#i love this character so much and doing curse of strahd has done so much for my art growth

[crouteann]

today is the last day of uriel week in misthoppers…. i drew this comic in about a day to answer a question for him. memories of his flock are precious to him, and uriel thinks its folly to underestimate a prey animal

[jadecantcreate]

curse of strahdanya has officially taken over my brain! alongside arcane…season two is SO GOOD SO FARR please go watch it if you haven’t. holy shit yall it does not disappoint

spoilers for up to and the entirety of episode 7 of cos — ill mainly be talking about character dynamics (mostly shepnax) but major events and plot developments will be explicitly discussed as well, so, if you’re not there yet, please don’t keep reading (getting spoilered for this stuff is not worth it i promise)

im sorry in advance. im not even done writing everything yet and its already very long

the way i see it, episode 7 is a major turning point for not only the whole story but inter-party relationships as well. i’ll be organizing this a little bit so it’s less text-wall-y (hopefully)

shepherd

there’s the raven mother they find nailed to the wall — the culprit being strahdanya. this definitely fueled the hate that all of the party had for her, but especially shepherd. he literally screams out in anguish and, later, calls strahdanya a coward and bitch — something we’ve never seen shepherd do before.* i think the events in the beginning of ep 7 is what really cemented his and the party’s objective: destroy strahdanya. before, i sensed some kind of ‘wiggle room’: the party would be willing to work with her a bit, though only for a very short amount of time and would probably backstab her. but after witnessing all that? strahdanya is irredeemably evil, not worthy of consideration / sympathy / courtesy, and i think it finally fully dawned on them all

*i also love how much raw emotion shepherd expresses throughout the campaign. the rest of the party has their moments too (i can immediately think of kana and victoria, but im not remembering any significant ones for clayton or sarnax though i know they exist), but shepherd consistently reacts to the hellhole that is barovia in such a genuine way that it grounds the whole narrative and, to me, makes barovia that much more horrifying. in other stories or discussions of stories ive seen like this (and even in the cos party itself), the characters are largely untouched by the horrors that occur in such a setting. which, fit the characters/purpose as it might, distances the audience at least a tiny bit from the happenings of the narrative. but when you have an otherwise grounded, calm, capable individual like shepherd crack? that’s when it really hits you i think. like, the whole thing with sarnax reviving the mother? shepherd being so relieved and overcome with a multitude of feelings that his voice cracks as he holds back tears, begging the mother to rest and not do any work? it made me feel the same way, and it really drove home how wonderful this act is and how dire their situation is. shepherd (and andy by extension!) have drawn the most emotion out of me in my watch, and its possibly the main reason i enjoy his character so much

him being seemingly chosen by the silver dragon (which, again, another turning point) is very compelling in a narrative sense too because shepherd doesnt want power, he doesn’t seem to even like the idea of leading (or at least being pushed into a position of leadership). i’ll touch on it later in the shepherd and sarnax segment (if i dont forget lol, my mind is running wild while i write this)

victoria

i think strahd’s infatuation with her and the physical effects it has (kana’s cleansing ritual failing because the water becomes blood as it touches victoria) is so interesting, especially her inner conflict with her heritage and wickedness (and the distrust it sows between her and the party, at least initially)

i really enjoyed how victoria was vulnerable with kana, and how kana handled it with such care and compassion. this is also a turning point, i think, when it comes their relationship: kana promises to protect victoria, and victoria promises to fight the darkness within her; they definitely got closer after that, and their bond was deepened. i dont imagine strahd would be very happy about victoria not being enamored by her and being helped by her party, though it’s very possible that she enjoys ‘the chase’ (for the lack of a better term)

when they came across the dusk elf in the order of the silver dragon estate-thing, it’s a pretty clear parallel to victoria given her appearance, heritage, and reason for being in barovia. i could be very very wrong about this but its heavily implied victoria’s elf half is a dusk elf, which makes sense considering, again, that she’s in barovia to learn about her lineage and that dusk elves are the only elves mentioned so far. i think this is the first time she’s genuinely made progress in her goal

sarnax

sarnax’s identity revolves around gherix: his whole life is devoted to the fire lord; he’s used to communing with and praying to his god. it’s likely what kept him going in such a terrible place with such terrible odds of survival, let alone returning (which he’s convinced he will not). so when strahdanya intercepted the augury spell he was so clearly shaken. it was one of the few moments, if not the only one, where sarnax was in genuine, utter panic — the whole time shepherd repeatedly asked him if he was alright and he didn’t seem to hear those words at all. suddenly he learned that strahdanya could damage or possibly sever his connection to his god, the being his life is centered around. (kana’s comment certainly didn’t help)

but what happens after — the augury spell reading ‘weal’ and sarnax being able to revive the mother — strengthens his faith. it was tested, but he prevailed. i think he was also filled with a newfound sense of purpose, knowing that, no matter what strahd does, his god considers him worthy enough

about him and kana: episode 7 is the culmination of their slow development towards not only tolerating each other’s beliefs but to understand and embrace them, specifically with kana saying that she trusts in sarnax and his god

sarnax and shepherd

the conversation between them was my favorite moment in this episode by far. there are so many layers,

shepherd so clearly doesnt want to embody his namesake and be a leader, but the silver dragon and someone he trusts so much — sarnax — and fate itself push him in that direction, so he just does. shepherd says:

“sarnax don’t”

“no why would you-“

“why- why- why would you put this on me, why?”

“how can you say that?”

“this was just a job. i mean this was just to make sure we all got here and back safely…how did this happen?”

then, later…

“alright, alright i…okay. i…dont know what to say”

“alright…alright…okay, understood”

“sure, sure. lead the way” and, after sarnax says “no, shepherd. you lead the way, i will light the path,” “…fine.”

essentially, he sucks it up. and that’s interesting to me since shepherd shows so much emotion, so it’s clearly not a ‘men dont cry’-type ideology thing. i think it’s probably related to his desire to do good, and as well as the good doc. after all, the doc gave him his virtue name: shepherd. it only makes sense that he would be written by fate as one: a person who guides the lost through the darkness. so that’s my guess as to why he so readily accepts this burden

i think sarnax being the one to say this also played a role in it^. shepherd witnessed firsthand the power of gherix and sarnax’s wisdom, so much so that he prayed to gherix. shepherd, who was originally averse to anything religious, prayed. and i also think sarnax is shepherd’s only true friend in the party. his relationship with clayton, victoria, and kana feels like professional acquaintances — they’re comfortable with each other and certainly growing closer, but he seeks out sarnax (and sarnax does too) and both have called the other a friend or good friend, on more than one occasion for shepherd and at least one for sarnax. it’s obvious that shepherd values what sarnax has to say and cares for him.

because of that, sarnax saying that he will die in barovia (specifically that he doesn’t “believe [he has] a place back in avantris” and that “whatever it is that [they] achieve here will be [his] end” because he has “seen it in the flames”) and shepherd’s reaction hits even harder for me.

shepherd says “i’m not gonna leave you. i’m not gonna leave anyone.”

and sarnax replies “then it will be i that leaves you.”

it’s the shortest exchange, but it holds so much weight. sarnax has accepted his fate, possibly long before this. but when before sarnax took charge and led the group, shining his light, he steps back, realizing shepherd is the one who (he thinks) fits that role. he still guides, but he doesn’t lead, and he believes shepherd should. but shepherd doesn’t. shepherd’s used to following orders, as we see so many times with him and clayton (but also him and sarnax), and struggles to make decisions for the group — when they ask him where they should go, shepherd seemingly blanks and he just picks whatever as fast as he can (to get the pressure off him, i assume). and despite this, shepherd’s line reinforces what sarnax thinks: a good shepherd doesn’t leave his sheep behind, he goes after and, well, shepherds them.

and honestly the whole relationship between shepherd and sarnax. them being regarded as monsters by others, being dehumanized by, for example, vascha [?] thinking shepherd is a devil and esmeralda calling sarnax shepherd’s pet ->

shepherd answers, understably upset, “he’s not my pet, he’s a person!” i figured sarnax felt the same way, but when he was praying to gherix, he referred to shepherd as “a vessel for [gherix’s] wrath.” so that raised a question to me: does sarnax truly care for shepherd (in the way shepherd does), or does he view him as a tool? it’s interesting to think about. it could be him truly caring about shepherd and seeing him as a capable person who will have a great role in his god’s plans which, i imagine, is among the highest of honors — the first possibility in the question, but filtered through the lens of sarnax’s religious perspective (which i think is the most likely and most compelling)

and there’s the parallel with them being connected to gold and silver dragons: different, but the same. (unrelated tangent but there’s also a very interesting parallel between shepherd being chosen by the silver dragon [‘good’] and victoria being chosen by strahdanya [‘bad’])

sarnax saying “silver will unite with gold” is, on the surface, about the two dragon-gods involved in the story. but i think, on a deeper and probably unintended level, it also applies to shepherd and sarnax growing closer (as they have been since the prologue, following in the footsteps of their respective dragons, and shepherd connecting the two dragons by his faith in gherix and affinity to the silver dragon.

i think that’s everything! hopefully i wont post this and immediately remember something i didn’t mention

thank you for reading all of this <33

[mylordshesacactus]

VERY soft about my girl Atri tonight tho.

She's a little baby cleric, nineteen, level 2 and one of those is in ranger, raised in a cloister, never been more than a day's travel from her home temple before, but her devotion to the Raven Queen is very real and very very tender.

We're running Death House as the optional intro to Curse of Strahd (so, spoilers if you're avoiding those!) and just. God, I'm so glad I decided to play my girl in this campaign, it's perfect for her.

Atri's defining character trait is that she loves the undead--truly and genuinely, even the mindless or vicious undead, because by their very nature the undead suffer. They're trapped--sometimes in prisons of their own making, yes, but trapped--and, worst of all, very few people seem to care. Even other clerics of her Lady generally view undead as abominations; to be pitied, maybe, and the peaceful ones treated with kindness, but objects of revulsion, an aberration of the natural order, something to be purged.

Atri says: The undead aren't abominations. Necromancers are.

In her world the Goddess of Death makes a promise: All chains are broken. Death means an end--no more joy and memories but no more suffering, no more fear, no more loneliness or pain. No matter what, or what you did in life, bad or good--death ends it. No one can hurt you, and you can't hurt anyone else.

Necromancy breaks that promise. It gives cruel spirits the ability to continue harming others when they should be past all chance of it, and it allows the innocent to continue to suffer. Spirit-binding is an obscenity--you cannot command a soul. No one has that right.

Which means this module has been, just...I couldn't design a scenario to better let Atri shine.

It says a lot about her that, having more than established that the lady of the house murdered her husband and his pregnant paramour using fucked-up necromancy and her vengeful spirit appears to still be around, Atri's response was...to gulp, light incense in her censor, and walk a slow circle around the room, calling out politely to the Lady Elizabeth and offering her some understanding--you must have been very hurt, and very angry. Your husband disrespected you in your own home, and that was wrong of him. I'm sorry you were betrayed that way. Will you talk to me? I'm Atri, Order of the Broken Chain, I'm here to help...

(It says a lot about her, also, that she made no further attempt at reconciliation after finding what she did to her victims. Compassion doesn't mean forgiveness. She just...lit the incense again, called out to what was left of Klara, and very very softly apologized. You were taken advantage of--whether you felt that way or not. And then you were hurt very badly by your employer. They shouldn't have done any of it...I'm sorry. Someone should have helped you...)

The party in and out of character has been pushing Atri to the forefront to do the talking-to-ghosts bit. She's had some lovely, lovely tender conversations with Klara and the kids, telling them how sorry she is, that she and her friends are here to help them...she cut the bindings on the bed where Klara was tortured to death, just as a gesture that might bring her spirit some closure. Broken chains, a promise kept too late. Recited full funerary rites over what was left of the poor woman's body.

Just feeling VERY soft that while we DID ask them important questions about the plot, 90% of Atri's conversations with ghosts in this house haven't been about mystery-solving; they've been about slowly, gently, prying free some of the pain that's kept them trapped in the place just as much as the fucked-up necromancy.

If Atri dies in this prologue, calling it now it'll be because she's not gonna run if it means leaving anyone behind.

[dandelion-jester]

Writblr Intro:

Hello All!!!

I've been meaning to do a proper intro so better late then never!

Who Am I?

You can call me Dandelion. I'm 23 years old, I use they/them pronouns, I'm English and I am a queer, trans, neurodivergent fantasy writer. I've not had anything published yet but it's my aim.

I have a background in theatre and circus so performing arts tend to turn up in my work. I also love making maps and studying conlangs! I do a lot of art and reading as hobbies, but my favourite pass time is playing dnd!

What Do I Write?

I write mainly fantasy, but also scifi and historical fiction. I also dabble in poetry and I would like to learn how to write for games and screen at some point. For now though, it's all novel writing as far as the eye can see.

My favourite trope to write is found family (I blame all the dungeons and dragons I play). I also write a lot of queer characters and try to diversify my casts as much as possible. My work tends to be very character driven although I do love world building a lot, especially building different cultures and places. I'm best st dialogue and really struggle with building plots. I also have a deep love for history, specifically the 1700s and Anglo saxon - medieval Britain, so that's usually finds its way into my work as well.

You can find my work on Patreon here

What Do I Read?

Unsurprisingly, it's mostly fantasy. I used to read over 100 books a year, but university made me hit a massive reading slump which I've been slowly recovering from. So the main thing keeping me going right now is Robin Hobb, although ive only got a few of her books left! I also listen to a lot of audiobooks.

My WIPs:

Information on my current work is under the break!!

Feypocalypse

Feypocalypse is a queer, fantasy horror comic set in medieval England following the events of a Fey Apocalypse in the 1300s. It follows a group of knights trying to survive in a world that has been turned into a Fey hunting ground, whilst protecting the Changeling child they accidentally adopted. The current plan is eight issues, to be published on Patreon and then printed as a complete novel at the end! It will be written by myself and illustrated by my amazing co-creator @withlovefromthecrowss.

The Legend of The Rat Bastards (vols. 1 & 2)

Now available to read on my patreon!

I recently finished playing in a Curse of Strahd campaign that lasted about 2 years and was one of the best dnd experiences of my life. So of course, I decided to write it up in novel form so that I and the other players could always return to it. Our paladin was an extremely detailed note taker so I've been borrowing their notes. It's currently the longest piece of writing I’ve ever done and I add to it every day. It's from the pov of my character, a human necromancer called Sepulcrave who has a pretty crazy character arc and it's my current main WIP, even though its a personal project.

Eye of the Falcon King (working title)

A secondary-world medieval fantasy novel about identity, rebellion, and manipulation. In a world where some few people have the ability to shape-shift into birds, the king seeks out these people to be his personal servants, messengers and spies. Turik is a young boy able to turn into a falcon and becomes a member of the King's circle. But after a tragedy befalls his best friend it begins to become apparent that the king is not as benevolent as he seems and Turik must come to terms with the knowledge that his reality is a lie. This book is about breaking free from manipulative forces, the ways invisible disabilities are ignored and pushed aside, and mostly about how the monarchy is terrible. Also queer people because all my stories have queer characters.

Otherlings (working title)

It's 1875 and Eliza Farthing's twin brother Alexander has just reappeared in her life after seven years. Except he's not her twin, he's her changeling. And Eliza isn't always Eliza, sometimes he's Francis. The world's of the two twins - one fey, one queer - are about to become very intertwined against their wishes. The two have to fight against their family, the police, a morally corrupt scientist, inter-community distrust, and their own dislike for each other, or both of them will never regain the lives they so desperately need and desire. Also there's a circus. The book deals with identity, secrecy, hatred, and community. It's a book about found family, about accepting yourself and others, about not needing to be seen to exist and be worth something. Mostly it's about sticking together despite your differences.

So that's my current WIPs! I'll add more as I get them, but that's all for now! Thank you for taking an interest in my work and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to send me an ask :)

Tags I use

#legend of the rat bastards, #eye of the falcon king, #ask dandelion-jester #feypocalypse #otherlings novel

[dnd-shenanigans-ensue]

Cassandra Blackwater Character Sheet

A/N: Not streaming this game of Curse of Strahd, but low key wished we were. I love her so much. Art done by @oriixxc. Please support them!

Basics

Name: Cassandra Blackwater

Age: 29

Sexual Identity: Asexual, Demiromantic

Pronouns: She/Her

Class: Warlock/Rogue

Appearance

Species: Human

Skin Tone: Fair, almost like porcelain

Eye Color: Brown

Hair Color: Dark red

Hairstyle: Typically worn up in an immaculately maintained bun

Build: Healthy figure with the vaguest sense that she didn't eat properly for most of her adolescence

Height: 5' 7''

Style: Typically seen in a 1890s style walking dress, covered to the neck with gloves, always clearly tailored for her

Personality

General Personality: Stubborn, Duplicitous, Clever

Ideals: Freedom. When under her brother's thumb she couldn't breath. While she may now work for a demon, at least now she can live how she likes. So long as she has power, nobody can tell her what to do ever again. Right?

Bonds: Her patron. He is the only one who ever lifted a finger to help. She cannot trust him, but she cannot turn her back on the one person who actually cares.

Flaws: Anger. She holds a deep simmering anger in her heart that cannot be put out. She doens't know how. She doesn't know if she wants to. What would she be without it?

Backstory

There was a time Cassandra used to believe in fairy tales. 

If she were just kind enough, virtuous enough, patient enough then somebody, anybody would come and rescue her. As the year went on, however, it became obvious no knight in shining armor was coming. 

She grew up the youngest daughter to a noble household of powerful sorcerers. Cassandra, however, was born without powers. Her parents attempted everything to get her to learn; tutors, rituals, even placing her in life threatening situations in some hope that her instincts would kick in. A particularly memorable moment was when they allowed her older brother, Victor, to burn her. If it weren't for the family healer she would have died. 

Of course, her parents were more concerned that her skin be free of any visible scars. What an embarrassment that would be to have to explain. She attempted to make up for this by placing her skill into other matters; history, music, poetry, anything to lessen her parent's ire, but nothing seemed to work. She was considered a loss, but they could not ignore her or lock her away. Her sudden disappearance would just raise more questions. So, in public, she was the dutiful, demure daughter and sister. In private she was nothing. Her parents pretended she didn't exist which made her brother's cruelties all the more potent. 

He always had a temper, one her parents either couldn't or didn't care to deal with. She became his outlet and visits from the family healer became a weekly event. As she neared eighteen she thought she could find an escape through marriage. Surely her parents would wish her to marry well and do honor to the family. But every attempt at a match was undercut by Victor.

 To the outside, it appeared the protective nature of a caring brother, but Cassandra knew the truth. He didn't want to lose his control over her. Her parents did little to intervene. As far as they were concerned Victor had finally found a healthy outlet and losing it would only cause them problems. 

It was around then she started praying. She started with the obvious ones; those that assured salvation. To them she promised devotion, quiet contemplation, a purging of her blood-soaked thoughts in favor of serenity. When they remained silent, it was clear they were too proud to sully their hands with the likes of her. She then turned to others, the ones who revealed in pain. She swore to give them all the pain stored inside her over the years, she promised pain of others if only they gave her the tools to achieve it. When the same silence met her ears it was clear her suffering wasn’t nearly enough for their notice.  The trouble with prayer is, the deity you ask for is never the only one listening. 

One evening she went to attend a ball with her family. For a rare moment she was able to slip away as her brother drank with friend and her parents consorted with others of their standing. She made her way to the gardens hoping to finally have a moment alone. Of course, she never could get her wish. She quickly felt a presence of someone...no, something else just out of the corner of her eye.

 She turned to see a man standing before her. He was undoubtedly handsome, perhaps a few years older than herself and possessed an air that brought the whole world out of focus save for him. It was quite a trick, but one that left the hair on the back of her neck stand up at a flash of yellow eyes.

 He introduced himself as a friend, someone who could make it all stop. Her prince charming finally come.

 Of course this wasn't a fairy tale, and Cassandra knew there would be a price, but what else could she do? As far as she was concerned there wasn't a single devil who could be worse than the devil she knew. 

When he asked her what she desired she told him everything. Didn't just want her family to disappear. She wanted it to hurt. She wanted them to know why it was happening. And she wanted them to know that they deserved it. 

The devil smiled at her before giving his name; Cassius. He would do as she asked. In fact, he would do her one better. Since her family liked to keep the truth away from the public eye, why sully their name now. It would all be a terrible accident; one that could not possibly trace back to Cassandra. She would be a figure of sympathy to all the rich and powerful her family craved the approval of. The only thing he would ask in return, was for her to report back everything she saw. He wished to know who owed who money, the rivalries, the jealousies. He wanted to know who was desperate. And he wanted to ensure those who opposed him were dealt with. 

Cassandra was not privy to Cassius' plans and she didn't bother to ask. These people were nothing to her. If they died or made a bad deal, it was no skin off her nose. She knew well enough the horrors that went on behind closed doors. And now she had the power and means to end them for good.

 Cassius sending her Barovia was just another job.

[tea-with-eleni]

Curse of Strahd: Interlude

One of the consequences of running the brides as full characters is that I must consider: What are they up to when we can't see them? Anastraya and Escher I've chosen to keep as spawn, so they might just be looking pretty in the castle and not really doing anything until Strahd asks.... but Ludmilla and Volenta are full vampires who willingly married Strahd and haven't regretted it. They love Tatyana as well and want her nearly as much as Strahd himself. What are they doing these nights?

The next person who accused me of brooding would be drained of all readily accessible blood and thrown off the overlook to be devoured by the omnipresent wolves. The threat would deter Escher and Anastraya - weak-willed children, the both of them - and might make Rahadin hold his tongue. It wouldn’t deter Volenta. I would need to actually draw blood on her for the threat to stick.

Not that I needed to, as it turned out. When Strahd brought her and Rahadin back from Berez, she actually looked subdued. I frowned. The rain began to pick up again, pattering onto the battlements around me. It was time to go inside and learn what happened.

Volenta met me in the library. She snarled at her damp hair, which had tangled during the ride. I sighed and began to detangle it with magic a section at a time. I smoothed it behind her hairpiece. “What happened?” She shook her head, fangs bared, ripping her hair out of my fingers. I waited. She wasn’t so young as she appeared. She took a deep, useless breath and brought her temper back under control.

“They not only refused our generous offers, they then immediately had to go and try to desecrate the stone circle you told me about! I was just going to watch, in case it helped Tatyana remember anything, you know? That was the time you were going to go help bring her home, but they - “

“I know, I was there,” I interrupted, before my own temper could rise. Remembering how close we had come to saving Marina, how furious Strahd had been - how furious I had been, by extension - made me want to go exhume the stupid, traitorous mortals just so I could slaughter them all over again.

Volenta snorted. “Well, it didn’t seem to make a damn difference to her. They weren’t even in the village by the time I caught up to Rahadin. They found some kind of weird stone…” she waved her hands, trying to describe the artifact the adventurers had uncovered, before giving up. “Whatsit. There was a lot of green light. I think the circle was resisting them - “ “Good.” “NOT good, because its guardians just kept coming and eventually I think they were going to eat Tatyana! I don’t think they were very smart.” She shook her head, nearly undoing my work on her hair again.

“What were they?” I asked. Nobody had actually tried to desecrate the fane that bound Strahd to the land, so far as I knew. Quite possibly he didn’t know himself what would happen.

“Undead, but that isn’t why Strahd is so angry,” Volenta sighed. “Rahadin saw what was happening and tried to stop them before anything could happen, but they nearly killed him. Strahd had to drag him into the Ethereal. They didn’t catch me,” she added, forestalling my next question. “I went to mist before they could get close, which was funny. They think I’m you and teleported somewhere.”

“And Tatyana?”

“She’s fine,” Volenta said, dismissively. “At least somebody taught her how to fight in this life. Why didn’t anyone try that before?”

“They did,” I said. “It hasn’t helped. I’m glad it’s done something this time, even if it also makes the backup plan of just grabbing her a little more problematic.”

“I still think we should make Doru-Vaclav-whatever bring her back,” Volenta said. She flounced to one of the other chairs and plopped herself down dramatically. She cupped her chin in her hands and batted her eyelashes. “My sweet Victoria, Strahd von Zarovich has won my heart. Come join us in Ravenloft, where we can be together for all time!” She laughed. “It’s not like he can stop us.”

I sighed and sat as well. “No, he can’t,” I agreed. Strahd did not hold Doru’s leash. I did. “But he could be angry if we imply anything between him and Doru.” Volenta looked unimpressed.

“Why? We’ve seen him with Escher. Your little pet is at least as pretty. Give it half a century, I doubt we’d be lying.”

“It’s more because he blames Doru for another one of her deaths,” I said. That was another one that should have been so easy to prevent. It was one of the reasons I had thrown myself so hard into my arcane studies. Someone needed to be able to find the girl if she chose to try and freeze to death in the mountains again. Someone needed to be able to keep her alive long enough to talk some sense into her. “I don’t think Doru realizes how lucky he is.” Strahd wanted to kill him the moment stupid, beautiful Escher rescued the spawn I never meant to create. I refused; he could be a gift for Tatyana. Strahd himself never need lay eyes on the boy. It was the same argument I used as a child begging my parents to allow me to keep a kitten. It worked then. It worked even better now, since kittens are so much less obedient than spawn. Doru could be told to stay in his crypt until we wanted to feed him or take him out and play with him. Truly, he was fortunate to have someone to keep him safe and well fed now. I didn’t even care if he preferred to drain the creatures of the woods over the humans. Sometimes it’s inconvenient to deal with prey that can think for itself.

Volenta shrugged. “So make him realize he’s a lucky, lucky boy. Tell him he gets to go smooch his girl again, or whatever, and make Tatyana realize you’re doing it for her, that you’re on her side. I don’t think they like me very much or I’d try it.” She stuck out her lower lip like a pouting child, then laughed. “Heck, lie and get her to help you take over Ravenloft. Claim you want her to be the queen of the night and you’re just waiting to overthrow his lordship. You should probably tell Strahd first so he doesn’t think you’re being honest, though.”

“He knows me better than that,” I said, smiling a little in spite of myself. Her suggestions might not be completely without merit. I didn’t mind sharing my things with my loved ones. If Tatyana wanted my kitten, she could certainly play with him. I crossed to Volenta and kissed her. “Thank you for your ideas, sweetness.”

[silencingspellsongs]

Tell me about Knuckles?

the echidna?

oh boy so there are some layers to peel back on this. i have a dnd character that is kind of an edgy warlock (Lich) who hates her undead warlock patron (Lysander) and she has some ties to necromancy (not really doing it herself, more like having had it done to her... you know how it is) and she has this sort of antagonistic but flirty relationship going on with one of her fellow party members (Wysteria) in the curse of strahd game we played in. my friend and i would occassionally text roleplay and write fics for our characters in tons of different AUs and one of the ones i latched on to was an AU of the locked tomb book series (which if people havent read yet they absolutely SHOULD. it's amazing. everyone basically breaks it down like: the first book, gideon the ninth, is about lesbian necromancers in space solving a murder mystery and if that ticks even one of your interests you will love it.)

ANYWAYS so i started writing the most self indulgent fic of my dnd crew's characters as if they were in the locked tomb series and i haven't done much with it in a while but sometimes a burst of inspo hits and i add a little more to my notes for it. a lot of it is just an outline right now but i do really want to write it out one of these days! ���️

but yeah, here's i guess a tidbit other than me just spewing out a bunch of nonsense: I called the fic "Knuckles" because in it, Wysteria who is a cavalier (if you read the books you'll know what that is) is about to duel with Lich's cavalier, Lysander, and Wysteria's necromancer kisses Wysteria's cavalier's knuckles to encases them in bone like a set of brass knuckles to act as her off-hand weapon in the fight and Lich finds it infuriatingly interesting (but also kinda hot teehee 🤭)

[clarktooncrossing]

HEY THERE PEOPLE OF TODAY AND ROBOTS OF TOMORROW! IT'S ME, CLARK! There is a madness deep in the dark catacombs of Castle Clarkenstein. For years these claustrophobic corridors have been the home of the ghoulish giraffe himself, watching as the world passes by. He prefers it this way. It gives him more time alone with the voices. The voices tell him many strange things. Yet they always come back to one: make more monsters! Everyday they tell him this. Everyday he is unable to comply. Hey, being a mad scientist on a budget means he can’t afford the fancy scientific equipment needed to breathe life into newborn abominations. Guy’s gotta afford pizza somehow. Luckily, he has discovered a way of sorts to please the voices. During all those years of watching, Dr. Clarkenstein noticed a particular pattern. Every night during October saw artists posting new pictures based on peculiar prompts. Many of them based on children of the night. While the spotted specter might not be able to craft new zombies, he can sure as heck sketch’m! As such, I provide this friendly warning to you all now: Be afraid. Few people can survive the horrors that are DUDELZ of the Damned!

By that I mean I decided to do my own take on Sketchtober this year just minus the prompts. Anybody gotta problem with that? Tough, cuz I already drew this crap so you might as well check it out.

Bumper is a mystery. Nobody knows when he died, how long ago the deed was done, or who did it. All we know now is that he is a child-like spirit who can only speak one word: Boo. Despite not knowing much about his own origin, the floating marshmallow is more than contempt with living an adventurous life with his family whenever not making new friends. However, one shouldn’t be caught assuming the friendly specter doesn’t have a dark side. It rarely comes out, but is a sight to behold nonetheless. Revealed only when the spirit is angry or agitated, the small spook becomes a hulking, haunting mass of fear! Gone are his pudgy digits in favor of sharp claws, his round, caring eyes swapped out for white, lifeless dots surrounded by a ghoulish gray, even his Boo becomes a deafening wail! For others this form proves frightening. For the Swamp Gang it’s a sign that the little ghostly goober needs a nap.

Just like this drawing needs an explanation! Back in 2017 I had sketched a ‘scary’ version of Bumper for no particular reason. Whether it was an idea for a story or just a random scribbling didn’t really matter, so the idea was left behind. That is until June of this year when the Dungeon Moron @burningthrucelluloid decided to pull the wool out from under me. During the Curse of Strahd campaign, Crocie managed to find his otherworldly companion within the titular blood sucker’s domicile. However, by then a week had passed and Strahd had gaslit the spirit into thinking the reptile had abandoned him. Why Bumper would believe that when the vampire was the one who torched his original body and held him hostage for all the time is anybody’s guess. Gaps in logic aside, the floating marshmallow transformed a dark, snarling, horrendous version of himself Alec referred to as 'Dark Bumper'. Making it all the more spookier was the fact that I hadn't shown him my sketch until after that session. It was after doing so I realized I shouldn't let a cool design go to waste, thus utilizing it for this DUDEL. Here’s hoping you all enjoy it and that Bumper is really just a double agent.

MAY THE GLASSES BE WITH YOU!

HAVING SAID ALL THAT: Two Bumper DUDELZ in a row? Jee Clark, I love the undead goober but don't you have other characters to draw? Yes, and I do plan on drawing more of them soon. However, do to prior art projects demanding my attention, there won't be any more DUDELZ for the next few days. This was the last one I had in the reserves, scheduled to be posted later on this month, but I didn't wanna leave you folks hanging. So here's one last DUDEL before we enter a temporary pause. 

[monster--boyfriend]

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

[palidoozy-art]

The more I think about your recent post about the changes you made to Strahd, the more I wonder about those changes you made to the others mentioned (Rahadin, Van Richten, Ireena, etc). I'd absolutely love to hear what adjustments you made as you already shared some stellar ideas already. Like the Tome? -Chef kiss- Amazing.

Oh mannn I do love talking about my campaign. I changed a lot with them. Again, weirdly enough, I think Strahd wound up being the most like his original incarnation. I could talk forever about the changes I made so I'll try to be brief haha. IT STILL WON'T BE BRIEF.

Obvious CoS spoilers below

IREENA - I thought it was weird that the picture they gave her makes her look like such a badass, and then the module just kind of writes her as a damsel in distress to either get kidnapped or pulled into water or dumped somewhere. To me, she's like, the second most important character in CoS -- and the book literally gives you less direction to roleplay her than her brother. Furthermore, reading her ending actually legit made me mad.

So I said fuck all that. Ireena in my game was a 19-year old girl who grew and developed over the course of the campaign. Several of my players actually said they thought of her as "the main character," just because she experienced a lot of character growth and development, going from a sheltered meek teenager to someone who can fight and assert herself. The biggest change I made to her though was that I very specifically did not just want her to be "Tatyana with memory loss." Ireena is a unique individual who happens to be partially made out of Tatyana's soul. While she shares many similarities with Tatyana, they're separate people, and part of what Ireena has to grapple with is how to live up to that. She's in the post-campaign because of that distinction -- while Sergei offered her to join him, she declined, because she wants to experience life past her twenties. I didn't get to play it out because we were kind of rushing towards the end, but I honestly envisioned a scene where she talks to the portrait of Tatyana, apologizing to her because she knows she's being selfish remaining alive.

This also brings up a unique problem in the post campaign. If Ireena dies, she ceases to exist and may not be able to be resurrected. When her soul leaves her body, it's Tatyana's again. Ireena very much wants to live. Tatyana doesn't. A resurrection has to be made with the consent of the soul, and if Tatyana declines, Ireena's just... gone. Forever.

Related: because I wasn't sure what my players would ask, and Rahadin would absolutely know this information -- there have been 18 incarnations of Tatyana, including the original. I actually have a timeline of when they were all born and how they died. The curse manifests in that they always die or are killed before their 25th birthday. If Strahd attempts to marry them, they lose their minds and throw themselves off of the same balcony the original Tatyana jumped off of during the ceremony. Strahd can never have Tatyana. Vampyr will ensure of that.

But yeah, essentially: Ireena gained actual class levels; she wasn't just Tatyana with memory loss; she traveled with the party for 90% of the campaign and wasn't just a macguffin to be kidnapped/take to places; and I removed any of the "Sergei takes her into water/the sky and you never see her again" endings because I absolutely hated those.

VAN RICHTEN - Van Richten I tweaked a lot from his original incarnation. First, I started him off as Lawful Neutral. No, game, I know you tell me he's Lawful Good, but I'm gonna have to disagree with you that "training a racist tiger to genocide an ethnic camp" falls under the spectrum of Lawful Good. Second, I changed him from cleric to artificer (alchemist). I somehow just got the impression the dude was a godless man, and so he felt more fitting to be a man of science rather than a man of the church. Third, since I wasn't sure the other dread domains were ever going to be brought into 5e I moved him out of Darkon and into another world from the outside.

His backstory was also tied more into Strahd and the campaign in general, as well as the Dark Powers. About 30 years ago, he went into the mists with his own adventuring party (that included Escher) to try to rescue his kidnapped son, Erasmus. He found his son half-turned and begging him for death. Killing him, Van Richten hunted down the Vistani woman (Ezmerelda's mother) who sold the man, and in a rage strangled her to death. This gave him a curse. Ezmerelda witnessed it happen.

He went on a warpath against vampire spawn and vistani alike, until Strahd proposed a deal to Escher. Escher lured the group to a familiar dinner date with Strahd... only for Strahd to murder all of them, including Van Richten. Van Richten was approached by a dark power -- Vaund the Evasive, and given the option to return to life in exchange for the promise that Van Richten would eventually return to Amber Temple and free him. He took it, waking up outside of Barovia. From there he became famed vampire-hunter-book-author, until in his early 50's he decided it was time to seek vengeance and fulfill his promise. He brought in his hat of disguise, came up with an alibi, and headed into Barovia as Rictavio the Great.

He was absolutely played as a much more morally grey character at the start (the party's first encounter with him rather than Rictavio was him literally torturing a dude). He softened over the course of the campaign as he grew attached to the party, until finally reaching a point in the post-campaign where he's considered Lawful Good

Also: Ezmerelda was treated more or less as his adoptive daughter. She absolutely argued against this every single time, but he even slipped up and referred to her as his daughter on a few tense occasions.

RAHADIN - Rahadin I adjusted a lot, too. A LOOOOOOT. Strahd being comically evil makes sense -- the dude is a darklord, that kind of comes with the territory. With Rahadin, I wanted him to have more motivations to his actions, because the base game actually suggests that the dude is actually capable of caring. In the base game, you can find him at Amber Temple, trying to "petition the dark god into releasing his master from his torment." He screams in grief if he finds Strahd dead. Furthermore it felt like the game glosses over the fact that the dude was adopted as Barov's son. It doesn't bother addressing how Rahadin felt about Sergei, who would in theory be his other brother. I thought a number of things suggested in his backstory were interesting, but not expanded upon in the base game. So I took it upon myself to do so.

I changed how dusk elf society was built, which affected the three major dusk elf characters. It worked off of a pretty brutal caste system, with three kings at the top overseeing all of it. Rahadin was born in a lower caste, but actually brought into the warrior caste after a member of royalty was intrigued by his stature. Rahadin worked as a general, but grew frustrated by the inefficiencies of the caste system and its inequality. He started attempting to use his influence to petition other members of nobility into changing or loosening the strict system.

Patrina caught wind of this, and viewing it as a threat to her lifestyle + viewing it as an easy way to gain brownie points with those above her... tattled on him to the three kings, spinning what he was doing as treason. Rahadin was arrested and subsequently tortured. They attempted to execute him on a breaking wheel, breaking his bones against the spokes and leaving him in the town square as an example. He wound up escaping, crawling his way out of town until he was subsequently rescued by a group of human monks. The event pretty much broke him, morally. He went to Barov soon after and sold his people out, taking a personal hand in helping annihilate the dusk elves and conquering their land. Barov was so impressed by the man's loyalty that he adopted him as his son.

Part of this was done to make a connection as to why the hell Rahadin just absolutely fuckin' hates Patrina so much (since that definitely got played up during the campaign). When thinking of Rahadin's motivations, I tried to come at it from the angle that this man was evil... but legitimately cared deeply about Strahd, Sergei, and Tatyana. He was devestated from the events of the wedding, but saw Strahd's return as a second chance. As the lone surviving witness from the wedding, he desperately wanted to help the three of them. But his own blind loyalty to Strahd and his broken moral compass prevented him from doing so.

One of my favorite little additions was a sidequest I offered to the players (they wanted to redeem Rahadin). They were requested by him to retrieve (well, "not destroy or sell") one of his most precious belongings in his office. When they get there... it turns out it's a birthday card and a worn-out old amulet from Sergei and Tatyana that he's kept after all these years. They got Ireena to read the letter to him, to help him keep going after Strahd's death.

anyway i could ramble on about changes forever but i don't want this post to get too long haha. i have. many feelings. over this campaign. maybe at some point I'll do a separate post with some of the others.

i also kinda wanna do a comic of an event from Rahadin's backstory for my players but we'll see, I might deem it "too stupid."

[dungeonsanddragonsfifthedition]

5, 9, 14, 31 for the DND ask game!

dee and dee questions

Which of your d&d characters has been the most like you?

hm... not d&d characters, but ves and keeper are probably my biggest self-inserts; if i'm choosing a d&d character specifically, i think it's probably eirlys? she's more jaded than most of my other self-inserty guys which is. more like me. + her family situation is easily the most like mine.

Has one of your d&d characters ever died? How?

well. io and eirlys both died pre-campaign, io from fall damage and eirlys from The Savalirwood Is Fucked Up. anthe died in a religious ritual pre-game too. but anthe is my only character who has died during a campaign i think? and she's done it twice. once, she was eaten by a purple worm (nev brought her back) and the other time, it was a hunger games poison berries situation in a puzzle where all of us had to "die" before we could get out.

Have you ever had a romance with an NPC or another PC?

anthe is the big one because she is. happily in a relationship with nev, clay tumblr user quillith's firbolg paladin. ori, in curse of strahd, had hook-ups with ireena and esmerelda, but she isn't really the romantic type.

Tell me about your current party!

i am in wayyy too many games to do this so let's just go over the two games i dm!

divinity & doors is a wildemount game, and the party has referred to themselves as the hypesquad and the shapes. it's made up of adaeze agubanko, a protector aasimar great-old-one warlock with a fucked up sword and a habit of handing out citrus fruits; agnodice abbadelli, a human alchemist artificer & divination wizard who makes research alchemical compounds and who lives in a basement; cyrus thorn, a half-orc redemption paladin who loves to make art and who i have hurt far too much; elvira cain, a drow grave cleric who makes knitted tapestries for the dead and whose passive perception is like 100; felicity perpetua, a tiefling divine soul sorcerer raised to be a prophet of tharizdun in the cult that's causing a lot of the campaign's big issues; kai murdoch, a beasthide (polar bear) shifter storm barbarian and profane soul (goo) bloodhunter from a giant pirate family, he is 17 and he loves to fish; and of course theodosia wright, a human blood cleric and also a bit of a narc, who is trying to solve the mystery of the strange, arcane illness that killed her mother.

thirty-six is a game set in arryl, my undeath/fey/psychological horror homebrew world, and the party doesn't have a name yet, but they are involved in a silly little prophecy together. it's made up of aeon, a firbolg rune knight fighter whose memory is spotty at best and whose history is... confusing; ainé, a reborn eladrin undying profane soul bloodhunter whose patron is the manifestation of her depression; echo goldaline, a half-elf enchantment wizard & ritual dancer who is very normal and who has nothing wrong with her; fraim tinkettle, a ghostwise halfling inquisitive rogue and trickery cleric who is running away from her temple after accidentally killing her uncle; thyme, a dhampiric wood elf hexblade warlock and cookbook writer who eats people's pride at the encouragement of their pact weapon, a chef's knife; and ymira, a flower nymph bard of songbirds who is subject of a mysterious, fucked-up curse.

[copper-dragon-in-disguise]

Quotes from my D&D game tonight (5/9/2021)

“I can do that now. I didn’t use to do that. Does that help?” 

“Are we just playing hot potato with the cursed shield?”

“’This is a celestial being.’ ‘Yeah yeah fine.’“

“In an alley when I was 14-16.″

“There’s a thing about this that is good, and only one thing. You’re getting a higher pay.” 

“You can make us think things.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.” 

“Oh, okay. So they’re just fancy names for very mundane things.” 

“Hold on. You forgot the demons- I mean Devils.” 

“Can I use my extra attack to just shuck a javelin at the bearded devil that hit the lady?” 

“Add spells. You gotta go to add spells.” 

“5th level wizard boi, you can have I think 15 spells but you can only prepare six.” 

“You wanna just thunderclap this guy or do you have a spell you really want?” 

“When you say bloodied- this guy in front of me, how much damaged does he look?” 

“Yeah this might just be the beginning of hell and we want to have it for later.” 

“It’s going to attack you with its glaive.” 

“Then I’ll just get in front of it, stop in front of it, and just be BIG”

“How do you want to do this?” 

“This devil is now a purple blaze.” 

“I- this is- I want to be clear, this is a very unconventional wizard.” 

“A six year old with a long sword probably as tall as she is.” 

“Oh wait- thats profincies.” 

“So you can have a kitchen knife or a quarterstaff.”

“Yeah I have a kitchen knife.” 

“You know the deal baby. Three more attacks- lets go!” 

“Oh dear that's not great.” 

“I will not roll bad on this one, I say as I get a three.”

“Do you have another javelin?” 

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god.”

“It is on fire and covered in blood?” 

“That one was mine?!” 

More below the break. 

“Out of game: I love the shield. I want to kill it in game.” 

“I ran curse of Strahd. This is just Strahd, in a shield.” 

“I have one charming villain character and I just play it over and over again.” 

“You’re the first one I’ve met thats not dead.” 

“Well that’s not a good sign.” 

“Fake insight roll. I trust but-”

“There’s demon Ichor and blood-black blood- everywhere.”

“Well thats... Disturbing.” 

“We want to slaughter a bunch of Devil and nearly die or take the safe path?”

“Safe.”

“Safe.”

“Safe. We can slaughter Devils later.”  

“This bridge has apparently been consecrated in the name of Torm.” 

“Are you getting paid at all?” 

“Yeah.” 

“You use your money to buy more money?” 

“Yeah. It’s called stock.” 

“The Devils have a working economy and are paid?” 

“Let me get this straight. There’s a Devil woman who pays you and its like a job?” 

“We’re getting paid to make innocent people die. It’s called capitalism.” 

“Oh no. What have they done!” 

“I’m not helping you with this.” 

“Activating them- they’re not activated-might channel the power of Torm. Do with that what you will.” 

“That doesn’t sound like a good thing to me, I’m just gonna say that.” 

“You suddenly remember where you heard this prayer- it was on a live laugh love poster sorta thing.” 

“Thonn. With two Ns.” 

“Can I activate radiant soul and try again?”

“I don’t go to church a lot. I just guard the church.” 

“I killed some abominations and disgusting goo upon the bridge of that which is holy.” 

“The shield speaks up. For the record, I think you should all kill each other.” 

“I punch the shield in the mouth.” 

[dunewizard]

30 Days of Autism Acceptance - Day 15

The questions I’m answering can be found here!

April 15: Free day! Write about any topic you want!

I have a few things to say today. 

In this post I talk about coming back to running my own Dungeons and Dragons games. Theres also a paragraph tangent about Drow and RA Salvatores Drizzt series. Because Drow are my favs.

.

One thing I’m very excited about is the fact that I’m getting back into running my own D&D games. I lost the passion for it for a while. it wasnt right, I wasnt running my own work and the work I was running was depressing. I’m not big into gothic horror, at least not anymore - I sort of burnt myself out on the topic after I ran Curse of Strahd. So when i went to run it a second time because I “am comfortable/know the story well” it was right off the back of doing it already.  I felt burnt out. Especially because right after the first time I ran Curse of Strahd I immediately went onto Storm King’s Thunder, which is an entirely different campaign which you REALLY need to read the WHOLE thing and understand the working parts to get that story off the ground. 

There was an emotional investment and skill requirement that I just didn’t have and it turned what should be a fun and interactive hobby into simply a chore. I’m blessed to have had players who understood that I’m a player at the table too and my imput as DM is necessary to facilitate gameplay so without me the game shouldnt run. My heart wasn’t in it and I needed time away. Folks who have read my Blondie Talks tag would be familiar with the plight, it was around 6-8 months ago tho. I think.

I’m now coming back to being a Dungeonmaster and I love it so much. I have a fantastic team of players who seem as invested in the story and their characters as I am which honestly sounds too good to be true. But I see it in the way they play and interact with the game it warms my heart. I’m not running depressing Gothic Horror anymore and now I’m running a campaign set in my favourite setting: The Underdark! Undeground caves littered with danger and intrigue! Who knows whats around the next corner?! And DROW. I LOVE Drow. 

Drow are easily my favourite race found in D&D, and my main campaign theme is trying to show that evil is a choice and that no creature is inherently evil. Sort of thing. I dont know. I was mostly inspired by R.A Salvatore’s Drizzt DoUrden series, as “the only good drow” he goes through many moral conundrums as he considers the ideas that... well. Hes a Drow. Everything hes been told so far is that Drow are evil, and they do this and that. So much of what hes told hes like... I dont align with this... I dont agree. I will fight for my friends I wont leave them aside! Combo that with legendary skill with some swords and you got a killer character there dude, hes facing his own morality! Hes wondering whos evil and whos not!  One of my favourite conversations the book has  is when some Goblins are outside the Dwarven City of Mithrilfast, and the King waves his hand to say “Just kill them and be done with it”. Cattie Brie, his adopted daughter tries to appeal to his compassion by pleading him to only scare them off! With the poignant mention “what if they were drow?!” - knowing full well that Drizzt was RIGHT there in their court, and it was well established that Drizzt is a friend with noble intentions and a good heart. The fact that Drizzt was there made him think “What if there is a Drizzt among those goblins?” and to summarize the situation the King ends up not slaying the Goblins. Its hard to quite explain but the books go into much better detail about these concepts.

ANYWAY Sorry I prattled. I’m running a game set in the Underdark! My players are phenomenal and I’m seriously finding my passion for Dungeon Mastering once more. I cant wait to throw more challenges towards my players and I’m so excited to see what they do!

I lost the spark for Dungeons and Dragons for a little bit because of my DMing hiatus. I never lost the interest but everything in me questioned why I loved it still so much. I played as my main Wizard character named Hermes, my friend jake’s campaign was every Sunday afternoon and I loved it. We always made sure to do something on “D&D Day” even if we couldnt continue the main campaign. I’ve loved the game for the last 6 years and I cannot see myself ever dropping the game, its simply one of those infinite content sort of games! Its really helped me come out of my shell and improve my acting abilities and I love being a player and understanding plot hooks and trying to be a better player for new tables too. 

I couldnt think of a better way to spend my free time <3

[pixelgrotto]

A look at D&D’s Curse of Strahd

From about October 2018 to August 2019, I led a group of four friends through Curse of Strahd, the latest campaign book featuring a dive into the realm of Dungeon & Dragon’s most famous vampire, Strahd von Zarovich. It went well, and it was an interesting experience for me as a Dungeon Master, since this was my first time using one of Wizards of the Coast’s official modules. In the past I’ve always come up with my own homebrew adventures, and I still homebrewed a good chunk of Curse of Strahd, remixing characters and formulating story twists on the fly once I learned the ebb and flow of my group.

One of the things I love most about D&D, however, is that such behavior is encouraged, and pretty much all of the major 5th Edition releases outright tell DMs that they shouldn’t hesitate to make a campaign “their own” by only following the book when necessary. Thus, the version of Curse of Strahd that my players ran through was an experience specifically tailored to them - one where a motley crew known as the “Well-Doners” (like a well done steak...or a stake to the heart of a vampire!) were sucked into Strahd’s strange valley of Barovia and forced to ally together for the sake of survival...aided by a few key comrades, including a funny gnome mage who’d lost his magical mojo, the reincarnation of Strahd’s lost love, a grumpy monster hunter and a massive ranger and his dwarf wife. If I ever run Curse of Strahd again for another group, it’s very likely that many of these key comrades - as well as the general crux of the adventure - will turn out completely different.

To all enterprising DMs who might wish to run Curse of Strahd for their own groups, it’s worth first noting that this is very much a Ravenloft campaign. Ravenloft is the setting that sprouted from the 1983 module of the same name, originally devised by Tracy and Laura Hickman and then expanded upon during the heyday of D&D 2nd Edition. In a nutshell, it’s D&D’s horror setting, and the horror is very much steeped in the gothic tradition, with a heavy dollop of foes inspired by the Universal Monster Movies of the 1920s to 50s, sprinkles of Eastern European creepiness and a dash or two of dark romance to complete the mix. I quite like this combination because it reminds me of the melancholy yet deeply beautiful world of Mordavia in Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, one of the formative experiences of my youth and a game that has a great soundtrack for the backdrop of any Ravenloft campaign. (Interestingly, Quest for Glory creators Lori and Corey Cole were D&D players before they went on to design computer games, which means that the gothic realm of Mordavia surely is a clear descendant of Ravenloft.)

But horror of any variety isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, and certain parts of Curse of Strahd - if run straight from the book - can veer quite sinister, because Barovia is ultimately a crappy place presided over by a crappy undead warlord. The introductory adventure of the module, dubbed “Death House,” actually deals with ghostly children who’ve died of starvation in a haunted manor due to the cultist ways of their mad parents. It’s entirely possible to make these kids untrustworthy antagonists in order to emphasize that the Ravenloft setting simply does not mess around, but since I was running this campaign for a group of four new players whose prior experience with D&D ran the gamut from limited to absolutely zero, I decided to make them into a spooky but still likable duo who could “possess” the players’ characters and offer sassy running commentary on the monsters infiltrating the manor. Like Casper but with a tad more snark, in other words - and the endearing nature of the children made the moment where my players had to lay their corpses to rest and confront their sad origins all the more compelling.

This act of balance - between ensuring that players recognize this as a dark adventure but also making sure that just enough light and humor alleviates the depression - is one that I tried to perform during every session of our game, and I’d encourage future Curse of Strahd DMs to do the same. I’d also encourage enterprising Dungeon Masters to perform a similar balancing act on the monsters and scenarios that permeate the adventure - specifically on the ones in the Death House opener as well as Strahd himself.

Death House, more specifically, is described in the book as a means to help the party quickly progress from levels 1 to 3, but played as is, it’s quite possible for players to get absolutely curb-stomped by everything within the manor - particularly a “final boss” that they’re technically not supposed to engage with, at least in a fair manner. Veteran RPG fans might relish the challenge, which is more reminiscent of Call of Cthulhu than D&D, but newbies might not like having to re-roll a character because their first one got wrecked by a Shambling Mound after only a few hours of play. So, retool Death House to suit the needs of your party - in my case, I limited the encounters somewhat to prevent a steady drip of HP and also gave my players a few tips on how to beat tricky baddies via those aforementioned ghost kids.

The opposite strategy goes for Strahd von Zarovich himself, who might be the big bad of Barovia but is surprisingly squishy when confronted by a hardy group of level 8 or 9 players, especially if they’ve found all the fancy sunlight-shooting artifacts of the adventure that can limit his powers. I can’t count the number of posts I’ve seen on the D&D Reddit or a Curse of Strahd Facebook group I’m in where frustrated DMs have written something like “Strahd was killed by my players within two rounds, where did I go wrong” - and in order to circumvent this from happening in the last session of a shared storytelling experience that had nearly spanned a year, I took a heavy pair of tweezers to Strahd’s stats and gave him three forms, each with their own HP. The first was his regular vampiric self, the second was him riding on his Misty Steed-summoned horse Bucephalus, and the third was basically Strahd going into berserker mode with black angel wings bursting from his back. (I stole the concept art of Satan from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 for that. Worked perfectly!)

Speaking of Castlevania, I drew inspiration from the recent Netflix series - which I’ve written about here and here - when it came to developing Strahd’s actual personality, because even though the book updated his original Bela Lugosi-esque appearance into something more regal and fantasy-inspired, his essence is still something of a two dimensional bad guy, and the fact that one of his eternal missions in undeath is to make the reincarnation of his original lover fall for him is a problematic pill to swallow in 2019, even if it is meant as an ode to Dracula’s obsession with Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s original novel. And so I decided to make my version of Strahd similar to the depressed, weary-of-life Dracula in Netflix Castlevania, turning him into a vampire of complexities - a guy who’s been immortal for so long that he almost wants the players to kill him, a man who believes he’s entitled to the love of a woman yet somewhere deep down realizes the inherent selfishness of that belief, and a lord who’s grown bored with his kingdom yet can’t quite relinquish the power he’s held over it for centuries. My Strahd, in other words, was still a bad dude, but at least a somewhat deeper bad dude that the cardboard cutout as presented in the book, and one of my players even described him as “a little like Kylo Ren,” which I took as a compliment.

Before I wrap this up, I’d like to return to the concept of the balancing act with regards to the structure and scope of Curse of Strahd, which is a true sandbox adventure. Players are not required to visit half of the locations outlined in the book, and the replayability factor is high, because the various artifacts that you need to defeat Strahd, as well as the specific non-player characters likely to assist you along the way, are dependent on a tarot card reading that occurs near the start of the adventure. The locations that I found the most important for my players were the towns of Barovia and Vallaki, the Wizard of Wines Winery, Yester Hill, Van Richten’s Tower, the Ruins of Berez, and Castle Ravenloft itself. Other groups online swear by Krezk, a third town that my players never bothered to visit (though I would have urged them to go there if we’d had any clerics or paladins in the party, since Krezk is a town with a giant church), and the Amber Temple, the lair where Strahd obtained his undead powers (a place I feel is best suited for players of neutral or evil-leaning alignments). Your mileage may vary, but if you’re going to DM this module, one of the best bits of advice I can give would be to see which locations your players are naturally inquisitive about, and then focus on those. Exploring every nook and cranny of Barovia can quickly turn into a slog otherwise.

With all this in mind, I think it’s time for the so-called “Well-Doners” to leave the world of gothic horror behind for a bit. They’ve somehow managed to find their way back to their home plane and the city of Waterdeep, and only one of the party was infected with a seemingly fatal curse after their stay in Ravenloft. What further quests await, I wonder, and what new campaign book will I hack apart to suit my players’ tastes? That’s for me to know, for them to find out, and for another long blog post examination...sometime in 2020, hopefully!

All photographs taken by me.

[lichlairs]

Checkout our new post over at http://lichlair.com/the-curse-of-strahd-curse

The Curse of Strahd Curse

This article is going to be a little different from my normal articles and I think the first in perhaps a little anthology series depending on how things go. Get yourself a nice drink and a snack and get comfortable as I take you down the dark path of my personal experiences (as well as some of my friends’) with everyone’s favorite Gothic horror module.

Mild spoilers ahead!

For the night is dark and full of spoilers…

Four times.

That’s how many times I’ve tried to unsuccessfully make my way through this cursed module. In fact, CoS was, I think, the first official module I tried to play my way through but I still remember as if it was yesterday; I had joined the campaign late as a fill in player. The original group had already collected Ireena and were now on their way to the Winery after being turned away from their destination. At the time I still didn’t quite know what I was doing and had opted to simply play my first Paladin, who was predictably an Aasimar.

We got to the Winery, talked to the family, and saved the day… not too bad for my first session having joined. Second session comes and we make our way to Yester Hill. A couple of player characters die but nothing too out of the ordinary for this module. Session three DM never shows up. Everyone sort of just sits around as makes awkward small talk as we wait to see if he’ll show up but eventually we begin to filter out. Strike one.

Flash forward a handful of months later and I’m still intrigued by CoS and very much decided to finish it. In my desperation I turn to the interwebs and discover that there are various platforms from which you can find a group and play online. It took a couple of days but I did eventually find a paid Cursed of Strahd campaign that looked promising and decided to join and what do you know… this group is also just now headed towards Kresk. I bite my tongue to not spoil anything and just enjoy playing my cool shadow monk. After another couple of sessions we eventually fight the druids again and…the DM kicks everyone out of their server after arguing with one of the players… no refunds. Strike two.

Hello, darkness my old friend

Months pass, I meet some pretty great friends along the way and forget about this cursed module for a bit until someone in our little group expresses their interest in running Curse of Strahd. I have a couple of seconds of doubt but eventually do agree to join the campaign as I had recently freed up some of my time. After a few sessions it happens again. Strike three.

Flash forward once again to about two months ago when another friend informs me that he will be running the game for some people and very hopefully asks if I am free to join. Now, at this point I’m very much reluctant and doubtful on whether I will ever actually be able to play through the damn thing, so I sigh and do what any friend would do…I play an Ancestral Barbarian Orc. Long story short, by the time we’ve made it out of the Death House three players had already dropped and with them the campaign came to an end once again. Final strike.

Now, if you’ve read this far I’m sure you understand why I’m not exactly fully knowledgeable on the full Curse of Strahd Module (since I really don’t like reading ahead on things I’m playing through) but for the most part I did find the story interesting enough and was very much looking forward to progressing through it.

After four attempts at playing this module I have some ideas as to why it might be difficult for a player but having never tried to DM it myself, I’ve done my rounds and asked a few people who are knowledgeable in this module about their own personal experiences running it and here’s what they had to say:

The module’s strength is also its weakness. While most people love a good sandbox adventure, CoS takes it a little bit too far by making it very difficult for the DM to prepare anything. We asked some of our friends who have run the module and they told us that they basically had to have the entire thing prepared because there was no way to know when the players would simply decide to change directions at the drop of a hat.

This overwhelming amount of material confined to such a small sandbox can also feel a little directionless for both players and Dungeon Masters. With so many quests and missions appearing all over the map and no “guiding” NPC to rely on, there’s just too many things to do and too few ways in which to nudge players in the right direction.

Another big complain that I personally experienced and something that got brought up quite a bit when asking for feedback for this article was that CoS seems to be built specifically to make the players’ lives miserable. At lower levels, every encounter is skewed to be deadly to the extreme, this coupled with the fact that 5th edition has an inherent tendency for players to not want to run away from encounters, it makes it extremely easy for total party wipe outs to happen. Now, don’t misunderstand me, player character deaths are completely natural and can lead to some amazing in character moments… when death is meaningful. Unfortunately that’s something that gets stripped away very quickly when your party has cycled through an entire rotation of characters.

“You can’t just play the same character and ad a ‘the 3rd’ at the end of their name!“

For a module that everyone seems to claim as their favorite, there seems to be a lot of unhappy experiences surrounding it. At the end of the day, after writing this article I think I’ve personally officially come to terms with the fact that I will never play through the entirety of Curse of Strahd and you know what? I’m okay with that.

If you’ve read this far I’d like to thank you for checking out our first article in our anthology series. If you’d like to read similar content in the future or simply want to rage at our writer for bad mouthing your favorite vampire module let us know by dropping a message in our new forums. Don’t forget to follow us on our social media to never miss any of our daily articles.

[dreadlock-detective]

All of my 5th ed D&D characters together, by order of appearance: Adi the Paladin (Crimson Crow Campaign), Beatrice the Monk/Cleric, Cirilisa the Wizard, Dindelion the Sorceress, Elenor the Ranger/Wizard, and Adi the Cleric (Curse of Strahd Campaign) (yes that’s A B C D E, and then A again)

My characters tend to have rather large issues that would, if they were left on their own without their respective groups/getting caught up in the campaign, ensure they’d never actually succeed in their goals. As such I’ve really enjoyed distilling each of them down to a single word, an essence of what lays behind their entire psyches. And they’re all bad. Yes, even “Justice”, due to the circumstances~ Ramble about each of them after the cut~

Adi the Paladin (of the Crimson Crows) is a bit of a special case, the only one whose impediment to their success isn’t strictly speaking herself. The child of nobles who collected ancient artifacts, it is said one day they lost themselves to madness. Adi was taken in by her aunt and uncle who raised her the best she could, but as she grew they found she too was prone to bouts of madness and hysteria. One day, when the man they had hired to exercise whatever demons lay upon her mind was found upon the floor, the girl bloodying his face with her fists, she was deemed incurable and quietly shipped away to join a peace-keeping force of ex-criminals and other undesirables known as the Crimson Crows.

She always thought of herself as a hero - a warrior of good and bringer of justice. The problem lays in that she was, originally, a warlock/barbarian of a Great Old One (Nyarlathotep), which warped how she saw the world to fit how she saw herself. For example, if she killed someone, it’s because that person deserved to be killed - if not for the reasons she was attacking them, then for something else. A self proclaimed Hero of the People who’s powers came from something far more likely to destroy the world, manipulating her towards its goals.

She had a rather happy ending, though - some of the other PC’s betrayed her trust and managed to sever her connection to Nyarlathotep, afterward she became a Paladin and through the power of friendship (with a colony of Mind Flayers - its a weird story) she managed to become the hero she always thought she was, ending a war with minimal bloodshed and bringing down an ancient evil.

Beatrice the Monk/Cleric of Death The young Bea, in a desperate attempt to save her clan from a powerful and deceptive mage, ended up selling her soul to a litch, turning her into a pseudo-undead herself. As it turns out, her clan who hunted the undead as abominations and mislead by the mage didn’t take kindly to that story, and she joined the Crimson Crows instead of facing their wrath. Faced with the knowledge that she had become the thing she had sworn to destroy to save those that now cast her out, she lost hope that she could ever reclaim her soul and, even among her new family of misfits, feared they would abandon her as well.

Sadly, she never got an end to her story - she got switched out for Adi when the campaign Adi was originally in was abruptly abandoned. Later on her and her wizard friend (another PC who had left the game) who both were hunting that evil mage found themselves mind-controlled into helping him resurrect an ancient draco-litch. She was saved by Adi & co, but now was worse off than ever, having played a pivotal role in bringing back a terrible undead horror, no matter how unwillingly. If we ever play another campaign in that world, I’d love to give her a proper story.

Cirilisa the Wizard Oh precious Ciri, the littlest Drow~ When a rival house murdered her entire family she became a young murder hobo in the underdark, growing up sickly and frail. Eventually she attempted to get her revenge but only managed to steal and sell some artifact from the family, along with getting a massive scar across her midsection from a blast from the family’s matriarch. Somehow escaping to the surface, her unconscious body was found by scouts of the Crimson Crows, who brought her back to relative health and gave her a new home, where she eventually set herself on becoming a moderately accomplished wizard. Her loss in childhood had deadened her already drow heart, but living among the surface world she saw so many people with so many emotions. She didn’t understand them, but she secretly coveted what they had.

I had planned that she would start to fall in love with the first PC that went out of their way to protect or help her from a serious problem - a plan that was designed to end poorly. The three candidates were a loner dwarf who didn’t want anything to do with anyone else, a were-bear orc who was 100% gay, and a minotaur who was already in a committed relationship. But even though the feelings wouldn’t be returned, she would FEEL things and grow as a character... well...

I didn’t expect that character (the orc) to protect her from drow assassins who nearly managed to kill her... and then THE NEXT NIGHT sacrifice his soul to a revenant of a man he had killed to protect the party. Before Ciri even had a chance to start acknowledging or understanding what she was feeling the object of her affections was dead and buried along the roadside. Instead of love, she grew bitter and angry, desperate to find a way to save the orc’s soul, all without really knowing why. She died before she could - her heart ripped from her chest by a wraith of vampiric spirits in a climatic boss battle. But that group’s leader, a PC vampire named Walter, destroyed the wraith, took it’s title and powers as Blood Lord, and raised her as a vampire. She’s still a ball of piss and vinegar, but she’s in a way found herself in a new family, charging herself with constantly keeping the Blood Lord in check and making sure he never gets too full of himself.

Dindelion the Sorceress If you don’t know about Dindel you haven’t been following me long. A homeless vagabond who hides her natural born ability to heal others for fear it would be exploited, she’s internalized many negative things about herself and rarely trusts herself to make decisions that won’t end in disaster. Add in a mother that disappeared when she was young, a drunkard gambler of a father, and a city decades in decline full of poverty and abuse by those in power and she’s got more than a few trust issues for other folks as well. She also has absolutely no idea how a healthy relationship is supposed to work, and a head full of stories and romance that have absolutely not lined up with her experiences since the campaign started.

Her father, the only constant in her life and the other half of a fairly unhealthy co-dependent relationship, got taken away by essentially the mob for not paying debts and it’s up to her to find some way to pay it off. To her great luck, she ran in to the wandering soldier Vale who, apparently wanting to make up for past sins, agrees to take her along to join a new venture he heard about, leading to the campaign proper. She was actually specifically designed to have too many trust issues to actually get in a relationship with anyone, but between how Vale cares for her and how absolutely shitty she’s found the outside world to be, those issues have actually mutated into something new as their romance has grown. Its... not any healthier a mental state though. I’m excited to see where it goes!

Elenor the Ranger/Wizard Elena was once a promising apprentice wizard, learning the weave with 4 other students. Always feeling a step above the others and not content with how slowly their teacher was progressing them, she devised a plan to work with the others to impress their teacher - to show her they were ready for bigger things. They were going to summon a creature from the planes of hell! Specifically, a Lemure, a relatively harmless blob of a twisted soul. An impressive feat and without much risk from the creature being summoned. Definitely within the capability of someone as great as her.

As sharp chains lashed out from the summoning circle her left arm was torn away. A great beast emerged, tossing her across the room. As she looked up she saw her rival, a young man named Osvaldo, brandishing an axe, standing over her, and looking quite pleased with himself. And the axe came down.

She would come to in a crypt standing near a coffin bearing the family crest of Osvaldo. Her body stiff and her mind cloudy, she slowly realized she had not survived that night at all - she was now a reanimated corpse, but had somehow regained her sense of self. She also found the nearby townspeople did not care enough to distinguish between mindless undead and herself. Eventually she found the place she had once studied - destroyed, some time ago it seems, by that night’s events. Lost and adrift, the life she once knew was over, even her memories were fragmented, but she would forever remember the names of the four who had done this. Osvaldo had convinced them to change the ritual - to summon that creature, and to use it to kill her. She was certain of it. And that hatred kept her going as years of nothingness passed her by. One day she was hired by a tunnel elf, a professed seeker of knowledge, as a guide through the wilderness and though she could not stand him they soon encountered others, mostly strange folk - a tabaxi, a triton, and a snake-like dragonborn in particular - and she stuck around to entertain herself.

Little did she know they were about to be pulled into saving the world from consumption by a forgotten and terrible deity. She thinks their chances aren’t even worth mentioning, but still she cannot allow existence to end before she has wrought what vengeance she can on those that wronged her, and so she will fight with everything she has to keep the world going.

Adi the Cleric of Nyarlathotep As Adi of the Crimson Crows discovered as she worked with the mind flayers, she was not the only Adi. Not even close. Hers was a soul connected to a power outside of time and space and finds itself drawn into worlds over and over, each incarnation as much the same as they are different. Perhaps the Crawling Chaos did not want to repeat what had happened before, maybe it was just twisted curiosity, but this iteration of the girl was born through his direct influence, raised in a town he had visited and driven mad. She was his disciple, and she would spread his teachings across the land.

Through a series of misunderstandings she has found herself in the land of Ravenloft, under the watchful eyes of the vampire Strahd, and in this land she came upon a terrible, bewitched house. A house with paintings of the owners and of a woman bearing a striking resemblance to her. A house where the ghostly children said their littlest sister was named Adi. The child had died in infancy, sacrificed in some dark ritual by its father.

And down in the depths of that place Adi found it was the truth. And there, along the alter, sat a book bound in human skin that called to her. A book of rituals devoted to her god, the Faceless Father. And there, upon the alter, she left the corpse of one of those who had traveled with her, who had brought her there.

She isn’t certain why the Faceless Father has guided her to this land, but she will carry out his will or die trying, though all things considered, perhaps the world would be better off with her in the ground, the cult’s voice silenced