#vedalkin

Curse of Strahd; Off the Shits continues a pace as our DM kindly works to let us play out an endgame we've been building towards for years.

IN THE MEANTIME more of our bullshit;

Touchingly, Garland's dead husband Creed helps him cast Spirit Shroud.

Milan's Pinup, with perpetually sharp kitchen knife.

Whenever we meet the old men who are irrefutably barreling on towards their tragic destiny we keep bullying them into being sensible and maybe not doing the dumbest thing imaginable to keep perpetuating their cycles of tragedy. Bully! That! Old! Man!

Milan is having a time.

But he's still here to read the cards for Mortimer's father... oh wait that's genuinely an awful reading... oops.

Vol tries to convince Kasimir not to be stupid (bullying works better.)

Osry is not easily deterred from the hunt for knowledge but we did decide better of going to the Amber Temple for now.

Milan's familiar, Illya has kindof been through it of late. He's fine though.

Vol killed Sangzor the Blood Goat one-on-one (12 rounds, it was a long fight) and gets some new gear and also a ton of barbarian/druid assistance from the mountain folk? Fuck yeah. I think they're taking it pretty seriously though, even if it's Vol. (Not gonna lie it was very fun to have my own special combat segment, much thanks to Dr Prof DM DJ ModMod jenjenjenjamin.)

And one last thing - Mortimer banishing his father, who has been DEEPLY UNKIND TO HIS BOY (and the Morninglord's specialist baby!)

Continuing on Curse of Strahd - Our DM Suffers More than Jesus edition;

Two ADHD diagnoses, and at least one probable undiagnosed has... consequences. Plus a handful of other brain shenanigans. (Yes I draw our DM as their screaming cat in a little hat being held up under the arms.)

Garland finds out his dead husband's sword is... very special. Nothing like a radiant aura of daylight at 4AM to wake up the neighborhood.

Garland and Izel rush off to help Esme out of some muck (bad rolls) Garland with his summoned horse and Izel in moorbounder form.

Vol had to be coaxed upstairs to a more private conversation with the promise of many potato (the food is generally downstairs, you see.)

Izel assists Milan's spirit summoning with some spirits of his own.

Vol's more... metropolitan background comes into conflict with Rudolph VanRichten's important informational exposition. Which explains this nonsense:

Welp - this week on 'Curse of Strahd - Bully that Old Man' it's just shitposting from me as the stuff going on in the game is actually pretty serious and dark.

Izel the druid gives us the weather. He's not actually a frog but he's a frog, yanno?

Why, yes! These idiots are still trundling their way to glory in Zarovia!

This time on "Curse of Strahd - How can we Help the Civil Infrastructure" our gang marches off to go kill Baba Lasagna Lysaga.

First on the list is slogging through a bog to even get near the ruined city of Berez. No one has a good time up to their ass in half-frozen muck and bugs.

After some spying on said hag, we found out about her freakish illusion baby. Garland was not keen on it.

Milan knocks on another hag's door, but this time the gang isn't even trying to be nice.

Maverick finally finds awesome success with thorn whip - ripping Baba Lysaga out of her sweet ride into the muck.

The duality of Mortimer. He did do fuckin' great though.

Oh and sometimes Vol has feelings but they have a way of dealing with that:

The gang lost Pazuzu to his own hubris - but he left some interesting things behind (we also briefly left Irina with her brother for a short while.)

- Taking Pazuzu’s Iron Defended back to his father, the senior Amberrock (who raised Pazu from an egg he found), the group and the master artificer consider how they might draw Pazu’s spirit back into his own work.  It’s a long night of much discussion which the cleric and sorcerer take to with great interest, the bard considers for usual interesting bits, the druids are somewhat perplexed by, and Vol... gets not much out of.  They fell asleep under a workbench as the group worked late into the night cobbling together all their skills to possibly try to make a soulless automaton draw in their friend’s wandering spirit - needing all of Mortimer’s healing, Milan's Channeling, Mr. Amberrock’s skills, and whatever little boosts and bits they can cobble together.

- Surprising everyone, it fucking worked (with surprisingly no body horror.)  Pazuzu has a long road of healing ahead as he figures out how to pilot this new body.  Get in the robot Pazuzu.

- And like all birds, he is made of hubris.  Poor Vol can’t be angry and happy at the same time, so their emotions are just all over the place.  They try Milan’s line, and, well, Pazu is Pazu.

- Leaving Pazuzu to figure his shit out with his both relieved and angry father, the group heads back from the border town where they all started, finding ANOTHER victim of the mists, a tiefling named Garland...

- Also, Maverick found a really cool monocle with some magic properties:

Being a nuisance in Zorovia continues with the gang, as they try to figure out what’s up at lake Zarovich - why there aren’t any fish, why village drunkard Bluto hasn’t been seen for a few days, and why someone is missing from the local Vistani camp:

- All Vol wants out of life is to be in the water.  As options on how to continue from Wachterhaus were considered, they had their vote ready.

- Izel also enjoys the water in his own druid way, as a melanistic and slightly blue giant river otter.

- MAKING THE DM DO MATH.  If Vol is dashing at 80f/s and Pazu is flying encumbered at 15f/s how long will it take for them to meet if Vol has already a few turns to book it towards the boat in the middle of the lake.  Will Bluto tip it over, what the heck.

- Arabelle, rescued from near drowning, is an imperious child, but not unpleasant.  She rides Milan’s shoulder like she belongs there.

- Milan looks for answers in his life from Kasimir, the leader of the Dusk Elves at the Vistani camp near Valaki.

- Kasimir muses on long lives - his own and that of one Strahd Von Zarovich.  Vol’s priorities are their own, as ever.  They don’t mean to derail the serious shit, they just genuinely want to know.

- Vol, checking out the lack of fish in the lake (one of several of our party who are able to breathe under water) surprisingly rolls high on a knowledge check and tries to explain deoxidization to the party.  They eventually figure out the fish suffocated somehow.  Explanation is being sought out.

Continuing to figure out what’s going on around Lake Zarovich involving a shit-ton of dead fish and a mad mage, this whole crew had quite the day:

- In the morning, Vol rustles up a dead sturgeon off the bottom of the lake (where it’s very cold and little decay is occurring.)  Pazu and Milan have two very different opinions on the matter and the group had fish for breakfast.

- After running in circles for a bit, Izel chatted with a local for more info.  Pulled a full on Kronk, and ms. squirrel was very helpful with directing us to a suspicious (and to her, very scary) elk.  (Semechki from Milan’s pack, was offered in compensation, of course.)

-  We found the remains of a family’s homestead, Mortimer is Mortimer (he surely didn’t mean to say that out loud.)  Jedidiah Devorak lived his homestead dreams until things went bad - a little story in the scope of Zorovia’s woes, but still a hard one.

- Vol, who’s tracking sucked all day, finally got the memo on what we were looking for and immediately spotted the suspicious elk, which turned out to be the Mad Mage himself.

- Pazuzu does a frightening amount of damage.

- Maverick uses an animal summons for some delicious irony.

- With the group’s usual luck (thank the morning lord - or we could have been toast), we managed to incapacitate the Mad Mage, tie him up, and are now holding on to him with the hopes we can get him back to Valaki and better sorted out after his mind got a bit scrambled.  Milan, contemplating the situation, tries to think of who this very powerful mage could even be, and comes to a terrifying conclusion (Milan is fine, he just talks like this.)

- This leads to shaving the old man (while he’s still unconscious) to see if he is truly is Mordenkainen.  Izel and Vol are awakened in the middle of the night to... this.

Bonus, poor Kasimir took a face full of cone of cold in the fight with the Mad Mage (Vol and Izel took a bit of it, but shrugged most of it off):

(He’s ok, but looked forward to a good night’s rest.)

Another lovely day in Zarovia, another day of our crew doing... their best.

Some bandits considered jumping us in the woods... briefly. Izel took care of that quickly - when the 7' blue bald guy tells you to shoo you shoo.

We went off to deal with the hags selling dream pastries. Vol can climb shit with ease these days -

so they and the two druids went up to flank the coven -

while team morning lord was asked to WAIT OUTSIDE.

Milan and Osry did the talking... after Milan figured out what the hell to talk about (and Osry regretted that.)

Garland is going through it - apparently using his dead husbands magical sword hurts him real bad. Like... mechanically.

Milan has a good doggo these days, and the druids are also good doggos.

With one hag down fighting the others went smoothly, we got lucky that our strategy worked out.

We did find a couple living kids who weren't made into dream pastries yet. Vol gave up their magical little stuff cat (though it makes them sad) the kids need it more.