A Clock Tower + Groundhog day

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Zilfer
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A Clock Tower + Groundhog day

Post by Zilfer »

So currently DMing a session where they came across Cuzau(no idea how to pronounce i'm just using places amongst barovia and since I could not find anything on it I felt the need to invent.)

So, a little background thus far on the story. A good number of the players are outsiders, with one half Vistani player who has a Monster Hunter Mentor Spirit kind of thing going on here. (one of the feats, i think it's "Haunted") They've been around Barovia village, been into strahds castle, (original people in this campaign 3 of them out of like 6. I had them play through I6, and then brought strahd back to do some more of that type of campaign. This is before I got the campaign setting, funny that Strahd did have a contingency spell for when he'd be helpless against sun light.... and they used the sun amulet against him. Ironic that I played it right that is. xD)

So Ismack the new Burgomeister was called to a meeting with all the other burgomeisters of the land to Teufeldor where they would meet with strahd. Ismack asked the party to come along for his protection. (skip a few events along the way) and they arrive.

They actually decide to go to this meeting with Ismack who did invite them, and indeed Strahd does show up. (They are not sure what to expect since they did try to kill him in the original adventure) Strahd appears after a thunderclap of lightning when most people are just looking about the room and discussing disputes between lands, and other politics. He addresses the Burgomeister's and congradultes Ismack for becoming the newest member among them. (Ismack holds little love for him since in the original module Strahd killed his father, but enough respect/fear to not comment.) After the brief pleasantries Strahd informs the Burgomeisters that they are at war with an unknown enemy and he will be recruiting young men for his army, and further more any strange occurances should be reported to his specialized "Monster hunters" from far away lands. (Party currently playing) After that he asks if anyone has any questions, (i do this to see if the party will say anything and i wait 10 seconds or so and then strahd walks out confidently). Of course right after that one of them's like, "Damn, he just made us work for him and if we go against him we are the bad guys now."

I think that fits Strahd's Personality no? Get your enemies to work for you? Anyways so they have to 'tour' Barovia and find odds and ends to hunt. They came to Cuzau like i said, and found out by the end of the session that it's stuck in some sort of time loop. The clock tower rings 12 times at midnight and then they wake up where they camped just outside the city again. (They are on repeat day 3)

***I kind of like the Idea that Strahd's domain is having a hidden war going on, I haven't decided if it's Azalin Rex yet or some other Darklord but i'm brain storming that.***




[hr]

Ok now that I have that generally told, had questions if anyone gots ideas of a few cool things I could do with this? I have it that someone in the town did a ritual that caused this but they did it wrong or are missing a piece of the ritual so it keeps repeating the last 24 hours.

What I have isn't concrete so feel free to offer anything that might change what I currently have planned but here goes.

Different People are being murdered each day the party knows because after they began to see repeats of the previous day they rushed to the last killing to see if said person was alive and they were. A different person died that day whether it was due to them interfering by showing up at the healer's shop is unknown.

The lock tower also had a kid perhaps murdered or had an accident in the clock tower. He was crushed inside two cogs. (how the heck that happened when the clock tower hadn't been working for years is anyone's guess).

During the second night they investigated the tower around midnight they went to the top floor and found candels lit everywhere, waiting there had someone in a black cloak spreading something on the cogs down below. One of them ran down the five stories of old metal railings alerting him and he ran away. As the clock was ringing he examined what the guy was throwing on that cogs and he identified it as blood just before "waking up" again.

It was getting late so I ended the session after the next day. Which had one of the party members searching the town for suspicious looking people, while another one went to the burgomeisters house to check on it. (forgot to mention why they came here was to check on the only burgomeister that didn't make it to the meeting yet there were claims he showed up in teufeldor before the meeting. They dealt with an impersonator monster, and thus they wanted to make sure there wasn't a host of them in Cuzau. They assumed that the burgomeister had brought this creature here, because a note written to him claimed that he wasn't returning their letters, and he should continue to "study" "Red" and get the information to them somehow if he was still alive and this would be the last letter he receives. Signed the Fraternity.)

Most of my players have not read much background on Ravenloft save for Strahd and maybe a bit of Azalin's realm of Darkon.

The day is currently stuck on the day after the burgomeister left, which was the first clue that something weird was going on in town when they first arrived since it's been more then a tenday since the meeting, even longer since he would have had to have left this place.

My currently plan is to have the party encounter the person doing this in the clock tower again at midnight one of the future days and they battle him. Except to complete the ritual or whatever he needs to die so when he dies his blood flows out into a ritual circle carved in the ground. I wanted it to summon a hound like creature of darkness that perhaps would return in future sessions or maybe just a few sessions of tracking it down and trying to find it's weakness. That or I was thinking it might be a mix between the magic and clock tower's designs that spurred this person to make a mechanical golem. (I found it in the Denizens of Darkness under golems so that might be an option too. I'm still not dead set on how I want this end to come out just yet. :D)

Comments suggestions welcome, and hopefully by saturday's session. I'll let you know if my brain storming turns up anything additional.

I appologize for the wall of text, I know it turns some people off of reading them!!!
There's always something to lose.

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