After two weeks of prep and rewrites we began Curse of Strahd last weekend. Some of my players know the basic backstory, and have probably peeked at the adventure (the lowlifes), so I’ve taken a lot of liberties to keep them on their toes. Death House has been placed in Vallaki, a rumored way to escape Barovia later in the story.
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The campaign began with a prelude wherein the players assumed the roles of peasant girls (Commoner stats, MM) who were being escorted by a geriatric Flaming Fist mercenary to a wedding in The Western Heartlands of Faerun. My players knew these NPC/PCs were sacrificial lambs to the genre, so they had some slasher movie fun with it. They met sketchy Vistani brothers who warned they’d never make it to the wedding “down that road”, got caught in a thunderstorm, and fell into a sinkhole which destroyed their cart and lamed one of the horses. A badass girl slit the horse’s neck as a mercy – and then the mist rolled in like crashing waves. I wasn’t subtle.
Instead of a muddy plain they found themselves in a dark forest with no cart and a single horse. After a brief existential crisis – and some screaming - they decided to continue down the road since both directions were hedged by the forest and the wedding was potentially close. They ran afoul of skittering blights, who paralyzed one of the girls with a falling branch. Things escalated fast: they lost their light source, half of them started running into the tree line, panicked, as the others were slaughtered on the road.
The three survivors (the old mercenary carrying the paralyzed girl and a remaining scrappy girl) ran towards a light in the woods where they came upon a small collapsed tower hung with dry herbs. The cloaked occupant came to their aid and revealed herself as the yet-to-be-introduced druid of the PC party, but emaciated and weary (the player of said druid had no idea what I was up to). She called the girls “the ones who never made it to the wedding” which put the mercenary on alert. The druid killed him in bloody fashion with a Blight spell and let the scrappy girl flee into the night. She turned her attention to the paralyzed girl and said she was the druid’s only chance to “make things right, to begin again and defeat Strahd”. Then she produced a scroll made of human skin and cast a spell that knocked the girl out. End of prelude.
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Meanwhile the five PCs found themselves for various reasons at a raucous farmstead wedding a mile outside of the palisade village of Greenest (yup, same wedding the girls never made it to). They are:
A male tiefling warlock, Pact of the Arch Fey
A male human wizard, School of Abjuration
A female dwarven cleric of Ilmater
A female human “barbarian” who expresses the class abilities as a bloodline curse.
A female elven druid, Circle of the Moon
The druid is a friend of the bride’s mother and was invited to officiate the wedding and bless their farm. The barbarian is a ward of the druid’s father (also a druid) who is helping her manage her strange “curse of rage”. She escorted the druid as favor to her father since the druid is rather naïve.
The warlock and wizard are both servants (and apprentice in the case of the wizard) of a wealthy Corymrian arcanist who set them on a mission to find a book peddler who is secretly a collector for Candle Keep. They found him and his warded cart at the wedding, a crasher made welcome for the extra wine he brought.
The cleric is a penitent beggar who lives in the nearby town. She and her fellow priest, a drunkard, live off the kindness of the townsfolk even though the cleric is openly the sister of mayor. It’s awkward. They attended the wedding for the free food.
I ran a long, upbeat social scene in contrast to the prelude, and as the last sunny memory most of the characters will probably have (the pathos!). They caroused, boxed, danced, tossed axes and fleshed out their personalities. The book peddler challenged the wizard to a game of riddles for a chance to peek inside his cart, which the wizard almost won. The barbarian, small and scrappy, intimidated the farmhands with her effortless takedown skills. The warlock tried and failed to flirt with the druid. The cleric grew annoyed with the drunkenness and secretly purified a keg of ale.
This partying took place in and around an elaborate scarlet tent erected in the field. When dusk fell and half the guests said their goodbyes the bride’s mother revealed she had bought the tent from colorful travelers and they had also given her daughter a deck of curious cards to “find love for your unwed friends”. She brought them to use as a parlor game but the illustrations were more disturbing than she first thought, and most of the remaining guests (12 or so) were too drunk to play anyway.
A gentle fog rolled in around midnight. The barbarian helped build a bonfire and the wizard and warlock cajoled the book peddler for another round of riddles. Couples began to stumble out in the fog to find a patch of privacy. It was in that sloppy, serene after-hours vibe that no one noticed the quality of the fog changing, thickening. The peddler toyed with the warlock and the wizard, trading lame riddles – but he was cut off by a bloody scream from somewhere in the field. A few farmhands, followed by the druid and warlock, ran into the fog as the scream intensified and cut short. Everyone heard the bestial growls next. A woman near the tent yelled “gnolls!” and panic set in.
The barbarian gathered the weapons she left in the tent and entered the mists looking for the druid. The warlock stayed close to the only farmhand he could see and together they found the severed leg of the bride. The cleric grabbed a hammer used to drive in tent stakes and pulled her drunk friend along. The book peddler grabbed the wizard’s arm and identified the mists as “a crossroads into the Shadowfell…or somewhere worse”. The wizard followed the peddler, circling to find peddler’s cart while yelling for his friend the warlock to come back to the tent.
The “gnolls” were of course dire wolves, who played death tag with the PCs and NPCs, darting through the mists. The PCs ran into trees and hopped over roots that shouldn’t have been there: the combat was done without a grid to reinforce the disorientation. The cleric and her useless friend tussled with one wolf before it leapt away to harass the warlock and farmhand. The druid (in black bear form) and barbarian were trying to pinpoint the direction of battle when the wizard suddenly rushed into view, a wolf on his heels (The beast had found the peddler’s cart and juicy oxen first. The peddler cast a spell and vanished, leaving the wizard to fight alone or flee). Together the wizard, druid and barbarian slayed their wolf, found the warlock, and the farmhand he was bravely protecting, and drove the other wolf off.
They joined the cleric, badly bit, scooped up her unconscious friend and marched back to the tent. A strong wind barreled through the mists, howling and resonant, bowling half of them over to dramatically reveal the dark alpine road they now stood on. The tent was still there, along with the handful of NPCs that had huddled on the far side of it. But the wind ripped it from its stakes and wrapped it around the NPCs. The character saw their outlines for a moment in the red fabric, halting the tent, but they vanished as the tent collapsed.
Remaining on the roach were the druid, the warlock, the wizard, the barbarian, the cleric, the cleric’s friend and the farmhand.
End of the first session!
