#cos doru

[smol-tired-binch-blog]

You know what, screw you (spares your sacrificial lambs)

[nkukubean]

It’s a shame most people kill Doru in the first five minutes of meeting him. His character has so much potential once you read into the nuances.

NOTE: i moved posting art to @pumpkinheadath , so if you wanna see more COS art, it's there

[green-geist]

Some casual clothes for the crew

[starsabounded]

some of my favorite NPCs from my curse of strahd game so far :’) having so much fun! (we’re still pretty early game so no spoilers pls hehe)

[thatsmutaccount]

Why is Ismark always shipped with the twinks™?

My opinion about the Ismark x Doru and the Ismark x Escher ship and why they do or don't work for me

WARNING: Even tho this is a completely sfw post, mine is mainly a nsfw blog. The stories I write tend to usually have topics that some people may be uncomfortable with, so please keep this in mind before eventually cheking my other posts. Love you <3

*****

Before we go on, this is absolutley not a dig or me complaining, I've been in fandoms for over 10 years now and I have a really cemented "ship and let ship mentality", so you do you and enjoy all your little fictional blorbos ♥️

That being said, let me ramble for a bit about this.

I started looking up at fics and fanarts about my most recent obsession, aka Ismark Kolyanovich, the sad and man that I love with all of my heart and that can't do anything bad, and I noticed how - not taking the player characters into account - he is usually shipped with what I can only identify as "twinks".

The two most shipped characters with Ismark I saw around are Doru and Escher, and I want to talk about thks for a bit.

Doru

Doru I can kinda see it. It's canon that Ismark and Ireena are good friends with Father Donavich, so it makes sense that the two of them are also somehow connected to Doru. Personally, when DMing my own CoS campaing and they met the Kolyan siblings for the first time, I made so Father Donavich and Kolyan, Ireena and Ismark's dad, are friends, making so Ismark, Ireena and Doru are childhood friends. So, you have that "Friends to lovers" connection between the two of them, and by making Ismark older than Doru you can also have that big brother/younger brother kind of dynamic that makes the whole thing much sweeter... and tragic because of Doru's ending in canon. Because be it the party kill him or they don't, Doru is still a spawn, there is no "cure" or happiness for him.

My feelings about the ship: I do see it, I can get behind it, but it's not my favourite ship with Ismark. That is mainly do to the fact that I appreciate the platonic older brother/younger brother dynamic they can have more, and let Ismark shine as a role of guide for his peers and caretaker much more. Plus, the idea of having already lost sla sibling with Doru and not wanting the same to happen with Ireena is just perfect for me. Good ship, but not my OTP.

Escher

This one, I noticed, was a ship much more well known and shipped in the fandom a couple of years ago. If you look on ao3 the fics about Ismark and you go to the first ones, you can see that, when Ismark is not a side character - which is not that often, unfortunately T_T - he is mainly shipped with Escher. At first I was confused by this, then I thought about it for a bit and... I can kinda see it. Escher is the odd one out among the consorts (yes, he is a consort just like the other three, Wizard of the Coast are cowards for not addressing him as one of them, fight me) being the youngest and the only male one. I also personally add to this the fact that he is not from Barovia, but an adventure that ended up here and that got seduced by Strahd (and I made him also an elf, deal with it). So, among everyone else in the castle, he is the most, quote unquote, "redeemable" of the consorts and the one most likely to being shipped with another NPC. But then, why Ismark? Ismark is, all in all, one of the few actually good characters. He has his flaws and negative opinion (like his canonically disdain for the Vistani) but he is a positive presence for the players, topped only by Ireena. So, having him as this sort of "saving grace" for Escher, someone who can actually make him better, help him "escape the grasps" of the villain that is Strahd, making him feel human again, it works more than him being paired with other characters.

My feelings about the ship: Can I be frank? Even if I get it and the dynamic would be interesting, I think, out of this two I would prefer Doru rather than Escher. Maybe it's because I still have to play Escher as a DM, so he does not have an actual fixed personality as of yet for me, but the two are too distant for me to think about them as a pairings, and they don't have enough common ground to be one for me. Good ship, good narrative potential, but once again out of the two I will chose Doru over Escher.

*****

Once again, this is only my opinion and how I see them, but it's really curious that the two main ships I saw of other NPCs with Ismark have him being paired with a twink. It's funny. Ismark the twinks collectors.

That being said now I'm curious

Which NPC do you ship with our boy Ismark? Is it Doru or Escher? Or is it someone new entirely?

And

What is your Ismark crack ship? Or in general your funnier and most out of the field Curse of Strahd NPC x NPC ship? If you want you can tell them to me and I will tell you what I think about them XP

Thank you for sticking by, remember to be awesome and expect much more Ismark content in the future, see ya ^.^

[squeeneyart]

[Image description: A greyscale digital drawing of Parriwimple Cantemir lying on lthe floor with his arm next to a small trap door on the ground. From under the trap door, a long-nailed hand peeks out of the dark, and small fangs reach towards two dark marks on Parriwimple's arm. There is a small dark stain beneath his arm. Both Parriwimple and the individual under the trap door are talking quietly to each other. End ID]

DoruWimple real (this is not the ship name this is not the ship name this is not the ship name)

my curse of strahd DM made the inspired choice for Doru and Parriwimple to have a vampire romance thing happening over in their corner of Barovia. Will the adventurers be able to cure Doru and save this budding romance before Doru escapes and kills everyone around him???? (full anime title: My boyfriend Tried to Kill Strahd von Zarovich and Was Turned into a Vampire and Sent Back to Kill Us All and Now Lives in the Church Undercroft???)

anyway i made a joke about keeping it arms length at a dance and one of the other players said

[Image description: sketch of Tomás the satyr and Granny the halfling bursting in on Parriwimple. Tomás is yelling "MAKE ROOM FOR THE MORNINGLORD" while flinging the door open. Parriwimple has his mouth open in a yell, with a speech bubble saying "/FINN SCREAM/". End ID]

[doodlenainers]

Tarot cards exist and I’m supposed to be normal about that????

[serene-elysium]

Sorry no okay now I'm thinking about Doru and the cemetery. This kid....he saw the dead every night. He saw them walk up towards Ravenloft, to the site of their failure, the place where they died, EVERY NIGHT.

He'd likely seen adventurers go to fight Strahd, and then later he'd know they'd failed—because he would see them among the parade. Hell, he might have even watched the marching ghosts after adventurers would leave town, just to check if they'd been killed yet.

And yet. AND YET. When a mysterious mage came to town and talked of rebellion, he joined. When most of his people fled, he continued to fight. He did not retreat to town to be killed later by wolves, or spawn, or zombies, or even Strahd himself. He would die fighting, not hiding.

Perhaps it was his religious upbringing, believing that justice may prevail. Perhaps he believed in the powerful mage, thinking the man truly had the strength to defeat the Devil. Perhaps it was a refusal to die to anything but Strahd, the greatest monster he knew. Perhaps he thought he'd join the marching dead, and he'd walk among heroes forever.

But when Strahd killed him, he didn't join the parade, or settle into a peaceful afterlife, or even an unpeaceful afterlife. He woke up the next day, a vampire.

And I can't stop thinking about it.