Personalizing Curse of Strahd to my PC's

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Ember in the Dark
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Personalizing Curse of Strahd to my PC's

Post by Ember in the Dark »

Alright, so a while back I made a thread about running curse of Strahd and asking for help. I'm here to ask for more help on a similar topic.

Before I continue though- if you play in a curse of Strahd game on Mythweavers with a character named Eddard's, Aeryn, Darian, Einar, or Pit, please shoo now.

Now, I really like most of curse of Strahd, but something that it really doesn't address is a way to tie in a character's backstory to the storyline. Now, this isn't really a fault of the module- it would be rather hard to do something like that, considering that it would be impossible for WOC to predict the characters people will make, along with the fact that the PC's are expected to be from another plane . So the task of making backstories somewhat pertinent will have to lie with me, and some advice and feedback would be most welcome.

So, let's meet the cast, shall we? I'll go over each character, and then toss around my ideas for how I'm going to make their backstory relavent to the plot.

Pit: A CG human thief rogue. She's young want to be hero who grew up as an orphan and street urchin in a large port city. She is on deaths door when she gets dragged back into Ravenloft, and is about to face horrors beyond what she thought possible.

Completely unkbenonst to her, her parents are Dmitri and Anna, the rulers of the village of Krezk. Pit- who will have been named something more fitting to Barovia by her parents, her current name is from the orphanage on another plane- was taken from her parents at a young age by the mists. Wondering about her family is a large part of her character, so finding them will be something of a shock to her.

Furthermore, she has one brother- older than her, named Ilya. In the normal CoS, he is dead when the players arrive. I want him to still be alive, albeit dying from some unknown "disease". In actuality, he is under the effect of a poison that he himself attempted to use on his own father, but accidentally effected himself. Not sure if I want him to be curable with a spell or for their to be a side quest- but either way, I want it to come to light that he was responsible. It would be interesting how Pit handles this- she always wanted to have a family but never did, and she gets to find out that her brother was willing to kill their father just to gain power.

It should be interesting when everything comes to light. Besides, I feel like I'm obligated to do something to pull the rug out from a happy family reunion, and this feels like just the thing to do it.

Now, this leads me to the Abby. To put it bluntly- I'm not the biggest fan of the subplot and the mongrel folk. It just doesn't have much appeal to me. I'm thinking to have it be corrupted by fiends, devils specifically, especially because one of my PC's already has issues with them. I'm thinking that those fiends might have corrupted Ilya into attempt poisoning his father- and might start tempting Pit into letting Ilya die. After all, if he dies, she'll inherit the lordship of Krezk upon her father's natural death.

Eddard: A LN human divination wizard. Unbeknownst to the character and the player (for now), he is from the plane that Barovia was initially taken from. Furthermore, he has some distant vistani blood in his veins, and has the potentially to become an incredibly powerful seer. He's already receiving regular omens and nightmares that loosely tie into the future.

Beyond that, I'm considering having the dark powers themselves taking an unusually keen interest in him... but for what I'm not sure. I'm still struggling with how to tie him into the story more.

Aeryn A NG halfling Circle of the Moon Druid. Unbeknownst to the character and (possibly) the player, some of her ancestors were from Ravenloft, druids who refused to abandon their old gods and worship Strahd. This character specifically has left her home after being driven out by the church of Asmodeus.

Lady Wachter is already planning on taking over Vallaki with a "Devil Worshiping" cult in CoS. I plan on giving her more direct ties to Asmodeus specifically, both to give Aeryn's character something of a familiar foe to go up against. Moreover, I was hoping to make the influence of fiends as a whole somewhat more prevalent than it is in curse of Strahd normally. Devils and unholy temptors are far from uncommon in gothic horror, yet they are seemingly absent in this module.

So, I'm poking for any sort of suggestions to make fiends more present. Furthermore, I know there are these things called "reality wrinkles" from older editions.. but don't know exactly what they are. Explanations would be welcome.

Oh, and I'm going to make halflings exist in Barovia. They still aren't common, but they do exist and people know about them. This is really a minor detail only, but it can't hurt to mention.

Einar A LN Goliath Battlemaster Fighter. A Goliath from Ebberon, Einar managed was on the battlefield when the Day of Mourning occurred- a great magical cataclysm that destroyed an entire nation, leaving only a mist covered wasteland in its wake.

Unbeknownst to the player (a Ravenloft noob) or character- this is wat it looks like from the point of view of a prime material plane when the dark powers drag a portion of a continent into the Demiplane of Dread. As the campaign progresses, the character's will begin to discover what happened when they run into travelers from the country that was dragged into the mist.

I still need a darkloard who was in Cyre (the country affected), but at this point there is no hurry. This will mostly be in the background, only mentioned by some NPC's that there is a new land in the mists. As far as Einar goes, I mostly have his ties to Barovia settled.

Darian A NG human Oath of Ancients Paladin. While I haven't finalized this yet, I'm planing on having him be a paladin of Andral, the sun God worshiped by Barovians before the mists came. What is of note is an important NPC in his backstory.

In short, she is a powerful warlock who gained her powers. Later, she came to regret her discision and felt incredible guilt, and sought repentance.

Luckily for her, someone answered. A long forgotten goddess (and Andral's sister), trapped in deep in the lower planes for eternity to seal away some great evil, personally slew the fiend that had held her contract, and is the new entity from which this warlock now draws power,

While she is seldom worshiped, this goddes's portfolio is starlight, death, misfortune, and suffering. Emphasis is on the last three of those- and anyone who winds up drawing power from this goddess usually winds up receiving these in copious amounts. She's essentially the goddess of "No good deed goes unpunished", of doing good when it results in personal suffering and loss, of enduring pain so others may experience joy.

After a short prologue, this warlock and Darian will both be dragged off into the mists. Lessia (the warlock's name) is dragged off to Barovia a year before the PC's are, an in short, she will take the place of the mad Mage of Mout Murbadak (or whaver it is). Furthermore, she'll be the one who has the holy symbol of ravenkind- hiding it away from Strahd deep into the shadowfel attached to this part of Barovia, trapped in a sort of personal hell of her own minds creation in isolation.

In short, I build a dungeon from scratch that the players need to move through to get the Holy symbol of raven kind, and have a story arc where the PC's can essentially lift someone out of their own despair and guilt, figuratively and literally.

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If you've made it this far- thank you, I know its a lot to take in. Any suggestion of how to best handle anything I mentioned barge would be really appreciated. Any sort of feedback is welcome.

I'd especially like to know about how reality wrinkles work. Those could be very interesting to use.
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Re: Personalizing Curse of Strahd to my PC's

Post by Zilfer »

For reality wrinkles i can only give you what i remember off the top of my head.

A.) Fiends and demons had them extending out by about i think 1000ft per CR?
B.) Darklords used to be able to sense a paladin walking in their land because of their pureness of spirit or what have you. Same with reality wrinkles except instead of showing up as a minor headache nudging the back of their mind, it instead was a 'blank spot' in their awareness.
C.) In reality Wrinkles the Darklord couldn't use their "Domain Powers" If i recall. Which was specific abilities they had to help control their domain. Strahd's choking fog, I believe this was an example. So correct me if I'm wrong here older and much more versed Ravenloft players/DMs, but if you got a fiend near Strahd you could potentially slip past a "closed boarder".
D.) Lastly if the Fiend bound themselves to the land of Ravenloft their Reality Wrinkle would shrink by half the size but they would gain a "Land Power" usually in the theme of the darklord but were now were more tied to the Lands of the mists and made it harder for them to slip out of the Domains of Dread. If they did it enough times in a enough lands they no longer had a wrinkle or a small one and could not leave Ravenloft. (They could use these powers within the confines of their Reality Wrinkle.)
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Re: Personalizing Curse of Strahd to my PC's

Post by thekristhomas »

With regards Eddard, male vistani seers are Dukkar, believed to bring doom to the Vistani, maybe that's why the DPs are interested
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Re: Personalizing Curse of Strahd to my PC's

Post by Ember in the Dark »

thekristhomas wrote:With regards Eddard, male vistani seers are Dukkar, believed to bring doom to the Vistani, maybe that's why the DPs are interested
Thank you for bringing this to my attanetion. This gives me a bunch of ideas to work with.
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