Session 10 - Curse Of Strahd - You sound like an 80 year old smoker with a neck hole

May contain plot spoilers. 

I honestly have no idea exactly where that reference comes from, but it was said during the session.  Sometime near the beginning and probably by our fighter who is comedic.  The facebook invite I received for this session was titled "for the love of god, why did I give you a walking house!".  And we made full use of that thing, we went from one end of Barovia to another.

At the end of last session we were at the Winery, so we decided to have a discussion with the Martikovs about what was up the order of the silver dragon (which we had previously heard about thru a rumour).  We got some vague information and were pointed in the direction of arganvasthold (or however you spell it).... barovians!

TO THE WALKING HOUSE!

And we are off.....

We get to arganmcdonalds and find a mansion that looks quite unused, with a untended front yard.  The gist of which is this place looks like no one has been here in a long time.  (cut the damn grass you bunch of lazy liches)

We wander thru the mansion, nothing, notta, nope.  Well other than spider webs.

We stumbled into this room, and find this old dead guy (which is what I'm calling him from now on).  He tells us this big spiel about Strahd, and the order of the silver dragoon, etc.  Old dead guy wants to help us take out strahd!  but he wants Strahd to suffer (and possibly not die).

My character keln (who i've grown to despise and he's basically an idiot with a holy mammoth turd)  asks old dead guy about strahds "love loves".  Keln is sure that there's a missing girl out there, that centuries ago was the soul of one of strahd's girlfriends. Keln has access to a VCR and has watched Bram Strokers Dracula few times, he's got this.

Anyways old dead guy wants us to lit a becon for him.  Problem is the only way to lit the becon is to get the skull of arkanvideoseller from the crypt in guess where?

if you guessed anything but Strahds crib, I'm shaking my head at you.

K so back to the walking house!

Keln has another brain wave (as his handler has had a few beers).  "we should go to the town that has those festivals, tell them we can create a NEW festival, the festival of the walking house!!!" And in the mean time see if we can scrounge up some red shirts for meat shields, as we are off to see strahd.

(we're off to see the wizard.....) #earworm

Editors note:  It is currently 2:23 am CST

We find the mayor at his place and he's all like "nope can't spare anyone".

CUE The Gnome

The CHARMED Mayor decides to give us a pile of magical loot! (1 point Gnome 0 points mayor).

After a brief drink at the tavern.  (those people are ecstatic that the winery is back in business)  we are once again off to see Mr. Strahd.

Editors note:  The Gnome somehow now has a bag of holding and a portable hole! He's going to cause shit. 

My character got this cool staff that will transport us to some other plane of existence for 240 days.  I'm mildly excited about this.

We also got a bunch of +3 this and +2 that kinda magic armour, scary poison dagger stuff.  Basically your general "kill strahd, don't die" kinda magic items.  WOO!

Alright, so we roll up on Strahd's crib, and Martikov "the raven" is there, and he's cheesed.  Cuz we were supposed to meet up with him like a week ago.  (it's  been a year of playing strahd fyi, poor bugger has been waiting awhile).

martikov tells us he scoped out the place, and he figured out where a few things are, including the skull we are after.  Which is a dragon skull!

thank Lolth that we got a big assed walking house right?

So the gnome flies up with brand new magic cape thingy, throws us a rope and we storm the castle!

Prior to getting up to the window, I gave dorian (the raven martikov) a piece of string, and he flew off happily to work on his nest I guess?

2:31

We wander around the castle.  At one point I got totally punked by Strahd.  I wandered into a hallway, and got a "blast this and that".  Turns out it was a wooden statue on a rope.

fuck you Strahd.

we somehow managed to find out that, we not only have to kill the physical being of strahd, but also his heart that is locked away somewhere (that figures doesn't it).

Honestly someone is going to die.  this isn't the end

And along comes basically Igor.  Who is expecting us.  (damn ravens)

he is going to get our rooms ready.

While he buggers off, we are all just hanging out in the mess hall, and we notice the big assed dragon skull.

So we get a bit "stealy" and try and get it down, with some terrible abillities checks.  Finally we get it in the portable hole.

then what do you know? That damned werewolf (that we didn't kill) shows up out of the blue.  So we beat him up.  He runs at my wifes character, (I'm down the line as far as init is concerned).  I cast hold person and our fighter boots him into the portable hole.

SUCCESS!

And then Igor shows up.

With Strahd....


Editors note:  Our DM is fucking awesome, his timing is amazing! 

I made some smoked jalapenos and sausages on the smoker, and my wife made some killer macaroni salad.  And we played D&D on the deck in the sunshine. 

Curse Of Strahd - Session 9 - BBQ Goat

We reconvened in Barovia yesterday.  It was a lot of fun.  I can`t quite believe we are on session 9 already.  I`m going to have to start working on some ideas for a campaign or a one shot very soon.  I`m guessing we will have Strahd wrapped up by summer.  Just a note we play once every 3 weeks or so.

When we left off we were in the basement of the winery, after having just finished murdering a large tree thing.  We found 3 holes the size of fists in the ground near the tree.  After a bit of checking around for gem stones that might fit into the holes, and just random searching we decided to up and leave the winery.

And Viola! guess who`s standing outside happy as you please.  God damn Von Richten.  I swear this guy is Gilderoy Lockhart, always taking the credit, but never there for the action.  This time around though he actually gave us the credit.  I was amazed.

We have a discussion with the martikovs who own the winery, and they need to get back the gems as they help with the wine process.  After a bit of haggling, apparently we will be paid in wine.  Woot.

By the sound of it Baba o``riley (lasaga, lasanga, whatever her damn name is) has the gems.  So we go off for a wander looking for the witch.

Come across a stream.  My cleric just jumps in and swims across.  The dwarf fighter tosses the gnome across the river.  And the thief swims along beside me.  We leave Gilderoy with the wagon filled with wine on the other side of the bank (after we beat up the witch we are going to go and drop off the booze in Valaki).

On the other side of the river we meet up with another martikov who is scared shitless.  We talk to her and she tells us all about the Baba`s camp, the protection, etc.  She knows way too much.... whatever.

So we find the camp of the Baba`O`Riley.  From the bushes we sort of scout the whole thing.  It`s decided that me and the dwarf are going to create a distraction.  The thief & the gnome will be invisible and will sneak into her house (which is apparently a monster) and try and knife her in the back.

And splitting the party.

The dwarf and I find this goat pen, its behind 7 foot tall fences.  There are skulls lining the top of the fence.  he gives me a boost, up and over I`m in the pen.  I throw a rope over and now we are both in the pen.  Looks like there are 9 rather normal looking goats in the pen.  The dwarf decides to lit them on fire!  So now there are 9 on FIRE! goats.  in a small pen.  Egad we are intelligent.

After some thought, I remember the dwarf has a decanter of endless water, so I suggest before we get burnt to a crisp, that we in fact douse the now BBQ`d goats.  At this point we decide to have a bit of a feast.

Cut to the gnome & the thief.  They sneak into the monster hut, notice some ravens outside in cages.  Once inside the thief does a sneak attack, rolls a crit and double damage.  The Baba will never make perogies again.  One hit is all it took to utterly destroy her.  Somewhat disappointing ending.  But team work was cool.  While the 2 of them are searching the lair, us 2 idiots (cleric & dwarf) finally set off the skull alarms.

BEEDO BEEDO BEEDO BEEDO!

And they sort of hear it from the hut.  The gnome finds a ring that controls the hut, releases the ravens who kill off any scarecrows in the vicinity.  We are finally let out of the pen, and hand out nicely bbq`d goat to everyone.

We all get in the monster hut thing and start making our way back to the winery.  During the night, the thief decides to steal the ring from the gnome.  Seriously those 2 are at each others throats the whole time.

Next morning the Gnome wakes up, notices the ring is gone.  I honestly thought he was going to fireball her.  He decides to cast an illusion on her that she has no hands.  She literally screams at the top of her lungs.  They jabber back and forth for awhile.

I get up to relieve myself, while doing so I come up with a plan.

Get back to the table, and they are still arguing.  I cast silence on both of them, and dispel magic on the thief so she has hands again.  The dwarf gives me a high five and we go off to the winery.

The thief (who doesn`t play the game that often) wasn`t sure how long silence would work, so she basically shut up for like a half hour.

We drop off the gems to the winery, they give the thief this nice bottle of 1000 year old wine.  She makes peace with the gnome and gives it to him.  He`s still peeved.  Afterwards we head off to Valak to deliver the wine.  I can`t wait to see what festival is happening this week.

Oh we met a old martikov who is going to help us, he buggered off to scout strahds castle.

that was fun.

I've been quiet lately.  My brain has been filled with guitars, and not D&D.  I managed to finally quit smoking, and I think its going to stick this time.  Every time I quit I start looking at guitars I can't afford because I smoke. So my brain has been filled with that instead of D&D, I'm guessing it'll start receding and going back to RPG things.  

Session 8 - Ransacking the warehouse - Curse Of Strahd

Caution may contain some spoilers.

Yesterday was a helluva a lot of fun, we managed to role play, fight monsters and explore!  All of the things that make up a typical D&D session.  None of them being too much, which is always good.

When last we left off we had just polished off a bunch of twig blights and holed ourselves up in the warehouse of the winery.

As per usual Von Richten (or whatever aka he goes by) buggered off, leaving us to our own devices.  

We explored the basement of the winery, finding not a lot of interest, other than some rather creepy ravens, and vats of wine.  One of our players decided to fill himself a few bottles of wine for later.  (malltov cocktail).  During the exploration our thief had the hardest time trying to open any type of chest, door etc.  At one point one of us said out loud "you are by far the worst thief I've ever heard of!'  To which the thief replied "yes but you have heard of me!"

At one point while checking out a rather large room, we heard footsteps coming towards us.  Our wizard Nym cast fake fire illusion, and the bad guy failed his save and buggered off.

After a bunch of exploring and splitting the party, Nym encountered a druid and charmed him.  The other 2 players found a bedroom with a secret door.  Nym brought the druid to the bedroom, and we decided to kill him.  Nice thing was the druid and Nym both had these strange twig blight wands, once they were destroyed no more twig blights! woot.

My character tends to have A.D.D. and wander off and fiddle with things.  At one point I was fidgeting with a spigot on the wine vat in the hopes of possibly breaking it and filling the room with wine.

We decided to camp in the bedroom for the night and barricaded ourselves in.  The next morning we woke up and found Von Richten dead on our doorstep.  Being murderhobos we looted his corpse.  During that looting we found a raise dead spell.  My Cleric just barely raised him from the dead.  (Most of the day my dice rolling was exceptionally mediocre, thankfully I made this one, barely.  The green dice pictured above rolled really well last session, but not this one. )

Another extremely funny thing I just remembered.  And I'm not even sure what the specific chances of this happening are, but we had to all roll initiative at one point, and all of us rolled a 9 with modifiers.  3 of the 4 of us rolled 7's and had mods, one of us rolled a 6 with mods.  and the DM rolled a 19, which is also midly strange.  Anyways, if someone wants to do the math go right ahead.

Alright so Von Richten is alive and well, and wants all of his stuff back.  We are sad haha.

A few more hours of exploration and we find ourselves in the basement.  Getting ourselves into the basement was rather odd.  My character just decided to wander down their first as he tends to wander.  Our thief wanted to ride a barrel of wine down the stairs yelling YEE HAW!  and the rest followed behind.

And there is a very large pissed off tree with green eyes.  A fight ensues.  While we all wanted to fireball the beejeebus out of this tree, that idea seemed like a bad plan.  Since we are supposed to be saving the winery and not burning it to the ground.

We did however light off a few malltov cocktails at the tree, once we remembered that our fighter had a decanter of infinite water, which we could use to douse the tree after it died.

The rather scary looking huge tree finally met its maker, we found 3 holes in the basement floor. and so ended the session.

Apparently we level up next time.

And as a side note, my cleric has become somewhat boring to play, and I'm hoping he gets killed off soon.  I'd like to play a paladin samurai in barovia at some point haha.