Ravenloft #7

For this session, my head wasn’t into it. Several of us weren’t. No reason.

It was so bad that Justin was actually the voice of reason for the group. That’s messed up.

Joy didn’t make it that night. I forgot what the reason was, but I’m sure alcohol was involved. Aaron played Mina.

Last week we stopped after we barely repelled Strahd from the church, and removed his control from Deimos.

We had also killed the Mountain Fane’s guardian, and intended to investigate a trail that led away from its location, but Strahd showing up and us running made that plan go away.

After resting until noon (to make up for the lost sleep) we decided to go back and investigate the Mountain Fane closer, and see where the trail led.

As we headed through town, we noticed that the three Vistani were loosely following us. Once they realized that we caught them, they changed tactics and came to say “hi” and asked us how we were doing. We told them we were just out and about. They knew we were lying, but it’s not like they could confront us about it. I assume they continued to watch us as long as they could, just from farther away.

So we traveled back to the trail to the ruins that were over the Mountain Fane, and kept going until the trail ended, into a nice view of the forested lands of Barovia.

Irritated with our dead end, the party returned to town with only one plan left, a plan which we later found out didn’t do squat.

We had tried to cast Speak with Dead on the Mountain Fane hag’s corpse, but she made her save to stop that.

We only had two ideas left.

The first would be to cast Augury to ask a question from a deity. But that spell is effectively limited to a short period of time and requires the answer to be the result of a planned course of action. We decided to have Deimos have that spell ready in case we needed it, but we wouldn’t use it unless we had a good reason to.

The second plan was to cast Consecrate on the fanes, all within the same day. So we went to Bildrath’s store and bought three castings worth of silver.

But we still had one minor detail to fill in, we still had to find the Forest Fane and take out its guardian.

So we grabbed a map of Barovia and decided to see if we could triangulate a spot of it based on the other two fanes’ location. If the third spot was in the forest then we’d hit the jackpot. And if they were indeed in a triangle, then there might be something else of interest in the center, or possibly even Castle Ravenloft.

Buzz! Wrong answer!

There was no forest in that spot (the opposite spot was also off the map).

So how about any forest in between the two fanes?

Well indeed there was, but it was getting late so we’d have to do it in the morning.

Plus Gortag and Tenbeers had some drinking to do.

Gortag’s other new friends; those three Vistani fellows were there too. For whatever reason they like Gortag, so Gortag had some drinks with them (it probably has something to do with Gortag not being able to keep secrets).

After losing some gold to them, Gortag was able to get some drinks for them and from them. Then he was able to get them to invite Tenbeers over, who got them to buy him some drinks.

After a few hours of drinking Gortag was the only one still sober enough to be in control of himself. Even Tenbeers had hit his limit.

So Gortag began asking questions of his new friends, while Ian and Mortimer were listening intently and nursing their drinks from the bar.

Apparently they had been ordered to keep an eye on us by their leader Madame Eva. After they described what Madame Eva was like (big, hairy, and she likes it rough) Gortag really wanted to meet her.

They also told us why they are not bothered by the wolves and other creatures of Barovia. It was a deal that the “wise” Madame Eva has struck with Strahd; the Vistani supply him blood and his creatures leave them be. That sounded bad to Gortag, but so long as it’s not him that has to hand over his blood without a fight, he doesn’t care.

So after that we added a new detour for our trek of the next day, we intended to stop at the Vistani camp if we couldn’t find the Forest Fane. If she was so wise, she might know where the fane actually is.

The next morning we headed out to search the area of the forest our plan led us to check out.

Do you know what we found?

Not a damn thing!

The Vistani encampment wasn’t too far away, so in a short while we were there.

The Vistani seemed to be having a good time, for whatever reason.

Deimos took this opportunity to um...take a chance at increasing the number of living on the planet with a Vistani woman. I won’t elaborate.

After that we got to meet Madame Eva and what a stroke of luck, she was going to take us right to the Forest Fane.

And really, we should have seen this coming.

The guardian of the Swamp Fane was a hag.

The guardian of the Mountain Fane was a hag.

Madame Eva was big and ugly, so she could also be described as a hag.

Sometimes I wonder how we don’t have a TPK every single week considering the many obvious things we just keep missing.

Madame Eva led us right to the Forest Fane and turned around and attacked us with the aid of a couple of ogres and a hill giant that appeared behind us.

Early rounds:
Madame Eva fails to affect Gortag with one of her spells, so she closes into melee with us, cause our group to be pinned in on two sides with combatants, and another with rubble.
The ogres close in to get into melee.
Mina is able to cast Prayer and Bless from relative safety (for now).
Ian, Deimos and Mortimer (a bow ranger) have to deal with the hill giant on them.
Ian spends his time bouncing back and forth between the front and rear combats, using Whirlwind Attack whenever possible.
Deimos does his usual splitting of casting and melee.
Mortimer (and his badger companion) gets a round of melee in before deciding to attack from ranged.
Tenbeers hits Madame Eva once or twice.
Gortag fails to connect at all, even while raging with buffs.

Middle rounds:
Madame Eva tears Tenbeers apart. In a rare feat of Dale rolling all of his attacks for her at 16 or better, she deals to Tenbeers over 40 points of damage. A bite, two claws, plus some rend damage leaves him with about 25hp.
One of the ogres does some minor damage to Gortag, the other misses.
Mina attempts to defensively cast Cure Critical Wounds on Tenbeers, but fails the concentration check.
Ian thinks that if Madame Eva alone can dish out that much damage consistently, then we’re hosed, so he heads back to fighting the hill giant with the intent of running next round.
Deimos casts the spell again from the Spell Compendium that causes a creature to take a hostile action (attack or attack spell) to take 1d6 points of damage for each attack. The spell would otherwise be ok if not for the fact that it doesn’t require an attack roll, the target gets no save, and it beats spell resistance. He casts it at Madame Eva who will now take 3d6 each time she performs a full attack, whether she hits or not. (We all agree that the spell is broken, so we’ve encouraged Brian to memorize more of them.)
Mortimer plugs arrows into anyone he can on the battlefield.
Tenbeers starts his streak of whiffing with his warhammer.
Gortag on the other hand hits often enough to seriously hurt Madame Eva. By the end of the fourth round she is down.

Late rounds:
With the appearance of fog everywhere, we pretty much knew Strahd would be showing up very soon, but we still had three combatants to get off our backs before we could make a run for the hills.

Mina attempted to heal Tenbeers again, who by now was in the teens for his hp, but failed the concentration check again.
The rest of the group dog piled the hill giant bringing him down.
But fog was filling the area, meaning Strahd would be here in a round.
Gortag took out one of the ogres (who he got some cleave damage in already with). The next round he moved towards the remaining ogre and took him out with a single attack on a critical hit (3d12+45 damage). I would guess that the ogre is now in two pieces.

Just moments after the last enemy dropped, Strahd popped in on the table of the Forest Fane and several of us bolted.

Ian ran up to Strahd to try to trip him to give us some more time. But that didn’t work.

Deimos tried a turning, but only got 1 point of damage through to Strahd. Mina did the same.

Strahd dropped a Fireball on Ian, Deimos, and Mina, causing Mina to drop to negative hp and go unconscious.

Since Deimos was close by, he healed Mina back up. He then ran one way while Mina stood up and ran another while Ian ran a third direction.

Strahd threw a Fell Lightning Bolt at Deimos, but he survived and saved versus the negative level effect that came with it.

Combat over.

Shortly thereafter we met up at the Mountain Fane again to cast Consecration. There seemed to be no effect and the Fane will still radiating both magic and evil.

Several of the group then began praying to their deities while on the fane, and seemed to respond to it. But after an hour nothing definitive happened, so we moved on to the Forest Fane again to repeat the ritual as we wanted to get all three fanes consecrated before the first spell wore off.

We repeated the same process at the Forest Fane, with the same results.

Finally we repeated the same process at the Swamp Fane, but this time we (as in everyone but Gortag) kept praying for more than an hour. We decided to continue the praying until something “happened”.

With that Dale called it an evening, so he could properly prepare what happens next (and to give a cliffhanger).

Speaking of cliffhangers, we won’t be playing this coming Friday thanks to Memorial Day weekend.

Updated list of clues and thoughts:
- As far as I can tell, everything else we need to do is going to be in Castle Ravenloft, unless this cliffhanger does something entirely unexpected.
- I expect the results of a full night of prayer at the Fane to call the forces of good and evil to the spot we’re at for something big, but not necessarily a battle.
- We still have to find out what happened to Girtruda, which I’m still betting is in the castle.
- I’m split against whether we should attack the Vistani for what Madame Eva has done or not. I guess it depends on how involved they were and whether or not they are more victim than aggressor.

See you all in two weeks.

Ravenloft #6

(Skip down below if the grammar hurts your brain.)

Hello, my name Gortag Crushface.

My daddy show me how to fight with axe and show me bestest parts of monsters and aminals to eat.

Daddy is gone now, so Gortag got to do all things for himself.

Little while ago me found a little boat and crossed over river, but river not behave and not do what Gortag say. Now me in weird place where trees look down at you all angry and not up at clouds and smiley.

Then the wolfses come. Me like to play with some of them, but there was more of them than Gortag could count and they was all snarly and hungry-looking. Gortag know that look means “me no wanna play”, so me run fast away.

Then me almost ran into other guy running from wolfses too.

Then we found church and wolfses not come out of woods. People in church let us in after they cast spell to see if Gortag evil. They not know, but me get that all the time, so Gortag just sit there and hope wolfses stay in woods.

Now me got new friends. Me hope they better friends than ones from Zenty Keep, those not good friends at all. Now they no move no more, hehe.

First new friend is Mortimer. All me know bout him is that me run faster.

Then there E-un. Him likes to use long hook to grab your legs and make you fall down. Dat is not fair fighting!

Then there Meena. She like icky sun god. Bleck!

Then there Day-moss. Him never smile and look at Gortag funny.

And me favorite new friend is Tenbeers. Him got good name that means what it say. When people who cast spells gotta rest extra hour in the mornin’, Tenbeers do his normal breakfast of ten beers. Hah, dis guy got his head on straight!

There also Sir Urk and Grevin, but they stay in church all the time.

Gortag’s new friends tell him that they need new friends cuz they lost their last friends. Dat weird cuz whenever Gortag get lost me just yell out till someone find Gortag. If friends show up, Gortag not lost no more. If monster show up, Gortag not hungry no more.

So me make deal with new friends, they need Gortag’s axe and Gortag get a bag of gold every week and all the monster meat me can eat.

Yay! Monster meat!


Horrible grammar ends here.

I just wanted to see if I could make MS Word’s grammar and spell-checker explode. It didn’t, but my screen has enough red and green to make you think it’s Christmas time.

This session was enjoyable. We spent the first half of the night doing some role-playing and the second half of the night as one giant series of fights, one after the other.

I kind of wish I could put the first half of this session back up on the podcast, but oh well.

The night pretty much started off with Mortimer and Gortag being introduced to the group, with the standard “I’m a PC” stamp on their heads.

When Gortag and Perrywimple met, it was pretty funny as they are both pretty damn dumb (Gortag’s intelligence is 6). Then right afterwards Tenbeers spotted a bar, at 9am. The bar has always been there, it was just the way it played out that was funny.

While we were at the bar, the usually introverted Vistani got up and started dancing, so Gortag joined them. Then at about the same time, Tenbeers felt really sick to himself. In actuality the Vistani had poisoned Tenbeers somehow and the dance was either a spell being cast or a distraction so something could be slipped into Tenbeers seventh beer.

After that Tenbeers stopped with the beers. He instead moved on to whiskey.

While doing our various shopping for supplies, we asked around where the second highest mountain in the region was (because the first is the mountain that Castle Ravenloft is on).

We had decided that the Forest Fane would not be so easy to find, but we might get lucky with the Mountain Fane. We really had nothing better to go with.

The hill we were directed to was not that far from the Tser Waterfalls we were at not long ago.

So the group traveled there. During that time the party filled in their new members what the task was and why it was being done. They also made sure to point out thickening fog was bad because it meant Strahd was coming.

We found a trail leading up to the hill and followed it until we came to some ruins.

It was about noon at that time, then some incorporeal creature called a Caller in Darkness attacked us. But a couple of shots from Mortimer’s bow sent the thing running – by sinking in to the ground (something about sunlight weakens it).

We searched the area and eventually found a trap door from which we could hear a very faint humming coming from below.

We prepped up and entered the cramped hallways of the area below and had another fight very shortly afterwards with a couple of babau demons. This was not the best display of Gortag’s or Mortimer’s combat prowess as Gortag kept missing (I was rolling like crap) and Mortimer couldn’t beat the babaus’ DR10/good.

But everyone else was able to pull their weight in this one. Eventually Gortag was able to score a hit with a full power attack with his greataxe and left a mark.

Next we were in combat with another hag who was a guardian of the Mountain Fane. When she dropped the party told Gortag to grab her and ran until he got to town.

Then the Caller in Darkness showed up again to stop us. But Deimos cast Ghost Touch Weapon on Gortag’s axe, so Gortag (while still raging from the hag combat) 5’ stepped in and hit twice with a full power attack leaving the thing so close to dead that only a few points of damage. But that’s not before it tried to have several of the party try to attack themselves with their own weapons.

So Gortag grabbed the hag’s body again and went back to running.

We knew Strahd was on his way, but we had no clue how long it would take him to find us.

Not long apparently.

Gortag and Ian were the first out of the trap door, and when they came up, fog was everywhere.

Strahd cast Waves of Fatigue, which slowed us down. But like before, we ran separate directions.

Then the rest of the group came up from below a round later, and they all scattered to the winds.

But a random die roll caused Strahd to pick Deimos as a target for mental domination. (Actually he was the second target, but Tenbeers made his save.) Brian failed that roll.

An hour or so later we all regrouped back in town, including Deimos.

That night while several of us were haplessly resting away, Deimos started pulling the boards off the windows of the church and intended to open the window to let Strahd in while we slept.

Mortimer and Mina were on guard at the time and they noticed what was going on. They grappled Deimos and alerted the rest of us.

Then while the rest of us were about to run to help, we noticed that the boards were magically falling out of place on the barred front door.

While one half of the party was pinning down Deimos, the other was trying to reinforce the front door because Strahd was now blasting it off its hinges.

A Protection from Evil spell brought Deimos back to his senses (for a while), but Strahd had destroyed the front door to the church and now intended to attack us.

There were eight of us (seven if you don’t count the manacled Deimos), so Strahd was not in his most optimal situation.

He fled as we closed in on him.

Next week, who know what we’re going to do with the Forest Fane. And we’re fairly sure Strahd’s going to do something extra special for us.

Updated list of clues and thoughts:
- The Forest Fane is either going to be really hard or really easy to find. There was another trail leaving the ruins of the Mountain Fane, maybe there’s something more there for us to check into.
- Killing a Fane guardian pretty much immediately alerts Strahd to our presence and what we did.
- We should probably have cast Speak with Dead on the hag, but we buried in the cemetery.
- I like playing Gortag until the combat starts, then it’s “wait until your turn so you can roll a ‘4’ and then wait some more”.
- I don’t want to lose any more PC’s in the group, especially my own.

See you all next week.

Ravenloft #5

Do you know what would be funny?
Watching Dale run an arcane caster who only casts non-combat spells. No defensive spells allowed, and especially no offensive spells.
He can do it, but he will squirm the entire time.

It used to bug him when I would run a wizard and I’d only have about 25-40% of my useful spells being combat spells. He’s more used to it now though.

For this session I believe I put Kelvin’s spells to optimal use; offensive, defensive, and miscellaneous. By the end of the session he had only Web and Levitate left to cast, when he started with the above plus Benign Transposition, Nerveskitter, Magic Missile, Ray of Enfeeblement, Mage Armor, Baleful Transposition, See Invisible, Regroup, Fireball, Haste, and Orb of Electricity. That’s 11 out of 13 spells cast.

Why am I kind of proud of simply casting spells? Because it’s hard to judge when to hold back your spells for later and when to let them fly like there was no tomorrow.

This was a good session where the combats we had challenged us appropriately, and our actions had consequences.

Joy was not feeling well so Aaron played Mina.

We started off with us waking up the morning after beating up on the crazed, dual-axe wielding dwarf and returning to town and trying to find out some information about the fanes/shrines that were mentioned in the Tome of Strahd.

Sir Uric knew nothing of them.
Grevan knew nothing of them.
The bartender knew nothing of them.
Izmark the Lesser knew nothing of them.

We tried to ask the Vistani, but they were unwilling to help. In fact they would rather draw weapons than talk to non-Vistani. Some of us really wanted to take them on, but decided not to…yet.

We found out a grand total of two things. The adventurer we found stuffed by the crazed dwarf was not local to the area and his wife lived in Waterdeep. And the wolves serenaded the church of Lathander while we weren’t there. Otherwise we have nothing new to work with.

So right then I was thinking that either Dale has missed giving us some clue, or we missed something.

All we could do was to find the fanes/shrines on our own.

There’s the Forest Fane. We assume that to be somewhere in the forest. But this damned land is nothing but forest.

Then there’s the Mountain Fane. Guess where we assume that one to be. But none of us are naturists/survivalists, so that path isn’t so easily taken. It is still a better choice to work with than the Forest Fane.

Then there’s the Swamp Fane. According to Sir Uric there is only one swampy area in this region, so that gives us a place to go. He did warn us that the mosquitoes there are as big as F14 Tomcats. Kelvin has no clue what an F14 Tomcat is like, but if the mosquitoes are as big as a housecat then we are in for some trouble.

With no better option presenting itself to us, we got directions to the swamp from Uric and head out.

Our first encounter was not all that surprising. There was an area about 30’ across that we were trying to get through, one at a time. While a couple of us had crossed, a shambling mound appeared and a mosquito swarm coalesced and attacked while Marco was in the middle of crossing.

Kelvin got everyone back together with a Regroup spell (gathers allies from short range and teleports them next to you), which helped Marco get out of harm’s way and brought Ian and Deimos into melee, but also set us up for the mosquito swarm’s attack.

The swarm was basically immune to weapon damage and most spells, and was able to swarm around 4 of us and drain a point of constitution and do a point of damage. The only solution to that was Kelvin’s only area affect spell, a Fireball, which did double damage to the swarm and killed it. Then the rest of the party itself swarmed the shambling mound and took it out.

After that, getting across the swamp was no big deal, but shortly there after we had to start wading through knee-deep swamp water, cutting our movement in half.

We were approaching a rubble strewn strip of land with some odd structure on it when we were attacked by something call a blood eel and a hag of some sort.

The hag kept trying to use her “evil eye” on the fighters, but they kept making their saving throw. But the hag failed her saving throw when Kelvin chose to Baleful Transposition with her (two targets, who get a save if they like, switch places). That put Kelvin safely out of the water and away from any further blood eels and put the hag right in the midst of our fighters. Ian critted her out of existence as the rest of the group pounded the eel to fish-goo.

As the party came to the strip of land another blood eel popped out, but a good random level roll from Kelvin’s Orb Electricity left the thing with single digit hit points, which pretty much meant the thing was doomed for even trying.

With everyone back on dry land, we found out that the odd structure was most likely the Swamp Fane and that the hag was probably its guardian. But nothing conclusively told us that it was broken, so we searched it, tried to dispel the faint humming of magic we could hear coming from it, and even tried to dig into it to verify or guaranteed that we had destroyed and hoping to find a clue to the whereabouts of the next fane.

We never found any kind of answer.

But we did notice that the fog was getting thicker.

“Look out!” was about all Kelvin could get out before the Fireball hit.

We apparently didn’t pay close enough attention to the Tome of Strahd.

I visited the Swamp Fane, the Forest Fane, and the Mountain Fane, and claimed their power for my own. Thus I solidified my grasp on this dim shadow of life.

I made the fanes my own, and I have become the Land. Also I made the fane-servants my own, and they serve me as once they served the saints of the fanes.

In other words, we might have just hurt Strahd and he decided to show up and hurt us back. I believe it to just be an image of him, because it was daytime, but there was no time to really experiment.

Post fireball results:
Ian was at -3 hit points.
Deimos was at 6 hit points.
Mina was around 10 hit points.
Marco was at -6 hit points.
Tenbeers was over 25 hit points.
Kelvin was at 14 hit points.

Initiative was rolled and Kelvin was first (thanks to a luck reroll, the Nerveskitter spell, and a +2 modifier). Since Kelvin can’t die, he chose to take on Strahd directly. He cast a Sudden Empowered Ray of Enfeeblement and hit Strahd with it (note: I later found out that undead are immune all of that, oops – but it didn’t really matter, and Aaron usually catches that stuff). Strahd lost 9 points of strength, making Kelvin his primary target, just what I wanted.

Out of game I basically figured I was sacrificing Kelvin to get the rest of the group time to stand up and run.

Mina, receiving a big bonus to turning thanks to Lathander’s sun domain, hit him hard with a holy-ball, and did a whopping 9 points of damage with it. Later when Deimos would try the same thing, there was no effect.

Strahd put a big bullseye on Kelvin and hit him with a special Magic Missile spell that drains a level with the first missile. But Kelvin, being a wild mage, was able to scatter it randomly to all targets within 20’.

Deimos was hit by the level draining missile, oops.
He also was hit by another normal one, but he lived through it because he had just healed himself.

Marco was hit by two missiles, leaving him at -14 hit points, oops.

Ian was hit by a missile, leaving him at -8.

The next round Kelvin taunted Strahd and threw a Magic Missile at him. The Mina attempted to turn again for no effect.

Strahd responded with a Lightning Bolt, which also had a level drain effect on it. Dale rolled 10d6 for 36 points of electrical damage.

If I made Kelvin’s Reflex save (somewhere around DC18 I would guess), he’d be at -5 hit points. Then I would have to save the level drain Fortitude save (DC20 I guess), or lose another 5 hit point and be at -10 hit points.

I failed the Reflex roll and Kelvin turned into a not-so-lucky, not-so-invincible, pool of goo at -23 hit points.

Woohoo, five sessions is a lot longer than I thought he would last!

After that everyone scattered.

Tenbeers, being the last to leave the battlefield, survived two rounds against Strahd before running. Strahd was floating just inches above the stagnant swamp water, so Tenbeers couldn’t get into melee with him. Tenbeers saved versus the domination attempt, but couldn’t do much about the 3 level Enervation drain.

Later the remnants of the party regrouped and quickly grabbed the bodies of Marco and Kelvin. The nearby sound of hunting wolves meant that they had to grab what they could off of the bodies and run. Hopefully they won’t see those two ex-PC’s later.

They next ran back to Barovia and quietly rested.

Deimos’s level loss was not when he made the save for it the next morning.

Now I know what you’re thinking, I caused Marco’s death. You can look at it that way.

Or you can look at it this way, in a “what if” alternate reality line of thought:
Round 1 (post Fireball)
- Kelvin hits Strahd for 9 points of strength loss (yes, a goof, but oh well).
- Mina hits Strahd with an empowered holy nuke.
- Deimos heals himself putting him somewhere in the mid-teens in hp.
- Kelvin takes an average of 17 points of damage from Strahd’s draining magic missiles, leaving him at -4. Then he probably will fail the save vs. level loss, so now he’s at -9.
- Marco bleeds a little (-7).
- Ian stabilizes (it happened in the real scenario).
- Tenbeers shoots at Strahd with his crossbow, but it has no effect.

Round 2
- Kelvin fails to stabilize and dies.
- Mina rushes to Marco and heals him, or stays there and heals herself. For now we’ll say she healed Marco.
- Deimos heals Ian to positive hp and quicken turns Strahd for no damage.
- Strahd cast’s the level draining Lightning Bolt (36 damage) at either Mina or Tenbeers and chances are another PC is in the line effect. If I were the DM, the cleric holding the holy symbol of a sun god would be my target. Scratch Mina and Marco as Mina will probably fail her Reflex save.
- Ian gets up and runs off the map.
- Tenbeers starts moving away.

Round 3
- Deimos tries another quickened turning and runs off the map.
- Strahd tries to dominate Tenbeers but fails.
- Tenbeers gets a little farther away.

Round 4
- Strahd casts Enervation at Tenbeers and drains 3 levels.
- Tenbeers gets off the map.

There, I’ve justified my action as helping the party more than hurting it. I saved Mina’s life by scattering the damage amongst the party and making a target of myself to take the Lightning Bolt the next round rather than die directly from the Magic Missiles.

Eh, believe what you want.

I was playing a wild mage. Adventuring with one of them is asking for trouble.

But dat ok cuz next week me gonna bring in me gud friend Gortag Crushface, half-orc barbarian. Him gud at killin things.

I believe Allen will be bringing in a bow-using ranger.

Updated list of clues and thoughts:
- Next on our to-do list might be to wander search around the base of the mountains, hoping to find something useful.
- The next time we assault a fane guardian we need to get in and out real fast. Maybe, if things are going our way, we’ll ambush Strahd. Yeah, and then we’ll replace two more PC’s.
- I wouldn’t be surprised if the next fane’s defenses are beefed up a lot.
- After talking a little with Sir Uric, I’m fairly sure that Strahd and his minions cannot enter the chapel that is within Castle Ravenloft. The ace of spades mentioned something about the powers of good protecting us. It seems to fit, but who knows.
- Several of Strahd’s spells come with a nasty level-draining effect. This almost guarantees that we’ll be walking around with negative energy protection spells on as much as possible.
- Strahd being able to attack us during the daytime concerns me. I’m hoping that it was because of something that we can fix, like destroying all three fanes. In case it’s the mists protecting him, I would like to find a spell that can effectively lift the mists and allow direct sunlight in.
- We should have paid more attention to the Tome of Strahd, though it probably wouldn’t have changed anything for this session.

See you all next week.

Ravenloft #4

We learned a couple lessons in particular for this session, and only one of them has anything to with the game.

Lesson #1 – Do not, under any circumstance, look at whatever picture Justin wants to show you on his cellphone. You will regret it.

Lesson #2 – The easiest way to get treasure in Ravenloft is to let an NPC join you. Their death is almost guaranteed, and then you loot their bodies. We didn’t use this tactic this session, but it’s certainly an option.

Everyone attended this session.

And a quick correction, the Tome of Strahd is where the river flies, not the sun-sword.

We started the game where we left off, early evening of our fourth day in Barovia. Some of us got some early rest before the wolves returned, while others chose to look around the higher locations of the church of Lathander for the sun-sword. Something in the Madame Eva’s readings for the sun-sword talked about looking for it where the faithful reach to the sky. Nothing was in the church’s steeple or rafters.

As expected the wolves returned for their nightly serenade. We still have a -1 to Will saves thanks to those wolves. We discussed Kelvin just looking outside and nuking the wolves from a safe point, but he refused on the grounds that he isn’t into suicide missions. Maybe later he’ll change his mind.

After sleeping in the next morning, we went back into town to get some information about where the local waterfall was located and to find out about the highest locations in Barovia. A short while later we were back on the road to the Tser Waterfalls.

We also found out that the highest location in Barovia is the tower of Castle Ravenloft. When we clarified it to the highest natural point in Barovia we were told it would be the foundation stone of Castle Ravenloft. Sheesh, it’s like this whole module was to get us to go Castle Ravenloft, heh.

Another bit of information - there are three shrines out there that may contain clues or other things of interest that we should check out.

It’s like the town is just begging to be taken over by undead. A whole town full of superstitious but non-religious people who refuse to burn their dead. M…O…O…N; that spells dumbasses.

A mile or so down the road and the road split, with a signpost pointing the way to the waterfalls. But a shout from the nearby graveyard got our attention.

A man clad in dark armor, with a raven helping him, was fighting some wraith-like creatures in broad daylight. It took only a couple of rounds for the holy fireball blasting clerics took out all but one of the wraith-things. Those “holyballs” are broken in our opinion, but oh well – that’s how the module has changed turning.

He introduced himself as Sir Uric, the last Knight of the Raven. He thanked us for the help and told us of his mission (fight evil, hurt Strahd, etc.) and we told him of ours. He offered to join up but we declined and told him about Grevan’s task about getting the church of Lathander back into shape.

Yet another NPC’s life we saved by not letting him join us.

Further down the road, along the river and not too far from the waterfall we came across a pack of wolves just watching us. Mina cast Detect Evil and the wolves (actually worgs) tested positive, so we killed them.

It didn’t happen just like that, but the only real damage we had was from Tenbeers stepping into a bear trap and Deimos being the lone combatant out front and got tore up a little bit. Kelvin seems to be specializing in transposition spells, so he was able to get both of them out of their particular situation, but Tenbeers did have to switch to ranged attacks because he was afraid he’d step into another bear trap and didn’t feel like searching around.

After healing up and having Ian search everywhere along our path out to 60’ for traps, we moved on and finally found the waterfall.

As expected, there was a cave behind the waterfall, and of course we went in.

In D&D I’m fairly sure that 90% of all waterfalls have a cave behind them, and 100% of caves are inhabited by monsters.

We found several stuffed mammals (animals, were-creatures, and later a human) in the various poses, but two of them weren’t actually stuffed. A feral looking dwarf and his pet wolf were waiting for one of us to cross a rope bridge before they attacked us.

The wolf was pretty much a temporary target while the dwarf was a potential nightmare, but Dale was back to his less then painful hit rolls. The dwarf wielded an axe in each hand and had two attacks with each which could potentially tear one of us apart a round. Having to cross a bridge that would draw attacks of opportunity didn’t help either.

But he’s amongst the dead now. After the usual healing up and checking for diseases, we searched the cave and found a few items of interest, like a stuffed human in and adventurer’s pose (he had a wedding ring with his wife’s name) and the dwarf had a tooth necklace that Tenbeers put on (probably a bad idea). But most importantly we found the Tome of Strahd.

After checking it for magic and traps, but not evil, we read it.

Unfortunately the story in the book sounded a little too familiar to me. I read the book “I, Strahd” about a decade ago. That means I might have some information that could ruin the fun, so when it comes to those potential storylines I will be keeping my mouth shut. Or I could just tell the group what I remember, and can just chalk that up to Kelvin’s intelligence of 19 (17+2 from magic headband).

From the Tome of Strahd –

I am The Ancient, I am The Land. My beginnings are lost in the darkness of the past. I was the warrior, I was good and just. I thundered across the land like the wrath of a just god, but the war years and the killing years wore down my soul as the wind wears stone into sand.All goodness slipped from my life; I found my youth and strength gone and all I had left was death. My army settled in the valley of Barovia and took power over the people in the name of a just god, but with none of a god's grace or justice.
I called for my family, long unseated from their ancient thrones, and brought them here to settle in the castle Ravenloft. They came with a younger brother of mine, Sergei. He was handsome and youthful. I hated him for both.

From the families of the valley, one spirit shone above all others. A rare beauty, who was called "perfection", "joy", and "treasure." Her name was Tatyana and I longed for her to be mine. I loved her with all me heart. I loved her for her youth. I loved her for her joy. But she spurned me! "Old One" was my name to her - "elder" and "brother" also. Her heart went to Sergei. They were betrothed. The date was set. With words she called me "brother," but when I looked into her eyes they reflected another name - "death." It was the death of the aged that she saw in me. She loved her youth and enjoyed it. But I had squandered mine. The death she saw in me turned her from me. And so I came to hate death, my death. My hate is very strong; I would not be called "death" so soon. I made a pact with death, a pact of blood. On the day of the wedding, I killed Sergei, my brother. My pact was sealed with his blood.

I found Tatyana weeping in the garden east of the chapel. She fled from me. She would not let me explain, and a great anger swelled within me. She had to understand the pact I made for her. I pursued her. Finally, in despair, she flung herself from the walls of Ravenloft and I watched everything I ever wanted fall from my grasp forever. It was a thousand feet through the mists. No trace of her was ever found. Not even I know her final fate. Arrows from the castle guards pierced me to my soul, but I did no die. Nor did I live. I became undead, forever.I have studied much since then. "Vampyr" is my new name. I still lust for life and youth, and I curse the living that took them from me. Even the sun is against me. It is the sun and light I fear most. But little else can harm me now. Even a stake through my heard does not kill me, though it holds me from movement. But the sword, that cursed sword that Sergei brought! I must dispose of that awful tool! I fear and hate it as much as the sun.

I have learned much, too, about this land of Barovia. Ancient are its ways, ancient beyond the knowledge of the simple folk of the valley. I have walked the ancient ways, secret roads linking three fanes of might, and I have become the land.

Three ancient saints dwelt in this valley long before my coming, and three hidden fanes still give tribute to their memories. I visited the Swamp Fane, the Forest Fane, and the Mountain Fane, and claimed their power for my own. Thus I solidified my grasp on this dim shadow of life.

I made the fanes my own, and I have become the Land. Also I made the fane-servants my own, and they serve me as once they served the saints of the fanes.
I have often hunted for Tatyana. I have even felt her within my grasp, but she escapes.
She taunts me! What will it take to bend her love to me? I now reside far below Ravenloft. I live among the dead and sleep beneath the very stones of this hollow castle of despair. I shall seal shut the walls of the stairs that none may disturb me.

After that we grabbed the bodies and burned them at dusk behind the waterfall (to make it not so obvious where we were sleeping).

Then we rested there (sans the wolves), leveled up (some of us), and called it a night.

Updated list of clues and thoughts:
- We have three more places of interest, the shrines. That means three more fights.
- The fights we’ve had so far are either really easy or really tough. Since the module is written for 4 PC’s, we’re taking the early things down easier but we’re getting only two-thirds the XP. Eventually this will be a self-correcting problem when the math catches up to us and all the fights are harder because we’re 2 levels too low.
- I’m curious as to why the crazed dwarf taxidermist had the Tome of Strahd in the first place.
- I’m disappointed with the writers of the module to not change the storyline enough to make Strahd’s background new, or at least not make it so integral to the story (or at least that’s how it seems to me). I now know why a few things have happened, but won’t state them here. If you’ve read “I, Strahd” or even seen Bram Stoker’s Dracula, you probably know who Tatyana is.