CONTROVERSY!

 Before I get deep into this, let's discuss some of the fun behind James Lowder's Knight of the Black Rose, or what happens when creators clash with property owners. According to the copyright, this got released in 1992, which was after Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis were on the outs with TSR, However, their DragonLance novels and game accessories were quite popular even then. (Of note, the game module that inspired the entire setting of Ravenloft was written by Tracy and his wife..) Anyway, Lord Soth was a secondary antagonist in the DragonLance setting, a Death Knight who was working with Kitiara for his own reasons. His backstory was tragic, and he was an inveterate scene stealer. Plus, he just LOOKED cool. So it wasn't a particularly great surprise that TSR decided to make D&D Reese Cups by having the Mists swallow Soth on Krynn and drop him in the new Gothic Horror setting. Now, he eventually escaped and wound up back on Krynn (with one partial escape assumed to be during The Grand Conjunction as chronicled in the debatebly canon source book World of Krynn), only to die a final and noble death during The War of Souls. As far as Soth's creators are concerned, Soth never left Krynn. As far as D&D canon goes, he did, although most people reconcile it by assuming he escaped to return at the moment of his exit. Anyway, info dump done, let's discuss.

So, we open towards the very end of the Blue Lady's War, when Kitiara went to Palanthus to greet whichever Krynnish god wound up coming out of the dragon portal. (The entire story is told in Legends.) Kitiara dies, and Soth heads back to his lovely Dargaard  Keep with his banshees and skeletal men at arms. However, we expand here on Soth sending his seneschal Caradoc to the Abyss to go get Kitiara's soul, so Soth can reanimate her body to be his eternal companion. (Soth has relationship issues.)

Caradoc winds up hiding Kit's soul, thinking Soth won't return him to mortality. (Mind you, some of the discussions here closely mirror the Planescape setting. Which I think came out somewhere around when this got written.) Soth strangles the ghost (perk of being undead, I suppose), the mists close in, and hey, everyone's in Barovia. 

What follows is a showdown between a Chaotic Evil vampire and Lawful Evil Death Knight. We also meet a Vistani lass named Magda (the Vistani during this era were basically stereotyped Roma, straight out of central casting) and a werebadger named Azreal. They cross Barovia into Gunderak and back, and eventually, Soth winds up in the Mists again, and ultimately refuses redemption, so he becomes the Dark Lord of Sithicus. 

By far the best part of this story is how in depth we plunge into Soth's days before the Curse. We hear the tale throughout DragonLance, but here, we're on Soth's shoulder as he has his first wife killed, married his second, gets expelled from the Knighthood, and ultimately fails in his redemption and gets cursed by wife #2. It adds a lot of humanizing effect onto the character, showing us his tragic nature. He's really a dark mirror image of the stereotypical paladin. Yes, his honor is tarnished and rusted, but the iron is still strong under it all. 

Now, I first read this when it was published, having picked it up at the local bookstore/smoke shop a few blocks from my house. At the time, I had not read the earlier source material, and had no real idea of who Soth was. Now, having read all of it, this made a hell of a lot more sense. I'm really happy I found my copy again, it was fun to reconnect with it after all these years.