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).