I like that idea. I have actually been thinking of doing a split psyche thing with Jens, although it would not happen early in the campaign. The idea I've had has been to use the Apparatus. Specifically, I have been mulling over a high-level adventure involving Hirregaard killing all the male members of his family, and then trying to Apparatus himself to exorcise Malken. I thought Jens would be a natural to put in the machine (maybe willingly, maybe not), too. I'm at the very early stages of planning this though -- have to see how the campaign unfolds a bit first. It's not connected to any other meta-plot yet.
A fetch is also an excellent possibility. I love Carnival! You will see I have plans for the Carnival in this campaign, and a homebrew fetch to interact with Tindal could be great. Jens' player is familiar with the Carnival, so that could be just the sort of thing I need to keep it interesting for him.
Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
SESSION 1 (December 2012)
The first in-person session of the campaign followed. I had intended to get right into my rakshasa adventure, but we didn’t get as far with the email preludes as I’d hoped, so there was still ground to cover in Barovia and Borca.
THE OLD SVALICH ROAD
What did Helena and Jens see on the face of the carriage driver at that pit stop in the Balinoks? To find out, we ran a flashback into Helena’s past. One day (about a month in-game prior to the beginning of the campaign) as she was telling fortunes for coppers at a logging camp near the eastern border of Barovia, a cousin of hers came galloping into camp and told her to come quick – her mother had suddenly fallen ill back home in the Village of Barovia, and it didn’t look like she had long to live. Helena went along to see if she could help (she did run away from home, but that was more out of boredom and wanderlust than hatred for her parents), or alternatively, to see her mother one last time.
When she arrived, her mother was indeed on her deathbed. A local priest tending to her explained that she had been attacked by a large eagle while doing some laundry in a nearby stream a day or two earlier. There were large cuts on her back that looked like talon marks, which had quickly become infected. She did indeed die, and as she did, nonsensically cried out about how some man named Toben was dancing in her mind. Sure enough, this was the work of Toben the Many, not an eagle. Mom rose as a Toben zombie, which Helena had to fend off. Due to some bad dice rolls by the player, the Toben zombie rampaged through the house, killed the local priest, and probably killed the rest of her family as well. Helena fled to save herself, and does not know the fate of her siblings or her father.
My Toben the Many is modified from the canon creature. The way I have it constructed, I link Toben’s history to Strahd. As all readers of this post probably know, Strahd’s zombie minions are more robust than most zombies. Certainly part of the reason for this is because Strahd is a smart guy who was taught necromancy by an even smarter guy, but part of it is also because he really set his mind to the task of creating robust zombies back hundreds of years ago when he got his start in the business. Toben was the name of an adventurer who tried to assault Castle Ravenloft, failed, and was used by Strahd in one of many zombie creation experiments. The experiment was partially successful – Toben became a super strong type of zombie – but mostly unsuccessful – he retained his free will. Whoops! Toben has hated Strahd ever since, and his ambition is to kill Strahd, although he is generally reduced to practical jokes against him. Strahd mostly doesn’t care about him, as long as his numbers are kept in check so that he doesn’t pose a large threat to the Barovian population.
So, Toben was after Helena’s family because her father was the only cobbler in the Village of Barovia. Toben wanted to infiltrate the shoeshop that most likely made Strahd’s boots, so that he could put garlic or holy water in the darklord’s boots to mess with him. Helena’s family was collateral damage to Toben’s joke (and I got to run a combat involving cascading shelves of shoes). While the attack was going on Helena heard some jokes from the zombie about “the Count’s shoes” or something like that, but she does not know Toben’s backstory yet. She only got verification that her mother had fallen ill as a result of a zombie attack (not an eagle attack) as she fled the village and ran into an old woman who had seen the initial zombie attack, and who had seen Toben zombies around the village before. She told Helena she could probably find out more about “the Smiling Dead” from the group of professors from the University in Dementlieu who were in town researching the abnormal robustness of Barovia’s shambling dead a few years prior.
So Helena set off to the west, where she encountered Jens and Lord Blackburn’s merchant caravan. The carriage driver’s face that she and Jens saw at the end of my email prologue was the face of a Toben zombie. A merry chase ensued, and the two PCs encountered a couple more zombies in the woods after the carriage driver took off. Toben had been following Helena, with the intent of killing her so that nobody would try to evict him from her parents’ shoeshop while he continued his plan to poison Strahd’s shoes.
After dealing with Toben, the merchant caravan set off into the higher mountains to collect its glacier ice. Helena joined up, in order to make some money and in order to get a free ride to Dementlieu. I had the rough-looking brigands from the mountain pit stop ambush the PCs as they were chopping up glacier ice at the top of a mountain. A couple members of the caravan died during the ambush, and the only way the rest escaped was by jumping on their glacier ice sleds and going on a harrowing ride down the side of the mountain. (I love Warren Miller ski movies, and this scene was inspired by dangerous backcountry skiing. I invented a mini-game for sledding rules, complete with possibilities of avalanches and crevasses. I also had the PCs encounter some Ravenloft-ish sights along the way – frozen remains of former climbers, and a statute of Tatyana built centuries ago by Strahd on a rock outcropping, beautifully looking out at the sunset, forever.)
The caravan lost a few members to this dangerous sledding adventure (they were ill prepared for that kind of exposure to the elements, and one died of bad frostbite), but on the whole the group managed to escape. They had already mostly loaded up their wagons with glacier ice, so they departed for the west.
The first in-person session of the campaign followed. I had intended to get right into my rakshasa adventure, but we didn’t get as far with the email preludes as I’d hoped, so there was still ground to cover in Barovia and Borca.
THE OLD SVALICH ROAD
What did Helena and Jens see on the face of the carriage driver at that pit stop in the Balinoks? To find out, we ran a flashback into Helena’s past. One day (about a month in-game prior to the beginning of the campaign) as she was telling fortunes for coppers at a logging camp near the eastern border of Barovia, a cousin of hers came galloping into camp and told her to come quick – her mother had suddenly fallen ill back home in the Village of Barovia, and it didn’t look like she had long to live. Helena went along to see if she could help (she did run away from home, but that was more out of boredom and wanderlust than hatred for her parents), or alternatively, to see her mother one last time.
When she arrived, her mother was indeed on her deathbed. A local priest tending to her explained that she had been attacked by a large eagle while doing some laundry in a nearby stream a day or two earlier. There were large cuts on her back that looked like talon marks, which had quickly become infected. She did indeed die, and as she did, nonsensically cried out about how some man named Toben was dancing in her mind. Sure enough, this was the work of Toben the Many, not an eagle. Mom rose as a Toben zombie, which Helena had to fend off. Due to some bad dice rolls by the player, the Toben zombie rampaged through the house, killed the local priest, and probably killed the rest of her family as well. Helena fled to save herself, and does not know the fate of her siblings or her father.
My Toben the Many is modified from the canon creature. The way I have it constructed, I link Toben’s history to Strahd. As all readers of this post probably know, Strahd’s zombie minions are more robust than most zombies. Certainly part of the reason for this is because Strahd is a smart guy who was taught necromancy by an even smarter guy, but part of it is also because he really set his mind to the task of creating robust zombies back hundreds of years ago when he got his start in the business. Toben was the name of an adventurer who tried to assault Castle Ravenloft, failed, and was used by Strahd in one of many zombie creation experiments. The experiment was partially successful – Toben became a super strong type of zombie – but mostly unsuccessful – he retained his free will. Whoops! Toben has hated Strahd ever since, and his ambition is to kill Strahd, although he is generally reduced to practical jokes against him. Strahd mostly doesn’t care about him, as long as his numbers are kept in check so that he doesn’t pose a large threat to the Barovian population.
So, Toben was after Helena’s family because her father was the only cobbler in the Village of Barovia. Toben wanted to infiltrate the shoeshop that most likely made Strahd’s boots, so that he could put garlic or holy water in the darklord’s boots to mess with him. Helena’s family was collateral damage to Toben’s joke (and I got to run a combat involving cascading shelves of shoes). While the attack was going on Helena heard some jokes from the zombie about “the Count’s shoes” or something like that, but she does not know Toben’s backstory yet. She only got verification that her mother had fallen ill as a result of a zombie attack (not an eagle attack) as she fled the village and ran into an old woman who had seen the initial zombie attack, and who had seen Toben zombies around the village before. She told Helena she could probably find out more about “the Smiling Dead” from the group of professors from the University in Dementlieu who were in town researching the abnormal robustness of Barovia’s shambling dead a few years prior.
So Helena set off to the west, where she encountered Jens and Lord Blackburn’s merchant caravan. The carriage driver’s face that she and Jens saw at the end of my email prologue was the face of a Toben zombie. A merry chase ensued, and the two PCs encountered a couple more zombies in the woods after the carriage driver took off. Toben had been following Helena, with the intent of killing her so that nobody would try to evict him from her parents’ shoeshop while he continued his plan to poison Strahd’s shoes.
After dealing with Toben, the merchant caravan set off into the higher mountains to collect its glacier ice. Helena joined up, in order to make some money and in order to get a free ride to Dementlieu. I had the rough-looking brigands from the mountain pit stop ambush the PCs as they were chopping up glacier ice at the top of a mountain. A couple members of the caravan died during the ambush, and the only way the rest escaped was by jumping on their glacier ice sleds and going on a harrowing ride down the side of the mountain. (I love Warren Miller ski movies, and this scene was inspired by dangerous backcountry skiing. I invented a mini-game for sledding rules, complete with possibilities of avalanches and crevasses. I also had the PCs encounter some Ravenloft-ish sights along the way – frozen remains of former climbers, and a statute of Tatyana built centuries ago by Strahd on a rock outcropping, beautifully looking out at the sunset, forever.)
The caravan lost a few members to this dangerous sledding adventure (they were ill prepared for that kind of exposure to the elements, and one died of bad frostbite), but on the whole the group managed to escape. They had already mostly loaded up their wagons with glacier ice, so they departed for the west.
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
SESSION 1 (continued) – THE CLOCKMAKER’S LEGACY
Back in Borca, Luca and Johanne headed for the bank with Malvoni’s safety deposit box key in tow. Johanne explained what he knew about Malvoni’s aid to the Falkovnian resistance along the way. This surprised Luca – he never even knew Gustav was a gunsmith. (In my campaign, Malvoni started aiding the Falkovnian resistance after he and Luca had their falling out.) It definitely explained why Malvoni would suddenly be worried about his own mortality, however – Vlad Drakov is a dangerous enemy, everyone knows that. This also explained why Malvoni would want Luca to deliver his wealth to Falkovnia after his death.
Malvoni had left word at the bank about their coming, so they had no trouble there. They put half of Luca’s new Indenture into the safety deposit box, and noted that the Codicil mentioned in it was already in the safety deposit box (but it was sealed and not to be opened until Gustav’s death, so they couldn’t read it at the time). They also noticed a super intricate/complex clockwork machine about the size of a grapefruit in the box. Luca could tell it was very intricate, but with only one rank in profession – clockmaker, he had no idea what it was. Masterwork gem cutters’ tools were also in there.
On the way out the door the bank teller gave the two of them a letter to deliver that had recently arrived for Gustav. (Can Borcan banks double as post offices for their wealthy customers? I say yes.) They brought it back home to him (witnessing the buildup to an execution at the Wyrmsbreath, and buying a bottle of wine to share with Malvoni over dinner, along the way).
Luca and Johanne arrived back at Gustav’s house to find the door battered down, gunsmoke in the air. The scruffy looking bully they’d seen in their email prelude scene earlier had been working for Falkovnian assassins, and had led the bad guys right to Malvoni. He killed one of his assailants , but was murdered by the rest, and lay dead on the floor of his shop when Luca and Johanne entered.
The Falkovnians (led by a Talon) and their local bully boy, all in disguise so as not to look like invaders to Borcan militiamen, were rooting through the second story of Malvoni’s shop when the PCs arrived, looking for clues about Gondegal and his resistance. This gave Johanne precious little time to act. Gustav had warned him before that he thought there was a spy in the Falkovnian resistance, and that if so it was only a matter of time before the Falkovnians found out about him and sent men to kill him. He had told Johanne that if that ever happened, he could not let Malvoni’s stock of firearms fall into Falkovnian hands. Malvoni kept all his guns in an unassuming locked storeroom… which was rigged with barrels of gunpowder so that he or Johanne could blow up the house if ever attacked by an overwhelming force. Johanne went to set off the explosion, while Luca fought off the Falkovnians for a few rounds. (My first fudged die roll of this campaign: the damage roll when the Talon hit Luca with his bastard sword. I generally kill PCs only when they act stupidly. Here, they were acting just as I hoped they would. And reducing Luca to 1 hit point did impress upon my players that Talons are no joke.)
The explosion was spectacular. (Gustav had been a little exuberant in how much gunpowder he used in the trap, and the blast destroyed not only half of his own home, but also damaged a couple adjacent buildings.) Luca and Johanne barely escaped. One or two of the Falkovnians died in the blast, as did the local bully boy, but others survived, and the PCs had to flee against overwhelming strength/numbers.
They watched from some bushes a block or two away as the Falkovnians finished ransacking the half-destroyed shop. The Falkovnians left a few minutes later, wanting to flee back to Falkovnia, themselves, before the Borcan militia got involved. In a touching scene Johanne returned to Malvoni, wept over his body, and performed some Sithican funeral rights. Luca hustled back to the bank, to claim the contents of Malvoni’s safety deposit box before the authorities sealed it when they found out about the whole incident.
Luca and Johanne worried that the local authorities would not look kindly on them for being mixed up in a private war with Falkovnia, so they fled west (aiming to return to Port-a-Lucine, where Luca had business at an academic conference). They ran into Lord Blackburn’s merchant caravan in western Borca, and joined up with it for safety in numbers. Blackburn had lost a number of men to the brigands and to the mountainside, so he was happy to have an extra guard/guide (Johanne) and an extra doctor/cook/engineer/jack of all learned trades (Luca). Luca and Helena had an instant connection, because Luca’s faculty advisor at the University (a guy named Professor Donatien) also happened to be one of the people who’d performed research on the Smiling Dead of Barovia.
Johanne and Luca kept the contents of Malvoni’s safety deposit box, including the Codicil to his will. They also kept the letter the bank had asked them to deliver to Malvoni. In my next post I will describe both documents.
Back in Borca, Luca and Johanne headed for the bank with Malvoni’s safety deposit box key in tow. Johanne explained what he knew about Malvoni’s aid to the Falkovnian resistance along the way. This surprised Luca – he never even knew Gustav was a gunsmith. (In my campaign, Malvoni started aiding the Falkovnian resistance after he and Luca had their falling out.) It definitely explained why Malvoni would suddenly be worried about his own mortality, however – Vlad Drakov is a dangerous enemy, everyone knows that. This also explained why Malvoni would want Luca to deliver his wealth to Falkovnia after his death.
Malvoni had left word at the bank about their coming, so they had no trouble there. They put half of Luca’s new Indenture into the safety deposit box, and noted that the Codicil mentioned in it was already in the safety deposit box (but it was sealed and not to be opened until Gustav’s death, so they couldn’t read it at the time). They also noticed a super intricate/complex clockwork machine about the size of a grapefruit in the box. Luca could tell it was very intricate, but with only one rank in profession – clockmaker, he had no idea what it was. Masterwork gem cutters’ tools were also in there.
On the way out the door the bank teller gave the two of them a letter to deliver that had recently arrived for Gustav. (Can Borcan banks double as post offices for their wealthy customers? I say yes.) They brought it back home to him (witnessing the buildup to an execution at the Wyrmsbreath, and buying a bottle of wine to share with Malvoni over dinner, along the way).
Luca and Johanne arrived back at Gustav’s house to find the door battered down, gunsmoke in the air. The scruffy looking bully they’d seen in their email prelude scene earlier had been working for Falkovnian assassins, and had led the bad guys right to Malvoni. He killed one of his assailants , but was murdered by the rest, and lay dead on the floor of his shop when Luca and Johanne entered.
The Falkovnians (led by a Talon) and their local bully boy, all in disguise so as not to look like invaders to Borcan militiamen, were rooting through the second story of Malvoni’s shop when the PCs arrived, looking for clues about Gondegal and his resistance. This gave Johanne precious little time to act. Gustav had warned him before that he thought there was a spy in the Falkovnian resistance, and that if so it was only a matter of time before the Falkovnians found out about him and sent men to kill him. He had told Johanne that if that ever happened, he could not let Malvoni’s stock of firearms fall into Falkovnian hands. Malvoni kept all his guns in an unassuming locked storeroom… which was rigged with barrels of gunpowder so that he or Johanne could blow up the house if ever attacked by an overwhelming force. Johanne went to set off the explosion, while Luca fought off the Falkovnians for a few rounds. (My first fudged die roll of this campaign: the damage roll when the Talon hit Luca with his bastard sword. I generally kill PCs only when they act stupidly. Here, they were acting just as I hoped they would. And reducing Luca to 1 hit point did impress upon my players that Talons are no joke.)
The explosion was spectacular. (Gustav had been a little exuberant in how much gunpowder he used in the trap, and the blast destroyed not only half of his own home, but also damaged a couple adjacent buildings.) Luca and Johanne barely escaped. One or two of the Falkovnians died in the blast, as did the local bully boy, but others survived, and the PCs had to flee against overwhelming strength/numbers.
They watched from some bushes a block or two away as the Falkovnians finished ransacking the half-destroyed shop. The Falkovnians left a few minutes later, wanting to flee back to Falkovnia, themselves, before the Borcan militia got involved. In a touching scene Johanne returned to Malvoni, wept over his body, and performed some Sithican funeral rights. Luca hustled back to the bank, to claim the contents of Malvoni’s safety deposit box before the authorities sealed it when they found out about the whole incident.
Luca and Johanne worried that the local authorities would not look kindly on them for being mixed up in a private war with Falkovnia, so they fled west (aiming to return to Port-a-Lucine, where Luca had business at an academic conference). They ran into Lord Blackburn’s merchant caravan in western Borca, and joined up with it for safety in numbers. Blackburn had lost a number of men to the brigands and to the mountainside, so he was happy to have an extra guard/guide (Johanne) and an extra doctor/cook/engineer/jack of all learned trades (Luca). Luca and Helena had an instant connection, because Luca’s faculty advisor at the University (a guy named Professor Donatien) also happened to be one of the people who’d performed research on the Smiling Dead of Barovia.
Johanne and Luca kept the contents of Malvoni’s safety deposit box, including the Codicil to his will. They also kept the letter the bank had asked them to deliver to Malvoni. In my next post I will describe both documents.
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
CODICIL TO INDENTURE [In the live game, I wrote this out by hand and included some fancy formatting, like blood-drop signatures and a jagged edge to the Indenture, and an envelop telling the PCs not to open it until Malvoni's death.]
October 5, 758th year of the Barovian Calendar
Decedent: Gustav Malvoni
Executor: Luca de Luca
Dear Luca, my friend,
There comes a time when a man must measure his life in other ways than the ticks he hears from the clock, or the crafts he creates with his hands. There comes a time when he must be reckoned for the deeds he does in his short hours in the world. I tried, and failed, to be reckoned as a noble man by being a father. I tried, and failed again, by being the master to an apprentice. But I do not think I failed in my most recent attempt.
Most call the Falkovnians "savages." And some are indeed -- the ones in charge of the place, at least. Some are working to change that, however, and I have been helping them. Luca, I have been building firearms and smuggling them into Falkovnia, to aid the Falkovnian resistance movement. The man in charge of the movement is a knight named Gondegal. You can find him at the location listed in our Indenture every year on Midsummer's Day. Upon my death, I ask you to assist my cause by delivering my wealth, and any remaining weapons in my home, to Gondegal.
It will be dangerous! Certain death if Vlad Drakov's men catch you. Save always the last bullet in your pistol for yourself, as the Hawk treats his enemies very badly.
This I ask, as my final request, master to apprentice. Good luck.
October 5, 758th year of the Barovian Calendar
Decedent: Gustav Malvoni
Executor: Luca de Luca
Dear Luca, my friend,
There comes a time when a man must measure his life in other ways than the ticks he hears from the clock, or the crafts he creates with his hands. There comes a time when he must be reckoned for the deeds he does in his short hours in the world. I tried, and failed, to be reckoned as a noble man by being a father. I tried, and failed again, by being the master to an apprentice. But I do not think I failed in my most recent attempt.
Most call the Falkovnians "savages." And some are indeed -- the ones in charge of the place, at least. Some are working to change that, however, and I have been helping them. Luca, I have been building firearms and smuggling them into Falkovnia, to aid the Falkovnian resistance movement. The man in charge of the movement is a knight named Gondegal. You can find him at the location listed in our Indenture every year on Midsummer's Day. Upon my death, I ask you to assist my cause by delivering my wealth, and any remaining weapons in my home, to Gondegal.
It will be dangerous! Certain death if Vlad Drakov's men catch you. Save always the last bullet in your pistol for yourself, as the Hawk treats his enemies very badly.
This I ask, as my final request, master to apprentice. Good luck.
-
Gonzoron of the FoS
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Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
Wow, you dug deep into my site to find those Gustav quotes. 
Funny you should mention a statue of Tatyana high in the Balinoks. Have you read Farewell to the Flesh? Or is it just a coincidence?
Always good to see Toben, though that's a bizarre prank if I ever heard one.
Funny you should mention a statue of Tatyana high in the Balinoks. Have you read Farewell to the Flesh? Or is it just a coincidence?
Always good to see Toben, though that's a bizarre prank if I ever heard one.
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
Yup, lots of quotes from you in that document. Now that he's dead in my game, at this point I expect our Gustavs will start to diverge more significantly. You'll see a big divergence in my next post. We'll see though! I am not ashamed to plunder others' campaign journals.
I have not read Farewell to the Flesh... but I was inspired by a thread on this message board talking about it. So its legacy lives on through word of mouth.
I have not read Farewell to the Flesh... but I was inspired by a thread on this message board talking about it. So its legacy lives on through word of mouth.
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
By carriage
3 [strange symbol for units of money]
From:
Mont-Claude Estate
Pres de Chateaufaux
Dementlieu
To:
Gustav Malvoni
c/o Sturben Central Bank
Lady Salvatore, Baronette
Sturben, Borca
[On one side of the invitation:]
Masquerade! October 31
For: Gustav Malvoni
From: Jean Mont-Claude
Friends, relatives, and customers! You are cordially invited to join Master Jean Mont-Claude at his annual Masquerade Ball on The Day of The Dead. Formal attire. Hospitality provided on the night of the Ball.
[On the other side of the invitation:]
Dear Gustav,
You have always been a fool. I thought "Stannum" would have taught you to stick to simpler aspects of our profession. Alas.
I will help you with your Falkovnian problem, however. Such is the bond between fellow apprentices. I do so for The Engineer, may he rest in peace.
Join me on 31 Oct. to discuss.
-Jean
3 [strange symbol for units of money]
From:
Mont-Claude Estate
Pres de Chateaufaux
Dementlieu
To:
Gustav Malvoni
c/o Sturben Central Bank
Lady Salvatore, Baronette
Sturben, Borca
[On one side of the invitation:]
Masquerade! October 31
For: Gustav Malvoni
From: Jean Mont-Claude
Friends, relatives, and customers! You are cordially invited to join Master Jean Mont-Claude at his annual Masquerade Ball on The Day of The Dead. Formal attire. Hospitality provided on the night of the Ball.
[On the other side of the invitation:]
Dear Gustav,
You have always been a fool. I thought "Stannum" would have taught you to stick to simpler aspects of our profession. Alas.
I will help you with your Falkovnian problem, however. Such is the bond between fellow apprentices. I do so for The Engineer, may he rest in peace.
Join me on 31 Oct. to discuss.
-Jean
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
SESSION 2 (January 2013)
I intended to run the entire rakshasa adventure this session, but 1) a couple of my players arrived significantly late, which is never any fun for the DM, but seems unavoidable in most gaming circles, and 2) there was a fire in the building I live in half way through the session, forcing us all the evacuate for an hour. Sigh. So as a result we got about half way through it. Still a great day of play though. Most of this adventure was my players exploring Port-a-Lucine for the first time.
Luca's player was absent for this session, and we had a guest playing a dwarf merchant called Eliezer of Ashkandad. Ashkandad is a Middle Eastern -flavored dwarf city-state in a homebrew world (outside Ravenloft) in which everyone in this campaign had played a previous campaign. So Eliezer was an outlander, and this session established a cross-over between the two worlds. That's not really important to this session, but I'm mentioning it in case Eliezer becomes a recurring character at some point in the future.
On to the game. The PCs were travelling by wagon through western Borca on the way to Dementlieu. As they neared the border with Richemulot their caravan passed several locals who told them to watch out -- enforcers working for Lord Ivan were patrolling the area, looking for a pair of men who were involved in some sort of explosion and fight with Falkovnian infiltrators in Sturben. Luca had tried to hide the Sturben story from the rest of the caravan, but Johanne was too naive to do so, so Lord Blackburn et al. knew about it. The group stopped to decide what to do, which is when they joined up with Eliezer (specifics about his trip through the Mists are too closely tied to our previous homebrew campaign to be of general interest, I imagine). Eliezer was a merchant with a wagon full of wares, so he readily joined the party in order to get to market in Port-a-Lucine.
The group decided to make a run for the border of Richemulot, which was only a mile away, and not to stop if hailed by patrols or border guards. They didn’t think Lord Ivan’s men would pursue them out of Borca, and they were right… but Lord Ivan’s men saw them and showed up before they even got started. The Borcan enforcers demanded that all submit to questioning, so that the two involved with the Falkovnians could be identified. Jens suggested complying (he was looking out for himself and Lord Blackburn, not Luca and Johanne), but was told by other members of the caravan that mere “questioning” by Lord Ivan could result in death and was a grim prospect. So, the party fought the Borcan enforcers, and fled across the border into Richemulot. They were greatly aided by Eliezer, who conveniently came equipped with weapon proficiency—cannon, and had a small brass foreign-looking cannon in the back of his wagon, used to good effect on the Borcan enforcers. (Eliezer later sold it at market in Dementlieu.)
A number of NPC caravan members died in the fight and the chase, but no death was more surprising than that of Jonathan Bettridge, Lord Blackburn’s business partner and the #2 man in the caravan. As soon as the party crossed the border (marked by a shabby fence), the Borcan enforcers stopped their pursuit. Bettridge cheered and took a celebratory drink from a flask of Borcan liquor… and dropped to the ground, poisoned by Borcan border closing. The party was bewildered and didn’t act fast to try to save him, so he died. I toned down the effects of the border closing a little bit, so that I could use it in the game without killing the whole party. The party had been subsisting on Barovian glacier water (or outlander water in the case of Eliezer) for at least the last day or two. Internal possession of Borcan liquid would be enough to kill a character, but internal possession of liquid from another domain would not. So they were all safe, except for poor Bettridge. Being an alchemist, Luca determined what was safe to drink and what wasn’t, and the party (considerably saddened by all the people they lost in the fight) went on their way across Richemulot. So anyway, this was the party’s first experience with border closings, and they were mystified by it, although they rightly guessed that powers-that-be in Borca used some sort of magic to do this at the border in order to try to keep Luca and Johanne from escaping. I can’t wait to see what they think and how they piece it together the next time I have them encounter a closed border. Jens’ player, who knows all about border closings, did a good job of staying in the background while the other players tried to puzzle it out.
The rest of the trip to Port-a-Lucine was uneventful. When they arrived in the city Lord Blackburn had them unload their glacier ice into the basement of an inn where he’d arranged to store it, and paid them for their services. (Along the way the players had the good idea of stopping a couple of times in Richemulot to procure local ice to insulate their Barovian glacier ice, to keep as much from melting on the journey as possible. I had Blackburn give them a bonus for this idea.) Lord Blackburn was thankful that the trip was over, and grateful to those who’d kept him alive the whole way, so he treated the PCs to a trip to the Grand Opera Nationale that night. We had some light-hearted scenes in which the PCs borrowed fancy Dementlieuse clothing to wear to the opera, and I had them roll some sort of skill check to see if they could figure out how to don it appropriately. Johanne failed his check by the largest margin, and was subject to disapproving reactions from local rich people that evening.
Most of the PCs got some sleep in the afternoon prior to the opera, but Jens wanted to explore the city instead. He wandered down to the docks, where he saw that a group of merchant ships from a foreign land called Sri Raji were docked. The streets were lined with little stalls set up to sell the Sri Rajians’ wares. Jens bartered with one of the foreign merchants over some Sri Rajian animal masks (which he intended to wear to Jean Mont-Claude’s masquerade ball later that month), and learned a bit about Sri Raji. He also learned of some gruesome killings that happened on the Sri Rajian ships on the journey to Port-a-Lucine. The culprit was never found, and the Sri Rajian sailors blamed sea monsters or Mist horrors.
The real killer on the ships was one of my antagonists – a rakshasa, one of Arijani’s servants, disguised in illusion as Mirza Kahn, the noble in charge of the Sri Rajian merchant fleet. I’ve modified Arijani’s backstory and curse, such that he is subject to final death in Sri Raji and will not be able to reincarnate (as is the goal of all rakshasas) if he dies there. He sent Mirza Kahn on this mission to Port-a-Lucine to infiltrate the Arcane Studies department at the University of Dementlieu in order to try to find a magical fix to his reincarnation problem. The faculty at the University is known to have quite an extensive library of forbidden magical tomes, after all. The merchant fleet was just Mirza Kahn’s cover.
Jens accidentally bumped into Mirza Kahn on the street down by the docks. Being a tough guy, he tried to intimidate the foreigner… and quickly found himself cowering in a corner after the “foreign lord” looked him straight in the eye and started paging through his most intimate memories.
The party went to the opera after that. To plant the seed for possible future adventures in Dementlieu, I described a bunch of fine statues of Dementlieuse people lining the foyer of the opera house, including several that looked all too real and that wore terrified facial expressions (actually the work of a medusa, allegedly the work of a blind virtuoso sculptor named Decad). The PCs had cheap seats, but Luca’s faculty advisor, Professor Donatien, waved Luca and his friends up to the University faculty box, where there were a number of empty seats for the night.
Prior to the show, being a Valachani man of the woods/man of action, Jens thought he would hate the opera. He wound up loving it, however. The story that night was a collection of Grandfather Wolf legends/fables from Verbrek and Kartakass. Jens appreciated stories about hunting, wilderness, the great southwestern forests of the Core, etc.
Even more interesting than the show, however, were the other theatregoers that night. Professor Donatien was joined in the faculty box by Professor Estran Tellus, allegedly a (devastatingly handsome) visiting professor of arcane studies from the University of Il Aluk (there is no Necropolis in my game). Professor Tellus couldn’t see much of the stage, because of the large hairdos of a couple ladies seated in front of him, so he spent much of the first half of the opera looking around at the crowd through theatre binoculars into which he had installed magical lenses. (Pure coincidence – the binoculars were masterwork quality, made by Malvoni and containing Malvoni’s mark/stamp, although Estran Tellus replaced the lenses himself.) The magical lenses are weak gems of seeing, that impart minor x-ray vision to users of the binoculars. So Estran Tellus was having a grand time looking at everyone in the theatre in the buff.
To a limited degree the magical lenses also allow users to see through magical concealment/illusion/shapechanges. Because of this capability, Professor Tellus appeared shocked when he scanned the crowd and saw that another University faculty member, Professor-Trustee Jacques Marchand, had demonic features. He appeared frightened, and shared his binoculars with the PCs and Professor Donatien, so that they could verify that he saw some sort of monster disguised as Professor-Trustee Marchand on the other side of the theatre. The binoculars afforded each PC a unique view of Marchand – some saw him as having fangs, others saw claws or fur, others saw hands that bent strangely, others saw blood on his mouth, etc. [At this point the PCs thought “Marchand” was a demon or some sort or a vampire. I was glad that I was able to give them a clue about hands that bent backwards without having them immediately conclude that he was a rakshasa.]
Tellus: “Donatien, your research, ahhhh, uniquely suits you to determine what this thing is.”
Doantien: “You think an Orb of Augmentation?”
Tellus: “Yes, that’s what I was thinking.”
With that, Tellus left in a hurry, saying he was terrified and heading back to Darkon before this monster noticed that he had spotted it. He left his binoculars of seeing with the PCs and Donatien to aid in identifying the creature.
Donatien and the PCs also left the opera at that point, about half way through the show. They retreated to Donatien’s upscale townhouse (filled with all sorts of fun magical items and tomes) where Donatien persuaded them to help him determine what the creature appearing to be Professor-Trustee Marchand actually was. They all agreed that they could not go to the local authorities or to other University officials for help, because Marchand was a powerful man with many government and Univeristy officials in his pocket, and he’d likely hear about it if they tried to alert authorities. Instead, Donatien suggested that he could construct a magic item called an Orb of Augmentation to identify the creature. The Orb would consist of:
1. A metal shell, infused with drops of blood from any who might use it;
2. Fine silver hinges and locks to fasten the two metal halves of the shell together;
3. A lattice of owl bones constructed inside the shell;
4. Many enchantments;
5. The blessing of the wisest woman in the city where the Orb was to be used (Donatien explained that this would be the elderly and sickly Bastion Secousse, of the local sect of the Church of Ezra); and
6. A special silk bag to keep the Orb in, to keep its magic from dissipating when not in use.
Once constructed, the Orb would work by amplifying the senses of the person holding it in the presence of a creature cloaked in illusion, polymorphed, shapechanged, etc. The bearer would be able to see the creature’s true form, and when he did, if he was able to call out the proper name of the creature (either its given name or the name of its kind if a monster), he would gain a measure of power over it so that it could be defeated or subdued. [I never defined this “measure of power” for the PCs. It would have frozen the creature in place for a few rounds if they had succeeded in using the Orb as explained in this paragraph.]
[Please note, I significantly changed the powers of Orbs of Augmentation, which are described in Gaz I. This adventure was inspired by the canon version of the magic item, however.]
Donatien said that Professor-Trustee Marchand was scheduled to judge the big academic symposium/competition happening in three days’ time, so if they completed the Orb by then they’d be able to confront him in the University’s main auditorium, in front of lots of powerful witnesses. Luca was of course in agreement with his faculty advisor’s plan, but the other PCs needed a little bit of persuading in order to go along with it. Donatien mentioned that the University was always interested in purchasing supernatural specimens for research purposes, and to be used in spell components. A monster that could transform itself into a man would surely fetch a high price. This convinced them, and they resolved to set out to trap an owl in the woods west of the city the next morning.
Donatien and Luca collected drops of blood to incorporate into the Orb from all the PCs except Jens, who has a healthy fear of magic and did not want his blood inside any magical device. With that Luca, being an alchemist, set to work forging the shell of the Orb. Donatien pulled him aside at some point and said that Luca would have to present Donatien’s academic research at the conference/symposium in three days – Donatien would be far too busy between now and then preparing the enchantments that needed to be cast on the Orb, and he wouldn’t be able to adequately prepare for an oral presentation. Since Luca was just a recent graduate and not a seasoned academic, it would be ok if he didn’t do well at the conference/symposium. Luca didn’t like the thought of doing poorly because he lacked adequate time to prepare for the presentation, but he thought there was a chance he could do well anyway, so he accepted the challenge.
Conversation with Donatien that night closed with Helena asking what he knew about the Smiling Dead. Donatien showed her his research on Toben the Many; in it he (and Professor Estran Tellus, oddly enough) had deduced that Toben has a hive mind, that Toben is out to get Count Strahd, and that Strahd must have been involved with Toben’s creation long ago.
So the plan was set: In the morning the PCs would head out to the woods a few hours outside of town to catch an owl. On the way out of town they would visit local artisans to commission the silk bag and silver hinges/locks they needed for the Orb. Doantien would put the device together when all those things were obtained, and would cast the requisite enchantments over it. The last step would be to get Bastion Joan Secousse to bless the device. Then it could be used on Marchand at the academic conference/symposium in three days.
I intended to run the entire rakshasa adventure this session, but 1) a couple of my players arrived significantly late, which is never any fun for the DM, but seems unavoidable in most gaming circles, and 2) there was a fire in the building I live in half way through the session, forcing us all the evacuate for an hour. Sigh. So as a result we got about half way through it. Still a great day of play though. Most of this adventure was my players exploring Port-a-Lucine for the first time.
Luca's player was absent for this session, and we had a guest playing a dwarf merchant called Eliezer of Ashkandad. Ashkandad is a Middle Eastern -flavored dwarf city-state in a homebrew world (outside Ravenloft) in which everyone in this campaign had played a previous campaign. So Eliezer was an outlander, and this session established a cross-over between the two worlds. That's not really important to this session, but I'm mentioning it in case Eliezer becomes a recurring character at some point in the future.
On to the game. The PCs were travelling by wagon through western Borca on the way to Dementlieu. As they neared the border with Richemulot their caravan passed several locals who told them to watch out -- enforcers working for Lord Ivan were patrolling the area, looking for a pair of men who were involved in some sort of explosion and fight with Falkovnian infiltrators in Sturben. Luca had tried to hide the Sturben story from the rest of the caravan, but Johanne was too naive to do so, so Lord Blackburn et al. knew about it. The group stopped to decide what to do, which is when they joined up with Eliezer (specifics about his trip through the Mists are too closely tied to our previous homebrew campaign to be of general interest, I imagine). Eliezer was a merchant with a wagon full of wares, so he readily joined the party in order to get to market in Port-a-Lucine.
The group decided to make a run for the border of Richemulot, which was only a mile away, and not to stop if hailed by patrols or border guards. They didn’t think Lord Ivan’s men would pursue them out of Borca, and they were right… but Lord Ivan’s men saw them and showed up before they even got started. The Borcan enforcers demanded that all submit to questioning, so that the two involved with the Falkovnians could be identified. Jens suggested complying (he was looking out for himself and Lord Blackburn, not Luca and Johanne), but was told by other members of the caravan that mere “questioning” by Lord Ivan could result in death and was a grim prospect. So, the party fought the Borcan enforcers, and fled across the border into Richemulot. They were greatly aided by Eliezer, who conveniently came equipped with weapon proficiency—cannon, and had a small brass foreign-looking cannon in the back of his wagon, used to good effect on the Borcan enforcers. (Eliezer later sold it at market in Dementlieu.)
A number of NPC caravan members died in the fight and the chase, but no death was more surprising than that of Jonathan Bettridge, Lord Blackburn’s business partner and the #2 man in the caravan. As soon as the party crossed the border (marked by a shabby fence), the Borcan enforcers stopped their pursuit. Bettridge cheered and took a celebratory drink from a flask of Borcan liquor… and dropped to the ground, poisoned by Borcan border closing. The party was bewildered and didn’t act fast to try to save him, so he died. I toned down the effects of the border closing a little bit, so that I could use it in the game without killing the whole party. The party had been subsisting on Barovian glacier water (or outlander water in the case of Eliezer) for at least the last day or two. Internal possession of Borcan liquid would be enough to kill a character, but internal possession of liquid from another domain would not. So they were all safe, except for poor Bettridge. Being an alchemist, Luca determined what was safe to drink and what wasn’t, and the party (considerably saddened by all the people they lost in the fight) went on their way across Richemulot. So anyway, this was the party’s first experience with border closings, and they were mystified by it, although they rightly guessed that powers-that-be in Borca used some sort of magic to do this at the border in order to try to keep Luca and Johanne from escaping. I can’t wait to see what they think and how they piece it together the next time I have them encounter a closed border. Jens’ player, who knows all about border closings, did a good job of staying in the background while the other players tried to puzzle it out.
The rest of the trip to Port-a-Lucine was uneventful. When they arrived in the city Lord Blackburn had them unload their glacier ice into the basement of an inn where he’d arranged to store it, and paid them for their services. (Along the way the players had the good idea of stopping a couple of times in Richemulot to procure local ice to insulate their Barovian glacier ice, to keep as much from melting on the journey as possible. I had Blackburn give them a bonus for this idea.) Lord Blackburn was thankful that the trip was over, and grateful to those who’d kept him alive the whole way, so he treated the PCs to a trip to the Grand Opera Nationale that night. We had some light-hearted scenes in which the PCs borrowed fancy Dementlieuse clothing to wear to the opera, and I had them roll some sort of skill check to see if they could figure out how to don it appropriately. Johanne failed his check by the largest margin, and was subject to disapproving reactions from local rich people that evening.
Most of the PCs got some sleep in the afternoon prior to the opera, but Jens wanted to explore the city instead. He wandered down to the docks, where he saw that a group of merchant ships from a foreign land called Sri Raji were docked. The streets were lined with little stalls set up to sell the Sri Rajians’ wares. Jens bartered with one of the foreign merchants over some Sri Rajian animal masks (which he intended to wear to Jean Mont-Claude’s masquerade ball later that month), and learned a bit about Sri Raji. He also learned of some gruesome killings that happened on the Sri Rajian ships on the journey to Port-a-Lucine. The culprit was never found, and the Sri Rajian sailors blamed sea monsters or Mist horrors.
The real killer on the ships was one of my antagonists – a rakshasa, one of Arijani’s servants, disguised in illusion as Mirza Kahn, the noble in charge of the Sri Rajian merchant fleet. I’ve modified Arijani’s backstory and curse, such that he is subject to final death in Sri Raji and will not be able to reincarnate (as is the goal of all rakshasas) if he dies there. He sent Mirza Kahn on this mission to Port-a-Lucine to infiltrate the Arcane Studies department at the University of Dementlieu in order to try to find a magical fix to his reincarnation problem. The faculty at the University is known to have quite an extensive library of forbidden magical tomes, after all. The merchant fleet was just Mirza Kahn’s cover.
Jens accidentally bumped into Mirza Kahn on the street down by the docks. Being a tough guy, he tried to intimidate the foreigner… and quickly found himself cowering in a corner after the “foreign lord” looked him straight in the eye and started paging through his most intimate memories.
The party went to the opera after that. To plant the seed for possible future adventures in Dementlieu, I described a bunch of fine statues of Dementlieuse people lining the foyer of the opera house, including several that looked all too real and that wore terrified facial expressions (actually the work of a medusa, allegedly the work of a blind virtuoso sculptor named Decad). The PCs had cheap seats, but Luca’s faculty advisor, Professor Donatien, waved Luca and his friends up to the University faculty box, where there were a number of empty seats for the night.
Prior to the show, being a Valachani man of the woods/man of action, Jens thought he would hate the opera. He wound up loving it, however. The story that night was a collection of Grandfather Wolf legends/fables from Verbrek and Kartakass. Jens appreciated stories about hunting, wilderness, the great southwestern forests of the Core, etc.
Even more interesting than the show, however, were the other theatregoers that night. Professor Donatien was joined in the faculty box by Professor Estran Tellus, allegedly a (devastatingly handsome) visiting professor of arcane studies from the University of Il Aluk (there is no Necropolis in my game). Professor Tellus couldn’t see much of the stage, because of the large hairdos of a couple ladies seated in front of him, so he spent much of the first half of the opera looking around at the crowd through theatre binoculars into which he had installed magical lenses. (Pure coincidence – the binoculars were masterwork quality, made by Malvoni and containing Malvoni’s mark/stamp, although Estran Tellus replaced the lenses himself.) The magical lenses are weak gems of seeing, that impart minor x-ray vision to users of the binoculars. So Estran Tellus was having a grand time looking at everyone in the theatre in the buff.
To a limited degree the magical lenses also allow users to see through magical concealment/illusion/shapechanges. Because of this capability, Professor Tellus appeared shocked when he scanned the crowd and saw that another University faculty member, Professor-Trustee Jacques Marchand, had demonic features. He appeared frightened, and shared his binoculars with the PCs and Professor Donatien, so that they could verify that he saw some sort of monster disguised as Professor-Trustee Marchand on the other side of the theatre. The binoculars afforded each PC a unique view of Marchand – some saw him as having fangs, others saw claws or fur, others saw hands that bent strangely, others saw blood on his mouth, etc. [At this point the PCs thought “Marchand” was a demon or some sort or a vampire. I was glad that I was able to give them a clue about hands that bent backwards without having them immediately conclude that he was a rakshasa.]
Tellus: “Donatien, your research, ahhhh, uniquely suits you to determine what this thing is.”
Doantien: “You think an Orb of Augmentation?”
Tellus: “Yes, that’s what I was thinking.”
With that, Tellus left in a hurry, saying he was terrified and heading back to Darkon before this monster noticed that he had spotted it. He left his binoculars of seeing with the PCs and Donatien to aid in identifying the creature.
Donatien and the PCs also left the opera at that point, about half way through the show. They retreated to Donatien’s upscale townhouse (filled with all sorts of fun magical items and tomes) where Donatien persuaded them to help him determine what the creature appearing to be Professor-Trustee Marchand actually was. They all agreed that they could not go to the local authorities or to other University officials for help, because Marchand was a powerful man with many government and Univeristy officials in his pocket, and he’d likely hear about it if they tried to alert authorities. Instead, Donatien suggested that he could construct a magic item called an Orb of Augmentation to identify the creature. The Orb would consist of:
1. A metal shell, infused with drops of blood from any who might use it;
2. Fine silver hinges and locks to fasten the two metal halves of the shell together;
3. A lattice of owl bones constructed inside the shell;
4. Many enchantments;
5. The blessing of the wisest woman in the city where the Orb was to be used (Donatien explained that this would be the elderly and sickly Bastion Secousse, of the local sect of the Church of Ezra); and
6. A special silk bag to keep the Orb in, to keep its magic from dissipating when not in use.
Once constructed, the Orb would work by amplifying the senses of the person holding it in the presence of a creature cloaked in illusion, polymorphed, shapechanged, etc. The bearer would be able to see the creature’s true form, and when he did, if he was able to call out the proper name of the creature (either its given name or the name of its kind if a monster), he would gain a measure of power over it so that it could be defeated or subdued. [I never defined this “measure of power” for the PCs. It would have frozen the creature in place for a few rounds if they had succeeded in using the Orb as explained in this paragraph.]
[Please note, I significantly changed the powers of Orbs of Augmentation, which are described in Gaz I. This adventure was inspired by the canon version of the magic item, however.]
Donatien said that Professor-Trustee Marchand was scheduled to judge the big academic symposium/competition happening in three days’ time, so if they completed the Orb by then they’d be able to confront him in the University’s main auditorium, in front of lots of powerful witnesses. Luca was of course in agreement with his faculty advisor’s plan, but the other PCs needed a little bit of persuading in order to go along with it. Donatien mentioned that the University was always interested in purchasing supernatural specimens for research purposes, and to be used in spell components. A monster that could transform itself into a man would surely fetch a high price. This convinced them, and they resolved to set out to trap an owl in the woods west of the city the next morning.
Donatien and Luca collected drops of blood to incorporate into the Orb from all the PCs except Jens, who has a healthy fear of magic and did not want his blood inside any magical device. With that Luca, being an alchemist, set to work forging the shell of the Orb. Donatien pulled him aside at some point and said that Luca would have to present Donatien’s academic research at the conference/symposium in three days – Donatien would be far too busy between now and then preparing the enchantments that needed to be cast on the Orb, and he wouldn’t be able to adequately prepare for an oral presentation. Since Luca was just a recent graduate and not a seasoned academic, it would be ok if he didn’t do well at the conference/symposium. Luca didn’t like the thought of doing poorly because he lacked adequate time to prepare for the presentation, but he thought there was a chance he could do well anyway, so he accepted the challenge.
Conversation with Donatien that night closed with Helena asking what he knew about the Smiling Dead. Donatien showed her his research on Toben the Many; in it he (and Professor Estran Tellus, oddly enough) had deduced that Toben has a hive mind, that Toben is out to get Count Strahd, and that Strahd must have been involved with Toben’s creation long ago.
So the plan was set: In the morning the PCs would head out to the woods a few hours outside of town to catch an owl. On the way out of town they would visit local artisans to commission the silk bag and silver hinges/locks they needed for the Orb. Doantien would put the device together when all those things were obtained, and would cast the requisite enchantments over it. The last step would be to get Bastion Joan Secousse to bless the device. Then it could be used on Marchand at the academic conference/symposium in three days.
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
SESSION 3 (February 2013)
The PCs had no trouble obtaining the locks, hinges, and the bag they needed. They had to contract with artisans in the working part of town (wrong side of the tracks) to get these things done, and I had encounters with pickpockets and a couple of robbers ready to go if they went there alone, at night, etc. They played it smart, paid some gold to have these components made, and were on their way to complete the rest of their tasks.
On their way out of town, en route to their owl hunt, the PCs did see one thing of interest. They went by the docks, and saw the fleet of merchant ships from Sri Raji packing up and getting ready to sail away from Port-a-Lucine. This was interesting because they saw Mirza Kahn board a ship; he did not come back out, and then the ship sailed away. So the PCs (and everyone else down by the docks that day) thought Mirza Kahn had left with the rest of his foreign contingent. But actually, he did not. He boarded a ship, changed his appearance to look like a random dockworker, and got back off the ship. He did this so that everyone would think he was gone, and would not imagine that Sri Raji was pulling strings behind the scenes as he continued to steal magical fixes for Arijani's reincarnation problem from the University.
The PCs caught their owl, too, although I made them work for it by fighting a giant snake in the forest along the way. Johanne got to use his woodland ranger abilities in the owl hunt, which was the first time in the campaign he'd been able to do so, so that was good. The contents of the snake's belly were good cause for horror checks, as well.
They returned to the city and Professor Donatien's house, and Donatien set to work completing the Orb. They had a while off while he did his work, so they went to visit Lord Blackburn to see how the glacier ice sales were going. The sales were going very well, and we had fun roleplaying interactions with fancy rich Dementlieuse people who loved paying high prices for this trendy new product. Blackburn gave them all bonuses because of the good sales, and offered to hire them to bring his caravan back to Mordent (where he’s from) the day after the academic conference/symposium. This was definitely a positive scene, although ever since Blackburn’s men started dying on the Old Svalich Road, I’ve played him as being more and more despondent and depressed and less and less as a happy-go-lucky drunk. The PCs are starting to pity him, so I may have to use that pity as part of some future plot.
The only thing left for the group was to get Bastion Joan Secousse’s “blessing” to complete the Orb. Of course, what’s actually required is for her living brain to be inserted into the Orb… but Donatien didn’t tell the PCs about that, out of fear that they would not go along with his plan. I played Donatien as a professorial ivory tower academic. He thinks he’s being utilitarian about using the Orb and killing Secousse to do it – she’s a sick old woman, after all, and I’ve been saying that she’s been in and out of consciousness for the last few months. Donatien thinks that killing her would only be a small bad, but using her brain in order to uncover (and stop) a dangerous monster would be a tremendous good. Therefore he’s justified it in his mind. This adventure was about finding out whether the PCs agreed.
Donatien told the PCs that none of them would easily be able to get in to see the good Bastion, because she’s bedridden, constantly guarded, and no visitors from outside the clergy are allowed. But several years ago, Donatien helped to cast some protective magic on Ste. Mere des Larmes – he knows how to bypass the magical wards that would keep them out of the Bastion’s chambers. That would get them past the magical protections, but they would also need stealth to get by all the guards at the cathedral. Donatien told the PCs that he had two potions of invisibility that would do the trick. One potion for him, and one potion for a PC. (I let the PCs choose who wanted to go. They chose Johanne.)
Donatien told the PCs that the cathedral opened its doors to tourists and onlookers at 5:00 AM every fifth day, when the moonlight is said to shine through the Icon of Ezra and illuminate a map of the Core superimposed on the floor of the big main room of the cathedral. Church dogma holds that pinpoints of light shine on all the locations where sects of the Church of Ezra have been founded; the scholars of the church in Port-a-Lucine keep a close eye on this, to see if the moonlight will illuminate a fifth location, foretelling the location where the fifth sect of the Church will arise. Fifth locations are illuminated all the time, but the scholars in the church are looking for a pattern to see if they can determine which the correct fifth location will be.
So Donatien and Johanne decided to sneak into the cathedral while the tourists were there at 5:00 AM. They easily enough bypassed the guards, and a couple magical (and mechanical) traps on the winding staircase that led from the main room of the cathedral up to Bastion Secousse's chambers. Although I got the impression from Gaz III that the Bastion's quarters and other important parts of the cathedral should probably be located in catacombs under the cathedral, I decided to put Bastion Secousse's room up a couple stories above the main church space, in a turret. I did this so that a window from her room, overlooking the main cathedral floor, would be the same height as the Icon of Ezra. I described the Icon as really standing out to them when they entered her room (finding the old woman lying peacefully asleep/comatose on her bed). It looked like the Icon was staring straight at them. Being a lifelong member of the church, and feeling guilty about what he was about to do, Donatien couldn't help but say a little prayer to the Icon, encouraging Johanne to do the same. Johanne complied, and was distracted from the task at hand because the moonlight had just come through the Icon a minute or two before, illuminating five locations on the map below. He was busy trying to overhear the priests below, explaining the significance of the Icon and the map to the onlookers in the cathedral. To further distract him I said, of course, that the moonlight illuminated Sithicus on the map. So now Johanne thinks that what needs to happen for Soth to be overthrown is for a new branch of the Church of Ezra to be established in Sithicus.
Since Johanne was totally distracted and not paying attention to sleeping Bastion Secousse, I had Donatien quietly just tell him to stand lookout and speak up if any guard approached. And with that Donatien got to work. He coughed a bit as he chloroformed Bastion Secousse, which was the result of the Icon bestowing disease upon him. He had to reach around the Shield of Ezra that the Bastion spontaneously generated in order to do so. This alerted Johanne to what he was doing... and Johanne was horrified. (All the players at my table were too. This was the moment when they were all like "oh, I get it, THIS is Ravenloft.") He backed away in fear, and told the professor that he was going to go alert the guards. But Donatien reasoned with him, said that she was already dead (a lie -- just chloroformed so that she would not possibly wake up), explained the utilitarian reasoning behind his plan, and calmly reminded Johanne that he and his friends would be implicated in the crime as an accomplice if Donatien was turned in. Johanne didn't approve of it, and really wrestled with the moral decision, but eventually decided to stand aside and let Donatien carry out the plan. (Powers check!) Donatien extracted the Bastion's brain, put it in the Orb, and got rid of the Bastion's body with powerful acid. The effects of their invisibility potions had worn off by then, so Professor Donatien used some spell (feather fall I think it was) to allow the two of them to escape out a window.
Johanne told the other PCs about what had happened when he returned to Donatien's townhouse. They were horrified, but perhaps fearing that they would be implicated did not turn in Donatien and agreed to go along with the plan to use the Orb of Augmentation at the academic conference/symposium the following day.
The following morning, as they all prepared to confront the monster at the academic conference/symposium, Port-a-Lucine was abuzz with news about the apparent murder of Bastion Secousse. The PCs were all nervous that they'd be found out, but they were not (at least, not as part of this adventure). So, they went to the University for the conference. Luca did a presentation on Donatien's research, which went over well with the crowd and the judges. (I had him roll a bunch of skill checks to see if he could bluff the judges, win over the crowd, make appropriate knowledge checks, etc. If the party leaves Dementlieu in our next session too light on treasure, I was going to have him find out that he came in third place in the competition or something like that, which would come with a monetary prize.) While he presented, and during several other presentations, the rest of the group spread out in the University auditorium and kept their eyes out for Professor-Trustee Marchand. Marchand was supposed to be a judge of the academic competition going on that day, but was nowhere to be found.
In actuality, the rakshasa was at the academic competition, taking it all in. He had previously killed and eaten the real Marchand, and had been imitating him so he could access the University's magical resources. But the rakshasa knew that he would look like a fraud if he tried to judge an academic competition in the guise of Marchand, because he didn't really have any of the same academic knowledge as the real Marchand. So the rakshasa just imitated a random Dementlieuse person, and sat in the crowd watching the competition like all the other spectators.
Using the Orb of Augmentation, Donatien eventually spotted the rakshasa in the crowd. Donatien saw the rakshasa's true tiger-headed form, but didn't know what kind of creature it was (because rakshasas aren't well known), so he was unable to call out its true name. He started yelling that it was a werebeast, which prompted the rakshasa to realize that he'd been dicovered somehow. The rakshasa began an flee, fearing that an auditorium full of academics could probably kill him. He and Donatien had a magical duel that lasted for a few rounds as he fled (with a lightning bolt and fireball destroying much of the University's auditorium), and the PCs joined in an hit the rakshasa with a couple arrows. After a couple rounds the rakshasa turned invisible and fled, ending the fight, but Donatien managed to toss the Orb to Helena and Johanne before he did, so they saw his true form. Neither Helena's player nor Johanne's player seem to be familiar with rakshasas, so in a fun turn of events, the party still has not identified the creature.
The PCs had no trouble obtaining the locks, hinges, and the bag they needed. They had to contract with artisans in the working part of town (wrong side of the tracks) to get these things done, and I had encounters with pickpockets and a couple of robbers ready to go if they went there alone, at night, etc. They played it smart, paid some gold to have these components made, and were on their way to complete the rest of their tasks.
On their way out of town, en route to their owl hunt, the PCs did see one thing of interest. They went by the docks, and saw the fleet of merchant ships from Sri Raji packing up and getting ready to sail away from Port-a-Lucine. This was interesting because they saw Mirza Kahn board a ship; he did not come back out, and then the ship sailed away. So the PCs (and everyone else down by the docks that day) thought Mirza Kahn had left with the rest of his foreign contingent. But actually, he did not. He boarded a ship, changed his appearance to look like a random dockworker, and got back off the ship. He did this so that everyone would think he was gone, and would not imagine that Sri Raji was pulling strings behind the scenes as he continued to steal magical fixes for Arijani's reincarnation problem from the University.
The PCs caught their owl, too, although I made them work for it by fighting a giant snake in the forest along the way. Johanne got to use his woodland ranger abilities in the owl hunt, which was the first time in the campaign he'd been able to do so, so that was good. The contents of the snake's belly were good cause for horror checks, as well.
They returned to the city and Professor Donatien's house, and Donatien set to work completing the Orb. They had a while off while he did his work, so they went to visit Lord Blackburn to see how the glacier ice sales were going. The sales were going very well, and we had fun roleplaying interactions with fancy rich Dementlieuse people who loved paying high prices for this trendy new product. Blackburn gave them all bonuses because of the good sales, and offered to hire them to bring his caravan back to Mordent (where he’s from) the day after the academic conference/symposium. This was definitely a positive scene, although ever since Blackburn’s men started dying on the Old Svalich Road, I’ve played him as being more and more despondent and depressed and less and less as a happy-go-lucky drunk. The PCs are starting to pity him, so I may have to use that pity as part of some future plot.
The only thing left for the group was to get Bastion Joan Secousse’s “blessing” to complete the Orb. Of course, what’s actually required is for her living brain to be inserted into the Orb… but Donatien didn’t tell the PCs about that, out of fear that they would not go along with his plan. I played Donatien as a professorial ivory tower academic. He thinks he’s being utilitarian about using the Orb and killing Secousse to do it – she’s a sick old woman, after all, and I’ve been saying that she’s been in and out of consciousness for the last few months. Donatien thinks that killing her would only be a small bad, but using her brain in order to uncover (and stop) a dangerous monster would be a tremendous good. Therefore he’s justified it in his mind. This adventure was about finding out whether the PCs agreed.
Donatien told the PCs that none of them would easily be able to get in to see the good Bastion, because she’s bedridden, constantly guarded, and no visitors from outside the clergy are allowed. But several years ago, Donatien helped to cast some protective magic on Ste. Mere des Larmes – he knows how to bypass the magical wards that would keep them out of the Bastion’s chambers. That would get them past the magical protections, but they would also need stealth to get by all the guards at the cathedral. Donatien told the PCs that he had two potions of invisibility that would do the trick. One potion for him, and one potion for a PC. (I let the PCs choose who wanted to go. They chose Johanne.)
Donatien told the PCs that the cathedral opened its doors to tourists and onlookers at 5:00 AM every fifth day, when the moonlight is said to shine through the Icon of Ezra and illuminate a map of the Core superimposed on the floor of the big main room of the cathedral. Church dogma holds that pinpoints of light shine on all the locations where sects of the Church of Ezra have been founded; the scholars of the church in Port-a-Lucine keep a close eye on this, to see if the moonlight will illuminate a fifth location, foretelling the location where the fifth sect of the Church will arise. Fifth locations are illuminated all the time, but the scholars in the church are looking for a pattern to see if they can determine which the correct fifth location will be.
So Donatien and Johanne decided to sneak into the cathedral while the tourists were there at 5:00 AM. They easily enough bypassed the guards, and a couple magical (and mechanical) traps on the winding staircase that led from the main room of the cathedral up to Bastion Secousse's chambers. Although I got the impression from Gaz III that the Bastion's quarters and other important parts of the cathedral should probably be located in catacombs under the cathedral, I decided to put Bastion Secousse's room up a couple stories above the main church space, in a turret. I did this so that a window from her room, overlooking the main cathedral floor, would be the same height as the Icon of Ezra. I described the Icon as really standing out to them when they entered her room (finding the old woman lying peacefully asleep/comatose on her bed). It looked like the Icon was staring straight at them. Being a lifelong member of the church, and feeling guilty about what he was about to do, Donatien couldn't help but say a little prayer to the Icon, encouraging Johanne to do the same. Johanne complied, and was distracted from the task at hand because the moonlight had just come through the Icon a minute or two before, illuminating five locations on the map below. He was busy trying to overhear the priests below, explaining the significance of the Icon and the map to the onlookers in the cathedral. To further distract him I said, of course, that the moonlight illuminated Sithicus on the map. So now Johanne thinks that what needs to happen for Soth to be overthrown is for a new branch of the Church of Ezra to be established in Sithicus.
Since Johanne was totally distracted and not paying attention to sleeping Bastion Secousse, I had Donatien quietly just tell him to stand lookout and speak up if any guard approached. And with that Donatien got to work. He coughed a bit as he chloroformed Bastion Secousse, which was the result of the Icon bestowing disease upon him. He had to reach around the Shield of Ezra that the Bastion spontaneously generated in order to do so. This alerted Johanne to what he was doing... and Johanne was horrified. (All the players at my table were too. This was the moment when they were all like "oh, I get it, THIS is Ravenloft.") He backed away in fear, and told the professor that he was going to go alert the guards. But Donatien reasoned with him, said that she was already dead (a lie -- just chloroformed so that she would not possibly wake up), explained the utilitarian reasoning behind his plan, and calmly reminded Johanne that he and his friends would be implicated in the crime as an accomplice if Donatien was turned in. Johanne didn't approve of it, and really wrestled with the moral decision, but eventually decided to stand aside and let Donatien carry out the plan. (Powers check!) Donatien extracted the Bastion's brain, put it in the Orb, and got rid of the Bastion's body with powerful acid. The effects of their invisibility potions had worn off by then, so Professor Donatien used some spell (feather fall I think it was) to allow the two of them to escape out a window.
Johanne told the other PCs about what had happened when he returned to Donatien's townhouse. They were horrified, but perhaps fearing that they would be implicated did not turn in Donatien and agreed to go along with the plan to use the Orb of Augmentation at the academic conference/symposium the following day.
The following morning, as they all prepared to confront the monster at the academic conference/symposium, Port-a-Lucine was abuzz with news about the apparent murder of Bastion Secousse. The PCs were all nervous that they'd be found out, but they were not (at least, not as part of this adventure). So, they went to the University for the conference. Luca did a presentation on Donatien's research, which went over well with the crowd and the judges. (I had him roll a bunch of skill checks to see if he could bluff the judges, win over the crowd, make appropriate knowledge checks, etc. If the party leaves Dementlieu in our next session too light on treasure, I was going to have him find out that he came in third place in the competition or something like that, which would come with a monetary prize.) While he presented, and during several other presentations, the rest of the group spread out in the University auditorium and kept their eyes out for Professor-Trustee Marchand. Marchand was supposed to be a judge of the academic competition going on that day, but was nowhere to be found.
In actuality, the rakshasa was at the academic competition, taking it all in. He had previously killed and eaten the real Marchand, and had been imitating him so he could access the University's magical resources. But the rakshasa knew that he would look like a fraud if he tried to judge an academic competition in the guise of Marchand, because he didn't really have any of the same academic knowledge as the real Marchand. So the rakshasa just imitated a random Dementlieuse person, and sat in the crowd watching the competition like all the other spectators.
Using the Orb of Augmentation, Donatien eventually spotted the rakshasa in the crowd. Donatien saw the rakshasa's true tiger-headed form, but didn't know what kind of creature it was (because rakshasas aren't well known), so he was unable to call out its true name. He started yelling that it was a werebeast, which prompted the rakshasa to realize that he'd been dicovered somehow. The rakshasa began an flee, fearing that an auditorium full of academics could probably kill him. He and Donatien had a magical duel that lasted for a few rounds as he fled (with a lightning bolt and fireball destroying much of the University's auditorium), and the PCs joined in an hit the rakshasa with a couple arrows. After a couple rounds the rakshasa turned invisible and fled, ending the fight, but Donatien managed to toss the Orb to Helena and Johanne before he did, so they saw his true form. Neither Helena's player nor Johanne's player seem to be familiar with rakshasas, so in a fun turn of events, the party still has not identified the creature.
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
In the next session of the game (scheduled for next weekend) the PCs will hopefully discover what the rakshasa was really up to in Port-a-Lucine. They haven't visited Professor-Trustee Marchand's quarters or his University office yet, either of which (whichever they visit first) is where the reveal will take place. A week ago or so the rakshasa found directions in the restricted section of the University's library for creation of a magical item called a Shroud of Reincarnation, which he is working to construct. The PCs will find the partially-completed magical item if they visit either location. From there, it will be on to our next adventure (masquerade ball, I think).
Here are parts of an email I sent the players setting up our next session:
Cut scene. Several days or weeks later. The camera pans out from the city of Port-a-Lucine, Dementlieu, moving higher and higher until the whole continent is visible, surrounded by Mists. It's late evening, and the lights of the cities of this world shine brightly and catch your attention. For some reason, on this particular evening the lights of Port d'Elhour, Souragne, a colony of Dementlieu in the southwestern corner of the continent, shine the brightest. The camera pans in to investigate.
Port d'Elhour is abuzz with activity, filled with music and merriment. The great city stands in sharp contrast to the dismal swamps and the churning sea that surround it. The man they had briefly met several days before, Professor Estran Tellus of the University of Il Aluk, Darkon, sits at an outdoor cafe, listening to the waves and scanning a newspaper. Two beautiful women sit across the table, smiling at the Professor and gazing into his eyes silently. He pays them no heed, and focuses in on his paper.
"So, the Bastion is dead," he thinks silently to himself, reading about it in a large article on the front page. "Discord in the Church has begun already. All is going according to plan."
He smiles to himself while folding the paper over to look at the next page. But a small leaflet tucked into the paper falls out as he does so, causing the Professor to frown. The leaflet is bright and colorful, an advertisement for something called The Carnival, coming to Souragne soon.
"Come my doves," he says to the women sitting across from him. "We best be off."
*****
Here are some things that happen in the immediate aftermath of the academic conference:
Folks who work at the University managed to put the fire in the auditorium out a few minutes after it started. Luckily one of the Arcane Studies professors in attendance had a Decanter of Endless Water in his office which did the trick. [This was a result of a fireball the rakshasa threw in his magical duel with Professor Donatien.]
The monster's fireball killed three people (all students at the university) and wounded about ten others. A few were also injured in the stampede to the exits that happened when the fight broke out. They were carted off to area hospitals/healers.
Professor Donatien wasn't feeling well after getting fireballed, so he retired to his office at the University in a nearby building. He was coughing like crazy as he walked out, looked very pale, and it appeared to you all that he had developed some medical problem (aside from briefly being on fire).
The President of the University accompanied Donatien back to his office, yelling at him the entire way, telling him to explain what the heck just happened and why three of his students were dead and who he was dueling with in the auditorium. Nobody seems concerned with the arrows the PCs shot at the monster; the lightning bolt and fireball seem to have captured everyone's attention. Surely there will be an investigation by the gendarmes... and hopefully Donatien won't implicate any of the PCs. So far he seems to be telling the President just that he used magic binoculars to spot the monster; he does not mention anything about the Orb of Augmentation or about the PCs' involvement. He says that his magic binoculars must have been knocked out of his hands in the stampede, and one of the students in attendance must have run off with them.
I forget which PCs used the Orb of Augmentation to look at the monster. Anyone who did, please roll 1d100 and email me the result. It's just a harmless little roll. [Powers checks. No PC has failed one yet, although the players sure do get nervous when I ask then to roll 1d100 without any explanation.]
The monster evidently skipped town after he turned invisible. People outside saw an invisible force steal a horse tied up outside the auditorium. It galloped out of the city, away to the south.
The PCs should feel a good sense of success in driving this monster out of town. Clearly he was up to no good in Port-a-Lucine. But was it worth the price, and what will become of the monster now?
Here are parts of an email I sent the players setting up our next session:
Cut scene. Several days or weeks later. The camera pans out from the city of Port-a-Lucine, Dementlieu, moving higher and higher until the whole continent is visible, surrounded by Mists. It's late evening, and the lights of the cities of this world shine brightly and catch your attention. For some reason, on this particular evening the lights of Port d'Elhour, Souragne, a colony of Dementlieu in the southwestern corner of the continent, shine the brightest. The camera pans in to investigate.
Port d'Elhour is abuzz with activity, filled with music and merriment. The great city stands in sharp contrast to the dismal swamps and the churning sea that surround it. The man they had briefly met several days before, Professor Estran Tellus of the University of Il Aluk, Darkon, sits at an outdoor cafe, listening to the waves and scanning a newspaper. Two beautiful women sit across the table, smiling at the Professor and gazing into his eyes silently. He pays them no heed, and focuses in on his paper.
"So, the Bastion is dead," he thinks silently to himself, reading about it in a large article on the front page. "Discord in the Church has begun already. All is going according to plan."
He smiles to himself while folding the paper over to look at the next page. But a small leaflet tucked into the paper falls out as he does so, causing the Professor to frown. The leaflet is bright and colorful, an advertisement for something called The Carnival, coming to Souragne soon.
"Come my doves," he says to the women sitting across from him. "We best be off."
*****
Here are some things that happen in the immediate aftermath of the academic conference:
Folks who work at the University managed to put the fire in the auditorium out a few minutes after it started. Luckily one of the Arcane Studies professors in attendance had a Decanter of Endless Water in his office which did the trick. [This was a result of a fireball the rakshasa threw in his magical duel with Professor Donatien.]
The monster's fireball killed three people (all students at the university) and wounded about ten others. A few were also injured in the stampede to the exits that happened when the fight broke out. They were carted off to area hospitals/healers.
Professor Donatien wasn't feeling well after getting fireballed, so he retired to his office at the University in a nearby building. He was coughing like crazy as he walked out, looked very pale, and it appeared to you all that he had developed some medical problem (aside from briefly being on fire).
The President of the University accompanied Donatien back to his office, yelling at him the entire way, telling him to explain what the heck just happened and why three of his students were dead and who he was dueling with in the auditorium. Nobody seems concerned with the arrows the PCs shot at the monster; the lightning bolt and fireball seem to have captured everyone's attention. Surely there will be an investigation by the gendarmes... and hopefully Donatien won't implicate any of the PCs. So far he seems to be telling the President just that he used magic binoculars to spot the monster; he does not mention anything about the Orb of Augmentation or about the PCs' involvement. He says that his magic binoculars must have been knocked out of his hands in the stampede, and one of the students in attendance must have run off with them.
I forget which PCs used the Orb of Augmentation to look at the monster. Anyone who did, please roll 1d100 and email me the result. It's just a harmless little roll. [Powers checks. No PC has failed one yet, although the players sure do get nervous when I ask then to roll 1d100 without any explanation.]
The monster evidently skipped town after he turned invisible. People outside saw an invisible force steal a horse tied up outside the auditorium. It galloped out of the city, away to the south.
The PCs should feel a good sense of success in driving this monster out of town. Clearly he was up to no good in Port-a-Lucine. But was it worth the price, and what will become of the monster now?
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
SESSION 4 (March 2013) -- The Miser From Chateaufaux
A new player joined the group permanently during this session. He's playing a ranger named Powell, from Invidia (specifically from a farm near Karina). The player doesn't really have any Ravenloft background, and didn't have any preferences on hometown other than "somewhere in the woodlands where there are rangers," so I just assigned him Invidia knowing that I wanted to bring the PCs there soon to run The Evil Eye. Anyway, the player is completely new to D&D/Pathfinder and had sat in on a couple of our previous sessions to try to learn the rules by playing redshirt NPCs during combats. Because he sat in on a couple previous sessions, he had heard about Toben the Many, and his character concept is that his character's wife has become a Toben zombie. He's got her chained up in the basement back at home in Invidia, and has traveled to the big city of Port-a-Lucine to try to find learned people who can help cure her (and who won't simply destroy her for being an abomination). I am pretty excited to add Toben the Many to The Evil Eye! Anyway, we worked Powell into the story by saying that he was a cousin of one of the artisans that constructed components of the Orb of Augmentation for the PCs in our last adventure; he joined up with the PCs then.
To begin this session, Professor Donatien died of the disease bestowed upon him by the Icon of Ezra. The PCs searched Donatien's townhouse for additional clues, and found some demonic book that contained Donatien's directions for creating Orbs of Augmentation. Some notes in the book explained that Donatien acquired it years before when he and Professor Estran Tellus (i.e., the Gentleman Caller) were doing some sort of archaeology together. So, this was a glimpse of the Gentleman Caller's ability to pull off diabolical intricate long-range plans.
The PCs also searched Professor-Trustee Jacques Marchand's house (which I said was a suite of rooms at the University) for clues. There they found the mostly-eaten remains of the Professor-Trustee and his wife (which were cloaked in the rakshasa's illusions -- I used this opportunity to teach the PCs the rules for disbelieving illusions). They also found the partially-completed magical item the rakshasa had been constructing, something I called a Shroud of Reincarnation. I had Helena, who is an Oracle, have a vision at this point explaining the backstory of why the monster impersonating Marchand had been trying to build this item, going into the monster's association with a powerful evil figure in Sri Raji. So now the PCs know without a doubt that the rakshasa is an evil monster, and that by driving it out of Port-a-Lucine they did accomplish some good. The PCs destroyed the partially-constructed Shroud of Reincarnation so that the monster could not return to claim it, and then alerted University officials to what they had discovered so that Marchand's next-of-kin could be contacted.
With that, the PCs left Port-a-Lucine. They were anxious to leave before they were implicated in the murder of Bastion Secousse. I played up the fact that her murder had set off a dangerous power struggle in the Church of Ezra, dividing the local sect of the church into two factions each supporting a different candidate to take the title of Bastion. I plan to bring this up from time to time in the future of the campaign to keep the PCs worried about the consequences of their actions in going along with Professor Donatien's/the Gentleman Caller's Orb of Augmentation plan.
The PCs accompanied Lord Blackburn out of town. He was heading home to Mordent, and they were headed to Jean Mont-Claude's masquerade ball in Chateaufaux, which is on the way to Mordent. They met up with Blackburn at a stables on the outskirts of the city, where coaches to/from Chateaufaux arrive/depart. The purpose of this scene was for the PCs to have their first casual encounter with the man (golem, really) who is to become a mysterious antagonist in the game -- Vir Stannum (copyright Gonzoron). A coach arrived from Chateaufaux just as the PCs got to the stables, and Vir was the first passenger out of it. He had just stolen a bunch of gems from the tomb of the Miser of Chateaufaux before heading to Port-a-Lucine, and was now in Port-a-Lucine for some unrelated business. As soon as his coach arrived he was the first passenger to jump out, and immediately started rudely/loudly demanding a horse to carry him the rest of the way into the city, in keeping with his living-on-borrowed-time, everything-is-rushed mentality. He gave Luca an odd look (because Vir had been keeping tabs on Malvoni from afar for years, and had heard that he once had an apprentice fitting Luca's description), but then sped off into the city.
(So what does everyone think? Could an enormous clockwork golem ride a horse, or would he be too heavy? Assuming Vir's superstructure is made of metal, and assuming his is filled with metal gears and levers, I feel like he would probably be too heavy and would crush a horse. But I ruled that he could do it, because it made for a good scene, and because maybe the Dark Powers enable him to do stuff like that so he can blend in with humanity at least a little bit. Since fully-armored knights can ride warhorses, I thought there was at least a chance Vir could do so too. I made sure to note that the horse he requested was the biggest Clydesdale-like draft horse the PCs had ever seen.)
For those interested, I am using pictures of World's Strongest Man Zydrunas Savickas as my Vir Stannum. He is easily Googleable. I have just been using pictures of him from about the chest up -- I think he is a little too big below that for my taste, as I don't want my Vir to look like he has a big belly. But from the chest up, I think Savickas is bulky enough to be a scary-strong golem who can still pass for a normal human if you don't examine him carefully up close for too long. I am having to Photoshop the pictures I find to make it look like Vir isn't dressed in t-shirts with bodybuilding logos on them.
Johanne rescued a little clockwork garden gnome from above the door to Malvoni's shop after the shop blew up in the first session of this campaign. The gnome used to function as Malvoni's doorbell, and played a different tune on little jinglebells in its hands every time someone opened or closed the door to the shop. Johanne kept it as a memento... but it is going to prove useful later in the campaign. When the PCs encountered Vir in this scene, the little gnome started shaking its jinglebells in Johanne's backpack. A little warning from Malvoni's ghost beyond the grave! Johanne didn't understand why the jinglebells were ringing (nor did any of the players)... but hopefully they will catch on when the same thing happens the next time they encounter Vir.
From there the PCs made the two-day journey on horseback from Port-a-Lucine to Chateaufaux. (Yes, my Core is significantly larger than canon versions of the Core.) When they arrived they had a few days to kill before Jean Mont-Claude's masquerade ball, so I ran Gonzoron's excellent Mordentshire Miser adventure for them -- The Miser of Chateaufaux. I encourage interested readers to look at Ron's campaign journals for additional details about the adventure. I didn't change too many major things about the adventure, other than to replace Mordentish NPC names with Dementlieuse NPC names and to create my own map of Chateaufaux rather than using a map of Mordentshire. My Miser was an ancient dead by the name of Cyrus Beausoleil. When the PCs arrived in town he had already committed murders and attempted jewel thefts on the four previous nights, all in rich parts of the city around the Boulevard Jardine. The PCs investigated the scenes of each break-in, and also visited Dr. Vilhelm Mikki's sanitarium on the outskirts of the city where one now-raving-mad survivor of an attack by the Miser was being treated. The clues they got showed them that the Miser was vulnerable to fire, was after rubies, and pointed them in the direction of its lair... but the PCs decided to try to confront the monster by catching it red-handed the next night as it tried to commit its next burglary/murder.
The PCs asked around to try to figure out where the other wealthy people in town lived, and correctly deduced that that Miser was most likely to attack Clerque & Verbois (makers of fine coaches, mentioned in GazIII) next. They set an ambush for the Miser there, and we had great fun playing out a big battle in the finest coach garage/storefront in the Core. The CR for my Miser was pretty high (the PCs were only level 2 at this point), so I compensated for that by giving my PCs combat access to all kinds of useful coach manufacturing equipment and tools to help fight the Miser. Combat in memorable locations is always fun, and I highly recommend Clerque & Verbois for this purpose. For example, one of my PCs, Jens, delivered the coupe de grace to the Miser by running him over in a flaming coach that belonged to the d'Honaire family and had been in the shop for repairs. Whether there will be any in-game consequences for wrecking the d'Honaire coach is yet to be determined.
I had planned to start the battle in Clerque & Verbois, but have the Miser flee to its lair when it was nearly defeated so that the PCs could finish him off there. The PCs did a good job of finishing him off at the carriage garage, however, so I let them end the battle there.
I thought my PCs would be smart enough to figure out that after defeating the Miser they would have to lay him to rest with some rubies to prevent him from rising again. But alas, they did not. I created an NPC priestess of Ezra, Josette Beausoleil (granddaughter of my Miser), who sort of kept an eye on them throughout the adventure and jumped in at the end to lay the monster to rest with some rubies to prevent it from rising again when the PCs were not wise enough to do this on their own. (I feel like I have enough major NPCs in this campaign already, so I didn't want to use Van Richten for this purpose like Gonzoron did in his version of the adventure.) The PCs got to see the Miser's tomb when Priestess Josette laid the Miser to rest... and got to see the damage that Vir Stannum did to it when he broke in to rob the Miser five days earlier. Of course, at this point they do not know that he was the jewel thief. During this adventure a local from Chateaufaux mentioned that he had seen a big man fitting Vir's description, who spoke in a Borcan accent like Vir and Luca, in town a few days previous, but the PCs have not tied him to Miser's jewels yet.
Johanne got pretty badly hurt in the fight with the Miser, and the morning afterwards woke up weakened, his wounds necrotic. He doesn't know that it's mummy rot, and that he'll have to find a cure soon or else. At the beginning of our next session we addressed this issue as the PCs prepared for Jean Mont-Claude's annual masquerade ball.
A new player joined the group permanently during this session. He's playing a ranger named Powell, from Invidia (specifically from a farm near Karina). The player doesn't really have any Ravenloft background, and didn't have any preferences on hometown other than "somewhere in the woodlands where there are rangers," so I just assigned him Invidia knowing that I wanted to bring the PCs there soon to run The Evil Eye. Anyway, the player is completely new to D&D/Pathfinder and had sat in on a couple of our previous sessions to try to learn the rules by playing redshirt NPCs during combats. Because he sat in on a couple previous sessions, he had heard about Toben the Many, and his character concept is that his character's wife has become a Toben zombie. He's got her chained up in the basement back at home in Invidia, and has traveled to the big city of Port-a-Lucine to try to find learned people who can help cure her (and who won't simply destroy her for being an abomination). I am pretty excited to add Toben the Many to The Evil Eye! Anyway, we worked Powell into the story by saying that he was a cousin of one of the artisans that constructed components of the Orb of Augmentation for the PCs in our last adventure; he joined up with the PCs then.
To begin this session, Professor Donatien died of the disease bestowed upon him by the Icon of Ezra. The PCs searched Donatien's townhouse for additional clues, and found some demonic book that contained Donatien's directions for creating Orbs of Augmentation. Some notes in the book explained that Donatien acquired it years before when he and Professor Estran Tellus (i.e., the Gentleman Caller) were doing some sort of archaeology together. So, this was a glimpse of the Gentleman Caller's ability to pull off diabolical intricate long-range plans.
The PCs also searched Professor-Trustee Jacques Marchand's house (which I said was a suite of rooms at the University) for clues. There they found the mostly-eaten remains of the Professor-Trustee and his wife (which were cloaked in the rakshasa's illusions -- I used this opportunity to teach the PCs the rules for disbelieving illusions). They also found the partially-completed magical item the rakshasa had been constructing, something I called a Shroud of Reincarnation. I had Helena, who is an Oracle, have a vision at this point explaining the backstory of why the monster impersonating Marchand had been trying to build this item, going into the monster's association with a powerful evil figure in Sri Raji. So now the PCs know without a doubt that the rakshasa is an evil monster, and that by driving it out of Port-a-Lucine they did accomplish some good. The PCs destroyed the partially-constructed Shroud of Reincarnation so that the monster could not return to claim it, and then alerted University officials to what they had discovered so that Marchand's next-of-kin could be contacted.
With that, the PCs left Port-a-Lucine. They were anxious to leave before they were implicated in the murder of Bastion Secousse. I played up the fact that her murder had set off a dangerous power struggle in the Church of Ezra, dividing the local sect of the church into two factions each supporting a different candidate to take the title of Bastion. I plan to bring this up from time to time in the future of the campaign to keep the PCs worried about the consequences of their actions in going along with Professor Donatien's/the Gentleman Caller's Orb of Augmentation plan.
The PCs accompanied Lord Blackburn out of town. He was heading home to Mordent, and they were headed to Jean Mont-Claude's masquerade ball in Chateaufaux, which is on the way to Mordent. They met up with Blackburn at a stables on the outskirts of the city, where coaches to/from Chateaufaux arrive/depart. The purpose of this scene was for the PCs to have their first casual encounter with the man (golem, really) who is to become a mysterious antagonist in the game -- Vir Stannum (copyright Gonzoron). A coach arrived from Chateaufaux just as the PCs got to the stables, and Vir was the first passenger out of it. He had just stolen a bunch of gems from the tomb of the Miser of Chateaufaux before heading to Port-a-Lucine, and was now in Port-a-Lucine for some unrelated business. As soon as his coach arrived he was the first passenger to jump out, and immediately started rudely/loudly demanding a horse to carry him the rest of the way into the city, in keeping with his living-on-borrowed-time, everything-is-rushed mentality. He gave Luca an odd look (because Vir had been keeping tabs on Malvoni from afar for years, and had heard that he once had an apprentice fitting Luca's description), but then sped off into the city.
(So what does everyone think? Could an enormous clockwork golem ride a horse, or would he be too heavy? Assuming Vir's superstructure is made of metal, and assuming his is filled with metal gears and levers, I feel like he would probably be too heavy and would crush a horse. But I ruled that he could do it, because it made for a good scene, and because maybe the Dark Powers enable him to do stuff like that so he can blend in with humanity at least a little bit. Since fully-armored knights can ride warhorses, I thought there was at least a chance Vir could do so too. I made sure to note that the horse he requested was the biggest Clydesdale-like draft horse the PCs had ever seen.)
For those interested, I am using pictures of World's Strongest Man Zydrunas Savickas as my Vir Stannum. He is easily Googleable. I have just been using pictures of him from about the chest up -- I think he is a little too big below that for my taste, as I don't want my Vir to look like he has a big belly. But from the chest up, I think Savickas is bulky enough to be a scary-strong golem who can still pass for a normal human if you don't examine him carefully up close for too long. I am having to Photoshop the pictures I find to make it look like Vir isn't dressed in t-shirts with bodybuilding logos on them.
Johanne rescued a little clockwork garden gnome from above the door to Malvoni's shop after the shop blew up in the first session of this campaign. The gnome used to function as Malvoni's doorbell, and played a different tune on little jinglebells in its hands every time someone opened or closed the door to the shop. Johanne kept it as a memento... but it is going to prove useful later in the campaign. When the PCs encountered Vir in this scene, the little gnome started shaking its jinglebells in Johanne's backpack. A little warning from Malvoni's ghost beyond the grave! Johanne didn't understand why the jinglebells were ringing (nor did any of the players)... but hopefully they will catch on when the same thing happens the next time they encounter Vir.
From there the PCs made the two-day journey on horseback from Port-a-Lucine to Chateaufaux. (Yes, my Core is significantly larger than canon versions of the Core.) When they arrived they had a few days to kill before Jean Mont-Claude's masquerade ball, so I ran Gonzoron's excellent Mordentshire Miser adventure for them -- The Miser of Chateaufaux. I encourage interested readers to look at Ron's campaign journals for additional details about the adventure. I didn't change too many major things about the adventure, other than to replace Mordentish NPC names with Dementlieuse NPC names and to create my own map of Chateaufaux rather than using a map of Mordentshire. My Miser was an ancient dead by the name of Cyrus Beausoleil. When the PCs arrived in town he had already committed murders and attempted jewel thefts on the four previous nights, all in rich parts of the city around the Boulevard Jardine. The PCs investigated the scenes of each break-in, and also visited Dr. Vilhelm Mikki's sanitarium on the outskirts of the city where one now-raving-mad survivor of an attack by the Miser was being treated. The clues they got showed them that the Miser was vulnerable to fire, was after rubies, and pointed them in the direction of its lair... but the PCs decided to try to confront the monster by catching it red-handed the next night as it tried to commit its next burglary/murder.
The PCs asked around to try to figure out where the other wealthy people in town lived, and correctly deduced that that Miser was most likely to attack Clerque & Verbois (makers of fine coaches, mentioned in GazIII) next. They set an ambush for the Miser there, and we had great fun playing out a big battle in the finest coach garage/storefront in the Core. The CR for my Miser was pretty high (the PCs were only level 2 at this point), so I compensated for that by giving my PCs combat access to all kinds of useful coach manufacturing equipment and tools to help fight the Miser. Combat in memorable locations is always fun, and I highly recommend Clerque & Verbois for this purpose. For example, one of my PCs, Jens, delivered the coupe de grace to the Miser by running him over in a flaming coach that belonged to the d'Honaire family and had been in the shop for repairs. Whether there will be any in-game consequences for wrecking the d'Honaire coach is yet to be determined.
I had planned to start the battle in Clerque & Verbois, but have the Miser flee to its lair when it was nearly defeated so that the PCs could finish him off there. The PCs did a good job of finishing him off at the carriage garage, however, so I let them end the battle there.
I thought my PCs would be smart enough to figure out that after defeating the Miser they would have to lay him to rest with some rubies to prevent him from rising again. But alas, they did not. I created an NPC priestess of Ezra, Josette Beausoleil (granddaughter of my Miser), who sort of kept an eye on them throughout the adventure and jumped in at the end to lay the monster to rest with some rubies to prevent it from rising again when the PCs were not wise enough to do this on their own. (I feel like I have enough major NPCs in this campaign already, so I didn't want to use Van Richten for this purpose like Gonzoron did in his version of the adventure.) The PCs got to see the Miser's tomb when Priestess Josette laid the Miser to rest... and got to see the damage that Vir Stannum did to it when he broke in to rob the Miser five days earlier. Of course, at this point they do not know that he was the jewel thief. During this adventure a local from Chateaufaux mentioned that he had seen a big man fitting Vir's description, who spoke in a Borcan accent like Vir and Luca, in town a few days previous, but the PCs have not tied him to Miser's jewels yet.
Johanne got pretty badly hurt in the fight with the Miser, and the morning afterwards woke up weakened, his wounds necrotic. He doesn't know that it's mummy rot, and that he'll have to find a cure soon or else. At the beginning of our next session we addressed this issue as the PCs prepared for Jean Mont-Claude's annual masquerade ball.
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Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
Now that is a kick-ass character background. love it!Cam wrote:S his character concept is that his character's wife has become a Toben zombie. He's got her chained up in the basement back at home in Invidia, and has traveled to the big city of Port-a-Lucine to try to find learned people who can help cure her
Good question! I have to admit, my gut instinct was no. But you make a good point about armored knights. I would have to say that yes, a heavy warhorse could carry him, but nothing less. (Let's face it, if you start wondering too much about the mechanics of a clockwork golem man built with renaissance technology that is realistic enough to pass for human better than the most advanced robots we have today, everything begins to unravel.(So what does everyone think? Could an enormous clockwork golem ride a horse, or would he be too heavy? Assuming Vir's superstructure is made of metal, and assuming his is filled with metal gears and levers, I feel like he would probably be too heavy and would crush a horse. But I ruled that he could do it, because it made for a good scene, and because maybe the Dark Powers enable him to do stuff like that so he can blend in with humanity at least a little bit. Since fully-armored knights can ride warhorses, I thought there was at least a chance Vir could do so too. I made sure to note that the horse he requested was the biggest Clydesdale-like draft horse the PCs had ever seen.)
)Ha! yes! that's exactly the sort of blocky look I'd imagined for him and completely failed to capture in my drawing. Well done!For those interested, I am using pictures of World's Strongest Man Zydrunas Savickas as my Vir Stannum.
(Thanks again for the compliments on my journal and the Miser adventure. I'm very glad you found it useful!)
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
SESSION 5 (April 2013) – Masquerade (subtitle: It’s a trap!)
[So, Johanne’s player tells me that I have been spelling his character’s name incorrectly. It’s supposed to be “Johan,” and will be from here on.]
Johan woke up the next day feeling terrible due to the mummy rot he contracted in the fight with the Miser. He also contracted some bad burns in the battle (not surprisingly, my PCs started several enormous fires in downtown Chateaufaux as they tried to kill the creature), so he was in rough shape. He was alarmed by the necrotic nature of the wounds on his chest, and had no idea what caused them to be necrotic. [None of my players suspected mummy rot, and they were all very worried for Johan when he lost 4 CON overnight. I hinted that the necrotic flesh on his chest slowly spread over the course of the day, and everyone got the message – he needed a cure fast, or he’d die soon.]
Before the other PCs awoke, Johan went downstairs to the common room of the inn where they were staying. Over breakfast he encountered a twenty-something Vistani woman named Patia Radanovich who had happened upon the fight with the Miser the night before and cheered the PCs on as they battled the undead creature. (She was burglarizing a shop next to Clerque & Verbois when the fight with the Miser broke out.) She saw that Johan was in pain, and somehow knew (mystically) that his wounds had a supernatural origin tied to the undead powers of the Miser. She offered to bring Johan to Souragne, where the Vistani know the Voodans live. She explained that the Voodans have a lot of familiarity with undead curses; they are able to bestow such curses or remedy them. Her price for bringing him to get a cure from the Voodans was that Johan and his brave friends accompany her small caravan to Invidia afterwards, to perform a yet-to-be-named service. Fearing that he would die otherwise, and being flattered by the pretty Vistana’s words about how brave they were in the fight the night before, Johan agreed. Then he went to wake the rest of the party to try to convince them.
Johan woke them and showed them his necrotic wounds. The other PCs don’t know what caused his wounds, and agreed to go with the Vistani the next day to save their friend. (Jens dissented, being a Valachani suspicious of all things magical, including the Vistani and Mist travel, but he did not dissent too forcefully because he was also flattered when the pretty Vistana had cheered him on during battle the night before.) Johan sort of deceived the rest of the group, however – he told them that the Radanovich caravan would bring them to Invidia where he would get healed. He did not mention anything about Souragne, voodoo, or a yet-to-be-named price to be paid to the Vistani in Invidia.
The PCs were in Chateaufaux for Jean Mont-Claude’s annual masquerade ball, and conveniently enough it was scheduled to happen that evening. Perfect timing – they could go to the ball and find out what Mont-Claude knew about Gustav Malvoni, Gondegal, and the Falkovnians before meeting up with the Vistani to travel to “Invidia” the next day. So the party rented formal attire for the ball, and set out for Mont-Claude’s estate on the coast a few hours’ horseback ride from Chateaufaux proper.
On the way out of Chateaufaux, Jens caught a glimpse of the rakshasa the party had pursued a couple sessions ago in Port-a-Lucine. Jens managed to see through the illusion the rakshasa had up to pass for a local human, and the party pursued the creature through the streets of Chateaufaux for a few minutes before they lost track of him. [I put this scene in the adventure to keep the players thinking about the rakshasa, to keep them thinking that they have unfinished business relating to their previous adventure. I’m doing so to foreshadow the rakshasa’s return in later adventures.] The party then continued on to Mont-Claude’s estate for the masquerade ball.
Unsurprisingly, everyone was in masks at the masquerade ball. (I googled lots of Victorian masquerade ball pictures to get the players in the right headspace.) The PCs wore plain loaner masks, as did some of the other guests. Most of the guests were wealthy nobility from the western Core, however, and they showed up with super fancy masks covered in sequins and jewels. The guests were the relatives, customers, and business acquaintances of Mont-Claude, who is a rich inventor/clockmaker and former apprentice of the The Engineer of Karina, Invidia (former co-apprentice with Malvoni, actually). He does extremely well for himself, but I portrayed him like many Dementlieuse merchants and businessmen are described in GazIII – very concerned with quantity and efficiency of production, less concerned with high quality. Luca and Johan both noted that his clockwork creations were wonderful, but he paid a lot less attention to detail to them than Malvoni did to his creations, and he cared about amazingly high quality a lot less than Malvoni. This made Luca and Johan sad, and made them miss their former master. I emphasized that Mont-Claude was much wealthier than Malvoni, indicating that although Malvoni’s inventions were more interesting because of his great attention to detail, perhaps Malvoni paid too much attention to detail and was obsessed with it too much (a little foreshadowing there…), which made him less successful than Mont-Claude.
I’m not planning to visit Lamordia in this campaign, so I used a picture of Dr. Mordenheim as my Mont-Claude, and I used the 2nd Edition Black Box cardstock picture of Schloss Mordenheim as my picture of Mont-Claude’s estate. The PCs noticed that some things were amiss when they arrived at the ball. A lot of Mont-Claude’s servants (who got people drinks, took their coats, etc.) were big muscular guys without good manners who didn’t fit into dressy aristocratic clothes very well. The big servants never spoke, and were always accompanied by more ordinary-looking servants who did all the talking and who had good manners. The ordinary-looking servants seemed to cower in fear away from the big servants, and I gave Mont-Claude a pet dog that also cowered in fear away from the big servants. The other ball guests didn’t seem to pay much attention to these things, and spent their time gossiping about fashion and art, making business deals, discussing the recent hostilities in the Church of Ezra, etc.
After mingling a bit, the PCs found Mont-Claude, introduced themselves, and asked to talk about Malvoni and the Falkovnians who killed him. Mont-Claude was interested in talking, and said that he had heard about Malvoni’s death and figured the Falkovnians were behind it. He invited the PCs down to his basement workshop where they could talk about it without being overheard by other party guests. ( I described the estate as being built on top of a large basement where Mont-Claude did all of his inventing.) When he brought the party down there, out of earshot of the rest of the masquerade guests, they were ambushed by Falkovnian soldiers!
The rude, muscular “servants” upstairs were of course also Falkovnian soldiers, their hawk brands covered up by the masquerade masks they wore. When the Falkovnians learned that Malvoni was smuggling arms to Gondegal, they set a trap for him at this party. Because of the Falkovnian enclave in Invidia, the Falkovnians were able to find out about the connection between Malvoni and Mont-Claude. They sent a small force, traveling undercover, to the Mont-Claude estate to take Mont-Claude prisoner and to force him to use his annual masquerade ball as a way to trap Malvoni. They killed some of Mont-Claude’s servants and family, held the rest hostage, and even sent a teenage daughter of Mont-Claude’s back to Drakov in Falkovnia to ensure that Mont-Claude went along with the plan (if he didn’t she would be killed). The Falkovnians gathered enough intelligence about Malvoni to kill him in Sturben themselves at the beginning of this campaign, but they had already set this trap, so they used it to try to capture Luca and Johan, who they knew were involved with Malvoni and who they feared were still helping Gondegal’s resistance.
The Falkovnians also used the trap to try to capture some of the nobles and businessmen of the western Core who they didn’t like. But the PCs fought their way out of the basement, freed some of the other hostages, and alerted the other party guests upstairs to the trap, so most everyone fled and the Falkovnian plan was spoiled. (I even had Dominic d’Honaire at the party – why not, he probably bought lots of clockworks from Mont-Claude – and the PCs got to see him use some of his considerable powers to evade danger and kill Falkovnians as he fled, although they just saw him doing this from a distance and did not interact with him themselves.)
Even Mont-Claude managed to flee. The PCs caught him, tied him up, and brought him back to Chateaufaux with them. He explained the circumstances behind the trap and apologized, but said he had no choice – he didn’t want the Falkovnians to kill his daughter. He was pretty distraught: the Falkovnians would probably be after HIM now, and so would the Council of Brilliance (because he aided the Falkovnian enemy). So the PCs suggested that he come with them to Invidia the next day. They said that if he would give them his wealth (stored in bank accounts and networks of business partners all over the Core, he claimed), they would use it to rescue his daughter, and to keep him safe from Drakov and the Council of Brilliance. Even though he did not like being tied up, he agreed – what other choice did he have? If he didn't agree the PCs hinted that they would turn him over to the Dementlieuse authorities, and everyone knew that he would be headed to the Place de Leon and the guillotine if that happened.
I described Mont-Claude as having an odd scar on his forehead. Years ago it looks like someone cut a narrow rectangular groove diagonally across the left half of his forehead, which has subsequently healed over. For now the PCs just think it is weird, perhaps caused by one of his clockwork inventions unexpectedly exploding or something like that. They will discover its significance in future sessions of this campaign.
[So, Johanne’s player tells me that I have been spelling his character’s name incorrectly. It’s supposed to be “Johan,” and will be from here on.]
Johan woke up the next day feeling terrible due to the mummy rot he contracted in the fight with the Miser. He also contracted some bad burns in the battle (not surprisingly, my PCs started several enormous fires in downtown Chateaufaux as they tried to kill the creature), so he was in rough shape. He was alarmed by the necrotic nature of the wounds on his chest, and had no idea what caused them to be necrotic. [None of my players suspected mummy rot, and they were all very worried for Johan when he lost 4 CON overnight. I hinted that the necrotic flesh on his chest slowly spread over the course of the day, and everyone got the message – he needed a cure fast, or he’d die soon.]
Before the other PCs awoke, Johan went downstairs to the common room of the inn where they were staying. Over breakfast he encountered a twenty-something Vistani woman named Patia Radanovich who had happened upon the fight with the Miser the night before and cheered the PCs on as they battled the undead creature. (She was burglarizing a shop next to Clerque & Verbois when the fight with the Miser broke out.) She saw that Johan was in pain, and somehow knew (mystically) that his wounds had a supernatural origin tied to the undead powers of the Miser. She offered to bring Johan to Souragne, where the Vistani know the Voodans live. She explained that the Voodans have a lot of familiarity with undead curses; they are able to bestow such curses or remedy them. Her price for bringing him to get a cure from the Voodans was that Johan and his brave friends accompany her small caravan to Invidia afterwards, to perform a yet-to-be-named service. Fearing that he would die otherwise, and being flattered by the pretty Vistana’s words about how brave they were in the fight the night before, Johan agreed. Then he went to wake the rest of the party to try to convince them.
Johan woke them and showed them his necrotic wounds. The other PCs don’t know what caused his wounds, and agreed to go with the Vistani the next day to save their friend. (Jens dissented, being a Valachani suspicious of all things magical, including the Vistani and Mist travel, but he did not dissent too forcefully because he was also flattered when the pretty Vistana had cheered him on during battle the night before.) Johan sort of deceived the rest of the group, however – he told them that the Radanovich caravan would bring them to Invidia where he would get healed. He did not mention anything about Souragne, voodoo, or a yet-to-be-named price to be paid to the Vistani in Invidia.
The PCs were in Chateaufaux for Jean Mont-Claude’s annual masquerade ball, and conveniently enough it was scheduled to happen that evening. Perfect timing – they could go to the ball and find out what Mont-Claude knew about Gustav Malvoni, Gondegal, and the Falkovnians before meeting up with the Vistani to travel to “Invidia” the next day. So the party rented formal attire for the ball, and set out for Mont-Claude’s estate on the coast a few hours’ horseback ride from Chateaufaux proper.
On the way out of Chateaufaux, Jens caught a glimpse of the rakshasa the party had pursued a couple sessions ago in Port-a-Lucine. Jens managed to see through the illusion the rakshasa had up to pass for a local human, and the party pursued the creature through the streets of Chateaufaux for a few minutes before they lost track of him. [I put this scene in the adventure to keep the players thinking about the rakshasa, to keep them thinking that they have unfinished business relating to their previous adventure. I’m doing so to foreshadow the rakshasa’s return in later adventures.] The party then continued on to Mont-Claude’s estate for the masquerade ball.
Unsurprisingly, everyone was in masks at the masquerade ball. (I googled lots of Victorian masquerade ball pictures to get the players in the right headspace.) The PCs wore plain loaner masks, as did some of the other guests. Most of the guests were wealthy nobility from the western Core, however, and they showed up with super fancy masks covered in sequins and jewels. The guests were the relatives, customers, and business acquaintances of Mont-Claude, who is a rich inventor/clockmaker and former apprentice of the The Engineer of Karina, Invidia (former co-apprentice with Malvoni, actually). He does extremely well for himself, but I portrayed him like many Dementlieuse merchants and businessmen are described in GazIII – very concerned with quantity and efficiency of production, less concerned with high quality. Luca and Johan both noted that his clockwork creations were wonderful, but he paid a lot less attention to detail to them than Malvoni did to his creations, and he cared about amazingly high quality a lot less than Malvoni. This made Luca and Johan sad, and made them miss their former master. I emphasized that Mont-Claude was much wealthier than Malvoni, indicating that although Malvoni’s inventions were more interesting because of his great attention to detail, perhaps Malvoni paid too much attention to detail and was obsessed with it too much (a little foreshadowing there…), which made him less successful than Mont-Claude.
I’m not planning to visit Lamordia in this campaign, so I used a picture of Dr. Mordenheim as my Mont-Claude, and I used the 2nd Edition Black Box cardstock picture of Schloss Mordenheim as my picture of Mont-Claude’s estate. The PCs noticed that some things were amiss when they arrived at the ball. A lot of Mont-Claude’s servants (who got people drinks, took their coats, etc.) were big muscular guys without good manners who didn’t fit into dressy aristocratic clothes very well. The big servants never spoke, and were always accompanied by more ordinary-looking servants who did all the talking and who had good manners. The ordinary-looking servants seemed to cower in fear away from the big servants, and I gave Mont-Claude a pet dog that also cowered in fear away from the big servants. The other ball guests didn’t seem to pay much attention to these things, and spent their time gossiping about fashion and art, making business deals, discussing the recent hostilities in the Church of Ezra, etc.
After mingling a bit, the PCs found Mont-Claude, introduced themselves, and asked to talk about Malvoni and the Falkovnians who killed him. Mont-Claude was interested in talking, and said that he had heard about Malvoni’s death and figured the Falkovnians were behind it. He invited the PCs down to his basement workshop where they could talk about it without being overheard by other party guests. ( I described the estate as being built on top of a large basement where Mont-Claude did all of his inventing.) When he brought the party down there, out of earshot of the rest of the masquerade guests, they were ambushed by Falkovnian soldiers!
The rude, muscular “servants” upstairs were of course also Falkovnian soldiers, their hawk brands covered up by the masquerade masks they wore. When the Falkovnians learned that Malvoni was smuggling arms to Gondegal, they set a trap for him at this party. Because of the Falkovnian enclave in Invidia, the Falkovnians were able to find out about the connection between Malvoni and Mont-Claude. They sent a small force, traveling undercover, to the Mont-Claude estate to take Mont-Claude prisoner and to force him to use his annual masquerade ball as a way to trap Malvoni. They killed some of Mont-Claude’s servants and family, held the rest hostage, and even sent a teenage daughter of Mont-Claude’s back to Drakov in Falkovnia to ensure that Mont-Claude went along with the plan (if he didn’t she would be killed). The Falkovnians gathered enough intelligence about Malvoni to kill him in Sturben themselves at the beginning of this campaign, but they had already set this trap, so they used it to try to capture Luca and Johan, who they knew were involved with Malvoni and who they feared were still helping Gondegal’s resistance.
The Falkovnians also used the trap to try to capture some of the nobles and businessmen of the western Core who they didn’t like. But the PCs fought their way out of the basement, freed some of the other hostages, and alerted the other party guests upstairs to the trap, so most everyone fled and the Falkovnian plan was spoiled. (I even had Dominic d’Honaire at the party – why not, he probably bought lots of clockworks from Mont-Claude – and the PCs got to see him use some of his considerable powers to evade danger and kill Falkovnians as he fled, although they just saw him doing this from a distance and did not interact with him themselves.)
Even Mont-Claude managed to flee. The PCs caught him, tied him up, and brought him back to Chateaufaux with them. He explained the circumstances behind the trap and apologized, but said he had no choice – he didn’t want the Falkovnians to kill his daughter. He was pretty distraught: the Falkovnians would probably be after HIM now, and so would the Council of Brilliance (because he aided the Falkovnian enemy). So the PCs suggested that he come with them to Invidia the next day. They said that if he would give them his wealth (stored in bank accounts and networks of business partners all over the Core, he claimed), they would use it to rescue his daughter, and to keep him safe from Drakov and the Council of Brilliance. Even though he did not like being tied up, he agreed – what other choice did he have? If he didn't agree the PCs hinted that they would turn him over to the Dementlieuse authorities, and everyone knew that he would be headed to the Place de Leon and the guillotine if that happened.
I described Mont-Claude as having an odd scar on his forehead. Years ago it looks like someone cut a narrow rectangular groove diagonally across the left half of his forehead, which has subsequently healed over. For now the PCs just think it is weird, perhaps caused by one of his clockwork inventions unexpectedly exploding or something like that. They will discover its significance in future sessions of this campaign.
Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
... and I forgot an important detail in my last post. As they fought/escaped from the Mont-Claude estate, the PCs lifted some detailed maps of the Falkovnian border regions off of a dead Falkovnian soldier. These documents contained some information about troop movements, patrols, and fortifications. Armed with this information, perhaps it wouldn't be total suicide for the PCs to try to rescue Mont-Claude's daughter or to visit Gondegal and his resistance fighters.
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Re: Chasing a Rakshasa -- new campaign outline
nice session... Always love a good masquerade!
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."