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.