Radanavich

The Radanaviches are a minor yet important element in the backstory of the Ravenloft setting for Dungeons & Dragons, having been essential to the backstory of the iconic NPC Van Richten and his subsequent story in the game's lore.

Originally, the Radanaviches were a Vistani clan belonging to the Corvara tribe, a sect of Vistani who are particularly infamous for their tendency to rely on a life of thievery, cheating and deception. But the Radanaviches were on the shadier side of the moral spectrum even for the Corvara, and this spelled their doom when the clan's raunie (matriarch and seer), Madame Irena Radanavich, chose to hire the clan's services to a vampire named Baron Metus. The Baron, you see, was looking for a comely human youth to become his "groom" - a special form of vampire created through ritualistic spawning, imbuing them with a telepathic link to their progenitor and unusually rapid development of vampiric powers. As he promised the Radanaviches a great sum of money for this task, the clan agreed, and tried to kidnap the son of another noble family from somewhere in Darkon. Unfortunately, this went terribly wrong; the baron's family was well-guarded, and in the fight, not only were the Radanaviches forced to flee, but Madame Irena's son Radovan was mortally wounded.

Desperate to save Radovan's life, the Radanaviches invaded the home of Van Richten and demanded he operate. But Radovan's injuries were too severe even for Van Richten to heal, and the Vistani died on the operating table. Madame Irena flew into a mad rage, accusing Van Richten of deliberately sabotaging her son's operations, and the terrified doctor pleaded with the Vistani for mercy, offering them whatever they wanted if only they would spare his life.

So they kidnapped Van Richten's son Erasmus and fled with him. But they underestimated Van Richten's paternal instincts; despite his fear, the doctor's fear for his son's life caused him to give chase... and then, in the mother of all Random Encounter Table dickery, he ran into the lich Azalin, Darklord of Darkon. But Azalin took pity on the grieving doctor; he animated Radovan's corpse and compelled it to lead Van Richten to his former peoples' camp. He also gave Van Richten a small army of zombies to protect himself with.

When Van Richten caught up to the Radanaviches, Madame Irena decided the best thing to do when confronted by a scared, angry father in full familial protection mode and leading an army of zombies was to mock him, taunting him with the fact she had sold his beloved Erasmus to be a gay vampire's sex slave. Not unreasonably, Van Richten snapped; he laid a curse on the Radanaviches to be forever pursued by the undead, and then set the zombies on them. In fairness, he did snap out of it and tried to stop the massacre, but the zombies wouldn't listen. The last to fall was Madame Irena herself who, completely refusing to accept that she'd brought this on herself, instead cursed Van Richten to forever suffer the tragic losses of his friends at the hands of monsters. The only survivor was a young boy named Arturi Radanavich.

Van Richten went on to kill his son, newly transformed into a vampire, only for his wife to be killed by Baron Metus in retribution, something that solidified his decision to become a monster hunter. Years later, he would meet the grown Arturi, and learn of the fact he had been laboring under a Vistani curse all his adventuring career. With Arturi as his guide, Van Richten came to learn about Vistani culture, and to realize that they weren't all as evil as the Radanaviches, causing him to let go of his hatred against the Vistani and lift his curse from Arturi, who in turn lifted Madame Irena's curse from Van Richten. This tale forms the backstory to the splatbook "Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani".

But that wouldn't be the end of Van Richten's encounters with the Radanaviches. As recounted in the adventure Bleak House, Madame Irena's vengeful spirit would return from the grave as a ghost, determined to end Van Richten, alongside the ghost of her son Radovan. This ultimately resulted in their destruction.

In Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, after seeing too many people slamming Curse of Strahd for its "racist" Vistani, WotC chose to retcon the Radanaviches from Vistani to a human trafficking rink who merely disguised themselves as Vistani to try and reduce the efforts to repel them.