{"id":204,"date":"2023-06-30T04:19:59","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T04:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/?p=204"},"modified":"2024-02-06T14:05:38","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T14:05:38","slug":"out-of-the-frying-manor-and-into-the-fog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/2023\/06\/30\/out-of-the-frying-manor-and-into-the-fog\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of the Frying Manor and Into the Fog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Session 6<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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And so, the party made their escape from the cursed Durst Manor (with only one Limp Bizkit joke!) and into the “safety” of Barovia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the point at which I switched over fully to DragnaCarta’s Curse of Strahd Re<\/a>Reloaded<\/a>. There’s still a loose end here and there that needs to be tied up to get everything in line, and I will need to make a small addition in one or two places (Sorry Dragna – Jeny Greenteeth’s gotta come back, but don’t worry, she’ll just be a shopkeep). This will tie in directly with Lesson Learned Number One after all of the arc’s synopses – a bit of a departure from what I’ve said previously, but rather than trying to recap the entire arc I’ll just go bit-by-bit. Milk it for all it’s worth!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Exiting the manor, the party found themselves looking out across the valley, still covered in fog but much less obscured than in the previous morning. With the version of Death House I had run, they had entered early in the morning, around dawn, and escaped around noon. I hadn’t quite caught on that Dragna was using RAW distances so they had a fair bit of uneventful walking to do which worked out, as they reached the ramshackle walls of the village at sundown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they reached the village, Tallet the door monkey immediately wanted to try every door – oops, turns out in my Barovia, even when they evacuate the village to go elsewhere they lock their doors. Otherwise it would have been a session of “you find yourself in another<\/em> empty house, belongings hastily packed and taken away, and no you don’t find anything useful”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, they eventually followed the only sign of life in the town (despite wondering where on earth they could possibly go if everything is locked – sure, a little bird could tell them like the guide says she should<\/em> but I totally forgot all about that) to the town square, and wound up at the Blood on the Vine Tavern.While little attention was paid to the Vistani women at first, when they left Hoid felt driven to follow them out of the tavern and see where they went (off into the mists, down the road). When he returned Luther had purchased a pitcher of wine and Ismark had just approached the party, and all seven of us learned how poorly I can stick to a vaguely Slavic accent – so Ismark now has my standard “serious male voice” that I do so love using. In lieu of a full “lessons learned”, I’ll offer this – sometimes, especially when playing digitally and audio can be impacted, it’s not always worth it to go for immersion with an accent, even if you’re good at it. Instead what I’d recommend is looking at Laban Efforts<\/a> – that’s a fantastic video that breaks it down super<\/em> well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a brief chat where he was able to somewhat prove he wasn’t an immediate threat and could be trusted, he explained the essential situation – he needed to get his sister out to Vallaki because he couldn’t guarantee her safety in the town. Hickory took an opportunity to ask him about the letter she carried, showing him only the back of it (a mostly illegible ledger from the Blue Water Inn). He was quite mystified as to how it could have gotten out of Barovia at all, and his best guess was that she had to have been given it from someone from Barovia – but did comment that if he were to recommend anywhere in Vallaki for hospitality, the Blue Water was first on the list (albeit a very short list as he’d never been to Vallaki).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then brought the group back to the manor, pointing out Bildrath’s shop on the way, letting me send some deliciously mixed messages afterwards when I was hinting that they could check it out if they wanted to – “wait, should we go there? Shouldn’t we… not<\/em> go there?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arriving at the house, I got to introduce my sassy takes-no-shit, loves-her-dear-brother-but-lord-does-she-have-no-more-patience-for-his-airheadedness take on Ireena as Ismark – who’s come to trust the party just a little too quickly – nearly invited the party inside before she tore him a new one, pulled him inside, and waited impatiently for the party to catch on. It only took a couple impatient sighs and a “I’m not going to invite<\/em> you in, you know” before it clicked and Fang marched inside, the rest of the party close behind. They were very suspicious of Tolyan’s coffin – their previous experience with dead things that didn’t quite stay dead had made an impression – but the two were able to reassure everyone that no, the biggest risk from that was the smell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They took up seats around the fire in the manor’s sitting room as Ismark fetched some food for them, chatting with Ireena and quickly cutting to the chase and asking about her scarf. Personally, I didn’t feel that she would continue to hide it when the party knew the gist of the situation – Luther was curious as to the extent of her “languishing” as described in her father’s letter. She revealed the bites, and unsuccessfully tried to convince them that she was not, in fact, a vampire at that point. The party pretended to go along with it, but Fang did verify it later with a broken shard of a mirror. Ismark returned with a tray of food – described as a charcuterie of field rations – and a pot of tea, and as Fang inhaled the contents of the tray Ireena dragged Ismark back to the kitchen under the guise of lambasting him for forgetting teacups while actually reaming him out once more for trying to ship her away. While Mister 24 Passive Perception Luther did hear that they were arguing he was far too polite to eavesdrop so they did miss the content of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two returned, Ismark looking upset while Ireena looked relatively put together (once again, Luther was able to tell she wasn’t – gotta love Observant), and Ismark presented the group with the other part of the request – helping bury Kolyan in the morning. Hoid felt it was the respectful thing to do, and Fang (presumably) felt it was a sound tactical move, so they agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

From there, Steve lore-dumped<\/s> Ismark regaled them with the story of the recent events that happened in town, effectively verbatim what was in the current RRL draft at the time. Downside was in that version, Mordenkainen was the “outsider” involved, but I lucked out and didn’t mention him by name or really give any details that really conflicted with the current version using Van Richten (which is great, since Fang is specifically looking for Van Richten). He also gave them a bit more detail about Strahd’s visits, and Ismark and Ireena’s belief that while she had been bitten twice, Strahd intended to “finish the job” with the third bite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this dramatically convenient point, a knock came at the door, which Tallet immediately ran off to open.<\/em> I called for contested Dexterity checks as Hickory attempted to grab her, but she succeeded and flung open the door allowing Mad Mary to waltz in, at which point Ismark – who hadn’t quite beat her, but rolled high enough – was able to grab her and move her away from the door. Mary ranted for a bit about her poor little girl, Gertruda, who had run off and nobody was trying to help find her. The session was running long, so Ireena pretty quickly calmed her down, ushered her out, and broke down in tears – I had Ismark inform the party that “little girl” was a bit more metaphorical while “Mad” Mary wasn’t, as Gertruda was of similar age to Ireena. I left it pretty open-ended as far as what had happened with her in actuality so the Doru subplot can still be worked in. After all that, I sent them off to bed to end the session…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Session 6 And so, the party made their escape from the cursed Durst Manor (with only one Limp Bizkit joke!) and into the “safety” of Barovia. This was the point at which I switched over fully to DragnaCarta’s Curse of Strahd ReReloaded. There’s still a loose end here and there that needs to be tied […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-act1","category-session-summaries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitr.sxcore.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}