Tabletop Fun

[Ceir]

Got to try something new at FLGS board game night, this week, Deep Regrets, a Lovecraftian fishing game. Despite screwing up in the midgame and not taking certain things into account for scoring, I did manage a Not Last on my first time playing. Enjoyable, and the fact that I can pinpoint the turn I screwed up is actually a good sign!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

We got back from the Icewall Glacier last session, after killing the Great White Wyrm, Icingdeath, and the White Knight of the Tears, Tharkassus.

This session, we found ourselves in a fight against the Great Green Wyrm, Cyan Bloodbane, whom we previously encountered in Silvanost, where he'd been torturing the "king" of the Silvanesti elves, unleashing a nightmarish blight and undead monsters on the forests, and where our previous wizard, Justinius, had managed to turn the Green Dragon Orb on Cyan and forced him to flee. But Bloodbane's Nightmare had wiped out a lot of Kagonesti elves too, including the entirety of Sylphara's tribe, the Skyfishers, who had been defending the rest of the Kagonesti.

Fortunately, we'd just come into possession of Lesser Dragonlances. Used from dragon back, these things provided a number of benefits-- +3 to attack and damage, +2 to AC (but could not be used in conjunction with other shields), resistance to dragon breath attacks (half damage on failed saves, no damage on successful saves), as well as the coup de grace-- on a critical hit, the lance dealt additional radiant damage to dragons equal to the wielder's maximum HP.

We were also joined by about ten other dragonriders from the Whitestone Forces-- including several members of the Companions (aka characters from the Dragonlance novels) such as Caramond, Goldmoon, Riverwind, and so on. They also got Lesser Dragonlances, and they came in clutch against the Green Dragon Army and Black Dragon Army's dragonriders.

Cyan Bloodbane is dead, with Sylphara getting the final blow, declaring, "The last Skyfisher has her vengeance."

Only, we don't get a lot of time to rest on our laurels. While en route to this new battle, we'd spotted the Blue Dragon Army watching from the nearby Kalkist Mountains-- and they had the dreaded Death Knight known as Lord Soth with them. But after the battle, the BDA just went back into the mountains. We know their goal is to march on Palanthas, since Soth has a hatred for the city.

Plus side, it will take Soth and the BDA about 14 days to reach the city, while it will take our party considerably less, and the WSF will be able to get to the city a few days ahead of the BDA. The BDA will be avoiding the High Clerist Tower, on the belief that it's still garrisoned, while the WSF can pass by the High Clerist Tower without problems.

Main worries we have are that we didn't see any Knights of the Tears with the Dragon Armies in the battle, but we heard then that, after killing Icingdeath and Tharkassus, the Emperor called back the other Knights, as well as the Red Dragon Army, to reinforce his capital. Also that Kitiara Uth Matar, the Highlord of the BDA, may have her own objective and plans on moving on the Empire.

[Nunavut Pants]

Wow, I got within a hair's breadth of winning three Terraforming Mars games in a row!

In the first one, I played a corp whose (money) income went up each time anyone played a Jovian tag. I wound up with 8 Jovian tags, plus a card that gave me 1 VP/Jovian, and one that gave me 1 TR (which is income and VP) for each Jovian. I also had played Pets early on, which is 1/2 VP per city tile played, and there were a bunch of them played! Plus I had two cards which fed into each other nicely; one that would occasionally allow me to place an "asteroid resource" on it which was worth 1 VP, and another which allowed me to pay a bit of money to place an asteroid resource on any card.

Even with all of that, it still came down to a tiebreaker! I had more money at the end so I won. 106/106/101; tiebreaker was 76 money to 67.

The second game I noticed after a while that I was in contention for first place in all of the Awards. So I funded the three I was best in, which is a nice 15 points. I had set myself up for another VP at the end but miscounted by 1 money. Turned out that was the difference; I tied with another player for VP and lost on the tiebreaker.

The third game was not nearly as close. I worked my way toward the Builder milestone (8 building tags) and also bumped up my income. Turned out the income got high enough to claim the Specialist milestone, and I played enough cards with requirements to also claim the Tactician milestone. Finally I grabbed the Builder one as well. The extra income was also enough for me to be in first place for the Banker Achievement, so I funded that, and I made sure to work myself into (tied) first place in the Naturalist one, which an opponent funded. Those 25 points were more than enough to put me into first place by the end.

Scores were: 80/74/55

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

I'd originally signed up for a Tier 3 game (lv 11-16) because I've been wanting to play in Tier 3 for a while, and either the timing's not worked out, or the tables filled up before I could get in.

Then I get a message from the DM for the Tier 3 game-- it was a continuing adventure, and it was meant to be closed for only the continuing players, would they mind if they instead put me on a different DM's table, a Tier 1 (lv 1-4) game? I was disappointed, but I agreed.

I had realized in the lead-up to the game, as well, that AL now allows players to use a new set of sub-classes from the recently released Ravenloft 5.5e expansion, and since AL also allows you to re-spec your character between adventures, I re-spec'd a level 3 character of mine, a firbolg ranger called Nico Longfellow, from a Gloomstalker Ranger into the new Hollow Warden Ranger.

Gloomstalkers are basically built around stealth and early-combat advantages, which I'd looked forward to trying. But Hollow Wardens are basically pseudo-lycanthropes (without the usual drawbacks, such as vulnerabilities to silver, etc) that can transform into a "ghastly form" that can frighten enemies and gets some bonus abilities, like a bonus to AC and extra capability for opportunity attacks. (Higher levels grant additional bonuses.)

I do commonly give my characters a voice or accent, for my own entertainment (and plenty of other players in our AL chapter do the same), and without really intending to, I ended up giving Nico a pseudo-Slavic accent. And Logan, one of the other players, unconsciously started copying the accent, and then admitted that he was just going to roll with it. I totally understood that, as echolalia (a repetition of another's vocalizations) is something I can find myself doing as well.

All good fun.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Curse of Strahd '26--

Hoo, boy. This almost went very badly, and it still did go very badly.

So, in our previous session, we did some administrative work, as it were, converting the coffin-maker's shop into our new bastion-- essentially a homebase that can grant benefits when completing a long rest in it-- and trying to follow up on some of our leads. But we decided to head back to Barovia Town to take Ireena back home to her brother Ismark. We found that he had apparently hooked up with Ezmerelda d'Avenir, and they were both happy in one another's company. There were some in-retrospect strange things about their interactions and everything that we should have twigged about sooner, but our initial Insight checks weren't high enough and it was easy for us (both IC and OOC) to chalk them up to the relationship upgrade.

But we also discovered that Father Donovich in the local church was dead and his freshly-turned vampire son was missing from the church's basement where he'd been kept. We returned to the church to confront the "new priest" that had turned up, and sure enough, it was the son, Doru-- and he thanked Ismark and Ez for bringing the party to him, whereupon Ez sank her fangs into our paladin's neck.

This session was the fight that followed that. A fight against ultimately six vampiric enemies-- Ismark & Ez were legendary opponents (and so had extra tricks at their disposal), while Doru and three Vistani women were lesser vampires. One of the dangerous things about vampires is that if they hit you with their bite attack, they not only can recover their health, they can reduce your max HP. With Ismark & Ez's legendary actions (letting them take action multiple times per round), this made this a potentially deadly encounter.

Early on in the fight, my rogue was knocked prone by Doru, but never got a chance to get back up. Even after Doru was taken out, Ismark was able to attack my rogue, biting him and bringing his health down to zero, then attacking him, giving me two immediate failed death saves. The only reason Trig didn't die on his turn from a third failed death save was because he had an Inspiration die to roll. He got healed, but before his turn could come back up, he was downed again-- came back to consciousness again off a Nat-20 death save-- and then got downed again by the other enemies, and furthermore got paralyzed by a poison that lasted for an hour. The only people who could remove the paralysis were too busy trying to keep themselves alive and dealing with the enemies to spend the resources to get me back up.

We managed to survive, but we're now heavily depleted on resources-- spell slots expended, HP max reduced in many cases, and other resources not replenishing until a full long rest can be completed.

I had joked at the start of the session, "So does everyone have their backup characters ready?" and by the end of the session, I noted, "So about those backup characters..."

[Ceir]

Been a while since I posted about any of my own game nights. We decided it was co-op week this go-round; WW2 games aren't normally my thing, but gave Black Orchestra a go. It's a non-comedic "kill Hitler" apparently based around actual unsuccessful and theoretical assassination plots from during the war. Also a hard game, apparently - the owner said this was only the second time he's seen the players win, for yes, we changed history.

Still waiting to put my name down for the new Star Trek: Captain's Chair boxes at the FLGS. After much faff, Wizkids has finally announced a release date this month (they were originally supposed to release, oh, last December), but we'll see if they actually flipping make it. It is Wizkids, after all.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I had joked at the start of the session, "So does everyone have their backup characters ready?" and by the end of the session, I noted, "So about those backup characters..."

DM Phil has actually responded to this "joke" of mine on our Discord, pointing out that we're too far into the campaign now (Level 8) to try onboarding a new (backup) character, and has suggested that anyone whose PC does die may have to take up an NPC as their "character" for the rest of the campaign. While also suggesting that "death may not be the end" for a PC.

Which just says to me that my half-elf ranger backup character may just have to sit in my head until and unless we do a second campaign or something.

ETA: So we had our latest session last night, and beforehand, while we were waiting on the rest of the players to show up, we got to chatting as we do. Some comment was made about some rule "being more of a guideline," which prompted me to quote Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean. We briefly collectively gushed about the franchise (or at least the earlier installments) -- and then Phil suggested that a pirate-themed campaign would be a neat idea. We quickly agreed, and that led to me remarking that it wouldn't be too difficult for me to retool my backup character to fit that theme, and I mentioned that the idea was a Hollow Warden, a Ranger subclass from the new Ravenloft 5.5e book. I didn't reveal anything else (backstory will be necessarily adjusted) but we may have ideas percolating for our next campaign already!

Curse of Strahd '26--

After our FAFO encounter with the vampirized Ismark & Ez last session, we realized we needed to get somewhere safer to get a proper long rest in to recover ourselves, and the only place conceivable for that was back in Vallaki. We had to decide what to do about Ireena, who we didn't want to leave behind (as Barovia Town isn't safe), but my character pointed out that it must ultimately be Ireena's decision whether to stay or go. She chose to come with us, as much as it pained her to leave her home again.

We had to camp before reaching Vallaki, and ended up outside the Old Bonegrinder mill, where these old women made and sold "dream pies." These magical pastries allowed anyone who consumed them complete a Long Rest without the penalties of being outside a "place of safety," with the caveat that they were addicting, and going without could lead to a character taking levels of exhaustion. Three party members had previously had pies-- and Trig and Oliver had both kicked their addictions, after some effort-- but we were wary of them. We (IC and OOC) understood that the women in the mill were Hags (wicked fey creatures that fill a lot of the "wicked witch" tropes), but were also wary of starting a fight against a coven of hags in our depleted state. (Reminder that most of the party were at reduced max HP and very low on spell slots and resources.)

So we were just going to spend the night camped outside the mill-- but Willow the druid (who had last watch) heard someone sobbing inside the mill. She woke up our paladin and tried to ask Ophelia (one of the hags) about it, and was told it was "just spirits." But then Willow heard someone cry out, "No, please don't go!" as the door was shut, recognizing it to be a young child's voice. She woke up the rest of the party, tried to scout inside with her familiar-- and saw a young boy being kept in a cage inside. Naturally this meant Trig, my rogue, had to get involved, because one of his core tenets is "You don't hurt kids."

That led to our confronting the coven, with a side helping of endless slimes. One of the hags was Morgantha, one of the three primal hags of Barovia who we needed to deal with as part of the overarching quest. Despite being low on max HP (I'm presently at -40 to my max HP due to the vampire fight), Trig paid dividends because of how I built the character--

Rogues don't get extra attacks at higher levels, unlike other martial classes. Their party piece in combat is their Sneak Attack, which requires one of two triggers to activate. Either the Rogue needs to have advantage on the attack, or they need to have an ally within 5 feet of the target. I built Trig with the "Magic Initiate (Wizard)" feat, giving me access to two cantrips and one 1st level spell per Long Rest. I took the cantrips Dancing Lights (so I can light up dark areas to see) and True Strike (which allows me to deal radiant damage with a melee attack - and deals extra damage as I level up), and the 1st level spell Find Familiar, letting me summon a familiar to aid in combat. Trig's familiar Rook is flavored as a crow, but mechanically an Owl-- Owls have the Flyby trait, letting them avoid taking opportunity attacks. So I can have Rook swoop in to distract an enemy to give me advantage on the first attack-- and if that first attack is successful, my next attack against that target on my next turn gets advantage because of my weapon masteries on my rapier and shortbow. That way, I get Sneak Attack on my attacks no matter what.

At level 8, I have an extra 4d6 Sneak Attack damage to add to my attacks (either 1d8 with the rapier or 1d6 with the bow), and by putting True Strike on there, I can add an additional 1d6 damage, which I can also make radiant, in case the enemy has resistance to non-magical damage. Which means I'm rolling 1d8+5d6+5 damage on my rapier with a True Strike Sneak Attack. (For an average of 23 damage per turn.) Those numbers stack up over time.

And the fight against the hags was a little hairy at times because of the endlessly respawning slimes drawing some aggro from our party, but late in the combat, Morgantha cast a spell called Evard's Black Tentacles, which can damage and restrain anyone in its AoE that fails a DEX save. In the penultimate round of combat, I hit Morgantha with my shortbow before my familiar was hit by the spell and destroyed. It was on the next turn of combat, when the DM asked me to roll the DEX save again, that I realized-- Evard's Black Tentacles is a concentration spell, meaning that Morgantha had needed to pass a check to see if she lost concentration from my attack. The DM rolled and she failed, meaning I was able to sprint after the escaping Hag, corner her in the attic of the mill and attack her-- without Sneak Attack (since my familiar was dead, and no allies were in range), but even only rolling 1d8+1d6 ended up dealing exactly enough damage to kill her.

We captured her spirit in an iron flask, because she is necessary for part of our main quest, and rescued the little boy that the hags had been fattening up for consumption. Now we're headed back to Vallaki to hopefully recuperate and get back to full strength again.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

We finally convened again (most of us) after almost a month. The party had just reached the city of Palanthas again, now having to prepare to defend it against a possible siege by the Blue Dragon Army. Mike was absent, so his PC, Evro, was pulled to help reassure people and give speeches to calm their newfound panic at the realization that "yes, indeed, the war can and will come to your city."

Meanwhile, the rest of us were contacted by the Monks of the Lost Rose-- a monastic order that collected and preserved knowledge, and who worked for the WSF as its intelligence gathering wing-- about a problem in the city. They'd managed to subdue and capture (at great effort) a man who appeared to be alive, but undead-- no pulse or other signs of life, but clearly sentient and intelligent. They'd shackled him by hands and feet to the wall, blindfolded, deafened, and gagged him. Gavin, my cleric, ended up recognizing him as a high-ranking Cleric of Takhisis from the Third Dragon War (thus making him as old as the ageless Gavin), and so we had to figure out what to do about him. The monks had revealed that the captured cleric had been searching for "the Everman," aka the Green Gemstone Man, in the city. The Everman had been on our radar, if only to find him before the bad guys. Questioning the undead-cleric would be tricky-- a Zone of Truth wasn't a guarantee of success, since the undead-cleric could just not answer, and Gavin was adamantly opposed to torture, even against the undead.

So Gavin and Thalenis the Wizard went to go hit up the Great Library for information, eventually learning about a Takhisian ritual that could (with the will of Takhisis herself) turn her High Priest into a Bane Priest, described as being like the cleric-equivalent of a lich. Similar to a lich, this involved the Bane Priest containing pieces of his soul into phylacteries, but in this case, it required six other powerful clerics of Takhisis to become "Saints of Takhisis" before performing the ritual. The cleric we'd captured was one of these phylacteries. It was also noted that destroying the Bane Priest required destroying the Saints first, but destroying the Saints could only be done in a way specific to each Saint. No information was available in the Library about what those ways might be.

And while that was happening, Sylphara the Ranger decided to test whether the captured Saint was vulnerable to holy water by dribbling some on him-- and he promptly vanished in a whisp of smoke, along with his equipment. When the rest of the party found out when we returned, we knew we were on the clock. Between Thalenis reaching out to the Wizard Conclave for assistance, and Gavin communing with his goddess Mishakal-- and some divine intervention called forth by some allied clerics-- we got the information we needed about the Saints. Each Saint was notorious for particular personality flaws, and so the items needed to destroy them ("Saint-banes") were specific to that, but each of the Saint-banes were located on other planes of existence-- the four elemental planes, the Negative Energy plane, and... Takhisis's Library in the Abyss. The wizards could send teams to retrieve the first five, but that last one was beyond their ability.

Fortunately, Thalenis's outreach had put him in touch with Dalamar, now the apprentice to Raistlin Majere, who had become the Master of the Palanthas Tower of High Sorcery. And Raistlin was intrigued enough with our plight to agree to meet. We'd learned why Berem the Everman was so crucial to the enemy-- the green gemstone in his chest was the result of a curse placed on him, but the gemstone was also the last piece the enemy needed to complete the Temple of Takhisis, which would become the bridge through which Takhisis could return from the Abyss in her full power. Raistlin had no desire to see that happen-- even if we suspected he had ulterior motives-- and so agreed to help us. His time among the Empire had allowed him to acquire a special tuning fork, attuned to the Abyss, through which he could open a portal to that plane. Between him and Thalenis, they opened the portal and sent through a troop of undead from the Dread Grove around the Tower to retrieve the last Saint-bane.

By this point, we had all six Saint-banes, and our allies went to handle "delivery." Runa the Barbarian's ancestral spirits had located the Saints and Bane Priest. So our allies went off, while Gavin cast the Forbiddance spell on the Lord-Mayor's Palace, so that undead could not enter it. From there, we went to go find the Everman-- Runa had managed to get enough of a description for her ancestral spirits to locate him-- as the Saints were all destroyed. Berem the Everman still didn't want to stick around-- he was aware that bad people were hunting him, and preferred to stay on the move-- but we captured him and brought him back to the palace for his own safety.

Just in time, too, since the Bane Priest showed up, got briefly whammied by the Forbiddance spell, and then demanded we hand over the Everman-- and started casually snapping necks when we refused. We had a brief clash with him, as Gavin and our allied clerics bombarded him with magic. Sylphara's arrows couldn't reach him, and Runa ran straight into some AOE emanation he put out that she failed to make it through. Fortunately, I had enough high-level spell slots left (important because the Bane Priest was immune to all magic below 6th level) that I started upcasting spells, and off a 7th-level Guiding Bolt, hit a Nat-20! on the roll.

That was a total of 20d6 radiant damage. Ended up rolling 72 on the dice-- and because the Bane Priest was vulnerable to radiant damage, that was a whopping 144 radiant damage to him, enough to destroy him. "Go back to your mistress in the Abyss!"

The clerics were all able to Revivify the people that had been killed by the Bane Priest, just as Evro and the Lord-Mayor returned to go "uh... WTF?!"

[Jay 2K Winger]

Ah, Adventurers League rules... I do love being able to play around with character builds and such, but now their rules aren't letting me have some fun.

Per AL rules, we must use the most recent version of anything. Classes, species, items, spells, etc. If something gets replaced with a new version, we have to use the new version. This is especially true as D&D moves from 5e to 5.5e.

There's a species called "shifter", which are essentially half-lycanthropes. They can change into a sort of bestial appearance (not necessarily lupine), which the player chooses when they pick the species. There's a variety of shifter types to choose from, which provide various benefits when shifted. One of these shifts, called "wildhunt," provides-- among other effects-- immunity to advantage, i.e. enemies cannot roll with advantage against you while shifted.

My intent had been to play a shifter barbarian, shift to wildhunt mode on my first turn of combat, then rage on my second, and be able to use the barbarian Reckless Attack feature-- which gives the barbarian advantage on their attack roles, but gives any enemies advantage against them-- without any drawback.

Alas, the shifter species-- previously available in 5e through Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, making the species available throughout all AL modules-- was updated for 5.5e with the Eberron: Forge of the Artificer splat. And AL ruled that the only thing from that splat which was available across all AL modules is the updated Artificer class. Everything else was restricted for AL modules set in Eberron, and there aren't many modules that do so. Meaning my shifter barbarian can only be used if my AL chapter ever runs an Eberron module.

Alas.

I was describing the character and the fun I could potentially have with it to one of our chapter's DMs last week, leading to this exchange--

Me: "Basically, I can Reckless with no downside."
Him: "Cool." (DM mode) "Make an Intelligence save for me."
Me: "Haha, yeah, well, my barb's not actually that--" (double-checking, sees character's INT score of 8) "--yeah, okay, that... yeah."

It was all in good fun.

Although, while I understand wanting to provide a challenge and all, you don't maybe have to come up with challenges to specifically prevent me from getting to go ham with a character. </s>

[Jay 2K Winger]

So my Curse of Strahd '26 group is definitely going to be running a pirate-themed campaign next (even though we're still narratively far from the end of CoS), and we're already in some discussion about characters and similar. Phil the DM has even already set up a channel on our Discord for discussion, posting of some additional rules we'll be using (some involving firearms, swimming, etc) and has basically said we'll be using the Dragonlance setting.

I was chatting with Phil and Kim about my character concept-- a sea elf Hollow Warden ranger-- which got Kim slightly disappointed, because she wanted to play a sea elf as well. I pointed out there was nothing that said we couldn't have more than one of a species in the crew. When she admitted the concept she's got in mind is "sea witch," I had to tell her, "You and I will need to discuss things a bit, if you go that route." (Not least because my ranger's backstory is entangled with a sea hag.) She also said she was using an anglerfish as partial inspiration, which is cool and all, even if my brain's contaminated by listening to The Magnus Archives and I can't hear the word 'anglerfish' without hearing the question, "Can I have a cigarette?" (IYKYK)

[dalesys]

... She also said she was using an anglerfish as partial inspiration, which is cool and all, even if my brain's contaminated by listening to The Magnus Archives and I can't hear the word 'anglerfish' without hearing the question, "Can I have a cigarette?" (IYKYK)

Topical reference to Jennie Breeden's daughter's appearance on July 28, 2026: https://thedevilspanties.com/archives/17124

[Ceir]

So my Curse of Strahd '26 group is definitely going to be running a pirate-themed campaign next (even though we're still narratively far from the end of CoS), and we're already in some discussion about characters and similar. Phil the DM has even already set up a channel on our Discord for discussion, posting of some additional rules we'll be using (some involving firearms, swimming, etc) and has basically said we'll be using the Dragonlance setting.

I was chatting with Phil and Kim about my character concept-- a sea elf Hollow Warden ranger-- which got Kim slightly disappointed, because she wanted to play a sea elf as well. I pointed out there was nothing that said we couldn't have more than one of a species in the crew. When she admitted the concept she's got in mind is "sea witch," I had to tell her, "You and I will need to discuss things a bit, if you go that route." (Not least because my ranger's backstory is entangled with a sea hag.) She also said she was using an anglerfish as partial inspiration, which is cool and all, even if my brain's contaminated by listening to The Magnus Archives and I can't hear the word 'anglerfish' without hearing the question, "Can I have a cigarette?" (IYKYK)

Yarr.

So. Star Realms is one of the few deckbuilding games I actually enjoy, because it's small and fast and I can actually parse how to make stuff work. There's a Star Trek re-theme of it that's okay - the gameplay doesn't feel very Trek, but I will still absolutely argue that there need to be more small, approachable Star Trek games. Turns out ST Realms has an expansion that adds an actual solitaire/bossfight mode - it is the Borg, of course, and I finally scored a copy of it. The rulebook is pretty janky for something so small, and I had to look a couple things up on BGG, but I've gotten a few tries in solitaire mode now. And by grepthar's hammer I am getting my face beaten in using RAW. The bossfight mode's balance for actual solitaire is pretty wonky. It's entirely thematic for the Borg to curbstomp, but when I can play three rounds and then go 'welp, I've lost', it's a bit of a drag. Will give it another go with one or two of the difficulty reducers that the BGG forum was talking about.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

So, previous session (the one after we killed the Bane Priest) was our big battle against the Blue Dragon Army and the undead horde of Lord Soth (or "Soth's Lot" as I called them) as they laid siege to Palanthas. It was mostly our aerial combat against the BDA's dragonriders, while Soth broke down the gates to the city and started setting fire to it, but soon it became clear that Lady Kitiara (the leader of the BDA) had some other goal in mind, as she booked it for the Palanthas Tower of High Sorcery, and Soth seemed to be pursuing her from the ground. The Tower's Master, Raistlin Majere, and his apprentice both turned out and decided to go "rocks fall, everybody dies" on the dragons approaching his Tower, killing Kitiara in the process.

She and her dragon crashed at the base of the Tower, and Evrouin & Gavin landed there, as did Raistlin and his apprentice, who demanded to know WTF was going on. But that's when Soth rode up, completely bypassing the Dread Grove surrounding it, pointing to Kitiara's soul as it pleaded for help, stating that she belonged to him. Turned out she'd made a deal with Soth-- he'd serve her in life, and she would serve him in death. Evro & Gavin, being Lawful Good, were torn on how to respond. "Good" means they should have helped her, but they were wary of challenging the immensely powerful Lord Soth, while "Lawful" meant they were allowed to tell her "You made a deal, you have to honor it." And Raistlin wasn't lifting a finger to help his half-sister.

Then suddenly this mist rose up out of the Grove and out of it came a figure we dubbed "The Pale Rider." But it was almost immediately clear this was, in fact, Jack Whales-- our DM's character from our Curse of Strahd campaign, who canonically returned to Barovia after all was said and done to make a deal with every Dark Power in the Amber Temple. The Pale Rider told Soth that he'd come to the attention of his bosses, and he'd been sent to collect him. He pulled Kitiara's spirit onto his horse and then rode off, as the mists arose and when they subsided, all of Soth and his horde were gone-- claimed by the Mists of Ravenloft.

Raistlin didn't care about Kitiara, just wanted the party to leave, and so we left.

Thus ended the battle, and we reached Level 18 - and set up the final evolution of our signature items. DM Bob had given each PC a "signature item" during character creation, something which has grown in power as we've reached certain tiers of play.

Before this week's session, Bob told us to have in mind a narrative hook to set up how that signature item might reach it. And we roleplayed that at the start of the session. Gavin the Cleric was praying in his shrine, reflecting on his journey and still experiencing guilt for giving the okay for the Bombing of Neraka (aka Jesse's Pocket Nuke) -- and he was suddenly transported to the Fields of Elysium, where he met Mishakal, his goddess. She gently told him that he needed to let go of his guilt, that if he had truly transgressed, there would have been repercussions already, and to be more confident in himself. Gavin was wary of being too confident-- arrogance had led to the Cataclysm, after all-- and she said humility was good, but self-denigration was a little much. He thanked her for her faith in him, and got to briefly spend some time with his long-departed childhood friends Magius, Huma Dragonbane, and Heart (Huma's wife), and Huma & Heart's son.

Runa meditated a bit and likewise got some spiritual guidance, from her tribe's elemental guardian spirit, the Guardian of Flame. She wondered why her swords had felt heavier recently, and was told that the swords reflected the heart of the wielder -- she was still aching from the loss of Justinius, and needed to let go of her sorrow. This was a difficult thing for her, and she was still consumed with the thirst for vengeance against Ember the Great Red Wyrm, who had nearly wiped out her people. But the Guardian pointed out that Ember's ambitions were the total subjugation of all peoples, and Runa and her friends had done more to stop those ambitions than anyone else. Runa was able to let go of Justinius-- not forget him, but finally able to process her grief, and be ready at last to be chieftain for her tribe.

Thalenis was informed by the intellect that inhabited his wizard's staff that he might need access to the higher level functions of the staff, but getting that access required a test, an interview with representations of those who had created the staff-- the Founders of the Orders of High Sorcery, who questioned why Thalenis needed them. Given the fight that approached, including confronting an evil goddess bent on world domination, he needed access to the staff's plane shift capabilities, and the Founders cautioned him. Destroying a god in their home plane causes an imbalance in the multiverse, one which must be balanced, either with a corresponding loss on the opposing side, or by replacing the loss with something equally powerful. After he reckoned that merely finding a way to stop Takhisis from escaping the Abyss would be the safer option, Thalenis was deemed worthy to get the full suite of magic from the staff.

He tried to do some legend lore magic on Lord Soth (Thalenis hadn't witnessed the encounter with the Pale Rider) to learn more about what happened to him, and as Patrick (Thalenis's player) got ready to make some notes, DM Bob passed me an index card with some notes on it. Right at the top, he'd written, "I need you to be Dolan." and included some notes for the roleplay. So as Thalenis cast the spell, he got just enough of a glimpse of Lord Soth stalking around an Eastern European-style castle in a perpetually overcast land (Barovia) before he was shunted out of the vision and confronted by the astral projection of a dwarven paladin, "Just what the hell d'ya think you're doing?" Just as Bob had gotten to show off what had happened to his Strahd character, now it had been established that my Strahd character, Dolan Brakenshield, was also still out there in the multiverse, now part of an order that monitors the Dark Powers and their agent (the Pale Rider) to make sure that the latter doesn't start "freelance work." Dolan got to explain to Thalenis that the Dark Powers sought out powerful and wicked people to pull into the Mists, setting up domains specifically designed to punish them, and further warned him against prying too much further. Thalenis agreed not to do so, letting the matter drop.

Chris & Mike's PCs will get their own "insightful meetings" to power up their signature items next week, probably, as Mike couldn't make it because his brother had gotten tickets to go see Rush, and Chris came down with the runs. We explained their absence from the post-insight upgrades by their respective coming down with horrible shits thanks to tainted lettuce.

From there, there was a bit of fluff, going to visit the inn we'd first stayed in and touching base with the innkeepers and their son. Runa also found out that her tribesfolk had linked up with the gnome engineers to pitch their crazy ideas (such as strapping a gnome to their chest and having them armed with twin flamethrowers), and basically put her foot down, took charge as chieftain, and placated them by saying the one with the highest kill count later would get their ideas brought to fruition. She also introduced them to a sort of homebrewed Potion of Haste that the innkeepers had developed, which grants the effects of the Haste spell, but unlike the spell (which causes the imbiber to get the boost for a minute, followed by a level of exhaustion that lasts for a minute), the potion's after-effects afflicts level of exhaustion that lingers until cleared. The potion was dubbed Monster.

As we determined that going after the remaining Knights of the Tears was the next goal (taking four powerful spellcasters out of play would be a good idea before assaulting the imperial capital), we had to do some intel gathering. Clerics came in handy here and we learned that each Knight had departed the Orders of High Sorcery for various reasons and had specialized in a particular school of magic.

Karathermin the Red Knight was an Evoker that liked to blow things up. He'd advocated the Orders join with the Empire, and left to do so himself to seek power. We've sort of already characterized him as basically a redneck that throws fireballs.

Beregrim the Blue Knight was a Mind-Controller, an enchanter that specialized in domination magic to an extent that even the Black Robe wizards thought was too much.

Vertigern the Green Knight was a Summoner, a conjurer who was basically an elf in an endless sulking rage about being exiled for turning evil. We scryed on him getting tag-teamed by a pair of succubi that he'd summoned.

Argilac the Black Knight was essentially "fantasy Dr Moreau," a Kagonesti elf that hated how his people had been enslaved and had extended that hate to all of society and wanted to destroy civilization as a whole. He was an expert in transmutation magic, and we scryed on him turning a giant ape into a horrific chimera with wyvern stingers in its arms, shark teeth, and gorgon snake-hair. The forest surrounding the Knights' headquarters was full of his creations.

On top of that, their headquarters-- a storm wracked island in the middle of the Blood Sea-- had been reinforced by the Great Black Wyrm.

So we needed to find a way to get close enough to their HQ to challenge them, preferably individually, and also deal with a primordial ancient acid-spitting dragon.

No pressure, yeah?