Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

We returned to our campaign, now having to account for the loss of two PCs. The rest of the Misfits were very aware that both Justinius and Catt had been caught-- the latter shot out of the sky by multiple arrows-- and when Runa used her Clairvoyance ability to listen in on the enemy command tent, she overheard Fistandantilus denying the cleric Denubis when he asked to heal Catt, but did allow funerary rites to be done, and asked for the red-robed wizard to be left for him.

We snuck around to where the rebel army buried its dead and found the fresh mound of earth with Catt's hoopak stuck in it. My cleric, Gavin, did cast Raise Dead-- because, ICly, we all considered it worth it-- and everyone spoke their piece to see if we could convince Catt's soul to return. We got an ethereal Catt appearing, but she said that she didn't think she should come back, implying there were adventures she was going to be undertaking on the other side, taking her hoopak and bidding us farewell.

What came next for us was having to re-focus and lock in on finishing our mission to steal the Blood Stone artifact from Fistandantilus. To recap, Fistandantilus-- the most powerful evil wizard in all of history, at the height of his mortal power-- was attempting to open a portal to the Abyss, so as to confront Takhisis (evil dragon goddess, known as Tiamat in other D&D planes) and kill her to usurp her place. As this was happening some 350 years before the 'present day' in our campaign, he was destined to fail, and the explosion that transpired killed his physical body, but the Blood Stone allowed his spirit to remain in an in-between place, and he survived by siphoning life/magic from other wizards. He tended to do this by appearing to aspirant wizards during their Tests of High Sorcery, offering the power to pass their Test in exchange for that life force. Justinius's apprentice Tasha was of Irda descent-- a race of 'high ogres' with natural magical power-- and needed to pass her Test so she can learn the higher-level magic needed to prevent herself from going insane, but taking her Test would expose her to Fistandantilus-- and he would not be able to resist just draining her dry, potentially becoming powerful enough to return to physical life. The Orders of High Sorcery had sent our party back to the year 1 AC to try to neutralize the Blood Stone, but we'd also been briefed that we were just the latest in many attempts at this mission. (We were somewhere in the vicinity of Attempt #1148.)

We scouted out the tower of Zhaman, which fortunately went without much fuss. Runa used her Clairvoyance again to scout the tower itself and we once again found an alternative entry than the main gate, which was once again through the sewer. Or rather, the servant entrance next to the sewer-- and even then, the sewer was remarkably clean. The passageway was dusty as well, and we rather worked out that Fistandantilus was just using the tower as a place to conduct his ritual, teleporting in and out to do his prep and whatnot, while resting and eating back in the military camp.

We explored the dungeon beneath the tower, mostly so we could recover Justinius's body, since Runa's Clairvoyance had located it in one of the cells. The rest of the cells had the bodies of people we found out had been part of previous attempts at getting the Blood Stone. The cells in the dungeons didn't have doors, but arcane wards which only allowed an evil wizard or a good cleric to pass through, and the bodies inside were held in a sort of stasis field (DM Bob explicitly compared it to the forcefield that Obi-Wan was held in by Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones) and were... well, they'd been tortured and their life-force sucked away. Gavin, the only one in the party who could pass through the wards on the cells, used a ten-foot pole to gently push the bodies out of the stasis field, and they all essentially disintegrated as they did. Gavin saw this as a mercy.

One of the cells, however, held an elven ranger, who hadn't been tortured to the same extent or had her life force drained. Gavin dispelled the stasis and then healed her up. This was our newest PC, Sylphara, played by Chris. She was a Kagonesti elf (wood elf) from roughly 150 years prior to the 'present day', and had been part of the previous attempt at killing Fistandantilus. The rest of her party was all dead, tortured/drained, and she joined us in our mission. She was a little disdainful of humans (everyone left in the party was human) and couldn't really wrap her head around the timelines, though accepted that she was only going to get to come back to the 'present day' and not her own. We rested up in a disused storage cellar in the tower while making plans, since we had another day or so before we absolutely needed to make our move.

And the plan went off without a hitch. Evrouin cast Silence on his armor, charging in to grapple Fistandantilus-- thus negating the two main components of his magic (verbal and somatic)-- while Gavin cast Hold Person on Denubis (to prevent him from dispelling the silence), allowing Runa to rush in and grab the Blood Stone from around Fistan's neck. Sylphara ran in with our "time-turner" device, we all linked up, released Fistan and returned to our own time, just as Raistlin Majere-- Fistan's usurper-- turned up.

We arrived back in 349 AC at the Weyreth Tower. We turned the Blood Stone over to the wizards, who promised to either find a way to destroy it or seal it away forever, and confirmed that Fistandantilus was dead. Raistlin, however, had now become 'Master of Both Past & Present', which would allow him to access the Palanthas Tower of High Sorcery, and potentially attempt the same thing that Fistan had been doing. (i.e., usurp a god) That, however, was now for the wizards to deal with, and they would do so, presumably without us.

We wrapped up with the Misfits (plus Sylphara) returning to the Whitestone Forces military camp, to resume what will undoubtedly become known as the Fourth Dragon War.

We're still planning to recruit a fifth player, which might end up being my roommate Richard, he's still making up his mind.

[Nunavut Pants]

[ .... Fistandantilus ....

Please, please, PLEASE tell me this guy's coat of arms has a closed hand with deer horns coming out of it... PLEASE!!!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd '26--

Well, Queen Julieton turned out to be a lot trickier to deal with than initially assumed. She won't stop possessing Ireena unless she has a suitable alternative, which is problematic. There was a half-serious suggestion of arranging a beauty pageant to find a suitable replacement, which prompted Phil the DM to quip, "Only if the Burgomeister's involved!" (As Burgomeister Vargas Vallakovich has been very T**mp-coded, this prompted some serious laughter from me and Mark, the older players at the table.) And then while we were trying to work out how to deal with our various quest threads, Strahd himself showed up out of nowhere, there in the inn's main room, while the innkeeper's wife and children just went into some kind of trance state. Strahd more or less tasked the party with getting Vargas out of power as he disapproved with how the man was running Vallaki. Then he started more or less flirting with Julieton and asked to take her on a brief walk so they could speak together. None of us were okay with that idea-- Potentia the Paladin especially. She pointed out that Julieton was possessing Ireena, and they could not get Ireena's consent. But this didn't ultimately work, as Strahd took her out for that walk anyway, though he did swear to return her unharmed, and did so.

And when we went to meet with Vargas (on an unrelated matter, and largely just so we could try to scout the interior of the burgomeister's manor), Julieton proved a bit manipulative, managing to dupe Vargas into sending "her servants" (the non-human members of the party) to meet with his so as "to be taught how to better serve" and to have Trig (my character) depart with Izek Strazni so the two could speak privately. Vargas seemed very flattered by Julieton's attention, and has us suspicious of what she's scheming.

Trig's talk with Izek had him confirming to Izek that they're brothers, explaining that he (Trig) had assumed Izek dead in the same fire that killed their parents, and had only just found out a week previous that he was still alive. "If I'd known you were still alive, I'd have come back years ago." Izek seemed mollified by that, but as he'd been adopted by Vargas, he'd absorbed a lot of Vargas's vile viewpoints, in particular his racism toward anyone non-human. He wanted Trig to join up with him and they could run "the ravens" out of the inn, revealing that Urwin, Danika, and their children at Vallki's inn were wereravens and therefore "unnatural." Trig promised nothing, but it was an additional wrinkle to his own personal questline concerning Izek.

As for our unrelated matter to meet with Vargas, we reckoned that getting in his good graces would allow us to get easier access to his manor. We settled on acquiring property in the village, and fronted ourselves as representatives of Queen Julieton-- passing off our earlier introduction as "Lady Ireena" was traveling incognito and needing to see how well he ran the village before committing to anything. Vargas accepted that much, and while there was a "recent vacancy" in town (the death of Henrik the coffin-maker) he would only sell to us if we did something for him. And he wanted the inn. It was a money-maker in town, and he wanted it, and the family who ran it out on the streets. As we had reasons of our own to visit the winery, we more or less agreed to his terms, though we have no intention of giving him anything.

We also learned that Rictavio is not who he says he is. Shrewd questioning by Potentia drew out his real name-- Rudolf van Richten, as in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. He had been drawn to Barovia while hunting a vampire (not Strahd, though one of his minions) to avenge the death of his son. We agreed to keep his identity to ourselves, and learned that his erstwhile apprentice may have come to Barovia as well, a woman named Ezmerelda d'Avenir. When the party prepared to set out for the winery, Rictavio went east to try to find Madam Eva. We took Julieton with us, because while her skill in combat was unknown, we didn't want her out of our sight, when she'd proven subtly manipulative and Of Interest to Strahd.

We stopped off at an old tower on the way to the winery, a decrepit thing barely holding together, and learned it was an old wizard's tower that had an Antimagic Field inside and just outside it. While we didn't much care for the idea of staying in a place about ready to collapse, the antimagic field was useful, since it might that Strahd couldn't just teleport himself inside. Oliver also discovered that the piss-wine curse he got off one of the Vistani didn't work inside the tower, so he happily drank any wine someone could give him. But while we were there, Ezmerelda ("Ez") showed up, pursued by werewolves. The werewolves demanded she come out, and demanded we turn her over, but they weren't able to find a way in without triggering the tower's defenses (which threatened to shake the tower apart) or getting shot by one of our bows, so they departed. Ez was grateful for the help, and decided to head east to find Van Richten when we mentioned where he'd gone.

After that, we approached the winery, where a number of mobile plant-like blights shambled out of the vineyard toward us. Nothing too strenuous, and we've still got to clear out the evil druids attempting to poison the wine vats.

Dragonlance--

Sylphara slotted into the party easily enough, but she almost immediately got us into a political quagmire. She noticed many of her people, the Kagonesti, among the other elven contingents in the WSF camp, but wearing pendants that signified them as being part of "House Servitor." This is a Silvanesti elven house, whose people are the servants of other houses. But Kagonesti can't be born into a Silvanesti house. She tried to talk to some of the Kagonesti, only to get noticed by some Silvanesti officers, who muttered about "another wild one...needing re-education in the light of E'li." (E'li being the elven name for the god Paladine.) Well, she heard that, snapped back about it, and one of the officers got in her face and asked her, "What are you going to do about it, you filthy little mudblood?" And Sylphara bitch-slapped him for it.

The officer immediately called for the guards, but she just Misty Stepped back to our tent. And that's when we found out that the guy she'd slapped was Col. Windstrider, one of the two regents for the Silvanesti Princess (still considered "too young" to ascend the throne after her father's death), and under military law, the colonel was within his rights to demand justice, which would entail cutting her hand off at the very least. Sylphara revealed that in her time (she had been displaced 149 years into her future after we rescued her, having no way to get her back to her own time), she had been a defender of her people against this sort of thing, the sort of supremacist thinking that the city-dwelling elves needed to teach civilization to the "wildlings," and had destroyed many "re-education camps."

We managed to get to Lord Gunther, head of the WSF's overall forces, first, and while we were convinced the Kagonesti were not serving of their own free will, this wouldn't be sufficient until and unless we could prove it. We had at best 5 days to find it before the court martial would begin.

We managed to finagle a way into talking to Princess Alhana without either of her regents present (describing it as a social call-- despite Runa's blundering inability to stop talking, since every time she tried to interject with a comment, it made it worse), and to hear her say it, the Kagonesti had been refugees same as the Qualinesti and Silvanesti elves after the Great Green Wyrm Cyan Bloodbane had spread the Nightmare out from Silvanest, poisoning the land, twisting it against its inhabitants and raising the undead. And as refugees, the Kagonesti had agreed to serve as repayment. We remained dubious, but she agreed to send two of her own personal servitors to attend us in our tent. And when we got to do so, assuring the servitors of discretion, they revealed that the "city elves" (Qualinesti and Silvanesti both) had been hunting their people down, forcing them into "the School" and teaching them that every elf has their place in the way of E'li, and that "the forest is not a place" according to these teachings. This was all bullshit, of course, and it was effectively slavery. Those Kagonesti that passed through the School were kept in line by being told that the city elves were "keeping their children safe" for them. They did let us know that there were resistance fighters, being led by someone called Lioness.

We checked in with our allies in the Qualinesti, the children of the king, Laurana and Gilthanas, who were horrified to hear about this. They had heard of Kagonesti being given shelter as refugees, but the School was not something they knew of and did not like it. Between this, Alhana's innocence, and the flat support of Lord Gunther and the dwarf king Hornfel, we knew we had allies to hand, and we rode out for the forests where the elves had been displaced by the Nightmare.

We quickly came across a Qualinesti hunting party that had been stalking a group of Kagonesti, and so we dispatched them, but the Kagonesti had just been bait for the Qualinesti-- a trap laid by Lioness, who took us to her grove camp. Turns out Lioness had been one of the Kagonesti that Sylphara had liberated from a re-education camp shortly before her ill-fated time-travel mission, and now she was a powerful warrior in her own right-- being 6'2" (a giant in Kagonesti terms, when they're usually in the 4-5' range) and wielding a greatsword taller than she was. She helped us scout out the School and told us there was a supply caravan en route the following evening, which she would attack as a distraction to let us infiltrate the School and find the documentation we needed to "expose the rot" so we could cut it out, "root and stem."

Infiltrating the School's compound involved going in through the sewers again, but we managed to get into the compound and then the School proper without getting spotted. And we found the proof we needed-- official documents bearing the seal of the Silvanesti regents and the Qualinesti king, proving the rot went all the way up. Getting out almost went poorly, we got spotted running back to the sewers, but we got out before they could attack us, then rode balls-out back to the WSF camp, covered in sewer muck, to deliver the documents to Lord Gunther.

When Laurana and Gilthanas found out their father was involved, they were furious, and furious further at the regent that came with Alhana to Gunther's tent, almost coming to blows. But Alhana, when she read the documents and realized what the regents had been doing in her name, she ordered the regent with her arrested. Laurana and Gilthanas's father later "took the honorable way out" and Gilthanas ascended the throne in his place. The next day, we rode back into the forest at the head of a few regiments, met up with Lioness, and marched up to the School, where Col. Windstrider was thrown off the battlements by his own soldiers when they surrendered. The Kagonesti prisoners were freed and the School was burned to the ground. Everyone who was complicit in the enslavement of the Kagonesti were cast out of elven society, branded as "dark elves" (not drow - drow don't exist in the Dragonlance setting), shunned and exiled. Sylphara didn't think this was enough, but accepted that justice was done-- her people were free, which was the important thing.

And then, better news-- the metallic dragons were joining the fight on the side of the WSF! My cleric Gavin's wife, Gwyneth, delivered this news personally. While the dragonlances themselves weren't ready yet, the WSF needed to train up dragonriders to wield them, and our party would be responsible for some of that training, so we needed to be trained up, ourselves. This entailed bonding with dragon mounts. (Gwyneth: "You don't get a choice." Gavin: "As if I'd bond with any other dragon but you!") So the party were introduced to their respective new mounts-- Evrouin to the gold dragon Firestar (who otherwise took the form of a gold-armored dwarf), Runa to the copper dragon Starwing (otherwise a Silvanesti elf in copper robes), and Sylphara to the copper dragon Fleetwing (otherwise a Kagonesti elf man with copper skin)-- and then taken up on an "familiarization flight." And after that, some drinking was done among everyone but Gwyneth and Gavin, who wondered if the world was ready for the introduction of dragon drinking culture to the already volatile mix of dwarf and barbarian drinking cultures.

This did lead to a fun little bit the next morning, as the DM describes the hangovers everyone else is having, and as soon as he finishes, I describe a cheerful Gavin coming into the tent with a bright and too loud, "Good morning, everyone!" (He brought coffee to keep them from trying to kill him.) And there followed the bonding ritual, in which the party got a sensation of what it was like to be a dragon and how they flew, moved, and cast magic, with the dragons in kind getting a sense of what each party member could do in combat situations and similar.

We're now at Level 15 and will be getting our signature items' last Tier 3 upgrade, which should be fun. And Chris, our new player, may have a 5th player ready to join, too.