Lord Soth, the Knight of the Black Rose, is a fictional character appearing in the fantasy realms of Dragonlance and later Ravenloft.

According to Tracy Hickman, he needed a powerful character for the Heroes of the Lance to fight at the High Clerist's Tower, and Lord Soth suddenly came into his mind with a complete history and personality.

[citation needed] The popularity of Lord Soth as a character has defined what a death knight means to the writers of the Dungeons & Dragons game over the years.

In the end, James Lowder himself was commissioned to write Knight of the Black Rose (1991), which more fully introduced Soth to the demiplane of Ravenloft".

[3] By Soth's third appearance in Ravenloft, in the adventure When Black Roses Bloom (1995), the character had become "a bit of a political hot potato.

Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis had returned to the company to write new Dragonlance novels, and they were unhappy with Soth's use in Ravenloft.

[4] Wizards of the Coast has been vague on the subject but the last official word was that Soth did indeed enter Ravenloft but that the Mists returned him to Krynn at the very instant he was removed.

[6] Wes Schneider, lead designer Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021), confirmed that Soth is not included in the 5th Edition sourcebook to respect the canon history of the character.

Although evil and filled with an intense hatred for all living creatures, most of the time Soth retains a semblance of the pride he held as a Solamnic knight, and fights honorably.

Soth also can cast various type of spells, including huge fireballs, magical words which stun or kill enemies, ice walls, cone of cold, etc.

Korrine eventually gave birth to an abomination, and Soth, thinking his wife consorted with some kind of demon, killed her and their child.

Korrine's lady-in-waiting revealed to Soth's superior that Isolde was pregnant with his bastard child and he was brought before the Court of High Justice at Palanthas.

Several centuries later, the evil goddess Takhisis launched the War of the Lance to conquer Krynn and wanted Lord Soth to assist her armies.

Thus at the Council of Highlords in Neraka, Soth personally carried the captive Laurana, who had been tightly wrapped into a cocoon of winding cloth, to Kitiara.

However, Soth's desire would be frustrated when Tanis Half-Elven assassinated Emperor Ariakas and then Laurana escaped as the Dragonarmies began fighting amongst themselves.

Under his command, a great number of undead creatures (including his skeletal warriors and banshees with wyvern-carried chariots) breached Palanthas the Unconquered City.

He had become completely obsessed with Kitiara (whose self-serving nature and survival-instinct had somehow rekindled his undead heart), and decided to make her become his eternal consort.

After a series of adventures with the Vistani girl, Magda, and the were-badger Azrael Dak, Soth had found out that Strahd was hiding Caradoc from him.

Soth was then given the domain Sithicus ("land of spectres" in the elven tongue) in Ravenloft by the Mists after he exacted his vengeance on Caradoc's ghost.

[12] In the 2002 book Dragon of a Vanished Moon,[13] upon his return to Krynn, Mina, Chosen of Takhisis, attempted to recruit Soth to lead the Dark Queen's armies.

The fallen knight perished with a measure of his honor restored, vowing that he would forever search for the elf maid and his son in the afterlife.

The undead man in a suit of armor is nothing new, but Soth is played to nicely creepy effect, and he comes with a horrific backstory straight out of a dark fairytale, one filled with wife murder and lost honor.