Tabletop Gaming

Catch Up

As we left off our group (Mike the average adventurer, Claris the knowledge-seeker, Ileana the Swordstealer, Nyx the Barovian native, Laise Claris’s familiar, Frederick the animated armor, Mistrunner the horse), they had made their way to the Wizard of Wines, Barovia’s only vineyard and winery, where they were tasked by the winery’s owners to destroy the druids and plant-monsters inside. They made their way into the winery and destroyed most of the enemies inside, but they decided to take a long rest before tackling the blights in the vineyard or the shambling mound in the basement. 

The Gulthias Tree

After some rather unsettling dreams, our group decided to examine the staff they found on one of the druids they’d slain before. The staff looked like simply the branch of some tree with pitch-black bark, and off the staff seemed to exude this thick, dark mist. Claris examined the staff and determined that it was probably a focus of natural magics, and tied in some way to the blights. Claris handed the staff over to Ileana, and Ileana began to attune to the staff to learn its full properties.

In doing so, Ileana saw herself transported to another place. She stood atop a hill, standing in front of a huge tree, apparently the one from which the staff was crafted. Surrounding her were hundreds of blights. From the perspective of the others, though, it appeared as if Ileana were still standing with them, but as if her body had suddenly become mindless. As they discussed what to do to try to wake her up, Ileana heard a sound behind her and turned to see a bunch of druids standing in a circle of stones, from which rose a huge wooden effigy of Strahd. The druids claimed that Ileana was now a part of the Gulthias Tree at Yester Hill, and Ileana turned back to the tree and reached her hand out to it, and as she did so, she seemed to return back to the winery, to see the other three arguing with mage hands flipping each other off as they discussed how to awaken Ileana. 

Blight Fight

So, the gang decided to head outside and test something. See, they suspected that, since the staff was somehow linked to the blights, one attuned to the staff might be seen as an ally or even a leader to the blights. So, Ileana went out into the vineyard alone and found that the blights indeed did not attack her unless she attacked them first. However, combat soon started nonetheless as the group opted to fight against the blights in testing out their theories about the staff. 

During the fight, the group mostly stayed close to the house, ducking in and out of the building to avoid getting too close to any particular blight at any particular time. At one point, as Mike rushed out into the midst of the field, he spotted Mistrunner’s corpse lying near the edge of the building, having died to the blights when the group first made their way into the winery. 

At seeing this, Mike was overwhelmed by sorrow and anger, and in his rage his dormant lycanthropy awoke and he changed into a hybrid human/wolf form and began to attack whatever of the creatures was nearest to him. During this rage, one of the things Mike did was began to chew into the flesh of Mistrunner in a sort of dramatic irony. The others were able to distract Mike and eventually calm him down, at which point he exhaustedly reverted back to human form and went away to sit alone and think for awhile, having remembered Mistrunner’s death but not his werewolf transformation.

Follow Up

The group then split apart, Mike going to think by himself, Claris burning Mistrunner’s corpse then going to tell Davian Martikov that the winery was cleared for his family to move back in. As Davian walked with Claris back towards the winery, Claris did take the time to point out that, well, there was still a shambling mound in the basement, but, uhh... That was normal, right? To which Davian replied that it wasn’t, but if it didn’t seem like much of a threat they probably didn’t need to much worry about it. They went down to the basement and took a look, and Davian said that they could probably just seal the thing in there. Besides, the passageway to its cave was so small it probably couldn’t escape if it wanted. 

Then Davian pulled the group aside and asked to speak with them for a moment. He first thanked them for their assistance, and again promised them the six barrels of wine that they had remaining, to be delivered wherever the group asked of them. Then he explained that the winery was only so successful because of 3 magic gemstones which brought life, making the land unnaturally fertile for the growing of healthier vines. However, without the gems, the grapes wouldn’t grow well, and wine production would essentially die off throughout Barovia. If the group could return any of the gems, the Martikovs and all of Barovia would be in their debt.

The first of the three gems, Davian explained, had been stolen ten years prior, and although he didn’t know where it had gotten to, he did complain about his son Urwin losing it then running away instead of owning up for his mistake. The second of the gems was stolen within the past month by the hag Baba Lysaga. The third gem was stolen within the past week by the druids at Yester Hill, who had also been the ones to invade the winery and take it over (although the gem was taken away back to the Hill). 

DM Notes

I guess you could say I have a lot to say about the way this session handled, from behind the screen. 

-Pregame messages: So for this whole session I’ve been experimenting with sending messages to the players between 12 and 24 hours before the session starts, to help get them in character and do some worldbuilding and character development with them outside of game time. And these pregame messages are slowly developing into a very significant thing. I don’t want to spoil any of the dreams (this week the messages were dream sequences the players experienced while resting), since they’re private messages and all my players can read this, but hooo boy some of them are getting oddly specifically premonition-y about things that might be coming.

-The Gulthias Staff: Okay this has to be one of the most interesting bits to happen this session, from my perspective. So, the Gulthias Staff giving visions of the Gulthias Tree isn’t something written into Curse of Strahd itself. However, it was something that happened to Strix in Dice, Camera, Action, and I wasn’t planning on doing it myself, but the conditions just seemed so right to give the staff some more significance. Also, the group apparently loves the staff which seems like not what’s supposed to be happening regarding the staff, but we’ll see how that plays out. I’m kind of glad they didn’t destroy it yet to try destroying all the blights. Means they’re attached to it, which of course means that if they ever do have to sacrifice it...

-Mike the Werewolf: So Mike’s blindside rage + lycanthropy over Mistrunner’s death kind of hit me out of the blue. I mean, Mike’s player and I had discussed how Mike had contracted the disease back at Van Richten’s Tower, and we’d discussed how Mike might handle it, but I wasn’t expecting it to come up now. I was expecting to have to force it to become relevant via a transformation due to moonlight or something, but I’m pretty happy with Mike’s player deciding to do it there.

-The Werewolf Silver Problem: Okay, so now we have two werewolves in the party. When Nyx’s player was considering making a werewolf, we decided that Nyx wouldn’t have the werewolves’ usual immunity to non-silvered/non-magical damage, to keep things a little more fair and balanced across the party and against the world. However, I’ve changed my mind since, and I think it wouldn’t really big a huge deal for a PC to have that immunity. And so I let Mike have it, at least while he’s shifted into hybrid or wolf form. But Nyx doesn’t have it, and although I’m not sure Nyx’s player fully understands it quite yet, it’s kind of become a part of her story as to why she’s missing the immunity. And I hope to bring that up soon, but in the meanwhile I’m torn because I don’t want Nyx’s player to feel like they’re being cheated out of something because the other werewolf gets it.