Sessions 7 and 8

Previously, on Curse of Strahd…

I left it pretty open-ended as far as what had happened with [Gertruda] in actuality so the Doru subplot can still be worked in. After all that, I sent them off to bed to end the session…

…I lied, and actually picked the next session up right as they were brought to their rooms, in order to give Fang a couple lore books between sessions. I wanted to clear up any potential conflicts between meta-knowledge about vampire and werewolf lore my players may have with how they’re represented in 5e and CoS specifically, as my party is 100% the type to run up against Strahd brandishing garlic – plus, with Fang’s background as a monster hunter, it would make sense for him to be relatively savvy. Formalizing some of this knowledge – things that would be relatively common knowledge amongst those that are informed on the subject – would give them a concrete frame of reference, and help me keep track of what information I’ve given them.

I took the old Van Richten’s Guides to Werebeasts and to Vampires and wrote out my own versions, which I’ll link for your enjoyment:

Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires

Van Richten’s Guide to Werebeasts

I had way too much fun writing those in my take on van Richten’s overly flowery and dramatic writing style. There’s some rough bits, I’m sure, but I had a great time regardless.

They also found half a map of Barovia hanging in a study, as well as old town ledgers (where they were able to find that the Dursts existed over a hundred years ago – sure it should have been further back, but I’ve made my apologies to Dragna already – and were all listed as “deceased”) and Ismark’s journal, which confirmed his story and illustrated his dedication to the position of Burgomeister. I am a very visual person and when I’m describing geography in particular, I tend to get my words mixed up. Having a diagram or a map, even if it may impact the intended tone to one extent or another, makes it much easier for me to avoid any confusion. Unfortunately by now I’ve forgotten where I found this map so I can’t cite my source, but I do really like this one – it’s enough to give an idea of the lay of the land, but doesn’t spoil anything inadvertently.

After receiving the books and map the party went off to sleep, where Madame Eva popped up in their dreams to remind them to pay her a visit in Tser Pool. They woke up to see ghostly green light through the cracks in the wood-covered windows (despite Fang’s warning not to, everyone absolutely looked) and were able to watch the ghostly March of the Dead move from the cemetery around the town and disappear into the woods, and then reappear at the top of the cliffs – with Tallet’s solid Perception check she also noticed the dozens of bats watching them from the roofs of the nearby houses. Fang used the moment to sneak out, break the mirror in the washroom (not like his luck could get worse, given his rolls), and tie a piece to the pommel of his sword after peeking on Ireena with it to verify that she was not, in fact, a vampire.

The morning saw them being woken up bright and early by Ismark to carry his father to the church. I had completely missed including Muriel when the party first entered the town, so I took the opportunity to place her first appearance here. The party was already on the lookout for anything strange on the roofs after noticing the bats during the night so they noticed her quickly, and it gave Ismark an opportunity to mention that ravens were a good omen in Barovia. He’s a handy device for providing some exposition – he had another chance a moment later, as the party passed through the town square, where he asked them to pause a moment at the statue of his grandfather, Ismark the Great. It was a good chance for me to show off the part of him that aspired to be similarly great, and the self-doubts he carries after the town was besieged.

At this point I hadn’t yet realized the conflicts between the backstories I had had the party put together for themselves and the module, and Hoid’s came into play as they got to the church – his wound throbbing in pain as they crossed the threshold. The idea was that it would hurt worse when in the presence of a vampire or their spawn.

The party really didn’t seem to know what to think of Father Donavich when they met him – they were easily able to figure out that he was hiding something, especially when Doru started wailing, but the immediate conclusion was that he was concealing something for malevolent reasons, and my attempts to clarify lead them to believe he was being charmed, or under the control of something else. There was a big lesson learned for me there which I’ll detail further at the end of the arc, but ultimately it’s to make sure to allow the players to believe what they want to believe, rather than to overcorrect by attempting to steer them in the right direction. Ismark was able to settle them by insisting they continue with the funeral out of respect for his father and for himself.

The funeral scene itself went quite nicely, and allowed me to pull on Luther’s backstory as a cleric, with Father Donavich recognizing him as a fellow man of the cloth. Of course I completely blanked on who Luther worshiped, and mentioned multiple times that he would be familiar with the Morninglord as a follower – completely forgetting that while Luther had received a dream from the Morninglord as his personal hook, he was actually a follower of Ilmater. I brought it up after the session and we decided to just retroactively treat it as Donavich making an assumption and Luther going along with it out of respect, as he would still be familiar with other gods whether or not he actually worshiped them. One thing of note during the funeral scene was a choice I made intentionally knowing the risks that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend – Luther!Player asked if there was a way he could find enough silver shavings to cast Ceremony upon Kolyan’s body to perform a Funeral Rite, which prevents the target corpse from becoming unread for the next 7 days. The party was already concerned that something would happen with the corpse being reanimated, but the spell does carry a hefty – especially for a party with next to no material possessions – material cost of 25gp worth of powdered silver. I chose to allow this to be cast without that cost, as it very much made sense for Luther to do and was a very touching moment, handwaving it a bit as Luther being aided by the spirit of the Morninglord in a small way. I didn’t intend to reanimate him anyways.

Having finished with Kolyan’s funeral, the party gave Ismark some space to mourn while they spoke with Donavich privately in regards to the elephant in the room, or rather, the vampire spawn in the basement. I think I oversold it a bit, though, as the party went from “let’s kill the priest for keeping something so dangerous hidden” to “we’re just going to leave you to deal with this, it’s on your head”, opting to completely avoid Doru entirely. This, sadly, was probably for the best, as shortly after the session Dragna made some major updates to the Doru and Donavich subplot that would have conflicted with how I was going to run that encounter – the perils of working from a work-in-progress guide popping up once more.

While planning this session I got some great advice from Dragna on how to handle the very popular additions of Rahadin delivering Strahd’s condolences, or Strahd himself appearing. I had intended to have Rahadin show up, pay his respects to Ismark and offer a reprieve for Ireena to mourn, but make it very clear that Strahd would be returning the following night for her and nothing would stop him. This was to both put the fear of Strahd into the party, as it were, and to shift the timing a bit so the party could rest that night and depart the following morning with Ireena. Dragna raised some good points – Strahd isn’t, and shouldn’t be implied to be, omniscient – the party needs to understand that while he’s extremely knowledgeable and resourceful, he’s doing so through spies and magic, not omniscience, and thus can be deceived. I dropped that entirely and instead had a bat fly out of the nearby woods up to the castle, which allowed Donavich to give some context that bats are a bad omen – while I’m sure the players had already made the assumption that bats = vampires in one way or another, this made it concrete.

From here I had Ismark leave the party to their own devices as he returned home to mourn. The party wanted an opportunity to do some shopping, and I was really excited for them to meet Bildrath, so shopping they went.

If I regret anything about the party’s interaction with Bildrath it was not having him try to gouge them enough. As it was, I played up Bildrath being a nasty, angry old man as much as I could, breaking out my best angry Scot voice (it’s so much more fun to insult people in a Scottish accent, if you ask me). This was a lot of fun for me, I’m not going to lie – at one point, Hickory tried to barter using some of the material goods they had retrieved from Death House, particularly the ivory hairbrush. Bildrath, who I described as balding, launched into a tirade at her – “Do ye think ye be a bloody comedian? A hairbrush? Ye jus’ tryin’ t’ insult me? Look at me damn head, ye bloody fool girl, do ye see anything I might be wantin’ tae brush?” It was an absolute catastrophe for the party, and a complete riot at the e-table, and the party, as expected, was soon ejected by Perriwimple.

I did throw the party a bone, though, as upon their return to Ismark’s manor they were provided with a backpack and the map from above, and in the interest of keeping things moving, the party headed off towards Tser Pool, a now armed Ireena in tow.

Up next, the party meet some new friends and have… Tser Pool party?