#stella watcher

If you want, you can suggest me any ship between two canon NPCs character (no party characters or OCs) and I will do a basic ranking of them. You can join me as well and tell me what you think of them, I would love to hear your opinion ^.^

If you already suggested them, through tags or other means, don't worry, I plan on making your suggestions too ^^

DISCLAIMER: This is just my opinion, please be respectful and remember that we are all different and that we all have different opinions, thank you so much <3

PLEASE READ: Due to the recent changes in Tumblr's guideline and how reblogs work, I can't see your reblogs if you do them from other accounts, so if you want to suggest a pair, please either comment under this post or reblog the original with your suggestions, thank you so much.

And after the m/m post and the f/f post is time to talk about a f/m ship with Victor and Stella. This one in particular was suggested through a reblog by @thedarkpowers . Thank you for suggesting, I promise you I saw the post and I will come and do the rest too (also, if you don't want me to tag you, please let me know so I also know for future posts like this, thank you ^.^ )

SPOILER WARNING FOR THE CURSE OF STRAHD CAMPAIGN!

******

Ship: Victor Vallakovich x Stella Watcher;

Why they are shipped: There are so many parallels that could be drawn between the two of them that makes shipping them really understandable. This time let's start with the obvious part: they share the same Tarokka. They are both fated allies for the campaign, and if you draw their card you, as a DM, can choose between which one of the two you can give your players. This already make them really similar, then you come to who they are: teenagers/young adults, children of the two most important families in Vallaki, both living shut in their families home (one forced - Stella - one by their choice - Victor), both with parents that neglect them, both with the desire to leave Vallaki and their respective families the first chance they get (Stella not wanting to have anything to do with them after she gets cured of her madness, Victor with his failed teleportation circle) and then there is the cat thing. It's well known that Victor likes to summon cat skeleton, and then Stella in her madness believes she is a cat herself. They clearly have a lot of things in common or thematic parallels that make the two of them really similar;

What kind of dynamic they can have: arranged marriages/strangers to enemies to lovers. It does make sense, doesn't it? Both the children of the welathiest families in Vallaki, and with personalities opposites to one another. Victor is not the easiest to have around and Stella has quiet a strong personality - which can be inferred after she gets cured of her madness - and are unthrostworthy of the people in their own city and families. They clearly have no interest or way to bond with one another, but in a different universe I can see Lady Watcher wanting her daughter to marry the son of the bourgemaster to bring more prestige to the family, and neither of them wanting that, but being forced by their families. It's a perfect trope for them to follow, it makes more sense for them rather than other eventual pairings, I feel like;

What kind of story suit them more: Hurt with comfort/eventual happy ending. It is really difficult but due to their age and their desire to leave and have a better future, I think they, more than other couples, can achieve a happy ending. By learning from one another and learn of each others strength and weaknesses, they can find a common ground and be happy, maybe by leaving their previous situation behind and find a brighter future beyond the Mists. But also due to the fact that this is Barovia, there will be plenty of angst beforehand that might make so that people looking at their story are not really sure if they will achieve this happy ending or not;

My ranking of them as a ship: 3/5. Perfect middle of the road. I can see it, I can totally get it, the parallels are perfect, they can work with one another so so much. In my personal opinion, I prefer to imagine them as just friends. They were presented as each others' future spouses do to the plans of their families, while they only knew of each others in passing and hated each others for their different personalities, then they were forced to spend time with one another, got to knew the person behind that first appearance and end up maybe not falling in love but for sure forming a strong bond. This is a pair I would have never thought about but that I'm happy I got to think of, I was certain my ranking would have been lower - also due to the fact that in my campaing my players never met Stella so I have barely an idea about her personality - but the more I think of their potential the more I undestand and I agree with those that see this pair, which is why I like doing this ranking, they let me see stuff from different perspectives.

******

What if... Viktor had a redemption arc? 🤔 🤔 🤔

so, stella had been carrying sergei’s soul as a divine soul sorcerer, party had almost entirely been disparaging towards her given her relative level of power vis a vis victor (who is like a tiny child playing with incredible fire he doesn’t understand, given his 5th level spell capacity, and zero sense of morality). ticking time bomb number one. cleric was the only one who was passably decent towards her, so she stayed.

insert strahd dinner

they made the mistake of bringing her and ireena. strahd knew about the soul, and they asked strahd von zarovich for a favor, which was to stay overnight so they could look at his library. strahd used this as an opportunity to enact leverage, and i took a point out of this DM’s book and emptied the crypts to surround vallaki so i could pull an ultimatum over them in the morning

morning came, strahd asked for ireena to stay the week while the party went to the amber temple to investigate the dark powers, so they could discuss political business. party insisted they needed HER as a guide, nobody else would do. when strahd posited stella as another barovia native, party instantly disparaged her as completely useless.

strahd voice: then you don’t mind if she stays instead, seeing as she was not invited into my home and she’s clearly of no use to you whatsoever, and i have legal matters to discuss with her re: vallaki as well.

party: surprised pikachu dot jpg

stella approval: -50

eventually, they left it up to the girls to choose, because they’d so clearly lied themselves into a corner that they had nothing, so ireena stayed.

at that point, i’d put stella on dark power shortlist, seeing as she’d been repeatedly been just absolutely crushed by everyone, used as bait in multiple encounters, constantly put aside in favor of a man who’d tortured her and snapped her mind by supposed champions of good. she’s “strahd’s enemy,” but that doesn’t imply she has to fulfil the prophecy by fighting on the same side as the party 

was considering three options as the challenging dark power, depending on what element ended up pushing her over the edge: delban star of ice and hate (given vengeance motivation re: victor and strahd), savnok the inscrutable (given her absolute hatred for being magically fucked with, which the party STILL does holy SHIT they did not stop casting detect thoughts on her) and yrrga eye of shadows (given the element of overwhelming good sergei is supposed to represent, and yrrga feeding off of lost faith)

anyway, this brings me to last week:

party decided, fuck it, let’s go just dick around in the hag windmill with no plan!

stella, you can be the bait again. 

So stella’s the bait, it doesn’t work, the tiefling cleric with a horrible terrible fear of fire due to tragic backstory (the party is WELL aware of this) climbs in the window), and a fight ensues.

During which, the wizard encircles the extremely flammable structure with wall of flames, setting the whole windmill alight, knowingly catching the tiefling in the spell itself in full view of Stella.

He berserks, jumps out the third story window, lands on Victor, Stella runs up to heal him and help him beat the shit out of the wizard, but the player decides to roll a d4 to decide who to attack (which I am still in full support of - I think he did the best RP-wise out of everyone in the group, given the shitshow of the situation), but he maces her first, then Victor. 

Victor responds with his highest spell slot, which is.... fireball. Centered just behind Stella, because that’s how I the DM can also catch the wizard without hitting Victor himself and remind him of the consequences of friendly fire-ing one’s allies, and also that Victor has zero moral compass.

Meanwhile the barbarian rushes back down with the two children who the wizard just burnt to death because they didn’t search the windmill before lighting it up, despite the fact they knew the hags were taking kids.

Anyway, it was a shitshow, I probably should have had the final hag un-etheral and just kill several of them with magic missile but I felt that would be... shitty of me. Victor and the Cleric knocked each other out, the party is amidst massive arguments (Cleric is spending a day off to cool down). 

Stella’s permanently left the party, is going full Delban at this point given how much fire and magic was involved. The cleric caught on a little when I flipped her class and she cast Armor of Agathys as she was running into the woods. Depending on whether he can re-integrate himself into the party or not, I may have Delban reach out to him too, given the pyrophobia and his role in the delivery of Sergei’s soul, but like.... yeesh.

Oh, and Strahd had a scry ongoing, since it was just hitting evening, and Wizard failed his roll to notice, so he saw the whole fucking thing.