#and to get railed by Strahd on a velvet divan beneath a shattered window while a storm rages on the other side

[enzomancer]

Curse of Strahd campaign updates, we’re still off-roading in Darkon, contains spoilers!

This week in Darkon...

The party decided to strike off back to Barovia, but before they did, Azalin shared his research on some of the darklords. Specifically, Valachan.

See, in Valachan, the original darklord was slain. The person who did it, Chakuna, had to take on the darklord's curse. So. If they killed Strahd, who was going to take his curse?

Alternate option: What if they actually destroyed the domains of dread? What if they took down the dark powers? Nobody has researched this more than Azalin Rex, after all.

Azalin's plan to take down the dark powers:

A sufficiently large infusion of their antithesis, life energy/positive energy/soul energy via A Device

More competent assistants than Lowellyn Dachine

And where do you get a lot of soul energy? Murder. Maybe a lot of murder.

Okay, definitely a lot of murder. On the order of hundreds of murders.

The party didn't particularly like that plan, but they also didn't like the idea of becoming darklord. So they started throwing around some alternate ideas and came up with some delightful things I hadn't considered:

The gems powering the Martikov vinyard have a lot of life energy in them; they know where two are, but can they find the third?

Ecological terrorism, like a really massive blight spell, might be able to use plant energy in place of mortal souls, but it would also probably render the land where it was used permanently sterile

Sergei's powering the sunsword, maybe use something like that??

Whatever the Abbott is, he's a Big McFucking Deal

Mordenkainen is kind of a huge deal when it comes to spell invention and if they could un-crazy him, maybe he could come up with some alternate solutions

So, please, friends. Picture Mordenkainen effectively teaming up with Azalin Rex, Ludmilla Vilisevic, Volenta Popofsky, Ireena Kolyana, Ez d'Avenir, and my ragtag party of a cursed kobold artificer, a burned out goliath cook, a cloudcuckoolander halfling cleric, a Nice Guy rogue, a decomposing shag carpet of a bard, and a 'definitely not aspiring to become strahd and/or strahd's next bride over here' wizard.

Nothing could go wrong.

kinda can't wait.