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lichlair · 4 years

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A Rundown of the Seven Wonders Campaign — Part One (Barovia)

Been DM’ing this one for a while! There’s a more detailed description of the player characters here but the basic descriptions of the party:

Aegis — warforged bard (homebrew subclass). Arrives late.

Aera — aarakocra storm herald barbarian.

Jeff Humanman — human champion fighter.

Marvey — firbolg grave cleric / druid

Meyloni — tiefling life cleric.

Mila — shadar-kai swords bard / rogue

Willow — air genasi divination wizard / monk

We start in Barovia. Not canon Barovia, I decided to scrap that idea from session one. My City Now.

Six individuals meet up on a foggy road underneath a single oil lantern with no idea who the rest are or how they got there. As far as each of them are concerned, they were traveling on their own paths before getting lost in a thick fog and showing up here.

They travel together, figuring it’s best to stay in a group for now. The first band of travelers they find (or rather, sneak up on their campsite) explain approximately what’s going on: this is a demiplane called Barovia, ruled by the Lord Strahd, a vampire. The only way to get out is with Strahd’s permission — or to kill him, but no one’s able to do that. The party continues onward, but are turned away at the gates to the first town they encounter as they are told there is a problem with fiends.

The party are tasked with finding the source of these fiends and they move on to an old temple to the god Jergal (pronounced Her-gall cause that’s way better). Marvey made a minor connection with this god, as the two of them had a shared occupation as archivists. What they find there is an abandoned lab, once dedicated to the research and study of undead creatures, and how to destroy them. They find a half-orc man in a cage, and determine him to be vampire spawn. His name was Titus.

Mila stayed back with Titus, not wanting to venture into this lab. He first intimidated Titus — thoroughly terrified him in fact — while the rest of the party moved deeper. Guilty at scaring an imprisoned man, Mila changed tacts to try to befriend Titus instead. However, as he was separated from the party, a minor demon approached to attack him. Mila opened the cage and forced Titus to flee, following him. The two of them blocked the door as this quasit attempted to break through. The rest of the party moved through the lab and eventually encountered the source of the trouble, defeating the head demon. They dragged the corpse out with them and back to the town to show it off as evidence, and brought the vampire Titus with them.

At night, the party was lured out of their rooms. When they returned, Titus was gone, with signs of a struggle. The party traveled deeper into Barovia to track him down. They encountered a patch of violet fungus, after which Marvey became a host to these creatures, with small mushroom stalks sprouting from her shoulder.

They stopped briefly in another town that was ruled by a cultist. While here, Willow received an odd dream — one she was certain was from her god, Savras. It delivered the message: this is your fate, it cannot be changed. Willow ended up discovering the cult while taking a walk to clear her mind.

The cult had set up a series of murders, trying to stage that a vampire had infiltrated to town and cause panic. The party decided to try to solve this and track down Titus as well, infiltrating a cult meeting. While Aera and Meyloni kept watch, they noticed a strange figure in the window of the manor where this meeting was held. They had found Aegis, a warforged that had only just woken up in this unfamiliar place.

After defeating this cultist, the party had to flee from town. They met first a vampire named Sabien, a friendly but strange man. Further along the way, they encountered an odd duo — a white raven aarakocra, and a black dragonborn, Umbra and Nox. Both of them recognized Mila as a shadar-kai and revealed themselves to be agents of the Raven Queen, trying to figure out how to deal with Strahd, a vampire that was messing with the natural order of things.

Finally the party ended up in the city of Ravenloft. Marvey met a goliath vampire named Keothi at a bar, and the two of them hit it off. The party was fairly quickly arrested due to the ban on radiant magic and celestial forces — Willow’s familiar is a celestial. Only Marvey was able to avoid arrest. She was helped by Umbra and Nox, and together they found Keothi, who had a familiarity with the castle Ravenloft.

The rest of the party escaped the dungeon they were held in. They ran into a person they had met on the road — a vampire who introduced himself as Sabien, but they recognized as Strahd when they found him sitting at the head of the dining table. He told the party they were to be treated as guests here, as well as that he had found and employed Titus here in the castle. Titus was clearly charmed by Strahd.

Marvey joined this scene with Keothi, initially in disguise but dropping it once it was called out. The party were given rooms in the castle to stay, but were assured that there was no true escape from Barovia.

When Titus failed to show up upon Mila’s request, he decided to infiltrate Strahd’s sanctum. The rest of the party and Keothi went with, having to defeat a pair of guards before delving inside. When they found Strahd, they found he and Titus were fighting Umbra and Nox. The rest of the party joined in, but realized then that Keothi had been charmed by Strahd as well and she turned against them.

Aera was able to land the killing blow on Strahd. With his death, the magic holding Barovia outside the planes failed. The land was transported into the Shadowfell, where agents of the Raven Queen began to deal with the excess of vampires and misplaced souls. The party was allowed to say their goodbyes to Keothi and Titus, assured the two of them would be returned to the material plane in time. Mila gave Umbra a letter to deliver to his shadar-kai father. With that, the party was transported out of the Shadowfell and back to the material plane: into the country of Isarus.

#dnd #5e #seven wonders campaign

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