#no! that's not how i like to draw strahd! i just had to finish it in approx 30 minutes before the session | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

monster--boyfriend · 2 years

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Some time has passed since Inac lost his party while trapped in Barovia. Every day he wonders if he could have done something to change how things played out. Now, he has to assume it’s just him left wandering the deep, dark, beast infested woods. Luckily survival was always his strong suit. The wolf pelt keeps him warm and hides his bright scales and the necklace of fangs give lesser vampire spawn cause for pause.

One day, he’ll escape. One day, another band of hapless adventurers will find there way here and when they do, Inac will be there to aid them in finishing what he and his friends were unable to. Until then, he will hunt whatever he can, pick off beast and monster alike, and wait. Because one thing is for certain. No matter what the cost, he will not die here.

I SPENT SO MANY FUCKING HOURS ON THIS

I’m not even completely satisfied with the background, I’ve never DONE one before, but I had to just call it good enough and move on. I need to practice on doing them more because there really is so much forgiveness with digital art that I don’t have an excuse. That being said, I am extremely pleased with myself and my boy.

As I’ve mentioned, the first Curse of Strahd campaign I was playing was cut short and I was never able to have any kind of closure for Inac’s character because of that. I made up several endings in my head but being an angsty fucker, the idea of him being trapped alone there was always my favourite. I would love to be able to play him again as someone who’d been trapped in Barovia and as such decided to draw him after a few years.

There’s two more versions under the cut because like, I loved the wolf pelt idea but there is so much detail under it that I need to share it.

I’m going to go eat a giant salad now

#oc #Inac #I am actually really happy with how HE turned out #just not he background #but fuck it time to move on

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cos-luna · 2 years

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I'm curious, what is going on within your Cos campaign? How did ya'll meet Strahd?

We haven’t meet him yet. I just like trashy evil characters so much that as soon as we started the campaign I felt compelled to draw him. At least figure out how I would like to draw him before we officially meet him. It was self indulgent doodles and also just on brand to Luna getting unsolicited attention from tall handsome evil men. It has happened a few times to her already lol.

However, the rest of my party (I joined the campaign a little later on) saw him on a hill riding his demon horse off in the distance. And only after Luna had joined the party did our group receive letters of invitation to join him for dinner. So we are going to go to his place after we finish this one side quest we are on.

I will try to update later this week as we have a session on Friday (we join every other Friday). But I will say that Luna has at least seen Strahd is image not Strahd himself. Once through the stamped coins with his younger face on them and now through one of the toys she bought last session at the store.

She is so happy to have it. Going to make him say so much stupid shit once she hears his voice at the dinner. She has the actor feat so lol!!

#reply #thornwood32 #CoS #Curse of Strahd #curse of strahd spoilers #CoS spoilers #DnD Luna #Luna!dnd #curse of strahd with luna

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bougainvilea · 7 months

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in my curse of strahd game i’m playing ireena/tatyana (which if you don’t know CoS she’s originally an NPC) as a death cleric. she goes by the name tatyana because she knows it fucks with strahd even if she isn’t sure why it does. worships the raven queen, strong bitch who can bench press you, bisexual who is constantly tired

and anyway last session we started by tatyana drawing three cards from the deck of many things. i made poor decisions. first one made all my wealth vanish. second one summoned an avatar of death that i had to fight alone.

third one ripped tatyana’s soul out of her body and left her body a comatose shell. now the dm hated having me roll ANOTHER new character (tatyana is my second) so when our druid asked if she could use one of her wish spells she had gotten from the deck (she got three free wish spells) not to reverse the card’s effect but to turn back time so the card had never been drawn, he allowed it. tatyana has no memory of what happened, nor do the ranger or our npc cleric friend, but the druid does and she’s having a mild crisis internally about it.

so then we left the room we had barricaded ourselves in to go to the room we hadn’t explored yet and found three flaming skulls. cool cool cool this will be easy… right?

initiative starts. i smack one with my lightsaber the sunsword, we do some damage. the flaming skulls all went one after another in initiative order-

first skull, fireball. ranger went down. we’re all a little crispy. it’s okay, we have two clerics.

second skull, second fireball. okay. we’re level seven and sweating. i have five HP left. the other cleric is down. only the druid and i are standing.

third skull… third fireball.

TPK.

now the skulls aren’t SMART so they just left us to finish dying and floated to the back of the room. we went around the table taking turns rolling death saves.

ranger: rolled a five. one failure.

dm, to me: whew. alright. tatyana?

me: haha this is fine we’re fine we’re - [ rolls a natural 20 ] OHHHHH YES BITCH!!! NAT20!!! I’M BACK WITH ONE HP!!!! shut up let me work i smack all three with a spare the dying-

dm: okay, everyone is stable, but how you gonna get out unnoticed?

me:

dm:

me: very carefully?

so one by one i intend to drag them out into the room we can barricade that we had started the session in. the problem? i have disadvantage on stealth.

luckily the dice gods smiled upon me and i managed to succeed on all three stealth checks, got everyone out, and barricaded the door. after some choice healing from tatyana and our other cleric, everyone got out of it alive and then we went and straight up murdered the skulls in one round because tatyana did a religion check and realized they wouldn’t have the strength to fireball us again.

anyway i thot u would enjoy ily <3

OMG!!!! what a stressful scenario.... so glad the dice gods smiled on u hahahah

ages ago i was part of a party playing curse of strahd w a dm who ensured us that most of what we were doing was homebrew, and that he was making everything creepier... idk that group hasn't played in literally 3 years but every time i see curse of strahd i'm like "no spoiliesss" ahahah. i probably won't play it ever w that group but maybe i will w a different group (:

#THANK U FOR SHARING <3 #dnd #aya responds #mytombofsilence

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lunchador · 3 years

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*drumroll sounds in the distance* Heya! It's me, you're Wondertrev Secret Santa!!! I saw your comments already on the post and on the fic but I wanted to say I am so so happy you enjoyed your gift!! The minute you mentioned D&D I was like I have to do it it's the only way and I had just finished Curse of Strahd before doing the secret santa too lol (I based Diana and Steve's characters off mine and my friends when we played- I always play a fighter because it's the easiest for me to understand and everything in that fic was based off our game it was so fun) the fic was a ton of fun to write and once again happy holidays ❤️❤️❤️

Happy holidays to you too!! Yes I utterly adored it 😭 it felt very personal, so I enjoy seeing your thought process behind it and how you incorporated your experience in it. Like I said it just happen to also hit that soft spot I have for curse of strahd so it makes me enjoy the fic for myself a lot more and it's nicer imo than generic holiday stuff(not that I would have minded that!!) Makes me wanna draw the scene 🤔🤔

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pixelgrotto · 4 years

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Online dungeon delving in the time of the coronavirus

In between my last post and this one, the world really turned upside down thanks to COVID-19. Due to the advent of social distancing in the United States, activities that were once commonplace suddenly became impossible, and ironically, this affected me the most in the tabletop gaming realm, since the various Meetup groups and Dungeons & Dragons sessions that I’d been holding in person were forced to make a speedy transition to a virtual space.

I’m no stranger to online tabletop roleplaying, and that’s actually been the main mode of play between my brother and I for our two previous D&D campaigns, which you can read about here and here. But I prefer to play in person whenever possible, and over the course of 2019 I went all-in on physical props, getting myself one of those handy dandy dry erase boards for sketching maps along with a ton of cardboard Pathfinder Pawns to serve as miniatures. (No, I haven’t gone about purchasing and painting metallic minis, since that is a very expensive road I am not yet prepared to hike upon!) In 2019 I also ended up starting not one, not two, but THREE new D&D campaigns for friends, and along with another ongoing campaign that I’d been running (which recently finished Curse of Strahd), that meant I had a whopping four in person groups that suddenly had to make the switch online when the coronavirus hit.

Thanks to my games with my brother, I became a firm believer in Roll20 in 2018, and even used it to display images on a monitor for my Curse of Strahd players before I’d invested in dry erase boards and Pathfinder Pawns. But converting so many in-person games into online ones was an overwhelming prospect. Initially, I considered playing only via Google Hangouts, Facetime, Skype or Zoom, but the fact that the vast majority of my D&D players are relative newbies who make me hold onto their character sheets meant that at the very least, I’d have to digitize the info they needed to play. Both my players and myself were by this time also used to the maps I’d sketch out and the minis we’d move around during combat, so using a text-based, theater of the mind solution like Discord wasn’t ideal either. (This isn’t to say that Discord isn’t a perfectly viable method for some groups, which multiple “how to play D&D during the era of the coronavirus” articles have pointed out. I just didn’t think it was the best bet for my groups.)

This led me back to Roll20, and the very busy business of digitizing eleven character sheets and re-creating the tokens, maps and playlists that I’d been using in our real-life games online. Frankly speaking, I simply had to grit my teeth and do the work...and this took a long time, though I kind of dug my own hole by making the decision to DM four games at once in the first place! But as I was going about this project, I discovered a few tricks to speed up the process, making it significantly less life consuming than it would have been otherwise.

First off, it’s very tempting to treat Roll20 like a fancy video game level editor and go all-out programming nice maps with tons of graphics. (I did this for the games with my brother.) You can even purchase packages for official D&D adventures that have done the hard work for you, giving your maps incredible doodads like dynamic lighting. (I’d done this for Curse of Strahd.) I made the decision to NOT go this route for the four games I had to convert, however, simply because there wasn’t enough time to add bells and whistles. Instead, I kept the maps to the absolute minimum, only making one good-looking map with official artwork that depicted the “main area” of each of the campaigns, which were all Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk mainstays like the city of Waterdeep, the jungle land of Chult and the seaside town of Saltmarsh. Then I created a separate map with an old parchment background which I designated as the official battle/encounter map, treating it as I would my dry erase board in real life. Whenever the characters ended up in a special scene or a combat scenario, I’d merely move their tokens to this map and then use Roll20′s freehand tool to drawn in the surroundings by hand, keeping things quick and simple. Were the resulting sketches the prettiest things imaginable? Perhaps not, but as the above screenshots can attest, they got the job done, and in one game, my players even joined in to draw certain parts of the map with me. Collaborative tabletop gaming!

As for character sheets, you can input those manually into Roll20, but I decided to make use of the drag ‘n drop function of the platform’s Compendium, which is a massive time saver. Basically, Roll20′s Compendium is a sidebar that provides information from the rulebooks of various RPGs - from D&D to Pathfinder to Call of Cthulhu - in a fashion similar to an encyclopedia. Don’t remember what a spell does? Type in the name and Roll20 will provide that info in an instant, which is supremely handy in the middle of a game when you’re the DM and players are throwing a bazillion inquiries your way at once. The Compendium also has a function where you can drag certain entries - for instance, stats on weapons and items - and place them on a character sheet, instantly populating that sheet with the appropriate dice rolls and modifiers. It’s darn convenient, and actually made me realize some mistakes I’d made when advising my players on the capabilities of their weapons.

Obviously, Roll20′s a business, and the base Compendium only contains the rules, items and monsters listed in the D&D Systems Rules Document, or SRD. If you want the extra stuff in the other D&D books out there, you’ve got to purchase them, and to ensure I had all the stuff I needed, I bought the Compendium add-on packs for the D&D Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. At about 30 bucks a pop, that was 90 dollars spent on extra material for Roll20. Was it worth it? Perhaps not for everyone, but for me - someone who needed to get four games up and running within a reasonable time frame and also knew he would get the most out of this material for future online games in today’s COVID-19 environment? Absolutely. At the end of the day, I succeeded in introducing all of my players to the online world of tabletop gaming this month, and minus a few technical issues here and there (Roll20 still has unreliable voice chat, so use Google Hangouts or Discord as a backup), everything was butter smooth. I even discovered that the online environment actually made one of my most boisterous “beer ‘n pretzels” groups more focused than they’d ever been in real life! Maybe it’s because they’re six dudes who’re more used to interacting with other gamers over the internet than they are with hanging out around a table in real life? Who knows! At the end of the day, the important thing was that the dice rolling went on, despite the chaos of the real world. And now that I’m properly set up with both a physical dry erase board and the virtual one of Roll20, I expect my players and I will be good to go for the foreseeable future...no matter what unexpected twists and turns a global pandemic tosses our way.

#pixel grotto #musings #tabletop gaming #dungeons & dragons #d&d #roll20

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sharkyhat · 5 years

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/ Artist Unknown. If anyone can direct me, please do. Google Image Search didn’t give me anything besides Pinterest posts. / Well, my Sunday night group are coming up on the finale of a long-running campaign in a few more sessions. We started at Level 3 and we’ve hit Level 20 and are finishing the final steps in our campaign against Thrazidun, amassing a world-army to charge into the Abyss to take him on at his doorstep - a collected force of armies of Pelor, Bane, Kord, Zehir, Grummsh, and other Deities both good and evil. We’ve united the powers of Divinity to take on the one threat that they had to unite against in the past. We use the Dawn War pantheon and timeline as a backdrop.

This is quite the experience since we’ve only ever *finished* one other campaign in our group’s history due to timing availability, housing changes, work schedules, people moving, etc. and that was for a game called “Anima: Beyond Fantasy”.

This character - Morthos Farrapul - has become one of my favorite characters ever and the second in my long-running Farrapul family line of characters behind Sennos Farrapul, a Human archer from the previously finished “Anima: Beyond Fantasy” campaign. My naming schemes are often connected, but in my own way rather than any canon way in campaigns. Sort of running references and homages.

If he were to be given titles, he’d be... Morthos Farrapul:

Lover of Churros

Pretty simple. We found churros and they were delicious and Morthos and the party’s cleric, Rhogar, have taken them and spread them around the world with eagerness to share the treats to new cultures.

Manipulator of Fate

After drawing The Fates from the Deck of Many Things and doing a big ol’ WHOOPS on the identity of Thrazidun’s Herald.

Father of Therai Farrapul

Who is the firstborn granddaughter of Strahd von Zarovich and the first true vampire-tiefling hybrid. She’s firstborn because I say so and nobody can change my mind. I also don’t completely remember.

Son-in-Law to Strahd von Zarovich

And the savior of his wife after a deal made with Asmodeus to give Big A Therai at birth, but not completely literally - more like a destined soul.

Exarch Warlock of Asmodeus

THE Warlock of Asmodeus by this point. His reputation precedes him among the Champions of the gods. And Demons and other Archdevils hate him.

The Shining Slayer of Demogorgon

LAST HIT, BABY - ALL THAT MATTERS! Crown of Stars is awesome alongside Eldritch Blast, just Macross Missiles all over the place.

Savior of the Battle of the Ellcrys

The “Yeeted” One

There’s a story to be told here: Imagine an Earth Elemental smashing through a wall like the Kool-Aid man before chucking this crazy-ass Tiefling Warlock, who is armed with a Scroll of Plane Shift, at a Hag-like entity, then said Tiefling bitch-slapping the Hag with the Scroll and sending them both to Asmodeus’ doorstep. This is how the Battle of the Ellcrys went.

These are just some of my Disaster Child’s antics and memorable moments. I just wanted to share them with you. It’s been a Hell of a ride with this troublemaking Warlock.

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hragon · 6 years

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I AM ON BOARD THIS SHIP AND READY TO SUFFER TELL ME ABOUT THEM

ALL RIGHT ANON, YOU ASKED FOR IT.

I don’t even think there are any Curse of Strahd spoilers here (okay, there’s one minor spoiler) because our CoS campaign morphed into the DM’s Homebrew campaign and I know for a fact that this hinges on something the DM decided on between the last two sessions.

I don’t know the full story yet but here are the relevant details so far:

Towards the beginning of the campaign, Zero found a caravan of people called the Vistani. The Vistani are a group of fortunetellers who were celebrating the many freedoms that had been granted to them by the vampire King Strahd, They have the ability to travel through the mist that covers Barovia, which makes them the only ones that are allowed to enter and leave as they please.

The elder in the caravan is a fortuneteller named Ava, who recognized Zero. According to Ava, Zero was Vistani and had been born in Barovia but taken away for his own protection. His parents had been worried about Strahd and sought outside help. They committed a crime by helping a famous vampire slayer by the name of Rudolph Van Richten cross the border. This angered Strahd, who managed to convince Van Richten to come to his side and Van Richten slaughtered Zero’s parents. Also, Strahd would want Zero dead if he knew he was alive because thanks to his parents, his bloodline is criminal.

Zero took Ava at her word because he didn’t know anything about anything, and a flashback he had soon after (followed by a few more flashbacks) in which he witnessed the murder of his parents himself seemed to corroborate her story.

Flash forward much later. Zero’s dealing with a lot of planar shifting powers he can’t control. Thanks to his latest shift, Strahd’s castle Ravenloft and a bunch of other people have somehow landed in the world we are currently in. A man approaches our group and introduces himself as Rudolph Van Richten. He wants to kill Strahd to avenge his family but needs our help to do it. I, and by extension, Zero, forgot Ava had given us his name lol, but there are several things Van Richten shares with the man from Zero’s flashbacks so he’s picking up on things despite a failed perception roll.

Zero suddenly remembers the conversation with Ava and attacks Van Richten on Strahd’s doorstep, claiming he murdered his parents. Van Richten drops his weapon, falls to his knees and says Zero has every right to kill him, but begs him to wait and to let Van Richten help them kill Strahd, who he clarifies had something to do with the loss of his son. Van Richten killed Zero’s parents because Ava had told him they were responsible all those years ago, only to realize after they were dead that they were innocent. Zero asks why he should believe Van Richten over Ava, and Van Richten reveals that Ava is Strahd’s sister which is enough for Zero to realize how little he actually knows, and spares him to get more information. Due to a string of chance rolls, Strahd shows up and finishes Van Richten off while he’s at his most vulnerable - unarmed and on his knees.

The background there is important, I promise.

Last time a soul appeared above Van Richten’s body. Zero initially tried to preserve his soul with a puppet made to contain souls and some soul transfer daggers, but I fudged a roll and he fell through it instead. He watched the younger Van Richten murder his parents again, but this time the flashback revealed that in the seconds before they were killed his mom and the man he had assumed was his father had been in disguise. Their disguises were lifted upon their deaths. Van Richten says, “What have I done?”, turns to Zero, and says, “Forgive me, my son.” And with that Zero snaps back to the present and the soul bursts and disappears.

I think this part was a recent decision, and it’s actually a really smart and cool move. The DM confirmed I didn’t have to retcon anything for this to fit in, not even the stories Van Richten and Ava told. He only clarified that in the flashbacks, Zero only thought the man killed in these flashbacks was his father but did not feel the same attachment to him as he did to his mother. This actually fits PERFECTLY because for some reason I tend to draw Zero with his mother, and the DM has had visions of his mother appear outside of flashbacks in game but never once the father.

Which makes Zero’s mother a Vistana and his father the most interesting npc in the game, like I didn’t realize how cool he was until after he died when I found out he was apparently a big deal in second edition?? Which is amazing because it’s such a great and organic way to keep Van Richten relevant to the story (I was worried we wouldn’t get to learn more about him, he became my fav two seconds before he died).

There’s the backstory. Basically:

Van Richten killed Zero’s mother and this other man who we now know is NOT Zero’s actual father. Van Richten didn’t recognize them because they were in disguise at that moment and he acted too quickly. He was trying to avenge his son - Zero - because Ava had told him this disguised couple were responsible for the loss of his son, but she lied. He tried for 23 years to set things right and was finally at the point where he could take down Strahd, only for his son to commit the same mistake of acting too quickly based on a lie told by Ava. Zero ends up setting in motion the very quick series of events that lead to the death of his real father while he tries to avenge his parents.

Since the Vistani get along well with Strahd and Zero’s mom, a Vistana, had a kid with a vampire slayer, I’m getting some forbidden romance vibes, and we already know it’s tragic so it has already shot high up on my list of favorite ships.

So the ship you’re seeing there is Zero’s mother and a younger Van Richten because I can’t handle all my feelings, this is like the saddest story I’ve ever heard.

That’s all I know right now!! We’ll get to find out more as the campaign continues so right now I’m just doodling because I can’t wait to find out everything that happened before I draw them. D:

#replies #anon

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theravensreliquary · 6 years

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I have conquered him!

(did a read more because wow I talk a lot)

I really wish I knew how much tie I spent on him... I was on anf off literally all day,finishing him up with the sealant passed midnight.Of course not before breaking him again... I had set him asife tolet the glue dry on the grass and moss, and I bumped the end of my brush into him while working on another figure.... of course.

But now that he’s all SUPER glued up ( made sure to put on extra, you can kida see it on the sword...) and now that he’s been sleaed really well, he feels more study and stronger. Of course my initial reaction is to poke and prod to see just how strong the glue is, but obviously that would not go over very well... Strahd is a delicate one, and sofar the only figure to draw blood. Fiting.

BUT

I am actually super super happy with how he turned out!! It’s really cool that his outfit and everything match the actual art of him. I’m sooo used to trying to make random figures look like pictures. Even tothe point for a character or three I’ve made the mini first and then figured out what I wanted the character to look like.

The sheild on his back was certainly intriuiging as well as the sword since he never uses either in the book. I mean, I could very easily make him, but his claws are stronger than sword attacks. Maybe he just wants the reach. And I think the sheild is more for the symbol than anything. Which I do really like! I love the Ravenloft symbol on him! it’s so cool and unique!!

And the nightmare is really really cool too, I like it more than the box art of the figure. The fire feels more chaotic and intense.

The base was the one thing I was happy with from the start. It had some really good detail in the rocks and nice dirt, even if i covered most of it up. I like using the dead raindeer moss for bad guys, too. Especilaly for Barovia. If I were feeling more adventurous and unafraid of breaking him any more I’d maybe tear up some cotton balls and really fluff it out thin for some mists. I’ll consider it maybe again in the future, but for now, he’s resting on a shelf far away from my usual tabel.I’m terrified of transporting him back to my appartment in January.. he’s going to need his own box and gentl hands and everything...

So in conclusion, Do not purchase one of these unless you are extremely skilled with figurs. I screwed up so hard so many times.... but he at least still came out really nice!!! His face is weirdly ong and hellish, I prefer him looking more human than mosnster, but whatevs. ANd his sowrd is weird, always was and now is even more so. But yeah, he’s incredible brittle, and I am positive I will break him again. I’m just terrified of him getting smashed... I will cry very hard if that happens.

#Miniatures #Minis #Miniature Figures #D&D #Dungeons and Dragons #Dungeons & Dragons #strahd #strahd von zarovich #curse of strahd #nightmare #vampire #this has killed me #my minis #finished figures #my art

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bruno-in-barovia · 4 years

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Session Five, Part Two

The abbot said we were welcome to watch him raise Zazear, but that it wouldn’t be pretty. No kidding.

Elliott asked if he would be back as he was before. The abbot said yes, assuming he was recently dead as he appeared to be. He took a moment to look the body over and seemed surprised that “he only appears to have been dead for half an hour.” Elliott explained what I had done to keep the body from decomposing.

“To keep it from becoming undead,” I corrected him, but my heart wasn’t in it. Either way, I had contributed to this.

The abbot assured the party that what he was going to do would not make Zazear undead, but make him fully alive again. Typical resurrection heresy.

He told us to follow him through one of the doors into a wing of the abbey. As we walked, Elliott maneuvered himself over to me.

“Now, Bruno, I understand that this is quite different for you. But he assures us that he’s not going to be undead. So if he’s not—”

“It’s not just undead that takes from the tally,” I told him. “Zazear’s dead. He’s been counted.”

“I just don’t want you to do anything rash if he does come back.”

“I know.” He doesn’t trust me. I guess that’s fair. It still hurt a little.

The chamber that the abbot led us into contained a long table. Music filtered down from somewhere on the floor above. There was a young woman standing behind the table. She looked a lot like Ireena, especially her hair. I haven’t seen a lot of redheads in Barovia so far. But her face had some strange lines on it. I don’t know how to describe it other than that. It was as though it had been… pieced together.

The abbot introduced her as Vasilka, his “finest creation.” He told her to retrieve someone named “Clovin” from upstairs. He cleared the table with a wave of his hands and told the party to set Zazear’s body on it.

The “Clovin” he’d sent for clomped down the stairs. He was a similar amalgamation to the two we met earlier, this one with a crablike claw for one hand and an extra head sprouting from his shoulder. The abbot sent him to retrieve the things used for revivals. While waiting for Clovin’s return, he began drawing with his hands on the table, leaving glowing lines where he touched it.

He paused then and looked at me, Opal, and Haku. “I do believe you seem to be suffering from an ailment of some kind. I see there is a craving in you.”

Opal confirmed his statement.

“Would you like me to remove it?”

She asked what it would cost, and he said, “Nothing.”

I asked how he would go about doing that.

“It is simple,” he replied and without warning he reached out his hand and touched my forehead. I felt this rush of magic, like cool water washing over me. I could tell it was healing magic, but it was like no magic I know. And the craving just… stopped.

The abbot repeated his action with Opal and Haku while I stood stunned, then returned to drawing his shapes on the table around Zazear. We looked around at each other, but before we could ask questions, Clovin returned with arms full of strange metal instruments, as well as a bucket. The abbot sent him back upstairs to ring the bell, and once that was done, he returned with two buckets and took them out to the courtyard, leaving our party alone with the abbot once more.

The abbot set up his instruments as we looked on, attaching parts to Zazear’s body with some kind of putty. The room went still. Then he began to sing in a language I didn’t recognize. But this sense of peace came over me as I listened, and the rest of the party seemed to feel the same.

He sang for about an hour, and then seized two of the wires attached to Zazear. Blue lightning crackled along the wires from his hands, and the body convulsed. He did it a few times, the body responding each time, until Zazear’s eyelids snapped opened and he started screaming. Lesions appeared on his body as he screamed, almost like claw marks, as if he was torn from somewhere. As if something had tried to stop him from returning. As the screaming ended, he gasped, chest heaving, and sat up, looking around at us.

“Gods above,” Elliott breathed.

“I have returned his soul to his body from the mists,” the abbot said.

“Mists,” I echoed. What about the chasm? That’s not right.

“His soul was in the mists,” he repeated. “I have returned it.” He folded his hands in front of him. “Now, I believe you have what you came for?”

Lith asked if he might take Freek and Myrtle in at the abbey, or whether he knew someone in Krezk who would.

He said that he knew some people in town who would take them, but that he had “no need for children.” That his work was much too important.

With that he told us to please do as he had asked earlier and bid us good day.

“Zazear!” Elliott approached his friend.

“I’m back,” the cat murmured, looking at his hands, “I’m back, I’m back…”

“You all right?” Elliott asked.

“Do you know what happened?” Haku added.

“I-I died.” He rambled a little, about light, and dark, and light pulling him back, and then just slamming him back. “That hurt. It hurt… all over.”

“We’re glad to have you back,” Elliott told him, setting a hand on his shoulder. “And if you ever do any shit like that again, not only will I leave you dead, I will find Strahd, not kill him, ask for a big wolf, and give you to it. You get me?”

“I honestly don’t know how to respond to that,” Zazear said, looking a little shaken.

“Also, I sold your hairbrush.”

Lith started to ask the abbot about his creations, what his project here was, but he brushed each one off and demanded we leave. Gulp.

Elliott had already helped Zazear out to the courtyard, and he called for us to follow.

“Ooh!” Haku turned around as we headed out the door. “Have you ever heard about someone called Izek?”

The abbot glared at him. “No. Please leave.”

As Elliott would say, we vamoosed. Lith wanted to explore the abbey, but the rest of us were ready to get the hell out. She opened the door to one of the sheds and started talking at one of the creatures inside. It screeched at her, and she closed the door.

Just as we got Lith back on track to leave, Haku decided to peek into the courtyard’s well, and another creature jumped out at him. It slashed at him with a dagger and screeched. Haku hit it with his axe, and it dove back where it came from.

He wanted to go after it, but Lith said he’d better not fall down another well.

Finally, finally, we made it back to the gates. The creatures we’d met before were back at their posts. Lith decided to question the talking one, the woman with the lizard arm, about the “procedure” the abbot did on them.

She said that her arm was crushed in a wagon accident, and the abbot healed her. But then he had said that he liked her other parts, and so he took them from her.

What… I couldn’t take any more of this, and I left.

The others followed me out not a minute later, so I can’t have missed much. Elliott and Lith were arguing about something she said to the lizard woman, I don’t know what.

This whole time, Freek and Myrtle had said nothing. They looked pretty scared by all of what we’d seen. Elliott did his best to comfort them.

“Um.” Zazear sort of raised his hand. “Can I ask what’s going on? And where we are, and why we have small children?”

We did our best to catch him up to speed. Halfway through, Lith asked if his reading with Madame Eva had foretold his death, by any chance. He said no, she just told him to “trust the raven” that was watching him.

“There’s a raven watching you?”

“Yeah…”

I blinked. “Let us know if it’s still around after this…” Because I have thoughts on that.

“And Haku can talk to animals,” Lith added.

“We’re here for you,” I told him, “if that’s you in there.”

Lith split from the group with Freek and Myrtle to find someone willing to take them in.

While Elliott finished telling Zazear what he had missed, I took the time to sit down with Father Donavich’s papers. After everything that had just happened, a little straightforward research was pretty appealing.

Barovia has two main deities: the Morninglord, whose name is Lathander, and another called Mother Night. I didn’t find much about the latter in my bag. The recurring devil figure is referred to interchangeably as Vampyr or Strahd.

The Barovians weren’t the first to settle in the valley. There was a primal religion called the Fanes that came first.

Barovia’s main places of worship are all dedicated to Lathander. Father Donavich’s chapel is one, the abbey we’d just left is another, and the third is a chapel in the town of Vallaki. There’s a litany of historical saints in here as well.

The abbot is mentioned a few times, and every description is similar to the abbot we just met. They all say that he’s a young man who’s extremely knowledgeable, some in more detail than most.

I finally got to Donavich’s notes on vampires, but they were less than helpful. The whole section just consists of the “Don’t Mess With Strahd: He’ll Whack You” sort of warnings. If someone turned into a vampire, they say, the person is better off dead.

Wow. This man got absolutely nowhere. Not the progression of the condition, no sign of a cure or anything.

But am I even looking for a cure now? Vampires are undead. I’m supposed to be destroying them, not trying to revive them.

Still, it seems so… unfair, somehow.

#campaign #session notes #d&d #curse of strahd

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player-slayer · 5 years

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Coffee Runs: Death House {all notes}

First and foremost, before any talk of the spare alterations + additions I made to Curse of Strahd’s intro adventure, it needs to be said that the wisdom gleaned from slyflourish, DragnaCarta1, MandyMod, and starwalkerstudios was invaluable! If you’re thinking of running the adventure, give their guides + recommendations a look! Especially if, like me, you decide to take this TPK Factory for a spin on your first time!

Part I — Entering the Svalich Woods I started my players out as 2nd-level passengers on a merchant caravan, describing some weeks of banal travel and dreary weather before giving them a bit of breathing room to introduce their characters and do a bit of rp. They went to sleep, safe in their bedrolls beside a warm fire, and awoke surrounded by dense fog, their belongings strewn haphazardly about the clearing. A few investigation checks, some constitution saving throws (which they all made, the bastards), and a bird collapsing from the sky in exhaustion later, and they figured pretty quickly that: A. They had been moved in the night somehow and B. This fog sucks. and so were quickly on their way. None of my players pitched that they wanted to keep watch, though if they had my intention was just to let them watch the fog roll in over them and describe a sense of nausea and dizziness wash over them that they couldn’t place (as they were plane-shifted). I may have also given them the chance to spot a wolf staring them down as the fog creeped in out of the treeline. I had a lot of new/inexperienced players, so I didn’t want to take their weapons + belongings at this point, though one of my players did decide at character creation that his halfling paladin had a pony mount name Courage. Courage I had no problem taking from him. This is a horror game motherfucker, you think I’m just going to let you keep your adorable pony named Courage?

Part II — The Death House Most of the house I ran as written.

My alterations to how I ran Rose + Thorn can be found here.

I removed the broom of animated attack (though my group skipped that room regardless) and combined a few rooms for the sake of streamlining the possible avenues of exploration + limiting dead-ends.

As with others, I made the nursemaid a roleplaying encounter rather than combat, describing her as beautiful if plainly-dressed, with a tired, solemn expression. When the players first entered the room, I described her as standing with her back to them, seeming to be a normal, solid figure at first, though as their light source fell over her described a translucent quality and eerie blue-white haze to her form. I named her Ludmila and gave her mixed human and elven features, and played her as being very affectionate toward Rose + Thorn.

I also added two possible entrances to the attic: I moved the secret stairs behind the mirror into the master bedroom and changed the path up in the nursemaid’s suite to a simple attic hatch, since that made more sense to me in terms of how Gustav + Elisabeth would have organized their home. Why would the hired help get the cool fancy secret passageway?

The biggest changes I made to house was the secret room in the library, detailed here.

Part III — Death House Dungeon As with the upper floors, I removed/combined a few rooms and alcoves for purposes of simplifying, plausibility, and/or aesthetic preference, but not many.

I scaled back the encounters a bunch, some to more success than others:

Ghouls :: I only threw two ghouls at my party, and even with one of the players beginning the encounter at 1hp they handily beat them. A combination of lucky dice rolls on their saving throws, judicious use of disengage and med kits by the rogue, and the paladin’s protection fighting-style in the small hallway went far for them. In hindsight, I think I was pulling my punches a little too much (not imposing penalties for all trying to fight crammed into the same little area—we had a map and minis up for reference at the request of one of the players but at this time I was not utilizing it for grid-based combat, which I think was a mistake), but we were short on time that night anyway and the fight was still fun and dramatic, so I’m not kicking myself too much about it.

Ghast :: I only included one ghast, the remaining form of Elisabeth Durst. My players missed her, but had they entered the room, I intended to describe her appropriately horrifying in look and scent, largely avoiding feminine adjectives or immediate give-aways as to who this used to be, but to draw attention to the fact that the creature was standing over an end-table, staring down blankly at the surface before being alerted to their presence. After the fight, if they inspected the table, they would have seen the key to rose and thorn’s room, the implication being that even in her undead, purifying state, some base instinct or remnant of Elisabeth still remembered her children and still wanted them to be okay, even if she was unable to act on or form coherent thought around that base feeling.

Shadows :: Again not wanting to overwhelm new/rusty players, I went with three shadows for the encounter in the Darklord Shrine, since they had just finished a long rest and were feeling nice and flush with hit points and spell slots again. If they had wandered in after the ghoul fight, I likely would have scaled the encounter back to only two shadows. This was another encounter they avoided though!

Part IV — One Must Die I love this beat in the adventure! Its so tense!

I tried to describe everything as eerie and upsetting as possible in the hopes that the party would nervously stick together for safety and all end up on altar at the same time. Unfortunately our cleric was YOLO af and ran up onto it ahead of the party, and as soon as the chanting began she noped tf off of there and triggered the fight, so the party never had the chance to consider what they should do. So it goes!

That said, the fight itself was really cool. I ran a reskin of MandyMod’s flesh mound, which I called the Shambling Cradle, and took a good minute to describe the bits of sinewy tissue and lurching amalgam of animal and humanoid remains writhing up out of the irony water for maximum atmosphere.

It was an overall very dramatic and cool fight. A combination of unlucky dice rolls and forgetfulness of the Lay On Hands feature led our paladin to be killed, but it actually resulted in one of the most surprisingly poignant beats of the story. He was a fledgling paladin of the goddess of sacrifice and bravery, and after struggling against his own fearfulness of the things he’d seen in this house, overcame that fear and did the most damage of anyone in the party to the creature before being killed in the same fashion as his matron.

I had named our game Death With Dignity on sort of a whim to avoid cluing the players in right off the bat that the house was evil, but after the game our cleric’s player pointed out that he had earned our game that title.

Part V — Escape After the shambling cradle was destroyed, I narrated a brief moment of reprieve as the party caught their breath, taking a moment to highlight the paladin’s bravery and sacrifice, and reminding the party of the iconography of his matron, and how his form seemed to mirror it.

Then I told them the house and dungeon were caving in on them.

When this moment came, I kept everyone in initiative, having them all make dex saves at the top of each round to avoid bits of rock and wood hitting them as the structures crumbled all around them. I had a set number of rounds before everything collapsed, but the party managed to make it out in good time by exiting from the upstairs window via grappling hook.

It was pretty dramatic and I think the players felt the exact amount of anxiety I was hoping for as they scrambled through the house, hauling the paladin’s lifeless body (and then the rogue’s unconscious one) with them, but I think if I ever run the adventure again I’ll opt to treat it as a 4e skill challenge instead.

As soon as they were out on the grass I described them turning to watch as the house caved in on itself, creaking and snapping before collapsing into its own pit. Then the sounds of birdsong, and the clearing of fog from the grasses and forests, but still very much in this strange new world.

And that was my run of Death House!

Overall I really loved this adventure as a one-shot, even if it might be a little meatgrinder-y as an intro adventure to a full campaign for my tastes. There was enough opportunity for roleplay for my rp-inclined players, a decent mystery for them to chew on, and lots of fun undead to squick everyone out with and make stupid gross noises for.

I think that this is a great adventure for new DMs looking to cut their teeth on something kind of intense and messed up, especially because I feel it taught me a lot about pacing and the action economy of 5e!

I look forward to hopefully running this adventure many more halloweens into the future!

#adventures #death house

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icarusdusoleil · 5 years

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Uhhh long time no see?

I actually really like my year-in-review posts that I’ve been doing the past couple of years, so I’m gonna do another one for 2018. It kind of helps me remember the good stuff about the year and reflect on how much has happened.

2018 for me was… okay. Despite the bad, there was still a lot of good. If my year was a line graph, it would probably be really chaotic the first few months, then towards the end of the year it would start to even out and gradually rise. I feel alright. Maybe the closest I’ve ever been to content. And that’s a lot for me.

Right off the bat in January, the ceramics instructor that I was an assistant for left for a new job and I was promoted to be the instructor. It was a huge leap for me because I actually didn’t have a lot of ceramics experience. I focused on drawing and painting in school, not ceramics. So I’ve done a lot of reading and research and trial and error and learning over the course of the year so I could actually do my job. I very much felt out of my element and like an impostor.

But I’m getting more confident in ceramics now and I’ve been teaching my students (and my bosses!) really cool techniques. I’m really proud of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve improved the studio. I also began developing lesson plans and workshops, which I’m going to start teaching next year when we open up to the public.

Dungeons and Dragons continued to play a big part in my life this year. I started a second d&d campaign with some friends where we decided to take on Strahd. It was so much fun playing my hummingbird cleric of Pelor, Probably Thwerby. She was such a beast. Probably dealt the killing blow to Strahd at the end of the campaign and I was really happy that I got the chance to play d&d with that group of friends.

In my main d&d campaign (What Lies in the Sand), we reached our one-year anniversary in July! Things have gotten really intense and our group discovered that we were essentially destined to save the world. Our last session for this campaign (for now) is next week where we’re gonna face down a giant plane-jumping squid. While this campaign is coming to a close, we are going to revisit these characters again in the future (I don’t think I could ever fully stop being Myfanwy anyway). We’re also already planning our next campaign where I’m going to get to play a tiefling gunslinger called Faceless!

Cosplay-wise, I continued working on my Rey costume again. I initially intended to make it up to RL standard, but found that the idea was stressing me out too much, so I just decided to do the best that I could. It was one of the most difficult sewing projects I’ve ever done because I had to teach myself some new techniques, but I’m so proud that I managed to complete it. I finished it in May, did an incredible photoshoot with my sister, wore it to Fanime, and wore it to a few volunteer events. That helped me meet another awesome Star Wars costuming group that also does volunteer work like the RL, but is less strict and apparently less… drama. I ended up re-making Rey’s scavenger outfit later in the year as well.

I also made Pike from Critical Role! This was my first real foray into making armour, so I learned a lot. I completely designed, patterned, sewed, and made everything from scratch. It was crazy and I’m very proud of myself!

I didn’t draw and paint as much as I have in previous years, but that was partially because I was spending so much time having to think creatively and artistically at work, that I had little energy for that at home. I did manage a couple paintings and drawings though, so I’m proud of myself for that.

Mental and physical health-wise… things have been kind of rocky. I continued seeing my therapist all year until about October. She really helped me work through a lot of things and I was finally brave enough to find a new doctor and try some antidepressants. I’ve been taking medication since August and despite the huge adjustment period, I actually feel so much better than I ever have. My mental health isn’t perfect—I still have depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia—but the medication has definitely helped keep all of that a little more under control.

Because I turned 26 in October, I’m no longer covered by my parent’s insurance, so I now have insurance through my work. These past couple of months have just been kind of a waiting game for me, because I can’t see any specialists about certain things with my current insurance, but I’m going to have a better coverage next year to hopefully get some physical health things sorted out.

Anyway, so my year is ending on an okay note and I’m feeling alright. And that’s better than I’ve felt in a while, so I’ll take it.

#the hilarious misadventures of skip #skip's musings

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