I Draw Sometimes

I'll go over questions first, just because the summary will be pretty long!

How did players kill Strahd?

They beat the shit out of all of his brides AND Rahadin first, THEN killed Strahd.

At the time the party killed Strahd they had Rahadin tied up in a basement with the shit kicked out of him. So he wasn't actually in the castle at the time they killed Strahd (meaning he couldn't do his RAW "I'm going to scream and charge the party and try to kill them afterwards and there's nothing they could do about it").

The way they literally killed Strahd was by killing him while he was standing in the aura of the Sunsword, which obliterated him (he got better tho, as he does).

How could he be with the players?

The party captured him and then decided to leave his fate up to Kasimir and the dusk elves. Since I made a whoopsie and misremembered Kasimir as being Lawful Good rather than Neutral, Kasimir made a decision to spare his life and have him spend the rest of his days working to pay off his misdeeds. While the party grew to treat him as an equal, technically speaking he was their prisoner performing the weirdest community service imaginable to make up for his crimes.

Another thing keeping him around was... so one of the things I noted and didn't like in CoS was that Rahadin was stated to be FIERCELY devoted to Barov and Strahd, viewing them as his family. Part of my take on his character was based around the confrontation you have with him at Amber Temple, where the book outright states he's praying to Vampyr to "[release] his master from his torment." I thought that was... kind of touching, and revealing more of his character.

So this guy loves Strahd and he loves Barov (how -- familial or otherwise -- is generally up to the DM's interpretation). And yet, the book says... literally nothing about his relationship with Sergei. You're telling me the guy who helped two genocides for this family just nothings a member of it?

So I made him just as devoted to Sergei as he was to Strahd and Barov. His devotion to Sergei lead to a devotion to Tatyana (as she was going to join their family), and that lead to a devotion to her reincarnations, too. Ontop of his community service, the party went "Yeah you're gonna protect this lady (Ireena) with your life now" and he went "ok" and did so, essentially becoming her chamberlain/bodyguard, because he is a murderous puppy I guess.

Doesn't everyone in Barovia know who he is?

Yeah, and that was something that impacted him. People fucking hated him. Most of the dusk elves actually left Barovia because they were pissed off Kasimir (and the party) spared him. He had people try to kill him over what he did.

In fairness, though -- the campaign DID open up, post Curse of Strahd, to an entire world past Barovia that did not recognize him by appearance. His actions had impact on the rest of the world (one of the major countries was the old kingdom Barov used to rule)... but because I didn't want it to turn into the Rahadin and friends show, I just wrote in that history got whitewashed or his role got unwritten, meaning everywhere the party went wasn't just hamstrung by someone going ":O HEY I KNOW THAT GUY" all the time.

GENERAL CAMPAIGN SUMMARY (WARNING: LONG)

The game started pretty RAW and then quickly turned into homebrew + MandyMod's Curse of Strahd takes. I originally began running CoS because I was taking over DMing from my husband, and literally told him "Okay I'll DM but I'm not going to do it if I have to homebrew everything, I'm going to run a module and that's it."

That wound up being a filthy lie, because I read about the Vistani and the Abbey and got pissed about both of those (this was prior to their rewrites for the Vistani). So I started changing things. It was small, at first. Then I started reading MandyMod's stuff and it snowballed.

Anyway actual summary of the OG campaign. I don't remember all the details, and I might have the order wrong -- this was literally 6 years ago.

I. Death House.

The party wakes up in a weird fuckin' house (Death House). They're all taken from different places spread out over different planes and have no idea who each other are. Their names are: Ellerian, Kelogul, Arialoth, and Luther (technically there was another, Miharu, but we don't talk about her). They frolick around Death House (this was pretty much run RAW), deciding at the end to sacrifice one of the ghasts and get barfed out into Barovia.

II. Barovia

They roll into the village of Barovia and meet Ismark boozin' in the bar, who introduces them to his sister, Ireena, and asks them to escort her to Vallaki. They help them bury their dad and see Strahd the first time. They mosey on out and go to the camp outside Vallaki, where they meet Madam Eva and she reads their fortune. At the time, I was running the module more RAW and did not read everyone's suggestions of DO NOT LEAVE THE TAROKKA READINGS UP TO RANDOM CHANCE, so I got the following:

The tome was in Argynvostholt, the sword was in the Winery, and the medallion was in Old Bonegrinder

Strahd himself is hanging out in the Hall of Bones

Their fated ally is.......... Clovin, that shithead in the Abbey nobody likes. The fortune is "Look for a man of music, a man with two heads. He lives in a place of great hunger and sorrow." Remember this.

Party goes "okay that's weird" and moves on.

They then get the absolute shit kicked out of them by wolves. Like absolutely ruined. Luther loses a leg. They limp to Vallaki.

III. Vallaki

Upon arriving in Vallaki, they find they hate it there. This was also when I decided to vary things up. I introduced Vasili, intending him to be that "Strahd in disguise" role he's meant to be.... and then one of my players completely spoiled that by googling him. So I came up with a different concept instead: that he was instead a simulacrum Strahd made in one of his goofy plans to woo Tatyana and then forgot about, and the guy had just been living as a tax collector with no real knowledge of it ever since. This was one of the first larger deviations I made.

Anyway, they make their way to the church to deliver Ireena and find 'dem bones are missing. They decide this is the highest priority, so they go track down the bones... and almost immediately kickstart the Feast, skipping anything about the festival entirely. The Feast also kicks the shit out of them. They meet Strahd for the first time, and he leaves Ireena a bunch of presents and is just otherwise a weird little freak.

Rictavio takes this opportunity to flee, and so I could throw the party off, I decided to make him suspicious of Vasili. So he kidnaps Vasili along the way then tells the party to meet him at his tower. So the party goes out there and finds him torturing Vasili into confessing (by leaving him under running water). He reveals himself as van Richten at this point. They run a Phoenix Wright mini-game into proving Vasili isn't Strahd. They take Vasili with them but van Richten refuses.

At this point I was given a hail mary, because my players started theorizing that van Richten was their fated ally (they interpreted the 'man of music, a man with two heads' as van Richten pretending to be a bard). Van Richten is a much more interesting fated ally than fuckin' Clovin, so I went "... SURE, YEAH, IT'S ALL A METAPHOR, YOU GOT IT GUYS."

They also meet Jeny Greenteeth at this point -- another addition I decided to add based on MandyMod's (the Ladies Three). She starts hinting at the party going into Berez and starting the Fane questline.

Also they meet Kasimir. Kasimir tells them he wants to go to Amber Temple, but notes the party will get the shit stomped out of them if they go there. They leave.

IV. The Winery/Yester Hill

So from there they head on out to the Winery. Remember: this was where I randomly set the Sunsword's location. They go there, kick a bunch of ass, and find the Sunsword in a barrel. They are, at this point, level 5. I realize very quickly that I cannot have a bunch of level 5s running around with the Sunsword, so as they arrive at Yester Hill I go "yeah I gotta take that shit from them."

So I figure -- Strahd time! He shows up at Yester Hill and goes "hey gimme that thing, that's my brother's." Kelogul goes "NO" and attempts to kill him, and so Strahd kablooeys him and Ellerian. The remnants of the party drag their corpses to Krezk because they got told there's a dude in the Abbey who can maybe fix them. Ellerian and Kelogul get introduced to the dark powers (Khirad and Taar Haak), who offer to revive them.

V. Krezk/The Abbey

This was another big overhaul I did. The Belviews were no longer weird little incestuous mentally ill people, but rather completely separate people who came to the Abbot to make bargains to cure themselves or their loved ones. The Abbot would fix their problems... for a price. Some of their flesh, an arm -- something like that. He's an angel who doesn't comprehend the whole 'pain receptors' thing, so when he'd perform 'surgery' on people and they'd end up traumatized he didn't know what to do. So he just kind of... locked them away, 'caring for them,' which just made their mental issues worse, resulting in an entire asylum full of miserable mutated people.

Anyway, they get introduced to the Abbot, and he's a creeper who asks for Ireena's skin. Ellerian and Kelogul, watching as spooky ghosts, go "aw shit we can't let them give up their skin or whatever" and make a pact with the dark powers to come back to life. They do, the Abbot goes "aw man" and they go into Krezk.

There, they meet Krezkov and Anna, and their little boy. I followed MandyMod's recommendations here, so he winds up turning into a monstrosity that the party has to kill. Little guy kills two other people along the way. They drag the dead women to the Abbot and persuade him into reviving them, reminding them this is kind of his fault in the first place by bringing back a kid wrong.

VI. Vallaki, pt. II

So once this all wraps up they start to return to Vallaki. I was a lot more strict of a DM, at this point, so I had specific deadlines for certain events. One of those events was the festival (you know -- the one that goes tits up if the Feast happens). The party headed out the day of the festival, eager to get there before the festival started at noon...

... and then literally got distracted by skinning a bunch of wolves. I'm not kidding. They got into a random encounter and decided to spend hours skinning and preparing wolf meat.

So the festival kicks off without them, and the party walks into Vallaki like that Community gif of the guy bringing pizzas into a room on fire. By this point, Vargas is already dead as hell. Yeah, the party literally never met him.

The party once again goes "wow this place sucks" and leaves. The name changes to Wachterview from this point on, and is taken over by her cultists.

While the party was dealing with Vallaki, Ireena gets 'saved' by Strahd from a group of peasants he definitely didn't set up or anything. He gives her an invitation to a dinner party, which definitely won't go wrong or anything.

Also, the party meets Kasimir again. He reminds them he wants to go to Amber Temple again. They leave, because they've got a hot date.

VII. The Dinner Party (That Goes Wrong)

So they all show up to a dinner party. Strahd apologizes for obliterating the party at Yester Hill. They pretend to accept it.

Ellerian decides at this point that Rahadin is his Enemy Number 1 (because he killed a bunch of elves) and starts pushing his food off the table. These men become good friends later in life.

The conversation starts going south pretty quickly, and then blows up when the party catches Strahd attempting to Charm Ireena. Combat starts. Ellerian turns Rahadin into a cat (once again, these men become good friends later in life). The party escapes (not without one of them almost falling off of a bridge) and at that point decides "fuck this guy, we killing him"

These next areas may be out of order, because their order wasn't AS relevant to the plot (and I do not remember it).

VIII. Argynvostholt

I believe from there they go to Argynvostholt, following the Tarokka reading. They meet Ezmerelda and watch Arrigal piss on a statue. They find the Tome in the barrel with the dusk elf, and then go upstairs and meet Godfrey and Vladimir, resulting in one of my favorite experiences in the entire campaign:

Y'see, Ellerian was the straight man of the group, the moral fiber and pretty much the leader. So the party confronts Vladimir, who basically tells them to fuck off and not fight Strahd because he wants to see that little fuck be tormented for the rest of his life. The rest of the party goes "ok cool see ya" and starts to leave.

Ellerian turns into a full-on redditor and goes "WELL ACTUALLY" and starts fucking arguing with the guy. This upsets Vladimir, who decides the best course of action is to start blastin'. He not only calls his spooky spirits, but also the other revenants. Long story short the party almost TPKs and only survives because the party managed to take down Vladimir and one of them nat 20s a persuasion check to convince the other revenants not to murder the shit out of them. Ellerian still insisted he was 100% right about all of this.

Anyway they learn about Argynvost and the skull which they will not be able to do in the entire campaign because the final boss fight was deemed to happen in the exact room they need to retrieve the skull from. This was something else I addressed in the redux.

IX. Berez

The party decides this is the point they're gonna dip into Berez, because Jeny once again asks them to go rescue her sister. So they do, and everyone nearly dies against Baba Lysaga (this repeats in the redux). They rescue Laura, and upon reuniting the two sisters Jeny hints that they should take the heart to the fane in the swamp just to kinda see what happens. Something happens, alright, and the party revives the fane there. Jeny strongly hints the party should go check out the other two fanes -- one at Yester Hill, one at Old Bonegrinder (the party never went there) -- and try to fix them, too.

Ireena gets kidnapped along the way because one of the party members attempts to teleport across the river, fails, and she gets kidnapped by snakes. The party immediately decides a rescue mission is of utmost importance.

X. Ravenloft, Pt. I

The party breaks into Ravenloft. They manage to fight their way in, making their way up to the top floor. They find the elevator trap door at the top. Ellerian repeatedly informs them it's a trap. The party decides to take it anyway.

It is, of course, trapped.

Ellerian gets separated from the party at this point, and he manages to find Ireena on the top floor. The rest of the party bumbles around Ravenloft, deciding to open doors, as they do. They open a door straight into the Hall of Bones and run into Strahd.

Strahd essentially Legends of the Hidden Temple's them and tells them he will not obliterate every last one of them if they give him a party member. Luther sacrifices himself and becomes one of Strahd's new brides.

The party reunites and busts out of there.

XI. Ol' Bonegrinder

The party decides to finally cash in on that deed they found in Death House and arrives at the old windmill. They're not fooled by the hags, and decide to kill all of them. They flee into the ethereal plane, but not before cursing the party and causing them to have horrible nightmares. They pick up the final treasure of the Amulet of Ravenkind.

They go to the nearby fane and cleanse it. Two fanes, one to go.

XII. Fidatov/Van Richten's Tower

They go back to van Richten to inform him of what's gone down. Rahadin shows up at this point, demanding they hand Ireena over to him. The party quite obviously tells him to eat shit. Rahadin begins having spawn fail against the puzzle of the tower (which, if you remember, causes the entire thing to collapse if you fail too many times). Tower blows up, but the party fends off Rahadin.

Van Richten decides to join the party at this point. He helps them kill the hags that are haunting them and joins them on their merry adventure.

Note: around this time I decided to adjust Van Richten's story a bit, to where he actually fought Strahd and died against him. I figured having another guy tied to the dark powers might be neat... so he, much like the other two party members, got brought back by a dark power -- in his case, Vaund. I misunderstood "the evasive" as "dude who lies a lot" and not literally as "evasive." Whoops.

XIII. Yester Hill, Pt. 2

The party goes to Yester Hill, fighting the Gulthias Tree and entering the fane there. Having to make a sacrifice to cleanse it, Ellerian gives up his journal full of letters he wrote to his sister. With all three fanes cleansed, the Ladies Three (from MandyMod's revisions) reveal themselves and grant the party three wishes. They wished for the following:

Equipment (each party member got a special magic item)

Strength (each party member got a +2 to their main stat, even going past the natural maximum of 20)

Freedom (Ellerian and Kelogul were no longer forced to remain in Barovia for making dark pacts)

They tell the party that if they kill Strahd, they'll have something special waiting for them afterwards, then depart.

They decide at this point to finally go to Amber Temple, so they swing by Vallaki and pick up their ol' pal Kasimir to do so. Vasili disappears in the night.

XIV. Amber Temple

The party makes their way up to Amber Temple, nearly getting murdered by a roc along the way. The meet Rahadin at Amber Temple, interrupting him before he can do horrible things to a frog (I made it a bat this time, because I thought a bat was more vampyr-themed). He leaves without a fight.

The party then gets lasers fired at them from the statue.

They force out Neferon, who was another figure I changed. I thought it would be kind of cooler if he wasn't just your standard daemon, so I made him one that was more good-aligned and fiercely protective of Amber Temple, living on in memory of the people that gave him a chance (who were all driven mad by the dark powers). He tells the party to leave. Kelogul and Ellerian insist that they have to release their dark powers.

So they beat the shit out of him and throw him outside (they do not kill him).

The party witnesses the twist that van Richten has a dark power, as he releases Vaund. Ellerian and Kelogul then release Khirad and Taar Haak respectively, which definitely has no ramifications whatsoever.

They find Vasili in the library, where he realizes that he's a simulacrum and not an actual person.

They take Kasimir to the basement, where he makes his shady dealing to bring back his dead-ass sister.

With all their goals and loose ends tied up, as well as obtaining all the treasures and their fated ally, they decide to go on operation Fuck Strahd. Somewhere along the way I think the Abbey gets attacked and the party saves the Abbot? I cannot remember where or how, but it gets the Abbot on their side, at least.

XV. The Party Breaks into Ravenloft a Whooooooole Bunch

The next leg of the campaign is pretty much the party dungeon-delving into Ravenloft and killing everyone and everything in it. Each of the brides were their own boss fight, plus Rahadin as a boss fight. So what would usually happen is this:

The party figures out a way into Ravenloft. Strahd would remember how they broke in, so the next day they'd have to figure out another way to break in.

They wander around picking up every piece of treasure they can.

They run into one of the brides and murder them.

They go into the crypt and throw Barov's coffin out the window

They leave and rest.

Repeat.

I am not kidding about the Barov's coffin bit, they did that three times.

The second-to-last time they break in they fought Rahadin. Realizing nobody else knew what happened at the wedding, they decided they'd spare Rahadin and torture the information out of him. So they beat the shit out of him and captured him (then threw Barov's coffin out the window for good measure).

They find Sergei's corpse and realize he looks exactly like Vasili. Because Strahd is weird and made his simulacrum look like his dead-ass brother. Vasili has, by this point, been obliterated by Strahd. They collect the Sunsword again, though!

They interrogated Rahadin, who informed them of the wedding and what happened. I made him more sympathetic, in this case -- he was super stoked about the wedding, happy for his brother, but concerned about Strahd's... obsession with Tatyana. He thought the guy was over it, though. As the chaos happened around him he could really only stand by and watch as the people he's devoted his entire life to kill each other, commit suicide, and turn into vampires. Which wasn't great.

The party at this point asks Kasimir what he wants to do with him. Kasimir makes the very unpopular (among dusk elves) decision to let him live. Kelogul has collected skulls from all the brides at this point, and Rahadin calls him weird for doing so.

They break into Ravenloft one last time and fight Strahd in the Hall of Bones.

The fight is pretty rough. Strahd adds a simulacrum for spice, so the party gets to fight two of them. Kelogul loses an arm. They impale Strahd on the Sunsword and he dies instantly in sunlight, and hooray! Barovia is saved! Rahadin cries in a basement somewhere.

XVI. Aftermath

The party meets Vasili, and it turns out the simulacrum was (maybe) possessed by the spirit of Strahd's dead-ass brother. He says a tearful goodbye to the party, but not before asking Ireena (i.e. Tatyana) if she wants to join him before departing. Ireena decides she wants to live a full-ass life as herself rather than her soul, but promises she'll pass on once her life is done and Sergei will be reunited with his love. Sergei departs.

The party raids Ravenloft. They throw Barov's coffin out the window one last time.

They then go on what they literally called "the Barovian Pub Crawl." What follows is a bunch of levity with all their favorite NPCs. Kelogul does, however, get wasted, dive into Lake Zarovich, and gets his leg ripped off by a giant fish. They also deliver Argynvost's skull, finally, to the Mausoleum, freeing the revenants. They make Rahadin swear to protect Ireena at this point and then literally drag him along in chains while he gets to suffer with the whole dead family thing.

Once they've had their fun, they head to the borders of Barovia. Some of the NPCs remain behind (Ismark, the wereravens, and Ezmerelda all do). Most of them follow them into the mists...

... where -- you remember the Ladies? Yeah I wanted to give the party something nice and let the campaign become more open-ended. Plus they all came from different planes of existence, so I didn't want to just return them to their homes (because which home would I pick?)

So with the Ladies freed, they restore ACTUAL Barovia -- not the weird shadow plane copy of it. The party gets barfed out into an empty Barovian valley in the real world. All of the cities and people got sucked in when Strahd did his thing, so it's just... undeveloped land, with which the party uses in the next campaign to develop into their own country.