Arturi
Source characterization: Homebrew, elaborating on Dragnacarta’s Radonovich family concept
Role: A cursed loner hunting Von Richten
Key characterization principles:
- Motivation: seeking to kill Von Richten because Madam Eva told him (via a Tarokka-style reading) that Von Richten’s death may lift his own curse.
- Knows Von Richten as an author of monster-hunting texts and as “the man who became the monster” — personally witnessed Von Richten’s transformation from man to monster.
- Aware his own family (the Radonovich line) was complicit in kidnapping/selling Von Richten’s son Erasmus, which he rationalizes as “we shouldn’t have sold him off, but we had to make a living” — sympathy that curdled when Von Richten retaliated by wiping out the whole family rather than just the guilty parties.
- Physical description: extensive scarring — claw marks, burns, and necrotic/cauterization scarring resembling old smallpox blisters — from many years surviving repeated border crossings and werewolf/undead attacks while cursed.
- May be one of the few people (alongside Stanimir and Madam Eva) who actually knows the mist barrier is enforced by werewolves rather than Strahd’s personal magic.
- His curse is loosely a “zombie attraction” — undead gravitate to him, especially at night, which is why he avoids cemeteries and coffin-makers and tends to be alone after dark even around otherwise-friendly company.
Current narrative status: Confirmed encountered in play at the Tser Falls Vistani encampment (Session 9) — he introduced himself by name and told a campfire story (see Session 9 log) that read, per a high insight check, as carrying real emotional weight rather than being mere flavor; a metaphorical fox-and-sparrows-and-rats revenge fable, plausibly a coded retelling of his own history with Von Richten. His deeper motivations/backstory above are still GM-only and have not been confirmed as directly revealed to the party in dialogue.
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