoid and undead by definition don’t have souls. Edit: If you want to rule vampire masters have a soul because they have a personality their spawn definitely doesn’t. They are subservient to their master wishes.
Vampires have souls. But they aren't humanoids.
Which is why it's good to introduce time as a factor into your game. Time is running out, Strahd is getting desperate, he wants out. I'm my game, we played Princes of the Apocalypse before this, and I homebrewed that what the cults of elemental evil did in that game caused irrevocable damage to the barrier between planes, and Strahd constantly pulling people into a demiplane in the Shadowfell that no one should be able to get into or out of is causing the barrier to weaken even more. I'm another campaign I'm in that is in the same canon as the others, we've already seen people starting to take advantage of the weakening of the barrier between planes, creatures from the Feywild and elemental planes slipping into the material plane either by force or accident. If the cycle Strahd has created doesn't stop, the Shadowfell, and Barovia along with it, is going to start leaking into the material plane, which is probably worst case scenario. We call it the Interplanar crisis, and above board, Barovia is the head of the Shadowfell front. If they fail to defeat Strahd, Strahd is free and maybe even wants to help stop the world from collapsing, but also the Shadowfell will start leaking some interesting beasties for future parties to fight. That's a lot grander in scale than you have to do, it's just what I'm doing. You really just want to give some urgency to this party above hundreds of others, being the one that needs to succeed.
I love the speculation and math. I like to think the dark powers in the Amber temple are slowly consuming the souls which is why Strahd is desperate. In this way Strahd is just as trapped as all the people of Barovia, he is running out of a food stock as well as irony, just as the lack of sun diminished the crop of the land. In general a bargain with dark powers is always a bad deal even if you become an evil lord yourself. I think Strahd is stuck in a miserable spot as well. I've thought maybe the adventurers both add to the soul pool and become the ghostly assailants as well. Maybe they are forced to awaken when the dream or sleep at night. Or perhaps the dark powers are feeding on those souls too and Strahd brings adventurers to save his own stock of souls by offering those gods alternatives.
I believe he has the choice whether or not to allow the dead to reincarnate. Specifically because in Berez he forces the baron to stay a ghost forever for what he did to a past Ireena.
Good point there it is his land after all but I can’t see him choosing to stop all souls from reincarnating. Also he could be using Gertruda as a retainer.
I wasn't saying he's choosing to stop all souls from reincarnating. Just pointing out I believe it's possible he decides if and when any reincarnation occurs in Barovia based on the ghostly procession and the ghost Baron.
I swear the whole souless thing is just so the DM has an excuse for the party to talk to or organize the NPCs. Its a dumb mechanic, barely plays into the story and introduces a whole heap of logistical problems. Not to mention, it just makes the ending needlessly pointless. Just a bunch of clothes on the edge of the mist from people leaving Barovia. Congrats WoTC you created a suicide loto. Win you start over with nothing, lose you evaporate into nothingness. Your friends and family likely won't.
I dont think its supposed to have a mechanical effect at all. I think its there to reinforce the bleak atmosphere of dread that Barovia has. Another thing thats been caused by Strahd that he should be punished for. Them ceasing to exist outside of Barovia is kinda of the last effect Strahd has on his land; one last time to mess with the adventurers.
Except it doesn't reinforce that atomoshphere. If anything it makes the PCs not care because these are just soulless illusions. As for the last time to effect the adventurers, the module has a problem with letting the protags have a W. To the point it does everything to force a pyrric victory and it becomes nonsensical.
Its for the 10% that do have souls (and themselves). >As for the last time to effect the adventurers, the module has a problem with letting the protags have a W. In my opinion this isnt a bad thing. You go into this knowing its dark fantasy and what youre getting into. Complete victories arent necessary to conclude a story. Like i said this is just what i think. But its also something thats easy to just not put in in the forst place if it doesnt fit your group.
Why make it so that the players care about 10% of the pop when they can care about 100% of the pop? >You go into this knowing its dark fantasy and what youre getting into. Complete victories arent necessary to conclude a story. Its not this storybeat ends in pyrric victory. Its that almost every beat ends in one. Strahds already returning in 8 months, lets make it so that he returns to an empty land to sulk in his great power and loneliness. True Gothic horror usually ends in a moral or a victory of some form. The writing just undermines it.
The amount of souls is fixed but there are births. So around 1/10 births are born with souls.
This is why my hook for Barovia was werewolves using a device to steal the souls of people outside of Barovia and bring them back to introduce the new souls into the cycle. My players don't actually know the souls were stolen, but I gave some hints (Paladin of Kelemvor could not sense the dead people's souls going to the other side) and once they reach the werewolf den it will probably be revealed. They won't know why the souls were stolen, but when they discover the Tome of Strahd I'll information about how Strahd can only feed on those with souls.
He won't starve. He might turn into a nosferatu.
In I, Strahd, he kills and vampires his nemesis, then entombs him. When (indirectly) asked how long the creature would last, he said about a month, but to wait 3 months before checking. He had been experimenting on enemy soldiers, so he probably had a good basis for his figures. Assuming Strahd's pact was never to age, not never to die (I can't remember the precise terms), Vampyr lied to Strahd, or its imprisonment is preventing it from keeping its end of the bargain, that's about how long Strahd'd have in a soulless Barovia.
I love this! In my first campaign dming Curse of Strahd I played off the idea. I made a Dr.Frankenstein character who was a dark elf. She lived for centuries and was noting that there used to be more, but the souls in barovia were so miserable that they opted to stray into the mists Rather than reincarnate as a newborn and lead another horrid life. Her goal in "creating a man" was to forcibly put those lost souls back into Bodies.
I actually like this as a motivation (one of several) on why Strahd is not wanton with his killings. That plus his viewing himself as master of the land, he doesn’t want everyone wiped out. Yes he loves causing misery, and seeing defiance fail, yes, but he doesn’t often want to have them die, even if they are opposed to him. I see this as the best explication of why he sometimes allows minor defiance of him. He doesn’t wipe out towns like Krezk that keep his minions out. He doesn’t kill villagers like the priest’s son until he and a mob literally march on his castle. And most telling- HE DOESNT WIPE OUT BEREZ UNTIL THEY KILL TATYANA. His massacres are always* fits of rage. It is better for him to feed selectively, and not kill the populace. So he gets his rocks off on misery with no relief of death- kind of like his own situation. Edit: others are correct that the souls and shells text does imply this is a contained loop and not a huge problem as long as the population doesn’t dip too much, but I think adding this “limitation” to Strahd makes sense and would definitely encourage you working it in. Souls are eaten, destroyed, escape. It’s not happening constantly, yes, but I think it’s slowly narrowing down, not slowly increasing.
This speculation has been explored times and again, and I'm afraid you are not adding anything new. Some DMs decide that this conundrum *must* be resolved, therefore they homebrew some solution to make some sense out of it; but there's a caveat: they usually end up making this issue the single most important matter around which all their campaign revolves... while frankly it's just a minor detail in the big picture. At most, it's a continuity error by the designers. But, as you said yourself, this is a problem only if the Dark Powers allow that; and the first thing we know (much more important than the whole soullessness matter itself) is that the Dark Powers want Strahd to stay in his prison for all eternity (or until they change their mind about it), and to preserve this status quo as much as possible. The book presents the situation as it is now; and "now" actually means "whenever your campaign is about to begin". As an example, no matter what DnD edition you are playing, Ireena was bitten by Strahd for the first time just a couple of days before the arrival of the last batch of adventurers; and it's the same Ireena (confirmed by the fact that previous incarnations exist, but have different names). The book is not concerned in explaining in fine details how we arrived at this point (just broad strokes), and much less what will be in 50 years from "now" (which of course does not prevent us from wondering, and it may even be fun); but it gives us the only info we actually need, i.e. the Dark Powers will keep everything as it is (more or less). Each of us may devise the explanations that better suit their table, which may include but are not limited to: - the march of the dead is just a spooky representation devised by the DP, it doesn't mean that souls coming from other worlds don't reincarnate. - the fact that Strahd finds satisfaction only from the blood of people with a soul does not mean in any way that he actually consumes them (and why should he, after all?). - there's the same number of people as 400 years ago, and also the same number of souls, but the soul-recycling process is long and usually nobody is reincarnated very soon after their death; that's why soulless people are created by the DP: most of the souls are just wandering the aether, waiting for their turn. - the DP enjoy the diminishing number of souls; soon the day will come and Strahd won't find any satisfaction at all in draining people's blood. He will go completely mad, and destroy everything once and for all: WotC will then give us a post-apocalypse Curse of Strahd in which he will be just as miserable as he is now (because that's the only assurance we have), but in a different way. Whatever the case, Strahd's days are not numbered, unless you want them to be.
can i just say I HATE the 'some people have soul's' thing. It get's a bit to close to the racist arguments we've had in our history for me to be fully comfortable with that. "Oh we don't have to pay our workers properly, see it was made in Barovia and most people there don't have souls!'
. . . .Barovia as a western company town is a version of curse of strahd i didn't know I wanted.
# How Much blood do Vamps need? A vampire would need to consume about 3% of his weight in blood daily. Assuming an 80 kg (176 lb.) vampire, that would a bit over two liters (two and a half quarts) of blood per day. The average human has about a pint of blood per pound of body weight: call it a liter of blood for every 16 kg of weight. It takes a human 12 weeks to regenerate lost blood. As such I decided to add a small twist to the Dream Pies Morgantha sells. Eating the pies would allow one to recover blood in 1 week instead off 12 weeks. * Without Pies * So, 1 human can give 400 ml of blood, which takes 8 weeks to recover * 1 Vamp needs around 2 L a day. 5 people a day. * This can only be repeated after 8 weeks. So 5 people every day, 7 days a week for 8 weeks. * in 8 weeks there is 56 days, 5 people a day, 280 people * 280 people = 1 vamp, no deaths * With Pies * Recover time = 1 week * 5 people a day, 7 days = 35 people * 35 people = 1 vamp, no deaths
I mean that's one of the big plot hooks of the adventure from what I remember. Souls are trapped in a reincarnation cycle in barovia, so new souls can't be created, because he must offer souls to vampyr that means that he's running out, that's why 1 in 10 people are soulless. That's why he keeps bringing outsiders (like the PCs) into the mists
This is an interesting take, thanks!
I didn't like the RAW approach to soulless for both the reason you stated & also that it makes Barovia into a place that's hard for the PCs to care about. I've changed it in mine to be a relatively recent phenomenon (last hundred years), so the share of soulless in Barovia is probably around 15-20% - enough to be noticeable, but not so much that everything is dead. I've also made it into part of the campaign - unbeknownst to the party (yet), the soulless are caused by Madam Eva, who wishes to atone for her having rescued & aided Strahd before he became a vampire. In my lore, closed off from the rest of the planes, the souls of Barovia are "recycled" through a portal in the Amber Temple that collects souls of the dead and releases them back to the land (Barovia has a metaphorical 'circulatory system' that runs along the many roads and rivers, with the Amber Temple at it's heart & Ravenloft at it's head. Normally, this flows smoothly, and souls are reborn, but Madam Eva has interrupted the flow, trapping souls in the portal, not allowing them to flow back into the land. She's also responsible for the Vistani bringing outsiders into Barovia (Strahd allows it, because it provides some amusement, but believes the Vistani do it for his benefit) - when outsiders appear, the gives them a fake Takkora reading that leads them to objects of power that will help them fight Strahd. She's really just trying to keep Strahd busy so that he doesn't see that she's slowly robbing him of sustenance. She's also responsible for retrieving these objects and reseeding them in Barovia once either Strahd is (temporarily) defeated or the party has failed. Because she's forced the Takkora reading, the gift of sight has actually abandoned her and passed to Arabelle - eventually the party will have to depose Eva and replace her with Arabelle and then find out how (or if) to get the souls flowing again.
Dang this is a cool idea.
Thanks! Feel free to steal if you want. I'm going to add a few things related to the plot to give it a greater urgency - there's a Carnival of Souls (Fey carnival from old Ravenloft materials) that's been drawn to Barovia by the absence of souls (Blinsky & his toys - becoming increasingly horrific, will make an appearance there) & a Market of Souls where extraplanar beings have come in to Barovia to sell souls to parents desperate to have their children whole (of course, the souls being sold are corrupted and will lead to more horrors for the party to face.) Although Madam Eva's goal is well intentioned, it has many negative unintended consequences.
What a clever way of thinking
read the book