#aw curse of strahd

[soul-of-vengeance]

*flipping through the book furiously* But why is Strahd sending spawn to the church????

[luckyblackcatxiii]

It's been awhile since I submitted any CoS drawings, so have some Saverio clothes and hairstyles (as well as a nakey face Sav)!

So I made it a personal goal--that aligns with Sav's IC wants of course--to gather as many articles of clothes and outfits while my boy's stuck in Barovia, and so far it's going great. Thus far, he's found a cloak of protection that's now attuned to his ridiculous tastes, as well as bought an awful gold shirt that adds +2 Cha (to his already 18...). He thinks it doesn't fit him properly--further, his less than impressive chest doesn't do it justice--and needs tailoring, but for now it's comfortable enough to pair with his sleeping robe.

Here's to more outfits in the future, it'll make up for all the clothes he had to sell prior to being spirited away...~

[ilariel]

Misthoppers' Strahdtober Day 1:

Sergei

[shrimpari]

A dream visitor. A moment in contrast to the love they have shared.

[anantplayingdnd]

another day another sketch of @yarrow-leaf ‘s strahd

[stayatsam]

i luv those tiktoks of dnd players making edits of their DM secretly plotting their downfall as if the DM isn't trying desperately to guide them away from TPKs.

[joutarts]

Vasilka! Again.

[aqours]

broke: genderbending Strahd and making her more sympathetic, wholesome, changing her obsession to something like parental, etc woke: full toxic yuri Strahdanya

[dictatorshipper]

Have noo idea why silly barovians are intimidated by my, quite literally, fiend from Hell

[fangedsaga]

the right honourable lord Elya Vrubel of ivyheart castle, tal'dorei ⤷ tiefling hexblood college of lore bard / warlock of the undying

cc tags: @rheallsim (skinblend, eyebrows) / @ratboysims (skintone) / @pyxiidis (eyes, sclera, skin details) / @vibrantpixels (body preset) / @plazasims (suit) / @uxji (ears) / @notegain (tail) / @valhallansim (horns) / @simandy (hair) / @oydis (rings) / @redearcat (gloves)

[vanhelsingapologist]

question, what happened with Demetria at Castle Ravenloft cause I remember awhile back something with her being kidnapped if I remember that correctly

You do remember correctly!

Massive spoilers ahead

So the first time around, Volenta had intercepted our party about halfway to Vallaki. Demetria ended up being nearly killed and then dragged away, but our barbarian (rip) saved her life by holding off Volenta’s attention. This gave us just enough time for Strahd to arrive, who absconded with Dima’s barely conscious form.

They ended up keeping her in Ravenloft to ‘heal.’ This was three days of in-game time that consisted of Strahd subtly manipulating, gaslighting, and trying to coax Tatyana out of Demetria. He’s told her that they were meant to be married, that she was killed escaping an assassination attempt, and that the positive surges of emotion she feels he uses (read: strahd’s charm) are her true feelings emerging. I think he believes the last one wholeheartedly. In the meantime, I got to play my backup, a half dusk-elf named Emilia.

Demetria returned to the party after the St. Andral Debacle, and Emilia was written out.

She’s back in Ravenloft NOW because Strahd came to the Abbey of St. Markovia to check up on Vasilka and to retrieve an old enemy that we had brought back to life. Our Bloodhunter tried to stop him and he bemusedly went to kill him for interfering.

There was some bargaining on the behalf of the party, but the Bloodhunter was defiant one last time so Strahd killed him in two turns, stating he regretted that it had to happen. We also found out that our Warlock’s children were being held captive in Ravenloft in exchange for manipulating the party to Ravenloft’s ends.

Terrified for the fate of the party, our Druid (who is also spying for Strahd) pulled Dima aside and proposed a plan to keep Strahd off the party’s back, as we’d just gotten the tome and the sunsword: go to Ravenloft. The Warlock told Dima to pretend to be falling in love with him to keep his children alive. It’s all so, so bad.

Between the two of them, they convinced Dima to go for another three days, leading to Ravenloft Imprisonment: Electric Boogaloo. Only the Druid is there too, seeing what betraying the party could potentially win them in terms of safety. So the party has like a couple days of breathing room, but Dima’s being mentally fucked with 24/7.

Currently, Strahd has succeeded on biting Demetria once and believes he’s succeeding in seducing her. He is not. Dima’s stay is drawing to a close, and Strahd has already started fucking with the party again via Rahadin, so it didn’t even work the way we wanted it to. I think he knows we have the tome, and if he does, we CANNOT pull the ‘Dima go back’ card again. We’ve used that up, and my DM will thwart us.

Also, I’ll mention that my DM is pretty much superhuman at making sure everyone has time in the spotlight. I don’t always mention everyone else’s plot lines because my writing’s already so fuck-off long, but our Warlock is super tied to Strahd, our Bloodhunter is/was VR’s second, less impressive apprentice, our Druid is the chosen of the Fanes + a double agent, and our Cleric has a big Mother Night/Lycanthrope plotline.

[soul-of-vengeance]

I am considering reworking the timeline slightly, specifically around Argynvost

With my being more faithful to older modules/the novels, it's really hard to have Argynvost/the order in there as an opposing force without having them being part of the "invading" force, which undercuts a little bit their place as the "good guys" in the campaign narrative 🤔

I'm thinking that having Strahd kill Argynvost after becoming a vampire isn't so far-fetched. I might even have Argynvost be part of the plot to overthrow Strahd (I have removed the assassin thing, and just made it a noble rebellion, partially because I don't know the lore enough to make the assassins work with my original setting 🫣)

[malzenn]

frank victenstein

he's the necromancer (wizard/cleric) from our finished curse of strahd campaign, and apparently, going to be doing some fucked up shit in the sequel. i am going to miss playing him so much

[mx-lamour]

Why have I seen NOTHING about Sasha Ivliskova?

[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.

[anantplayingdnd]

oh my god I opened word to work on the escher fic and the entire most recent draft of it was just totally gone and i almost started crying but i managed to find it in temp files and i'm like still about to start crying but out of relief this time.

anyways here's a snippet of it because i am just so relieved it isn't all gone.

for anyone wondering, it's an origin story of sorts for our favorite little twink. in my game, before he met strahd, the love of his life was Arden, a member of the Keepers of the Feather.