Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

I joined in on part 2 (or possibly part 3) of a multi-part adventure, one where the party had apparently been shunted around through multiple alternate worlds to get some macguffins, so there was a little question of how my level 5 rogue was going to join up with the party.

I found out later that these alternate worlds are indeed meant to be worlds from other known properties. Apparently, on the previous session(s), they'd gone through Star Trek and Skyrim. And they went into the next world, and they found themselves in the bedroom of a princess. In Dorne. Westeros, from Game of Thrones. She was shocked to see strangers in the room, demanding to know what they were doing there.

Then the DM turned to me. "What is your character doing?"

I immediately replied, "Putting his clothes back on."

Broke the table for a minute or so. But come on, that was just the perfect opportunity for it.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

More largely roleplay-related stuff this week, no combat encounter. (Though next session will likely be another large-scale military engagement when our army besieges a stronghold captured by the enemy.)

While the rest of the party recovered after a punishing battle against Waylon and the Aurak Draconians (we called it "our shawarma moment," a la the stinger from the Marvel Avengers movie), Justinius had been pulled into a confab with the Masters of High Sorcery. Turns out that his new apprentice, Tasha (she of the off-the-scale "magi-chlorian" count) may be something extremely rare to encounter: an Irda Sorceress. The Irda are also called the "high ogres," who existed long ago, but most of their race had devolved into the brutish ogres most people are familiar with, but the Irda were naturally gifted with magical power. The wizards believed that Tasha may have come from an Irda bloodline, and they asked Justinius to give Tasha a special bone wand and have her attune to it. It would cause her appearance to change if she was of Irda stock, and they believed would make it more imperative that she receive proper training with magic to prevent the risk of going mad.

Yadda yadda yadda, yes, turns out Tasha is of Irda descent. She agreed to undergo her training and tests, even after the risks were explained. (Namely, failing your Test of High Sorcery usually results in your death.)

Apart from that, the resistance bands were introduced to the Whitestone Forces, and we had the whole moment of Beric Fletcher (unknown bastard son of the late Lord Derek Crownguard) meeting Darren Crownguard (Derek's legitimate son) and the two hitting it off well -- because they'd practically been raised together. Beric's father (that is, the man who was married to his mother) had saved Derek's life at the cost of his own, which is why Derek had allowed Beric to be trained as a squire. Darren and Beric had been as close as brothers while growing up, and that friendship had not diminished even after years of separation. But neither of them seemed to be aware of the fact that they were, in fact, half-brothers. Because, in their own words, there's a lot of physical similarities between people in Vingaard.

Evrouin finally knew he had to broach the subject and went to talk to them. I had my character Gavin offer to go with to offer some support/backup. Both Beric and Darren took a little bit to actually wrap their heads around it, but Darren took it well, even reckoning that the Measure (the code the knighthood is expected to uphold, and which the Crownguards have been staunch adherents to) did allow unmarried knights to "have relations" with unmarried women-- Derek's wife had died in childbirth and Beric's mother's husband had died in battle, so technically they were both unmarried. DM Bob did sort of roleplay it that Darren was also trying to cope with the fact that his father had done such a thing without acknowledging it publicly, so I had Gavin remark, "You're going through what all men must: realizing that their father, as larger than life as they can feel, is still just a man, with all the little foibles that come with it."

Darren then appeared to accept this, and without further preamble, he had Beric Fletcher kneel, swear his oath, and touch the sword to his shoulders, before bidding him rise as Sir Beric Crownguard, a full fledged Knight of Solamnia.

As Gavin remarked to Evro as they were leaving, "That went better than I could have expected."

Meanwhile, Runa the Barbarian approached the gnome engineers of the WSF with her idea of catapult-launching barbarians. As the gnomes use such technology to get about inside their capital in Mt Nevermind, they agreed on the idea, and the rest of her part of the session involved Runa having to go through parachutist training. But by the end of the session, Runa (and many of the barbarians of her tribe) were now essentially our equivalent of the 81st Airborne.

[Nunavut Pants]

Lots of gaming in the last couple of weeks! I am visiting the area that I used to live in and still have lots of connections in. Several games days were hosted by AL. I managed to sleep through another one hosted by LM, sadly, but did go to a weekly meetup at a local restaurant earlier this evening.

12-27:
I played a game called "Junk Orbit" where you maneuver yourself in orbit around Earth, Mars, the Moon, and Mars' two moons (Deimos and Phobos). You maneuver by throwing junk out of your ship, which propels it the other direction. If you throw a piece of junk that has a label for a particular destination and it lands on that destination, you have delivered it and get credit for it. If you end your turn on a space and have junk destined for that space (any number of pieces!) those are delivered there and you get credit for them. After delivering, you pick up any junk that is in that orbit space. Junk is represented by cards, each of which has a size and a destination. The size is the value (in Victory Points) and also how far it moves when you throw it, and how far your ship moves in the opposite direction. This was quite a fun game, but I came in last of 5 players.

Next up was "Echidna Shuffle", where you move cute little plastic echidna tokens around on a board. They can pick up and deliver your particular type of bug if they are in the space where your bug starts or are in one of the spaces that are your bug's destinations. There are something like 15 echidnas for 18 spaces on the board, and you get anywhere from 2 to 7 moves in your turn. It is very crowded and you spend much of your time getting in your opponents' way. This was cute, but I didn't enjoy it. I also was 6th place out of 6 players.

The last game I played was "Quiddler", a game where you get cards with letters on them and try to make words out of them. Each card has a certain point value, kind of like Scrabble. Unlike Scrabble, a few cards have two letters on them (things like "IN", "QU", and such). You get bonus points for making the largest number of words, and also bonus points for the longest single word. The first round you only have four cards. Draw one card and discard one card, then see if you can go out by making words with the cards you have left. If you do, everyone else gets one turn to see what they can make. Unused letters count against your score. After scoring, you deal out one more card than the previous hand, going up eventually to 10 cards. This is something of a classic game, easy to understand and play. I won at the end, but mostly because my opponents re-arranged my cards so that I could actually use all of them (no penalty points!) and so I had a bunch of short words (bonus for most words) at the end of the last hand. I hadn't seen that combination, so I hadn't played it, but they gave it to me anyway.

On 12/29:
We started by playing "Faiyum", which is a game about clearing out and building up part of the Nile for the Pharaoh. It was a worker placement game that used cards to place the workers. I didn't care for it that much, I found it to be too fiddly. One player had to leave about 3/4 of the way through, so while I did beat his score technically, he was in the lead when he left and I would not have caught him if he had still been playing through to the end. So I counted myself morally in 4th place out of 4 players.

We moved on to "Fabled Fruit", in which you move your token onto a card to perform the action that is on it. Those included things like taking a piece of fruit from the "marketplace", or trading your hand (of fruit) with the marketplace, or trading it with someone else, and more. It was a bit chaotic, but enjoyable. Alternately, when you land on a card instead of taking the action on that card you can pay the listed fruit on it to make a "fabled fruit drink" and claim that card. (The card then gets replaced from the deck, sometimes with another copy of the same card and sometimes with a different one.) First person to make three drinks wins. We played three rounds and I didn't win. It was a bit chaotic but enjoyable.

On 12/31, New Year's Eve:
We started out with "World's Fair 1893", a worker-placement game about building attractions for that World's Fair. You landed on a space and picked up cards that were on that space. Some of the cards would advance the game clock, some were the attractions that you could build if you had enough workers at the point where the clock advanced to the "scoring phase", and others would allow you to play more workers onto the board or to move a worker arbitrarily. After three scoring phases, the game ends. Points are scored by those advance-the-clock cards (only 1 per) and also by sets of attractions, which come in 5 different colors. It was decently fun, but I didn't really get it that well and came in last out of 4 players.

We also played "Hare and Tortoise", which I have mentioned before. I have never done well in this game--I am always last or next to last. Well, this time I won it! I tried my luck with the "bunny space" twice, and got "lose a turn" both times. I swore off the bunny spaces after that, and just tried to get my lettuces eaten without resorting to die rolls. I pulled it off, and was able to get into the end in 1st place with something like 7 carrots left, which is good enough!

I finished up the evening with two games of Dominion, which is kind of the classic deck-builder. I wound up in 2nd place in the first game, and 3rd in the second game. Both were four-player games.

1/2:
One friend wanted to play Mahjong, so four of us set it up and played. We went through about four rounds. I won the first one (meaning I went out first), but none of the other three.

At that point, I had to leave to meet some friends that I hadn't seen in years. I promised I would be back in a couple of hours, and I was.

I think the next game was called "Tichu". It's a trick-taking card game played by two teams of two players, a bit like bridge. But unlike bridge, you don't play single cards--you more or less play poker hands! (One of a kind, pair, three of a kind, full house, etc.) Players must play the same type of "poker hand", but higher value. You keep going around until everyone passes, the last person to play takes the trick. There are ways to take the trick without "following suit" (by playing four of a kind, for instance). You score points for the 5s, 10s, and Jacks that you have taken. And for two special cards, the "dragon" and the "phoenix". My team one once and lost once.

Next up was "Hare and Tortoise" again. This time I came in 3rd out of 6 players, which is better than I generally do, so it wasn't too bad. Once again, I found myself at the end of the track with too many carrots to finish. When the second place player crossed the line, the greater allowance for leftover carrots allowed me to immediately finish at the exact limit of what I could have! (30 carrots, in other words.)

We finished up with a number of rounds of "Just One", which is a fun party-style game that I have talked about before.

Dinner tonight, 1/5:
We played "Just One" again. It was fun again. We had one person who I hadn't seen in a while, and the other three were folks who had made it to many of the above events. That person isn't into very heavy games, so Just One was a great choice. We all had fun.

[Nunavut Pants]

Just finished another game of Terraforming Mars. I was playing as the corporation that could make forest tiles out of 7 plant resources, a discount of 1 from standard.

I was able to grab one Milestone (for Building tags), and funded and came first in two Awards (most owned tiles next to oceans, and most forest tiles). That's fifteen points worth! And I still came in second.

The winner got two Milestones, 10 points, and first place in the one Award they funded, another 5 points. Plus they were second in the two Awards that I funded, for another four points. It was very close on other points, but they got me by 3 at the end.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd '26

As mentioned previously, this new campaign is being DM'd by one of the players in my local D&D Adventurers League chapter, and all of us players were recruited from D&D AL as well. So we're all generally familiar with one another and are pretty good at D&D. A few of us have played Strahd before, but we know that no two campaigns are going to be the same. Our cast of characters this time:

• Mark as Willow Thornbloom, wood elf druid (circle of the land)
• Kim as Potentia Greenveil, wood elf paladin (oath of the ancients)
• Syed as Oliver Gardin, halfling sorcerer (wild magic bloodline)
• Jake as Mort, gnome artificer (battlesmith)
• Yours Truly as Trig Cove, human rogue (phantom)
• Phil as the Dungeon Master (literally everyone else)

We all worked privately with Phil to build out some backstory elements to help tie them into the campaign, and in the last few days, he sent us all DMs with additional roleplay hooks. Trig, my rogue, has been developed between he and I that he was born in Barovia, but the Vistani helped smuggle him out when he was a child after the family home was burnt down because his baby brother was born deformed. He ended up in the city of Waterdeep, where he was taken in by a somewhat kind gang leader called Cobb Likely. That was 15-16 years ago, and Trig has now had to leave Waterdeep after a job went wrong.

The additional hooks Phil sent me are that Trig has, in his pack, three bounty posters. One each for Rudolf van Richten (500gp, wanted dead), Ezmerelda d'Avenir (300gp, wanted alive), and Trig Cove (200gp, alive). And that a mad halfling may have a lead on van Richten. (I assume Phil meant "gnome" as a link to Mort, but I'll have to ask him to clarify.)

I've built Trig to be a lot better at getting advantage on his attacks, so as to proc his Sneak Attack bonus (an additional 2d6 damage). The 2025 edition of D&D's Player Handbook (PHB) introduced something called "Weapon Mastery," which allows additional bonus features if you're using a weapon with which you have mastery. In Trig's case, he has mastery in both his primary weapons (rapier and shortbow) which both have the mastery feature called "Vex," which gives you advantage on the target for your next attack against them until the end of your next turn. So if I can land at least that first hit, I get advantage to proc Sneak Attack every subsequent round against the same target. I took the starting feat Magic Initiate - Wizard so I get a couple of cantrips and a 1st level spell I can cast once per day. For the cantrips, I took Dancing Lights (since as a human, he has no darkvision) and True Strike (which presently offers no additional bonus to attack for me - it allows the user to use their spellcasting modifier for their attack rolls instead of their STR/DEX, but in my case my DEX equals my spellcasting modifier - but it does allow me to switch the damage type from the weapon's type to radiant damage, which might be useful in Barovia), and for the level 1 spell, I took Find Familiar, using the owl statblock for it. The familiar (which I've flavored to be a corvid) can use the feature Flyby to swoop in and out of an enemy's threaten radius without prompting opportunity attacks, letting it give me the help action to distract enemies and give me advantage.

The party all met at a tavern in the middle of nowhere (stated to be at least a day's ride from the nearest sign of civilization) on a cold, misty evening. The barkeep stepped out to go prepare food (kitchen was detached from the main tavern house) and never returned. By the time we noticed, the mists had gotten thicker, and we finally investigated when we heard a scream from outside. The mists swallowed up everything, and when we finally stumbled out of them, we were on a muddy road in the middle of a forest, and soon set upon by wolves.

Amusingly, Kim forgot that rolling a Nat-20 for an attack means you double the dice rolled for damage before adding the modifiers. We promptly told her to pump her paladin's Divine Smite into her attack as well (as it takes a bonus action) so that could get doubled too. Once she understood the explanation and realized she'd be rolling 6d8, she got excited about it.

Probably not as excited as we all got when I rolled two Nat-20s on an attack against one of the alpha wolves, for 2d8+4d6+3 damage.

After our fight with the wolves, we decided to head in the direction of some chimney smoke for a village, but it still took us camping in the middle of the night before we got there. And during that camp, we learned that because we were not in "a place of safety", we only got the benefits of a short rest, not a long rest. Mechanically, this means we had to spend hit dice to regain HP (long rests regain all HP) and we could not recover any spell slots or other features that recharge on a long rest. And what sleep our characters got was not great besides.

We eventually reached the village of Barovia, where the locals gave us all a wide berth, and the only person to speak with us was a kindly old woman called Ophelia, who sold meat pies which aided in getting a good night's sleep. Despite knowing who this woman likely was, I chose to have Trig buy a pie from her. Mort ended up buying the rest of her pies. Ophelia told us about how the realm of Barovia was a trap-- "no one ever leaves"-- and that it was ruled over by "The Devil Strahd von Zarovich."

We went to the local tavern, where we met some Vistani women who were much more welcoming, and whom Willow and Trig were happy to see. In Willow's case, this is when the rest of us learned that she'd grown up with the Vistani, that she'd even been adopted by one called Madam Eva, before she left to join the druids. Trig admitted that he met the Vistani when he was a kid, they helped get him to Waterdeep.

It was from the Vistani women that we learned the local burgomaster, Baron Ismark, had just passed away, and leadership was likely to go to his son, also named Ismark (mockingly called "Ismark the Lesser" by the Vistani). As it happened, the younger Ismark was in the room as they was happening, but he approached the party for help. He explained that his father's home had been attacked, nightly, by minions of the Devil Strahd, and the stress had finally given him a fatal heart attack. Ismark feared for his sister Ireena's safety, believing that the Devil sought to claim her, and wanted someone to escort her to safety at the next town in Vallaki. We agreed to stay at the baron's house for the night and escort her on the next day. Ireena, for her part, wasn't happy to be sent away, but relented and asked to see that their father was buried before she left.

Willow and Trig both set their familiars to keep an eye out in the night, her owl in her room, Trig's crow in the hallway. They both heard some movement, but the crow saw someone descending the stairs and woke up Trig, who burst out of his room with his sword drawn, and saw a tranced Ireena opening the front door. Trig called out to her, and then saw the figure on the other side of the doorway: Strahd von Zarovich himself. He was polite as he greeted Trig and asked if he could come in. Trig, of course, said, "No." Strahd made some comment on how he expected better from one of his loyal subjects, and when Trig said he wasn't one of his subjects, Strahd just chuckled and said, "Not yet." But he turned and disappeared into the mists and Ireena snapped out of her trance, briefly chastised Trig for his apparent disrespectful treatment of her, but he just said, "Your brother asked us to keep you safe." and didn't regret what he'd done.

The next day, we helped transport the late baron's body across the village to the church, where we met Father Donovich, a stressed-out priest whose son had recently been turned into a vampire spawn by Strahd, and was presently locked in the undercroft. Donovich didn't know what to do about his blood-starved son, as he didn't want to kill him. The party sympathized, but we just got to work digging a grave for the burial and last rites.

We got on the road, and apart from a brief bit of spookiness at a crossroad where there was an old gallows-- Potentia turned around as we left to see herself hanging from the noose-- we soon arrived at a Vistani camp at Tser Pool, where the Vistani welcomed us and soon introduced us to Madam Eva, or "Auntie" as Willow called her. Eva's friendly demeanor evaporated on seeing Willow, before rebuking her, "Do you know what your mother sacrificed to help get you out of Barovia?" It transpired that Willow had been born in Barovia. And-- what with nothing being allowed to leave Barovia, even the souls of the departed-- she had been born with a reincarnated soul. And not just any soul, but the soul of Tatyana, the woman that Strahd coveted most of all. Willow did not care, she believed that fate had led her back here, maybe even to put an end to Strahd.

Troubled, Madam Eva consulted the tarokka to see what guidance she could give about defeating Strahd. It was during this that I learned that Phil may be using an unofficial expansion of the module called Curse of Strahd Reloaded. Typically, Eva's tarokka reading provides clues as to where to find several plot macguffins, an ally against him, and where Strahd can be found within his castle. Based on my own meta knowledge, the reading told us that the Tome of Strahd (a book with info on his backstory) was in the werewolf den, the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind (amulet with potent magic) was at Yester Hill in the Gulthias tree, the Sunsword (powerful weapon to use against him) was in Argynvostholdt, the ally was likely Vasilka, the flesh golem bride made for Strahd by the Abbot of Saint Markovia. It was when the final card was turned, supposed to reveal Strahd's location in the castle, that Eva said his location was obscured and we would need to cleanse the fanes of the land to reclaim it from his evil. While I have not personally read the Reloaded expansion, I am familiar with some of its expanded content to know that the fanes are a key part of that.

We all stayed pretty true to our roleplaying throughout, with little bits of flavor sort of worked in. Mort the artificer is a little kooky, prone to muttering to himself, hitting people with a giant tome as a weapon, quick to dismiss magic in favor of science, and very keen to learn as much as he can about everything. Most of his questioning to some of the NPCs have amounted to "how old are you?" and similar things, which we latched onto as a running gag for bits at the table. Similarly, Oliver is afflicted with some kind of curse and has leaves and vines growing out of his body, usually hidden by his shirt. One of the first things he did when he met Willow, a druid, was to ask if she knew anything about it and opening his shirt to show it. When he did the same thing with one of the Vistani women in Barovia Village, we started joking about a "serial flasher" going around. Syed had good humor about it, but made sure to ask Kim-- who has stated her desire to draw portraits of all of our characters-- not to make him "opening his shirt" the portrait for him.

We all had a lot of fun and we're looking forward to continuing this campaign.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

This session was a lot of prep work for the impending siege of Vingaard Keep. The Blue Dragon Army had had months to dig in and had enough stores to basically withstand potentially years of siege, so we had to work out how to proceed. There was really only one gate viable as a means of getting inside, but what we decided was to set up as if the Whitestone Forces were preparing to undermine the walls for sapping, expecting the BDA to counter-mine -- while the goal was to use our new barbarian parachute regiment to disrupt the guards and then open the gates.

We had a week in-game or so to prep, so we spent that time setting up and gathering what intel we could. Justinius and the wizards could scry on things, and my cleric Gavin had two options available for intel-gathering -- using Commune to ask up to 3 yes/no questions of his goddess Mishakal, and potentially using Divine Intervention to get more direct information. Per the rules, every time you use Commune more than once in a 24-hour period, there's an increased chance the spell won't work properly or the information might be wrong, and if Divine Intervention works (at level 12, the DC to be successful is to roll under 12 on a d100), then you can't use it again for a week.

We wanted to determine where the BDA's command post was located, as that was a priority. We worked out from the Vingaard local soldiers/knights the layout of the keep, and so we worked out through a series of questions over a few days where the command post was not, until we determined it was in "the dome" of the keep. At that point, we changed up just trying to learn some other general intel-- and learned that there were traitors within the WSF, and that there were relief forces coming for the BDA. And while the Divine Intervention failed the first few days, I rolled a 10 and so was able to get it off. So, since the ability basically allows the cleric to ask their deity to do anything (although the deity will decide how it gets done), we asked Mishakal to weaken the BDA's defenses and to prevent their relief from making it before our attack. Mishakal agreed, and said the relief would not make it for at least an additional week. And the BDA's forces in the keep would come down with dysentery.

While that was all happening, Justinius and Catt both went scouting, with him using his magic to hide their presence so she could invisibly scout out where the gate controls for the main gate were located. It took a few days to narrow it down, as there was a limit to how long she could stay hidden.

I thought we'd end it there, but we pressed on as the barbarian parachutists went in with Runa and Justinius, having to then make their way past a bunch of the BDA forces. They got split up necessarily, because the controls were twinned and needed to be operated at the same time or the mechanism would jam. Well, Justinius ended up taking a bunch of damage from the soldiers' attacks of opportunity as he ran past them, and went down to 0 HP before he could operate the controls, and so when Runa pulled her lever, it jammed the mechanism. Fortunately, some of the barbarians were able to make it down to him and stabilize him (by yelling at him -- we all compared it to Hulk yelling at Iron Man at the end of the first Avengers movie) long enough for Runa to fix the mechanism and then synch up with barbarians on the other side to open the gates.

This let the WSF cavalry charge in and start fighting back against the BDA's forces, who were not as tough as they might otherwise have been because of the dysentery. Gavin was able to get Justinius back up with some healing magic, and do likewise for Runa (who was also low on HP despite her barbarian rage reducing the damage she'd taken) before storming "the dome" of the keep, which was magically locked. Justinius was able to open it with Knock (which can open any lock, even magical ones) and we got swept up in a golden wave of magic before we ended for the session.

[Nunavut Pants]

Hosted another games day. Played Just One with four ladies. I do like that game!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

The battle in the dome of Vingaard Keep was a tough one. The baddies had a magical artifact they could charge with some magic and frequently did while three of them continued to perform some ritual-- one we assume was going to allow them to teleport more forces in or something. The BDA elites we were facing were effectively our evil counterparts-- a black-robed wizard (Justinius), an evil cleric (Gavin), a death knight (Evrouin), a barbarian with twin lightning-powered hammers (Runa), and a rogue with a rapier and dagger (Catt). It took the entire session to deal with them all, not helped by our needing to burn some of our spell slots right from the get-go to get through the door. Then, a few rounds in, the baddies triggered the artifact, which attempted to banish everyone into a demiplane. Only Catt and Justinius avoided it, and Gavin had to burn a 4th-level spell slot to dispel the banishment on himself. Evro and Runa had to wait for the banishment spell to end before they could return.

The evil rogue's weapons were magical, a rapier of wounding and a dagger of life stealing-- the rapier could inflict a wound that (until healed) would cause 2 HP loss every round, and the dagger could reduce Catt's CON score, effectively lowering her max HP. Fortunately, after an initial hit with the dagger that took Catt's CON down by 10, he wasn't able to hit her again for a while because of bad rolls. Gavin was spending nearly every round just healing people back up, occasionally trying to take down the enemy cleric, who returned fire himself when he got targeted-- but once he started retaliating instead of focusing on their ritual, the ritual failed. At that point, the evil wizard yoinked the artifact and teleported away, leaving the others in the lurch. It still took some doing putting the knight and barbarian down, and when Runa went down, the cleric touched her body, they both vanished, but fortunately Justinius was able to make them visible with a Faerie Fire spell, at which point Gavin destroyed the cleric with a high-level Guiding Bolt spell.

We all basically compared this to the entire party pulling a Randy Marsh from South Park. ("We didn't hear no bell!") And joking that we're gonna go for shawarma again after that fight.

Curse of Strahd '26--

We followed up from last session by getting a little clarification on Madam Eva's tarokka reading, with her not really able to offer much additional knowledge as yet, but to come find her when we have learned or found something. It was also established that Willow isn't exactly Tatyana's reincarnation, so much as the Vistani were able to implant her soul into Willow's body as a baby, then had her taken outside of Barovia, away from Strahd. The aim was-- since Strahd effectively went dormant whenever Tatyana's soul was outside his reach (usually when the soul was yet to reincarnate), the hope was that Willow's elven lifespan (hundreds of years) might somehow weaken Strahd to the point of breaking his curse. Only for Willow to return to Barovia in less than 100 years.

Trig asked if Eva was aware of which band of Vistani had been responsible for getting him to Waterdeep, reckoning it might be possible that they were in Barovia and she might know them. The only names he could remember of the Vistani was another boy, a bigger boy who looked after the other kids, named Luvash, who had a brother whose name Trig had forgotten. She said was a common Vistani name, but she knew of two brothers, one named Luvash, who ran the Vistani camp outside of Vallaki. Trig appreciated the help, just wanting to make contact with a childhood friend.

Poor Oliver was trying to follow up on a rumor he'd heard, about some thief with connections to the Vistani, and tried to ask around the camp about this-- but a very poor roll by Syed led to him greatly offending one Vistana man, who assumed that Oliver was calling Vistani "thieves" and ended up cursing him, "May the wine turn to piss in your mouth!"

The party did try to make sure Ireena wasn't being forgotten, and after admitting to how she felt out of place, we assured her she wasn't a burden. She admitted to not really knowing how to use the rapier her brother had given her, with Potentia and later Trig offering to teach her some tips on how to best use it. The next day, we decided to take a shortcut up a series of switchbacks by a waterfall, but ended up ambushed by zombies coming out of the pool at the base of the falls. Ireena tried to help save Potentia from a zombie, but tripped and fell in the water, after which another zombie fell atop her and they both went under. It took a few rounds before we managed to free her from its grip and get her back to the surface. She was in rough shape from both the zombie's attacks and nearly drowning, weeping and apologetic, even if none of us blamed her for what had happened.

We came across a crossroads, where there was a black carriage waiting, and a dusk elf gentleman approached. Introducing himself as Rahadin, he was a servant of Strahd, who was extending an invitation to meet him at Castle Ravenloft. None of us trusted him and turned down the offer. Rahadin just admitted he thought they might not accept and left to inform the master. We moved on quickly at that point. We spent the night camped outside an old windmill, which was home to Ophelia, the old woman who sold pies, who was a bit happy to see return customers, but who also would not allow the party inside, claiming it was too cramped for everyone. We could see that the interior was fairly filthy, but she rebuffed any offer from Mort to help clean it up. We bought more dream pies from her, and we learned that eating one would assure a full long rest, even outside of the safety of a village, but those who ate one would not be able to stand watch during the night.

Then, as we got close to Lake Zarovich, we saw a lone fisherman in a boat on the lake, but as we started to move along, Trig and Willow saw the man sigh, haul up a squirming burlap sack and throw it in the lake. Trig immediately took off running for the fishing dock, the rest of the party following. Mort and Oliver stayed on land while Potentia and Trig rowed out as quickly as they could. Willow was able to-- thanks to casting Longstrider on herself-- make it fairly far through dashing and swimming, then haul the sack to the surface. When they got it into their boat, the party found out it contained a 10-year-old Vistana girl named Arabelle. And seeing that, Trig got pissed.

He drew his sword on the fisherman, who barely seemed to acknowledge the threat, blithely or flatly speaking, introducing himself as Bluto, and simply said that Vistani were lucky, good for catching fish. He didn't seem to see the problem with what he was doing. Trig could see the man was one of those Barovians born without a soul, and the lack of remorse or reaction from Bluto didn't sit well with him, so he jabbed his sword into his throat and killed him. Bluto just tipped over the side into the lake, while Potentia was shocked. Trig just growled, "You don't hurt kids." Arabella, once freed from the sack, started cursing at Bluto like a sailor and spat after him when Trig killed him. She was grateful for the rescue and said that her folk would be looking for her, so we escorted her back toward Vallaki, diverting at the gates to the Vistani camp outside its walls.

We got there in time to meet a dusk elf named Kasimir, glad to see Arabella alive, but when he saw Potentia, he looked horrified, and quickly lent his cloak to cover up her face. He escorted us into one of the cabins near the camp, and explained that Potentia was a dusk elf. I'll admit, I the player was bewildered by this, and even described Trig looking from Potentia to Willow-- both of whom had been described as wood elves-- until passing a perception check to note the subtle differences, and now he had a dusk elf to compare to, could see the traits in Potentia. She was half-dusk elf, her father Eldrin had come to her mother's druidic grove. Kasimir remembered Eldrin, who'd been a member of the Knights of Argynvost, an order of warriors with a manor in Barovia. Kasimir explained that his sister, Patrina, had been claimed by Strahd to become one of his brides, but the dusk elves did not want this to happen, so they stoned her to death. Furious at this, Strahd had every dusk elf woman in Barovia killed and cut the ears off every dusk elf male. Since then, their people have been slowly dying out, unable to reproduce, and Kasimir does not know what his people might do if they saw Potentia. He urged her to keep herself hidden from them.

The rest of the Vistani returned, with their leader Arrigal and his brother Luvash-- a huge bear of a man-- who turned out to be Arabella's father. He was boisterously grateful to the party for rescuing his daughter and dealing with her abductor. Trig once again expressed no remorse for killing Bluto, restating his "You don't hurt kids" approach, and when Mort half-jokingly added "Unless they're a little shit," at which point Trig emphasized "You don't hurt kids," admitting it's a personal issue for him. He lost his baby brother when a mob burned their house down. At this point, Luvash realized who Trig was, glad to have re-met him, and then revealed, "We saved your brother, too!" Trig's baby brother had been taken to Vallaki, where he'd been raised by the burgomeister. Luvash added, "He's a lot bigger than you." (Trig sort of noted, defensively, "Life wasn't always easy on the streets of Waterdeep.") When the DM mentioned said brother's name was Izek, I the player knew who he was talking about, but covered my realization by having Trig just cover his face and half-ruefully say, "Oh, gods, it's been so long I'd almost forgotten his name!"

Because that meant Trig's brother is a significant NPC in Vallaki, Izek Strazni, the enforcer for the burgomeister.

That's something I'm looking forward to roleplaying out.

[Nunavut Pants]

I won another Terraforming Mars game! (And lost two more, badly, since then.)

I didn't claim any Milestones, and didn't fund any Achievements. Even though there was one that I had planned to fund if at all possible...

My Corp was one that got extra income any time a Jovian tag was played. And one of the Achievements was to have the most Jovian tags. So my plan (or maybe just my hope!) was to play as many Jovian tags as possible and claim that Achievement. But one of my opponents funded two Achievements before I really had thought to fund that, so the last one was more money than I could really afford.

I did get kind of lucky with the cards, though, as I got four more Jovian cards (the Corp has one Jovian tag). One of those cards gave you 1 VP per Jovian. Plus I got Terraforming Ganymede, which raises your Terraform Rating by 1 per Jovian tag that you have played at that point--and has two VP on its own to boot! So I got 5 VP from the one card, plus 5 more (TR are also VPs) and another 2 from the other card. Plus a few individual points here and there, and I came in second (two points each) for two of the Achievements funded by other players.

Final scores were 72 to 66 to 63 to 58. I won!