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.
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.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 7:01 AM
2 Comments:
Sean,
I just read all of your Ravenloft entries, and enjoyed them greatly. I'll be DMing the adventure for my friends beginning soon, and seeing how things played out in one group is interesting and of help to a DM. So, thanks for taking the time to write them, and I hope that all's well with you, your wife, and your twins.
Kyle
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Glad to be of service Kyle! :)
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