Hi all,
Over the last few weeks I’ve been posting some warts-and-all email summaries of the Curse of Strahd campaign I ran in 2017. This is the first campaign I started sending summaries to players by email after each game (I was a bit lazy prior to that).
Some of the summaries may be dull, some may be amusing; some are written in present tense, some in past tense – these are unedited emails, so please forgive their somewhat chaotic nature and poor sentence structure/grammar.
If you’re a D&D fan you may enjoy them, but I warn you: I’m not Mathew Mercer and this is not Twitch.
Game on!
Steve 🙂
Week 19
This week, after a long rest in Asgarte’s chamber, the party elected to burn the demon with Natasha’s Gnomish Druid’s wall of fire. This didn’t work, instead burning away the magic sigils keeping the demon imprisoned. Before Asgarte could get out and ravage the party, William’s Dragonborn Paladin decided to grab the Gnome and drop him on the back of his spirit horse in the corridor they had previously traversed while the horse was flying (they were expecting a trap, after all). Unfortunately the spirit horse wasn’t flying this time. The corridor floor became a slippery downward ramp and the Gnome and the horse slid down into the opposite wall and then further down to the bottom of the shaft, 40 feet below the double doors of the previous room.
Meanwhile Asgarte decided to take advantage of the situation and push the Dragonborn Paladin and Kasimir, the handy dusk elven NPC wizard, down the ramp. Kasimir, being an all-around weakling, went all the way home, crashing into the horse and gnome. The Dragonborn was made of sterner (stupider?) stuff and stood his ground. Asgarte took a few swings at the paladin, and then decided (in what turned out to be a bad move) to slide down the floor to take out the magic users. Dan’s Halfling monk, casually poisoning his blade, decided to slide down the ramp and give the demon a damn good rodgering. This wasn’t entirely successful, and he ended up flat against the demon’s back. The paladin decided to slide down with a javelin and missed by that much, both the demon and the monk. So now all the party was down at the end of the slide, packed in like lemmings.
The Gnome cast another wall of fire just in front of him. The NPC wizard cast some magic missiles. The monk stunned Asgarte for a round, and the monk and paladin took advantage of this to finish him off. A mighty divine smite was the killing blow, with William’s paladin claiming the title of “Demonslayer” forevermore. Or until someone else killed a demon. Either way.
The party climbed back up to the room, took the 4 x 2000 GP diamonds from the walls and made their way out of the tomb. The short, skull-encrusted romp was a success. “That’s the most treasure we have ever found in Barovia,” said the Dan’s monk, telling everyone what they already knew: Barovia is full of poor and depressed people.
Meanwhile, what to do? After much discussion, the party decided to take a wagon and some horses and go to Vallaki, as it was really close. There they found much of the population had deserted the town, due to lack of wine the party had failed to deliver. Oh, and that little Vampire Spawn massacre a week ago. Looks like the church where Ireena and her brother were holidaying was destroyed as well. Ireena and Ismarck were missing…
The party headed back to the Inn, where they had a free meal on behalf of the Martikovs. The dragonborn changed into a raven to show solidarity with his wereraven chums, then had to put all his armour back on. The wereravens got a good laugh out of that.
The party decided to question the burgomaster to find out what they could do. The monk got antsy during the discussion, attacked and killed the burgomaster (despite a valiant attempt by the Gnome to save the burgomaster by changing him to gaseous form). The rest of the party set about supporting the guards who took the monk off to gaol. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 GP.
The burgomaster’s wife was not amused. No, dragonborn, it wasn’t a good time to ask her about that strange mirror in her bedroom. “And how did you know I have a mirror in there, anyway?” said the lady. “And where did my wedding dress go?”
“We’ll just be going, we’ll make our own way out, no need to fuss, see you next time,” said the party, tip-toeing to the door).
While the party went back to the inn, the monk shared some pipeweed with her guards. The druid felt bad, went back to the monk’s cell, changed into a spider and walked under the door, changed the monk to gaseous form (that spell has been pretty useful this time around) so she could escape and then toddled out again. The Halfling monk decided to hide in her wagon as she wanted to avoid the dragonborn, who was a bit peeved the monk had killed the burgomaster (“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” said the paladin, having conveniently turned the other way when it happened).
The party decided to go to Berez and recover the third green stone for the Wizard of Vines and also find whatever it was the Tarroka Cards were referring to that lay there. Somewhere. Their wagons got bogged (lots of mud in Berez) and they crossed the river to talk with a wereraven spy who gave them intel on the witch Baba Lysaga who lived in a tiny hut in the center of Berez with her freaky scarecrows.
Next week: Back across the river, and taking out that witch. Or making friends and influencing people. Or smoking pipeweed. Or whatever they want to do.
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