The newbie's falling for the former captain of the guards ❤️‍🔥

Doodle of the day! Izek’s been doing so much better since leaving the Vallakovich family but has been doing worse in other ways

Some Curse of Strahd NPC art I've been hoarding!

oh noooo not me being roped into a second Curse of Strahd campaign!!! How dreadful!!!!! anyway. Here's wonderwall Izek

The 13th session was definitely cursed.

"Lower your weapons"

Izek killed Ismark, we tried to kill Izek, but at the beginning of the battle, only Ireena and Light had full hp. Tyreene's spells didn't work. In the end, Izek was killed by Strahd, and for the first time we agreed with him, because, well... Ismark was killed?? Ireena, by the way, made a deal with Strahd, so Ismark is alive and just hasn't fully recovered yet, and Ireena is in Ravenloft.

Izek and Victor Vallakovich, as they appeared in a good friends COS run - I was asked to play Victor as a guest star and made this illustration of him and Izek for the occasion. The DM gave them a lot more depth and a very interesting codependent (homoerotic) friendship, which was extremely fun to portray as the players.

some low-res doodles of my elf cleric Serissa for my friends homebrew campaign ft. Izek because I think they'd (absolutely not) get along <33

Serissa looks small on his shoulder but it's just because they're both huge, she's 7'4''ft (225cm) and Izek is 11'1''(340cm) also please ignore she isn't sitting on anything I did this at 6 AM!!!

Right-hand of the Town Devil

Version 2 which I really like!

Charmed by the Devil, a (fake) bodice ripper by Luke "Power" Strazni ✨🧛

alternative color under the cut!

They may hate each other but they’re also best friends!! This one shot is so important to me

apparently doing my own Strahdtober so it’s my entry for day#6

Keeping up the fake illustrations ft Izek. I'm late because I had to prep for the sessions of my group and ended up neglecting prepping as well. I played Baldur's Gate 3 instead ... but our session went nice. What I had prepared was enough for our run so I guess the fact that I was playing instead of doing gm stuff went un-noticed. He went to track Ireena down after Vallaki went batshit in my game, and I kinda forgot to roll to see how he was doing. He would track her down to the high peaks of Mt Baratok if he had to. He's just the kind of a dedicated brother who would go to world's end for their lost sibling.

I will polish things one day. One day.

Credits : F2U Pose ref > The Pose Archive ( twitter ) This Izek design is based on the one commissioned to Ernesto Irawan, by the curse of strahd reddit here.

In sacrifice I returned to the fiery eyes ❤️‍🔥

Recent developments with our chosen Curse of Strahd NPCs are: Izek getting a hair cut and finally processing the pact he made with a dark power as a child, and Ismark getting his toenails eaten off by Jeny Greenteeth.

Ezra couldn't help everyone.

[tw: Children in peril. CoS spoilers.]

We had dodged a lot of Vallaki early on. We’d spotted Izek down the road after noticing an array of Ireena look-alike dolls in Blinsky’s shop and booked it out of town as fast as possible. But now Izek had finally heard that the party had Ireena, and he was going to take her from us.

He was sitting on the bridge cresting the river on the road toward Vallaki from the west. The bridge was rigged to explode. And there were children underneath the bridge, he told us, and they would not be released until we handed over Ireena (who wasn't actually with us at the time). They would either blow to bits or simply starve.

Ezra had made himself invisible, to creep up close while the bard was talking with Izek, to look for an opportunity to either disable the explosives or take out Izek himself. He didn't know what Izek wanted with Ireena, but what he did realize, up close, was that the man literally did not have a soul, and that was especially off-putting in conjunction with his mysterious demon arm. On overhearing there were children under the bridge, the trajectory of Ezra’s tentative plan quickly changed.

Ezra ducked under the bridge and managed to calm the children despite his sudden appearance. He was in Sergei’s armor, and he looked like the genasi he was; for once, he hoped they would take him as the morninglord. He set about untying one, then two. The children huddled there beneath the bridge, waiting for a signal to run.

There were two more on the other side, across the river. Heart in his throat, Ezra stepped in to wade carefully across while the bard continued to stall Izek above him.

In the middle of the river, something grabbed his foot. It tugged him down under the water with a quiet plip. For a blinding instant, Ezra thought that was the end. Then he Blinked.

The undead beneath the water couldn't touch him in the Ethereal plane. The water itself could hardly keep him in its grasp. He ran to the other side of the river and popped back into physical being.

But the time for stalling had run out. Things above the bridge had gotten dicey. The undead were climbing up out of the river after him, but he remembered his divine ability to turn them forcefully away. They crumbled. Ezra was dripping wet, fumbling with shaky fingers to untie the third child, when a sudden violent wave of heat slammed into him, flinging him back into the river.

Gasping and spluttering, Ezra’s first thought was still locked on the children, to return to the task his hands had not yet finished. His second thought, as he raked through the rubble, was No. He found a small severed arm in the debris. Bits of charred and bloody flesh.

Izek and the barbarian were struggling in the water. By the time Ezra reached them, Izek was already subdued. He had been dragged onto the shore and was bleeding out. Blood mingled with the water in thin rust-orange swirls. There was a tense moment as the seconds ticked by, and Ezra only stared down at him. They still wanted information. The bard suggested that maybe Izek deserved to die.

Ezra finally stabilized him. “There are worse things than death," he muttered.

The party helped Ezra search for the two children he had managed to untie. They found them in the wreckage. One was still alive, and Ezra managed to revive the other. Guards from Vallaki had heard the explosion and come to investigate. As he handed over the traumatized children to the guards, wondering if the four of them had been friends or siblings or strangers, or if it really mattered, he speculated again: There are worse things than death.

The party imprisoned Izek at Argynvostholt, where Ireena had been staying during that whole ordeal. They amputated and (with some difficulty, despite Ezra's bolstered flames) incinerated the demon arm. But then they let Izek speak with Ireena, and found out what he really wanted with her...

He just wanted his sister back.

A quick plan was made of Nick and Cash presenting as people from the town of Barovia, with Cash using Disguise Person, and from there the two were brought inside. They met the lady of the house, a one Baroness Lydia Petrovna, and while Cash went to explore the house a bit more, Nick was left to examine some of the things the lady of the house was doing. She had going on a small circle of her closest 'friends' where they were making bits for the large effigy in the center of town in two days for the festival, and others were busy sewing clothing for the play that some of the children in town were going to preform before the burning. Nick asked some of these women if they knew anything about what else would be burned, but everyone simply said that just the effigy would be, as a placeholder for the actual sun in the sky. As Nick attempted reconnaissance, Cash found himself heading upstairs into the library where he met with Vargas Vallakovich. Cash excused himself as the Burgomaster was flanked on either side by two dogs, and it seemed that the man was paranoid after a supposed two servants had gone missing.

As the two of them did this, Chiaroscuro, Kenshi, and Alexir waited outside, the three of them circling the building to try and attempt another entrance. As Chiaro got a boost from Alexir to the second floor window, he realized he couldn't enter the building, as the windows were sealed shut and unable to slide open. He attempted to do some recon regardless, and summoned Flicker within the room as the door opened to an exploring Cash in disguise. With this, the two of them went to look for any other things in this house to try and suss out where it was that Strazni stayed, and upon entering the main bedroom where Vargas and Lydia lay, the two saw the rope to the attic and used it to climb the stairs up. In the attic, they saw a mess of items and a clear path through everything where a room at the end of this maddening hoard stood closed. On the outside of the door was a skull painted on the door and a sign on the handle reading "All is Not Well", a jest at Lydia's tic of a phrase that Nick had been hearing all the time they sat, eating and drinking from this small tea party they had intruded upon.

Chiaroscuro was informed that Nick had been cajoled into sewing for the play, and left Kenshi and Alexir to join Nick and the other ladies in the sewing circle. Here they found out that Strazni was a drunkard and a brute and that no one in the town truly liked him, as he was an intimidating sort. Lydia actively did not discuss him, almost afraid of him and requested any other conversation be brought up. Nick was informed mentally through their Psionic Whispers that Cash had found a weird door and excused themselves from the sewing table to go and find it themselves. From here, the other two were also informed and the whole group entered the attic, Chiaro included as he had to excuse himself from the tea party much like Nick. Here, the group kept knocking upon the door, bothering the inhabitant. The door opened to no one in the room and a shout of "Go The Fuck Away!" astonished everyone as the door then closed again.

Following this, they decided to head downstairs to check on a room that Cash informed was locked prior, and upon picking the lock, the five of them stood agape at a room filled with dolls. Every single tiny doll looked exactly like Ireena, all in different little outfits. Nick took a doll as the rest of the party looked around, finding nothing but a chest with a hidden sword at the bottom, and a bunch of cheap wine bottles littering the floor under the bed. This was definitely Strazni's room.

The group decided to try one more time to see if they could approach the door upstairs in the attic, and so they began knocking again, eventually talking the inhabitant into letting them in as well.

Victor Vallakovich was a scrawny man with heavy bags under his eyes, as he dispelled the Invisibility spell he had cast upon himself. He discussed his plans to attempt to leave the country, and showed them his paperworks with the designs to do so on it. He admitted that he had talked two servants into attempting the Teleportation circle he had made and the only thing he saw happen was that they disappeared into a flash of bright purple light. He informed the party also about Strazni and that his father hired the man when he was but a child and that Strazni already had a body count by that point. He also informed them that Strazni's Monstrous Arm was a newer development as he had been missing an arm as a child, and the new one could cast some sort of magic. Victor asked if Chiaro knew anything about that sort of thing because as a Tiefling, Chiaro should have known fire magic, right?

After leaving Victor to his strange magics, the group exited the home no better having entered, only slightly more knowledgeable in the interim. Before heading out of the building, Chiaroscuro decided to leave Flicker in Strazni's bedroom to spy on him as needed during the night. He didn't know if anything would come from this action, but it was better to keep an eye on the man than not.

As they walked back to the Blue Water Inn, Chiaroscuro asked Cash about Tiefling history, as the young man had never known another Tiefling before. While he questioned him, Chiaro shared a bit of private information with Cash about the makeup of his body, as it had been changed by the Khayal that made up Chiaro's patron. Cash commented that he didn't have anything like that at all, and that he should feel proud of being so blessed anatomically like that. It was here that Nick overheard the salacious information, having been left out on overhearing such juicy gossip in the past.

Upon reaching the Blue Water Inn, the group felt slightly demoralized. They hadn't made much progress today, and it was nearly nightfall. The didn't know what left lay ahead of them from this point.

My Curse of Strahd party have finally met a certain Vallakian noble and very quickly came to like him! After a short meeting at Lake Zarovich, he and Rea especially warmed up to each other.

(I mean, you've got to find warmth somewhere. That lake is cold!)

Slightly (barely) smuttier version under the cut