Lotan Kaligor came to Venturia by sea from Faerun — a world no one in Eldryn has heard of — and hasn't been able to leave it. A pirate — or near enough — somewhere in his late thirties or forties, he arrived the hard way: his ship broke apart at the shore, and as the water took him something vast reached up to bargain. He sails into the city's story already owing forces larger than himself. He carries an Eldritch Knight's discipline and a Warlock's borrowed fire, and the easy manner of a man who has talked his way off worse decks than this one.
Concept
A custom Fighter/Warlock hybrid — an Eldritch Knight drifting toward the Warlock's bargain. He's descended from a previous Curse of Strahd character.
The Pact
As his ship went under at Venturia's shore, something vast in the water reached for the drowning man and offered a bargain — and before it could be sealed, something older cut in and answered first. Lotan came up alive, bound to a patron he won't name, carrying a Warlock's borrowed fire and a debt he won't talk about. The sea has not been safe for him since.
That's the reason he's been ashore since the day he arrived in Venturia.
Background
He arrived from abroad and has stayed on land ever since. The ones who pulled him from the wreck were the crew of the ship carrying a young gnome named Roxy — and since neither of them had ever set foot in Eldryn, Lotan repaid the rescue by playing the seasoned local, steering her through the markets and making up half of it as he went. The friendship stuck anyway. He keeps a winery in the city now, the way he kept one back home — The Sorcerer of the Spirits, in the Winecradle on the Merchant's tier, under the Wine Merchants' Guild. He lives in the room off the back, never close enough to the water to fall in. Most of what the winery earns above costs he earmarks for what he calls the Brownie Relief Fund.
The Harbour Work
Whatever else he is, Lotan can read a manifest. He knows which captains take which cargo, which warehouse clerk drinks, which Ferrier looks away and for how much. He has been putting all of it at Roxy's disposal — intercepting shipments of brownies before they are sold into Venturian houses. It is unpaid, it is dangerous, and it puts a man who will not go near the water on the docks several nights a week.
Ties
- Roxanya "Roxy" — Rescued alongside her when his ship wrecked at the shore; he appointed himself her guide to a city neither of them knew, and the friendship stuck. They now run the harbour interceptions together.
- House Kaligor — The Barovian line he comes from, and the tavern story he tells about it.
- Velonar Kaligor — The ancestor who is said to have burned Strahd to ash and bought a winery with what came after.
- Andrea Kaliskiny — The druid who sealed the Amber Temple, and married into the line the same season.
- Lady Noctyrix — The bruxa whose dying curse he says his family still carries.
Possessions
- A cutlass — Ornate, and to every test Lotan has put it to since the crossing, otherwise ordinary. His father gave it to him; Kaligor is the family name, not the blade's. See Kaligor for what it was before the seawall.
- A necklace bearing what he believes is the original Holy Symbol of Ravenkind — It has not answered to anything since he arrived in Eldryn.
Gallery
Donata Vell's Project
From Beyond Relief.
Donata Vell, the merchant who sponsored Lotan's membership in the Wine Merchants' Guild, does not remember doing so. She has nonetheless taken it upon herself to find him a good woman to settle down with, has no idea he is gay, and is being extremely thorough about it.
On the morning of Maruk Grommarg's rite, Lotan was up from three o'clock: a ceremony cask tapped and standing on the trestle, cups counted out for Wardens he expected back thirsty. He sent a cart for Roxy, hauled the cask up to the Overlook with her and Caravel "Car" Asteri, and afterwards carried the party around the city in his carriage while they argued about Maruk's effects.