#like right when i finished saying my piece about the Abbot and Vasilka one of the players said their ride was there and we had to end it

[innistrahd]

Curse of Strahd, Episode 09

AKA So Much Plot 

Recap

Our heroes, Claris the gnome wizard, Ileana the elf druid, Mike the human bard, and Nyx the werewolf rogue, along with their various companions Laise (Claris’s familiar), Frederick (animated armor), Magdala (a wereraven), Ash and Thorn (two wood woads), and Mistrunner (a horse) all arrived in Barovia in their own times (some being born there), and eventually all gathered together. At the start of our adventure, Claris received a fortune telling her of a few things of note in her journey, such as that “knowledge of the ancient” was to be found in a place where a dragon rested. Most recently, our group encountered the druids at Yester Hill, where Ileana was first crowned their leader, then our heroes killed the druids and burned their sacred tree since they were worshipers of Strahd, the evil lord of Barovia. As we pick back up, our heroes are on their way back to the Wizard of Wines, from which they plan on heading north to the village of Krezk. 

The Order of the Silver Dragon, and the Druids going north

As the group was perhaps a half mile away from the winery, they encountered a creature wandering the paths nearby. What appeared at first to simply be a regular old zombie turned out to be an intelligent revenant, a member of the Order of the Silver Dragon, an order of knights dedicated to fighting evil. After hearing that Ileana was indeed the folk hero the Swordstealer, Sorina the knight asked the group to come to the order’s mansion at their own convenience to convince their leader to once again take up the fight against Strahd. She agreed to wait for them at the location called Tsolenka Pass. 

After that, our heroes returned to the winery, still quite early in the morning, and spoke with the Martikovs. Claris began to speak with the intelligent crystal that she’d picked up back on Yester Hill. As the group got on the road with the younger son of the Martikovs, a man named Elvir, they were attacked by a druid and a horde of twig blights. While they fairly easily slew the horde of blights, they took the druid hostage briefly to experiment with equipping Frederick to a living creature. 

The Walled Village of Krezk

At around noon that day, the group arrived at the village of Krezk, a lonely village on a mountaintop, where they were happily greeted by the Burgomaster Dmitri Krezkov. The burgomaster told them about the village a little- that they were a secluded settlement that produced all their own goods except for wine. Additionally, after arriving in town they could hear bells chiming from the Abbey up the hill, and also the cries and screams of many crazed creatures, although they couldn’t pin down just what kind of creatures might be making those sounds. 

As they entered the burgomaster’s modest home, the group saw a dog lying near the hearth, which made Mike particularly happy, because this was Little Mike, his best friend whom he’d lost and all his searching had been for. Magdala stayed behind with Little Mike while Mike and the others traveled up the hill to the Abbey of St Markovia, where they were to meet with the Abbot for spiritual advice, a cure to Mike’s lycanthropy, and information about the world. 

The Angel and the Bride

As the group arrived at the Abbey of Saint Markovia, they found that the place seemed surprisingly empty. The sounds of the bell and the cries and screams had faded away, leaving little but a cold breeze to greet their senses. They rung a bell hanging at the Abbey’s gate, but received no answer and so began to travel into the Abbey on their own. Within, they saw a wagon that they recognized- the wagon of a certain Ezmerelda d’Avenir, a vistana woman who they met at the wizard’s tower on Lake Baratok. With noone around but the party, Claris crawled into the wagon using the secret hatch underneath that she’d learned of by watching Ezmerelda before, and took just a few of the items hidden away within, including a half-burnt page from a journal.

The group continued inside the Abbey a little more, and were greeted by a strange, deformed man and woman, who were carrying an empty cauldron from one end of the Abbey to the other. They ushered the group into the Abbey’s main hall, where they met with the Abbot, a handsome young man (probably no older than 30, but who had been about 30 for many generations, from what they’d heard) and Vasilka, a beautiful young woman in very fine clothing who seemed almost to have no mind of her own. After their introductions, the Abbot invited the party to join them in supper, and called upon the two deformed figures, Clovin and Zondra, to serve dinner. The two had barely begun to fix a new pot of stew by the time the Abbot called for dinner, so the food they did serve was hardly cooked at all, but they served it nonetheless. 

At dinner, 9 places were set at the table. The Abbot and Vasilka sat at one end of the table, with the four members of our party sitting 2 on either side of the table beyond that. The other 3 places were filled in by 3 new figures who joined: Ezmerelda d’Avenir, who seemed shocked to see this group who she suspected to be working with Strahd; Buck, a tiefling who used a weird weapon (a gun); and Aliera, or Xantha as she called herself, a human assassin. After clearing up that neither Ezmerelda nor our heroes were actually on the side of Strahd, they became a tad bit friendlier with each other. The party also got a chance to speak with Buck and Aliera, the two figures from our session 6.5 of this campaign, who had been stuck in Barovia for awhile since we last saw them. 

Meanwhile during during dinner, our party also noticed a few things rather strange about Vasilka. First, she appeared to not be entirely human, but rather to be stitched together flesh from many different women. In addition to that, she appeared to strike an eerie resemblance to Nyx, like she was made to be a cheap replica of Nyx. After dinner, the Abbot showed our heroes around the Abbey, where he revealed a few very interesting things. 

First, he revealed that Vasilka was actually a creature the Abbot created to serve as a gift for Strahd, to appease the dark lord and allow the people of Barovia to hopefully leave his domain. As such, Vasilka was created to bear a resemblance to one of Strahd’s previous desires- a woman who Strahd sought after but who met an untimely demise before Strahd was able to wed her or turn her. The Abbot also revealed his own nature as a Deva, an angel of the holy planes, who had been trapped in the land of Barovia long ago and wished simply to leave the place. He believed that offering up Vasilka as an undying gift to Strahd would appease him and allow those who wished to leave Barovia that opportunity. 

DM Notes

Whew, that was an interesting session. I felt like there might have been a lot of people not paying attention this session, at least some of which was because they were having private in-character discussions off on the side and not paying attention to the other discussions going on, but I’m not sure everyone got all of every story going on here. I’m hoping everything got through to at least one of the players, though. 

-Changed the Abbey: While I don’t think it’s the biggest change I’ve made to our Curse of Strahd campaign, I do think it’s the biggest change that the players have actually encountered, although they don’t really know this since none of them have played through the  adventure in any other capacity. But, yeah, I’ve made some changes to the Abbey, and a lot of them will probably actually be revealed next time, since the players might have a chance to explore the Abbey on their own and take a better look at some things. 

-Combat-Light: There wasn’t really a whole lot of combat this session, or a whole lot of dice rolling at all, really. I don’t think that’s really a good or a bad thing, but it’s just an interesting thing. I have no clue if that had an impact on how intently people were paying attention. Maybe too much exposition at once isn’t necessarily a good thing. Also, the one combat was all done without a map, but when the players sat at the dinner table with the Abbot I drew up a map, which I think may have confused the players a little.

-The Random Encounter: So, the druids were sort of a random encounter I’d rolled for the characters’ journey from the winery to Krezk, and I thought it might be an interesting encounter to show how the dynamic between the party (especially Ileana) and the druids of Barovia might change in response to some of the things that have happened. In theory, once the druid saw that Ileana was carrying the Gulthias Staff, she’d have called off her blights and done as Ileana asked, but that wasn’t really how things played out in practice. 

-Extra Characters: Nyx’s player made a comment about it in game and I was also thinking about it myself, and one of the other players mentioned it after the game, but the cast of NPCs in the players’ party is growing exceptionally for this campaign. I’ve been having the players control some of the other characters in combat to try to help keep them engaged, with each player controlling the other characters most related to them (like Mike controlling the horse Mistrunner or Claris controlling her familiar), this has left Nyx alone for a lot of the time. Her player’s been controlling no characters other than her for awhile now and I feel kind of very bad about that, but also I’m not sure what kinds of allies to offer to Nyx in the near future. I can think of a few in the semi-near future for sure, but nothing within the next maybe session or two. 

-Plot Hooks Ruined: Well, I was originally going to use Little Mike’s illness as a plot hook to guide the players up the mountainside to visit the Abbey, since they’d need magical healing to ensure Little Mike’s safe recovery. However, after I expressed that Little Mike looked sick, Mike immediately threw up a Lesser Restoration spell, which, hey, good for him! I wasn’t going to deny him the primary use of his spell just for a plot hook. Besides, they still decided to head up to the Abbey on their own anyway. 

-Mike’s Happy Ending: So, looks like things are going swimmingly for Mike, and he might be retiring from the adventuring life after this. He’s found Little Mike, and Claris knows a spell that would heal Mike of his lycanthropy. The only thing left that Mike might want to accomplish through adventuring would be to leave the lands of Barovia, but since he’s not much of a fighter, he probably wouldn’t stand much of a chance against Strahd. So, Mike’s story may be coming to a (temporary) close, though he might be showing up later to help out in non-combat capacities. Mike’s player is probably going to be switching over to playing Buck, the tiefling gunslinger, after all this has gone down.