When were the dusk elf females slain?

Question

A friend of mine is going to start a 5E campaign soon, using the Curse of Strahd published adventure.

I'm working on my character in anticipation of this. I'm planning on being a dusk elf, based on the information in the Dusk Elves: A Ravenloft Subrace unofficial supplement.

This supplement talks about a villainous dusk elf named Rahadin, that helped Count Strahd punish the dusk elves for killing Strahd's bride-to-be. His wicked loathing of his own people and loyalty to his master drove him to a horrific form of poetic justice:

Killing all the dusk elf women. Since males of his race had deprived Rahadin’s lord of a bride, he ensured they could never marry among their own people. Rahadin slew every female dusk elf in Barovia.

This is in addition to an earlier massacre of dusk elves by Strahd's father, Barov:

The traitorous Rahadin helped Barov conquer and nearly exterminate the dusk elves of the Svalich kingdom. Members of the royal family who had exiled Rahadin were murdered down to the last distant cousin, leaving no heirs, and the others were hunted down like animals. On the verge of being annihilated, the few survivors surrendered. Barov left those who weren’t subjugated to the mercy of the Vistani, who took in many. Worse was yet to come.

That all sounds like great roleplaying material.

Fortunately, from what I can tell, these are official events, even if the supplement itself is unofficial. Unfortunately, I can't figure out when they happened. That's kind of important for determining my character's relation to and view of these events.

So, what year is it at the start of Curse of Strahd, when did Rahadin's foul deeds take place?

Answer 1

In the Curse of Strahd module, it doesn't give an exact year that these events take place. Everything can be kind of fluid because of the nature of Barovia, which I won't get into because that might be a bit spoiler-y. However, according to the module:

Strahd had all the female dusk elves put to death around four centuries ago as a punishment for Patrina's murder.

In terms of Barov's handling of the dusk elven royalty, again, no hard number of years, but in some information about Rahadin in an Appendix, it states:

Rahadin, the dusk elf chamberlain of Castle Ravenloft, has served Strahd's family faithfully for nearly five hundred years.

So it's safe to assume a range of four to five hundred years ago for those events.

As an aside, fantastic character development potential. I would be super excited to play with/DM for your PC.