Second Part! (First one: Danny here) I think everyone agrees Vlad's character in the show was always hinted at to be deeper and then he got slapped with 'no interesting overarching plot allowed' syndrome applied by the show's self proclaimed creator and they tried to bring him into line with saturday morning cartoon slapstick nonsense and it never fit what they built earlier. It's clear he liked exploring the zone and collecting important stuff so I have him as an NPC you can run into and trade herbs, ore and other assorted things you've collected on your run in exchange for things he's found in the fields. These variants of them I'm headcannoning as very post canon and very displaced from the time they come from but luckily the ghost zone hints at temporal displacement too so I get to claim easy get out of explaination free cards on that one. But again I had alot of fun with the concept on this one. The Cat. Stays.
He's also very good at getting other ghosts/shades to do stuff for him, so he's got a little bunch of guides with him there too.
