Ravenloft #3

Have you heard about Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine?
I figure everyone has by now.

In case you don’t know, Paizo, the company that has been making the magazines the past few years had their license to do so pulled by WotC so that WotC can go back to making it themselves, but in an online only format as part of their “Digital Initiative”. It has made a lot of gamers mad. A few have hit a raving lunacy level of frothing anger.

Me, I haven’t cared particularly about either magazine since the early 90’s. I bought a Dragon Mag a couple of years ago and the layout bugged me and there wasn’t any content I was interested in, so I haven’t bought any since.

A few of the angered people have said that WotC is turning the latter day T$R. I can’t say they’re right, but I also can’t say they’re wrong – I just hope they are.

WotC also pulled Code Monkey Publishing’s license to create and sell more of their add-ons to E-Tools a few months back. That saddened me a bit as I liked what CMP did to fix and improve the pile of crap E-Tools was when originally released.

A few months ago WotC also had a questionnaire pop up on their website asking our opinions about buying online content. If that wasn’t foreshadowing the “Digital Initiative”, then I’ve forgotten the meaning of foreshadowing.

I don’t know WotC’s long term goals beyond making money, but as long as they don’t take their customers for granted like T$R did, in this case taking all of their currently free content on their websites and putting it into the new online magazines and charging us for them, then I think everything will turn out fine.

Oh and if Mike Mearls every tries to change the rust monster again by making it weaker, I’ll throw him off a skyscraper and belly flop onto his broken and shattered body.
(Sorry, that just needed to be said.)

Now we head to the game.

No Allen or Justin this week. So while also breaking in their own new PC’s Aaron and Brian played Marco and Tenbeers.

Last week we stopped where our remaining PC’s were looking down into a hole in the floor of the defiled church of Lathander.

This week we started where Dale asked if we had searched the place and we responded that we told him several times that we were taking 20’s while searching the whole place. So then he told us about the trap door covering up a set of stairs leading below. (This is caused by Dale himself getting so caught up in the module that he forgets or misses some simple things. Every DM does it, Dale is just more entertaining when he does it; like not seeing the stairs on the map.)

Now I was expecting a slog through some catacombs or crypts, but I’m finding that a lot of these side quests are actually very short when it comes to encounters.

They can also be pretty deadly.

The area down the steps was no crypt, just a wide open basement with a few undead; 3 of the stronger zombies we’ve been fighting and a something Dale called a blaspheme.

Since I don’t own the Libris Mortis, or whatever that thing is in, all I know about it was that it had a high AC (23 or so), a lot of hit points, and could hit each round for 1d8+13 damage which it never missed with in this combat.

Mina was infected with the “walking death” disease by one of the zombies and literally came within one activation of her rising as one. We found out then that the plague activates when someone goes below 0 hit points. Even if at -1hp, anyone infected with the plague will rise in 1d4+1 rounds as one of those zombies. Mina was healed by Marco just before Mina would have risen as a zombie.

By the time the fight was over, half of us had been infected with the disease, but once the blaspheme was killed the plague went away.

We had just completed one part of Madame Eva’s fortune told quests by removing the source of the walking death.

One other odd thing happened during this fight; Grevan actually got into combat and did something effective. He wasn’t as much of a tool afterwards either.

After the fight he refused to let us burn the defiled church of Lathander to the ground. He intended to reclaim it and remove the taint of evil from it. And we decided to let him and use it as a base of operations as well, for which he thanked us.

Among the zombies we had slain in there was Ashlynn’s two lost comrades.

Do you know what that means?
We got all kinds of loot! We got the stuff off the fallen priest of Lathander, the blaspheme, Theo, Skellex, Ashlynn, and Ashlynn’s friends!

You just have to love the neutral-greedy alignment. But what we ended up with was several magical armors and masterwork weapons we had to sell most of, and plenty of one-shot divine scrolls, potions, and odd alchemical items that may come in handy.

Kelvin got an Amulet of Health +2, which he desperately needed. Even though I rolled pretty decent hit points, 30hp just isn’t enough in this world.

But Kelvin had to cast Identify twice; once for the Amulet of Health +2 and once for the Cloak of Charisma +2. Everything else could be identified pretty easily; it was all +1 except for a greatsword +2.

The first ID was cast from a scroll, which killed the remainder of the day since ID still has an 8 hour casting time, even off of a scroll.

Then some more bad things happened while we tried to rest.

Dozens of wolves began howling outside the church and scratching at the doors at midnight. Luckily the rest of the group had been helping clean and board up the place while Kelvin was casting ID, plus Dannovich, prior to his fall had done plenty to fortify the church through the recent years.

After fifteen minutes they left.
Then at 2am they returned.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Then at 4am they returned.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Then at 6am they returned.
After fifteen minutes they left.

Their only goal was to deprive us of sleep, and it worked. We had to spend several extra hours in the morning to make up for the lost sleep.

Kelvin memorized his spells and cast ID for the second item while rest of the group continued the reparations on the church and they made time to investigate the church’s graveyard. They found evidence of one particular grave with recently dug up soil all around it, with what appeared to be signs of clawing from underground. They made note of that for tomorrow.

The wolves returned and repeated their activity from the previous night. The distress on our sleeping habits caused us to get a -1 penalty on all Will saves until our sleep patterns return to normal.

This time anyone who was on guard duty would occasionally look out a church window. At one point we saw a hundred ghostly blue figures emerge from the graveyard and make a trek to the castle where Lord Strahd “lives”. We could even make out the ghostly images of Theo, Ashlynn, Dannovich, and Skellex in the mass of apparition.

We don’t know what that means, but I doubt it’s good.

The next morning when we were about to investigate the graveyard, as almost an afterthought, we got our new party members (this also could have happened the previous day, I have forgotten). Since they had the “Hey I’m a PC!” stamp on their forehead, we immediately accepted them into our group, though they didn’t get anything special from our loot (yet). I personally don’t like doing that, but I also don’t like wasting time on introductions every week either, so with a few role-playing based reservations I let it go.

First there was Ian. He is Aaron’s new PC who is very similar to his Ian of the previous campaign (he even said he was too lazy to even bother changing the name). He is a fighter/rogue type specializing in whirlwind attacks, polearms, and tripping.

Then there was Deimos (Day-moes). He is Brian’s new PC, a cleric/fighter (or cleric/something) also from the Necrophontes family who somehow knew of his brother’s death. He came to see proof of his brother’s demise, and to aid us.

Off, 25 feet, to the graveyard!

As expected, the dug up earthen grave had an underground tunnel beneath which led to a crypt area.

And of course we were attacked by undead. This is D&D in a graveyard after all. There were a couple of ghouls (probably powered up a bit) that burst from the walls once we opened a particular coffin, some kind of undead harpy, and a powered up monk ghoul.

But we have two clerics in the group, and Dale is using rules that changes undead turning into holy fireballs rather than making undead run away. This combat started scary, but ended with a whimper. Marco was frozen by a ghoul touch, Ian was tripped as a result of his own failed trip attempt, and Deimos was charmed by the harpy. In spite of that we surrounded the monk and beat it to pulp, holy fireballs fried the ghouls, and the harpy was cornered and bashed real good.

We found a few items of interest, but the big item was a holy symbol of Lathander (which I believe was referred to as the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind). That means we have another checkmark placed on Madame Eva’s fortune to-do list. Now we just need to “activate” it some how.

That was easy enough, so we decided to return to town to see if the zombies were gone from town, as well as the disease.

They were and it was.

We looked around and did some shopping for minor supplies and so on now that the stores can reopen. Bildrath charges double prices because he can.

Kelvin fed the horses. They aren’t dead yet, somehow.

Next we decided to head to the burgomaster’s mansion to find some information there.

On the way we heard some sobbing coming from one of the many boarded up houses.

As usual we investigated and found a distraught middle-aged woman who was very sad because her little girl, Gertruda, ran away from home. She showed us her room which looked like an eight year old girl’s room with rainbows, unicorns, and princes in castles. At first we thought the girl ran off the castle to find her prince, but then the woman told us that Gertruda was actually 18 years old. So now we think Gertruda ran off to get away from her over protective mother. Though the castle may still be where she ran to.

We promised the woman that we’d try to find her daughter for her and left.

Finally we made it to the burgomaster’s mansion.
It was nice and big, and ready to fall apart. The windows and doors were all boarded up and the gate to the place was rusted almost entirely off its hinges.

We approached the front door and a woman’s voice told us to leave unless we had come to bury her father, the burgomaster. We responded that we could do that so long as she accompanied us and answered some questions, but she didn’t give us much new information.

The woman, Irena, stated that her father was murdered by poison from Strahd because her father stood up to him and kept him at bay with the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind (though we’re not sure specifically why). But Mina’s heal check determined that he died of a heart attack from fright rather than poison.

Irena also told us that Izmark the Lesser was her brother. I missed that little bit of information in our previous session.

So off we went with Irena and her dead father to bury him in the village cemetery. She refused to let us burn his body – and you just know that’s going to come back to bite us in the ass, or throat I guess.

On the way we stopped to get Izmark so he could be there for his father’s burial.

During all of this Deimos used it to convert Irena and Izmark to worship Kelemvor. Which is kind of funny because the last time some reverend tried to get me to convert at a funeral almost got that reverend punched (true story).

After that we stopped.

Next session we might try to find some waterfall that we heard about in the city. There’s a pretty good chance that it is the “river that flies” from the fortune telling.

I really like the fortune telling aspect of the game. From what Dale’s told us the results of it actually determine what your goals are for the module. That’s pretty interesting and makes the module somewhat re-playable.

Updated list of clues and thoughts:
- My opinion of Grevan Thalmer has improved, but I still don’t trust him. We haven’t told him that we have the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, and don’t think we should.
- We’ll be getting the Sunsword this next session I suspect. It will probably be in a dungeon behind the waterfall we heard about.
- Something doesn’t seem right with either Irena’s story of her father’s death, or Izmark’s version. Something isn’t adding up, but all I have is a hunch.
- The missing Girtruda is probably in the castle, but I can’t help but think she’s hiding somewhere else. If her mother protected her from the outside world so much, that means she doesn’t know how evil everyone else believes Strahd to be. If she went to the castle, she’s dead. Part of me thinks she might be hiding with Bildrath or Perrywimple, but that is only a hunch. Plus I really need to stop watching so much Law & Order.
- The ghosts from the graveyard could mean anything, good or bad. Part of me just prefers the scorched earth method of problem solving this – burn all of the bodies in the graveyard. But that “solution” offers no recourse if I’m wrong.

Next week Sunsword & maybe Castle Ravenloft.

Ravenloft #2

After several weeks of no D&D, getting back to the game was fun. Well kind of fun.

Dale and I both had just gotten over a little cold bug. Aaron was still a little under the weather. And Justin had to work so he couldn’t make it (Brian ran Tenbeers for the night).

The session kind of started a little slow and ramped up over the evening. That tends to be the standard way most of our campaigns get going. Dale’s eagerness to get the story moving caused him to unintentionally skip a few things, like zombie attack rolls against us and others, but it was a temporary issue. Anyone who has ever run a story-based game understands how easily that can happen.

The group bought a combat pad (hopefully I’ll remember to include a link for it) to help things move a little quicker in combat and to take some work out of Dale’s hands so he can focus on killing our PC’s rather than worrying about the initiative stack. It’s a simple magnetic dry-erase pad that allows us to track initiative order and make notes and such. Anything that makes D&D combat a little quicker is a good thing to me. It did take some getting used to during the first combat, but after that it was pretty easy to use.

We started this session very shortly after the last combat of last session with the dire maggots and vargouilles.

We heard the sound of combat coming from deeper in the city and followed it to see some more shambling zombies, several of which came after us.

So far we haven’t found any normal easy-to-kill zombies. I would say every single one we’ve fought so far has around 40 hit points, a 16 armor class, and can deal around 1d6+4 damage. They are by no means powerful, but they aren’t exactly a pushover. Their biggest asset is their high hit points which allows them to be more of a blocking monster, soaking up damage up front while their allies do something evil in the back.

In this event 4 of the zombies attacked us and occupied our attention while the other 4 beat up on a woman we some of could see fighting them. The fog prevented our spell-slingers from even seeing her from their vantage point, but we could easily hear her.

After several rounds we were able to help the woman, but she was at a mere 4 hit points. So it was just in the nick of time.

She thanked us for helping her and introduced herself as Ashlynn, a paladin of Lathander of the Order of Lightbringers (or something like that). She told us that she too had come to this place to discover the lost artifacts of Lathander, and came with her friends, Frederick and Mathilda, who have not returned since they left the village to search through an old church of Lathander. Then she told us that they intended to go see some great Vistani seer known as Madame Eva. She also made a few verbal jabs Grevan Thalmer’s unwillingness to fight undead, even though he’s a priest of Lathander – which made us like her more.

She also filled us in on the small area behind the barricade (which the zombies had torn down just minutes prior to our timely arrival). There was the Blood on the Vine Tavern that used to be called the Blood in the Vine Tavern. Then there was the general store, but we were told to not expect to buy anything there as the place was never open anymore.

As she was telling us all of this, a very large muscle-bound lummox of a man called Perriwimple exited the general store; carrying some casks. Someone else inside the store relocked the doors. In a few short minutes he had remade the barricade, and then gone back into the store.

We attempted to communicate with the owner of the store, Bildrath, that we wanted to buy some equipment, but were told they were closed (repeatedly). No manner of bribery or threats worked to get that store open.

Next we had to find safe lodgings for the night for Kelvin’s and Mina’s horses. We found an abandoned but sufficiently sturdy home and the put the horses there. Then Kelvin had his owl familiar Amarinth watch over the area in case anything happened.

Yeah, like you’ve never worried about your horses before, those poor horses’ days are numbered. A pair of light riding horses, cooped up in a confined area where zombie attacks occur daily. Plus we can’t even sell them to hand the headache over to someone else.

The next and last place we visited for the night was the tavern.

Note: all names and such are just how I remember them, or are a combination or poor note-taking or misunderstanding something that was said. If I get something wrong, oh well. It’s not the first time, and it’s certainly not the last.

Oh and what a dreary and depressing place that was. There were 3 Vistanis playing cards at one table, a sulking man drinking alone in the corner, and a bartender who couldn’t look more miserable and depressed.

Our bard Marco tried to strike up a conversation with the Vistani, but that went nowhere. They made it pretty clear that they had no interest in talking to us or anyone else who wasn’t a Vistani (or a bartender).

Kelvin tried to talk to the bartender, but all he said was things like “Why bother? We’ll all be dead soon.” Plus this place was just a tavern, and not an inn. That threw Kelvin off. He didn’t know one could exist without the other. He is an adventurer after all.

After the Vistani rebuked him for the last time, Marco began chatting with the man in the corner and offered him a drink.

His name was Izmark the Lesser. This guy helped us with a few bits of information that helped us figure out a little on how this whole mess got started. Mainly it was because the now dead burgomaster of the town had angered the local lord, Strahd von Zarovich, and shortly there after the zombies began their nice visit to the town.

Kelvin asked the bartender if there was an inn or another place we could stay. The bartender told him to find an empty house and stay there. The owners were probably dead anyway.

Kelvin didn’t like that answer so he made a proposition to the bartender.

“We sleep here tonight and we make sure you have at least one last good night of drinking fun before the zombies come back to kill you. I can’t die, and so long as you’re around me tonight you’re fine. So I’ll guarantee you another night you’ll live through, you’ll give us a safe place to sleep, and tonight we drink as if it were the last night we’ll be alive.”

Somehow that worked, even though Dale had me make a diplomacy check. I rolled an 18, so the result was a 17. So we had a decent night of drinking and had good night’s rest. And of course, Grevan paid for it all.

During the night of drinking Ashlynn told us how the zombies came to be. It was caused by a disease that turned you into a zombie when you died. Mina immediately went to checking everyone of us to see if any of our wounds had transferred the disease. One particular wound that Theo had looked a little off, so the next morning Mina memorized and cast Remove Disease on Theo. Theo immediately felt a little bit “cleaner”.

Next we had some decisions to make. Do we go see Madame Eva the seer first to see if she had any information for us, or do we head to the old church of Lathander first to find Ashlynn’s friends? And then, do we bring Ashlynn along with us?

We decided to see Madame Eva first, without Ashlynn, and then return to the village and get her to go with us to find her friends at the church.

The reasons for not including her had more to do with there being 6 of us splitting XP. I felt that someone else in the group was a waste unless they were directly attached to that part of the story. I’m guessing everyone else felt the same way, but no one said it.

After about an eight mile trek through the fog covered lands of Barovia we came to a clearing filled the traveling wagons of the Vistani. (In case you don’t know, the Vistani in Ravenloft are pretty much medieval gypsies in a D&D world.)

We asked to see Madame Eva, and we were brought to her with no trouble. She was a very large and imposing Vistani.

Marco explained to her what we sought (the lost artifacts of Lathander, Ashlynn’s friends, freeing Barovia of its curse) so she brought out some tarot cards (in this case a red US Playing Cards deck).

Dale also had Allen roll a diplomacy check for Marco. Even though Marco had around a +17 in that skill, a natural 1 meant Madame Eva would be doing very little to help us interpret the cards.

Marco cut the deck and she dealt out the cards and gave us our fortunes, which I’m only going to give the quick of it.

The Queen of Hearts
A holy symbol that protects from darkness, it is powerful force for good. Seek it in a cemetery in a place of wisdom. Bring it to the castle to join it with ancient lore.

Jack of Clubs
A tome of ancient knowledge holds the source of the lord’s strength and how to rob it from him. Spend a night in prayer to steal his power and seek the tome where the river flies.

King of Spades
The Lord Strahd himself will be found in the heart of darkness. The darkness seeks light.

Jack of Diamonds
A blade of light will be found in a place of holiness. It can be woken by joining it with other treasures of the castle.

Jack of Spades
Death leads to death and walks the streets of Barovia. The plague of death can be stopped by ending its source.

One final card – the Ace of Hearts
The powers of good will ward us in this place.

Some of that makes obvious sense to us, but not all. Plus it’s really easy for a fortune to get twisted around. Just ask the thousands of “experts” on Nostradamus’s predictions.

We thanked her and left after asking a few other questions of no real consequence.

Next we returned to the village of Barovia to gather up Ashlynn and head to the old church.

We arrived to the church in no time and set about to enter the place and we heard to frantic and unintelligible chanting coming from within.

Dale put us on initiative the moment we entered the place.

Kelvin delayed until “something of interest happened”.

So did Marco.

Ashlynn and Skellex entered cautiously.

Theo, who had turned himself into an alligator, moved far into the church to find the source of the voice. He did find the voice, but he had used all of his movement to do so.

The voice was from a fallen priest of Lathander. He rose from his hiding place holding a spell scroll and cast the spell from it, successfully. The spell was Circle of Death that affected everyone in the church. Theo, Skellex, and Ashlynn had to make a fortitude save of 19 to survive.

All three failed.

Aaron used a DM bribe to get a re-roll, but he failed that one too.

We just lost a third of our party and a plot-driving NPC in the first half a round of combat.

FINALLY Dale delivers on a threat!

We, well the rest of us, immediately kick into action.

Kelvin tosses a fireball right at the bastard. Now for every spell a wild mage casts you subtract three from their level then add 1d6 to get the caster’s effective level for that casting of the spell. I rolled max for a 9d6 fireball that did around 30 damage to the fallen priest.

Then Tenbeers charged in and was able to get right next to the fallen priest.

Marco played an Inspire Courage song that gave us a +2 to attack and damage for a couple of rounds.

The fallen priest, for some unknown reason, ran away from Tenbeers rather than step away and cast. I’m guessing that he was trying to jump down the pit that is in the center of the church. But anyway, Tenbeers critted the guy, doing enough damage to kill him.

Then some more zombies popped out, but they were nothing by comparison to a save or die spell.

Then, us being adventurers, we looted the bodies.

In our searching we found a scroll on the altar. Considering what just happened to us, Kelvin wasn’t about to read some scroll lying out in the open in a tainted church for all to see.

Kelvin cast a Detect Magic spell and got some strong necromancy coming from it. Burning it did nothing. That just screamed “Cursed!” to me, so Kelvin packed it up in a scroll case without touching it with his bare skin.

Then we found a hidden compartment in the altar itself. Inside was the Journal of Danovich, who we assume was the fallen priest of Lathander.

It detailed the man’s descent into madness after his son died. His grief drove him to reading the “cursed manuscript” (told ya) and his subsequent recanting in his faith to Lathander.

The journal had a couple other tidbits of information of interest to us. One was that Irena was not the burgomaster’s real daughter and another was that the tome that Strahd kept has many notes that could be the key to his downfall and is hidden somewhere in the castle library.

Then we gathered next to the pit and prepared to see what is down below before we stopped for the night.

Next week Brian will be bringing in a cleric of Kelemvor and Aaron will be bringing in a rogue/fighter that he said will be similar to a previous character of his (Ian Cabatuan).

My current list of clues and thoughts:
- The loss of Ashlynn was a minor blow if her Lightbringer friends are still alive and well.
- The owner of the general store is going to be a thorn in our side.
- Our horses are dead.
- Grevan Thalmer is going to get us screwed over somehow. He’s the guy in the movie who thinks he’s doing the right thing but causes something really bad to happen. Like the redheaded guy in Ghostbusters who gets the containment grid shut down.
- The holy symbol relic of Lathander emits light constantly and is hidden somewhere in a mausoleum. It might require activation, and that will probably be done in Castle Ravenloft.
- The blade of light pretty much has to be the first Sunsword, the other relic of Lathander and will probably have to be activated like the holy symbol.
- The tome of ancient knowledge might be the same tome that Strahd keeps his information in.
- Whatever is in the pit we’re about to enter is the source of the plague and we’ll put an end to it soon.

As for Dale killing our characters with little to no warning, I was actually happy that happened. There has been so many times where he had said “there could be a potential TPK tonight” and it was nothing.

Now I’m not saying that I want every single combat to be an ultimate life or death struggle for us, but having a big and nasty fight on occasion is fun.

Plus Dale made it clear that this module is dangerous, so a PC dying should not be a big deal to us.

In any other campaign, killing even a single PC before they even know who their threat is would be a big no-no. In this campaign we’re taking it with a smile.

Ravenloft #1

Ah, where do I start?

Well first off, kiss the podcast goodbye. I enjoyed doing it, but due to the impending dual-addition to my household, I am having less and less time to devote to editing it. And there is no way I’m releasing it totally unedited.

Plus it will allow me to not care so much about all of the little things that mess with the recordings; hay fever, sniffles, bags of chips, pop can openings, the sounds people make while eating and drinking, etc.

I’ll still be recording our sessions, but really only for my own posterity kind of thing. It’s kind of cool going back a year or two and listening to a session.

I will try to keep doing the blog entries for as long as I can.

Sorry for the lateness of this entry, but I have plenty of time to get it in. We didn’t play this past Friday because half of us couldn’t make it, and we won’t be playing this coming Friday as Dale can’t make it.

For this campaign I roughly sketched out about half a dozen potential PC’s I would take to help patch any holes in the group. With 6 players you’d think we’d have everything covered, but not quite. Brian had to modify his character to take a level or two of rogue just so we could have a trap-finder. I had to fill the arcane casting role.

But I didn’t just make your standard “I’m a wizard” character. I’ve done that and want to try something at least a little different, so I added a level of wild mage to it to make it a little more interesting. The 3E wild mage is much tamer than its 2E predecessor, but I’m not too worried. I don’t expect this PC to have too long of a lifespan as I don’t expect to play him like I usually would a wizard.

Justin made a dwarf fighter named Tenbeers. He put all of his character building points into the physical stats, leaving the mental stats to languish at 8, 10, and 6. Otherwise this PC is just an extension of Justin’s psyche.

Aaron made a human (?) druid named Theo. Theo seems to be a bit of a quiet loner, preferring to use non-verbal communication when possible. He originally had an ape companion, but when Aaron botched the ape’s hit point roles, he let the ape go. Now he’s waiting for an opportunity to try to get another companion.

Joy couldn’t make it, but Dale brought her character so it could be played. She chose to play a cleric of Lathander named Mina (which I’m told has a Dracula connection). She’s using the good and sun domains, I presume for the undead turning bonus. I figured she’d never want to run a cleric again after she found out that a cleric’s main job is to be a walking band-aid. I highly suspect that her decision was heavily influenced by her father.

Brian made a rogue/fighter named Skellex Necrophontes (no clue if I have that spelled even close to right). He came up with a back story that involved his family as undead hunters, but Skellex chose the easier route of theft, but some of his family’s training is still there. He used the PHB2 option Disruptive Attack which means he traded in his Uncanny Dodge to allow his sneak attack bonus to make it easier for us to hit that target by reducing its AC by 5 (the bonus works on undead, but the sneak attack still doesn’t).

Allen chose to play the pitiful class known as the bard. Ok, that’s just my prejudice showing through. I think Allen did some research to try to prove how wrong Dale and I are about bards as Marco was just as effective as every other PC.

Then there’s my PC, Kelvin the Odd. He’s loud, obnoxious, and utterly clueless about it. He is in fact modeled after your stereotypical gaming nerd. Even his owl familiar Amarinth (a play on the word amaranth) knows he’s a geek. His only saving grace is that he leads a bit of a charmed life, getting lucky at all the right times. But he knows it, which makes him think he won’t die an early death, and that all but guarantees that he will. He calls himself Kelvin the Lucky, but it doesn’t take long before people start calling him odd. In spite of his luck, he’s not exceptionally brave. His luck only prevents him from dying, not feeling pain.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0214430/
This guy from the movie Wargames is a good example of him.

I believe all of us had our character creation started prior to the game, but they weren’t 100% ready. This let us share ideas and such prior to fully fleshing out our PC’s.

I think we all bought some potions of Hide from Undead and Protection from Evil, and several of us bought silver daggers. I’m sure +2 stat boosting items, magic weapons and armor, and Vests of Resistance were bought plenty of as well.

Kelvin spent a good chunk of his on additional spells and scrolls. Four spells per level are never enough to choose from for a wizard.

Since I played Mina, and I was rushed for time trying to make sure both PC’s were ready quickly enough, so I just bought for her the basics (full plate +1, shield +1, Periapt of Wisdom +2, etc.) and didn’t research her options too much. If Joy doesn’t like it, oh well.

In spite of his prior statement that he would not aid the party in any way, Dale couldn’t help himself. He kept offering little tidbits of what we “might want to do” or what we should buy, and so on. I wanted him to stop, but I was alone in that as most players are perfectly happy to get help from the DM.

This campaign got started off about like half of them out there; some yahoo offered some adventurers a bunch of money for a supposedly simple task.

Grevan Thalmer (no clue on the spelling) is a priest of Lathander who is on the fast track to making his way high into the church’s hierarchy. It helps that his family is rich with many connections.

For whatever reasons our individual PC’s had, we were all in Mulmaster. He gave each of us 500gp to be his personal bodyguards on some trip to a territory known as Barovia. His research pointed him to the lands of Barovia as the last known place of a lost church of Lathander and potentially some lost relics of the church as well, including the first Sunblade created in the Realms.

We knew nothing of these lands we were heading, and that was probably a good thing.

Grevan hired a boat to take us all from Mulmaster across the Sea of Fallen Stars, to a river that winds itself around some mountains, to a valley on the southern side of the mountains where Barovia is said to be.

There were plenty of signs that showed that we had made a bad decision, but it was too late for us to back out. First, the crew didn’t look too happy. Then there were these weird images we kept seeing out of the corner of our eyes whenever we were near a mirror. And the worst of all was that Grevan woke with a scream one morning.

Everyone ran to his room to find the man holding his holy symbol of Lathander as it dripped with blood. Mina, being of the same faith, was a bit disturbed and checked to see if the blood was coming from the holy symbol, or maybe Grevan had been having a nightmare and squeezed the symbol a bit too tight.

Mina found no physical injuries on Grevan, but she stood guard near him for the remainder of his rest.

Skellex, suspicious that Grevan was not telling us everything, searched Grevan’s room shortly after the bleeding incident. He found nothing out of the ordinary, but still confronted Grevan; warning him that he best not be holding information from us.

The closer the boat came to Barovia, the foggier it became. When we reached our destination, it was not at a dock. The captain got us as close the shore as he could, and then had us tender the rest of the way as he didn’t want to risk his boat hitting the shore thanks to the poor visibility. We hand-waved dealing with getting horses to the shore.

Note: I probably didn’t run Mina as Joy would have liked me to, but oh well. I blame her for not giving any specifics about her character other than deity and stats. So “ha-ha”.

Mina was none-too-impressed with Grevan’s display of faith so far. He had shown himself to be spoiled and a coward. To her (as far as I was concerned) those are not good traits for those who spread the faith of the Morninglord. Then while tendering to the shore he demanded that he be brought as close to the shore as possible so that he would not get wet. So while getting out of boat, she “slipped” and knocked herself and Grevan into the icy cold water.

She apologized and helped pull him up, but he responded by calling her a “stupid bitch” so she let him go so he could fall back in the water again.

Theo gathered some wood and made a fire for Grevan near the shore so he could get dry. This gathered some points for Theo, but he didn’t care.

It was getting late and we didn’t like the feeling we got from the area.

Kelvin sent Amarinth to scout out the local area from above. She reported that there was nothing but forest around that reminded her of home, but there was something “wrong” with it and it creeped her out.

It was starting to get dark and we didn’t want to be too close to the shore during our rest so wanted to get moving. But Grevan refused to move until he was completely dry. Mina started dragging Grevan back to the water until he relented.

It didn’t matter though, it wasn’t too long before we still had to stop for the night and rest in the cold wilderness. There was no trail or road for us to follow, so we just followed the shore in the direction we were told Barovia was in.

Theo’s investigation of the area showed plenty of evidence of wolves, so we set up guards for the entire night.

There was no wolf attack, but we still felt like we didn’t get any rest.

The whole next day it was slightly foggy, but was otherwise uninteresting.

Near the end of the day we found a non-descript inn.

The few who were inside were not interested in us at all. They kept to themselves and actively avoided us. When Marco tried to put his singing to use, he was told by the innkeeper that the people here enjoyed their silence. The price of drink was about five times the going rate as well.

Then we found out that the going rate to sleep in the common room was 50gp a person. It was ok; we all looked at Grevan because he was going to pay for it.

He balked and said that was outrageous and had no intention of paying. The innkeeper stated that we’d be getting four solid walls, as if that really meant something. (On a metagaming level we knew it was worth it, but you need to have a good mood set up to make it all more believable.)

Theo snuck out during this, turned into a wolf, and howled near the inn. That was enough for Grevan to pay up.

During this time a man entered the inn, walked up to us, stated that we looked like adventurers (or good enough to pass for them), and threw a rolled up piece of parchment on our table. The parchment was a plea for help from the burgomaster of Barovia, but written in a frightened and creepy manner. We questioned the Vistani (as he called his kind) but only told us that he was hired to find adventurers (or a reasonable excuse for adventurers).

At closing time, we were given a key to lock up the common room while the innkeeper proceeded to bar and lock the front door, and then his own bedroom doors.

Even while resting at this inn we decided to post guards. During Tenbeer’s guard duty he went back to the unattended bar and more than made up for the overpriced drinks.

During the night we heard plenty of scratching at the doors and windows to the outside. We chose not to investigate.

The next morning we awoke again feeling like we had a poor night’s rest.

Using the directions we received from the innkeeper, we entered the forest and found the road to Barovia.

Not much later we came across a large and rusted iron gate. As we approached it, it slowly opened of its own accord, yet radiated no magic. Theo checked the animal tracks nearby and found no telling information of one side having more animals than the other and none of any trying to get from one side to the other.

Slowly we passed through it.

Once we were all several dozen feet away from it, the gate slammed shut. None of our experiments to get it to open again worked.

Mina accused Grevan of leading us to a prison we can’t leave, Skellex gave him a cold stare, Tenbeers repeated how much he hates humans, Theo and Kelvin kept quiet. Well Theo kept quiet.

(The only one who has tried so far to be genuinely nice to Grevan is Marco.)

But Grevan is genuinely scared now. Mina accused him of not doing his homework and finding out the history of this place. In Dale’s words,”This guy is so smart he’s dumb.” Grevan had done all kinds of research about the surrounding lands for sights to see and places to look for his lost relics, but he apparently failed to miss some of more interesting aspects of the land – mainly that it is haunted.

The fool actually believes that he will be greeted into Barovia with much fanfare, will dine with the lord of the land, he will find his precious relics of Lathander and return home a hero. On a metagaming level, I’m sure the part about him dining with the lord of the land is right – kind of.

Not much later, the fog thickened to a few dozen feet away and we finally entered what appeared to be a village.

The first people we saw attacked us (high hit point zombies, undead dog things, and minor spellcasting undead). After that combat we checked out the nearby houses, all of which were locked and boarded up, or contained more zombies.

Skellex did manage to open a lock and try to talk to the family inside. They begged us to go away. We did, but I believe in the process Skellex accidentally broke their lock. I figure we’ll see that family again later, just not alive.

Shortly thereafter we encountered some “dire maggots”, more zombies, and some vargouilles. The combat was not much of a fight, but only because of Marco’s countersong ruining the shrieks of the vargouilles.

So far in these combats people who have been hit by zombies have had to make fortitude saves and not everyone has made them (but I have forgotten who has failed). Mina checked out everyone’s wounds afterwards, but the DM auto-ruled it as a “they look fine”.

After that we stopped.

So far the campaign has a good start. The only thing that needs a little tweaking is combat speed, which I plan to help Dale with at our next session.

He’s done a good job throwing in some creepiness to the game, but the combats so far haven’t backed that up. But I seriously doubt it’s because combats aren’t harsh. I think it’s just the start of something much worse.

Until next time we play (whenever that is).