#curse of strahd arabelle

[calebisdrawing]

Arabelle the Vistana (her stuffed saber-tooth’s name is Ramses).

Feel free to use in your game if you like!

#art #my art #artists on tumblr #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #caleb cleveland #procreate app #arabelle #vistani #curse of strahd #digital watercolor #ipad pro

[pumpkincalico]

A short animatic of what I think strahd sounds like 👀

#Let me know what u think! #Cos #curse of strahd #strahd von zarovich #Dnd #dungeons and dragons #Dnd art #Dnd animatic #Animatic #Cos memes #Curse of strahd art #Calicoart #Digital art #Arabelle #Kinda #Cos arabelle #Youtube

[aqours]

you ever think about how RAW (so ignoring the fact anyone that makes her the destined ally usually homebrews her a bit) Arabelle is a human child with 2 HP capable of doing shitfuckall and in pretty much everyone's destined ally tierlists online she's still ranked higher than Clovin usually

#starposts #dungeons and dragons #dungeons & dragons #dnd #d&d #curse of strahd #arabelle #like its AMAZING how much clovin is like. actually an active detriment #ofc every destined ally arabelle is usually given divination powers as a homebrew to make her useful #if i actually drew Clovin for my players i'd fucking rewrite him entirely

[generic-cleric]

A little birthday gift I made for Okrin's player. Arabelle and Okrin in that scene from The Pacifier! because she's a rascal and he's STACKED.

#curse of strahd #arabelle #okrin #goliath #vistana #vistani #barovia #ravenloft #dnd #dnd art #dungeons and dragons #dnd character #digital art #digital illustration #web comic #dnd meme #5e #ttrpg

[tea-with-eleni]

DnD this week: "Ah yes, the brutal honesty and OCCASIONAL PROPHETIC VISIONS of children. How many kids have you people BEEN around?!!"

I work with children. They're strange small humans, but they're not like Arabelle. None of my party members work with children. Or ever have. They think Arabelle is a precocious albeit otherwise fairly normal child.

we have very different ideas about what is normal for kids.

#dungeons and dragons #dungeons and/or dragons #curse of strahd #referring to Arabelle #they literally saw her during the Feast of St Andral #She befriended van Richten's Tiger and claimed it as her protector #like guys #that is not normal kid behavior

[socialwrecks]

just some cute curse of strahd emote guys i made, love these characters

#curse of strahd #emotes #ismark kolyanovich #arabelle #ezmerelda d'avenir #ireena kolyana #my art #dungeons and dragons 5e #dungeons and dragons #dnd #dndart

[vivtanner]

Feral child causes mischief in local Barovian town 🗡️

Recently in Curse of Strahd: I mixed things up and played "a day in the life" of Jaimie. This 10-year-old visited Vallaki with her Papa and ended up causing quite a bit of trouble 😈 She did make friends along the way though (Brom, Bray & Arabelle)... and can't wait to return!

#dnd character #character art #artists on tumblr #illustrators on tumblr #dnd art #jaimie bernard #curse of strahd #dnd curse of strahd #cos #barovia #child character #rogue #dnd5e #character illustration

[niccdevv]

Notable Vistani from Curse of Strahd. Ezmerelda d'Avenir, Arabelle, Arrigal, Luvash and Madam Eva

#niccdevvdndart

[lexicals]

So I'm gonna write this down partially for my own reference and partially bc I'm curious to know what other dms following me think of the concept - curse of strahd module spoilers below the cut here

So long story short the CoS campaign I was running had to be put on hiatus because of inter-group issues, and at this point my plan is that once I've finished running our current pathfinder module, I want to reboot it minus the players that will not be returning for various reasons, and plus the new players that want to join from the pathfinder group.

Now obviously the rub here is that 2 of the 5 or so players have already played this module up to lv5, but the other 3 are coming in with varying levels of knowledge (one person has DMed it, but long enough ago that he doesn't remember most of it, plus a lot of the later sections I've got for this module are homebrew, and the other two know nothing about it other that what I and the other players have mentioned to them). I don't really like the idea of subbing in 2 or 3 new characters to the campaign halfway through, as this will be a completely new dynamic that they'll have to adjust to on the fly, as well as the new players having no context or attachment to anything that's happening, but nor would it be fair to the OG players to just slap them back to level 1 and have them try their best not to metagame.

So, I am thinking. What if I just groundhog day the whole party. They get reset back to the entrance of barovia, but retain all their levels and gear that they've picked up, and the NPCs that were travelling with them (Ireena and Arabelle, in this case). My in-universe justification for this is that one or both of the party members who will definitely not be returning fell prey to the temptations of the dark powers, and tried to kill either Ireena or each other, in order to earn themselves their own demiplane domain (they've just come out of a homebrew mini-domain, so this would be thematically appropriate I think). The third player who is currently a "maybe-depends-on-scheduling-but-probably-not" happens to be a paladin of lathander, so he (in his aspect as the morning lord) and the elven god of dusk whose name I cannot remember right now work together through her to perform an act of divine intervention that results in the reset, and can remove her from play if needed due to the impact of channelling that much divine power. This would be linked to postgame homebrew plans I had linked to a couple of players' backstories (unfortunately mostly the ones that are not returning, but what can you do) wherein shar aka mother night is amassing a cult in her name whose endgame goal is to summon a beast capable of destroying the moon and thus assassinating selune, who lathander & co are allied with. They know that if the cycle begins again with ireena's death/the party falling apart and strahd remains undefeated the party will not be able to leave barovia in order to combat what's happening on the material plane, and they can't afford the loss of time that would occur (I'm thinking it has to be this particular group for prophecy reasons or something idk about that yet lmao). The party get their reset with the warning that they cannot fail again.

This also means that I can justify a hike in difficulty by removing the influence of the morning lord and the sun itself from barovia, leaving shar and strahd more powerful as it becomes a very literal land of eternal night. Aside from that, my plan is to run everything mostly the same as before, with the hope that the old players will be able to have fun being allowed to selectively metagame with their knowledge of events, which they can share with the rest of the group, who also get to experience events they would otherwise have missed. It should mean we get through the content we've already covered fairly efficiently but with room for things to play out a little differently this time, whether that's fixing mistakes from last time or making new ones lol.

I think it's hopefully a fair solution but I would be really interested to hear what other people think about it; my main worry is that it won't have the intended effect and the old players will be bored while the new players feel swept along. Genuinely would love to know what other GMs or even just other players think of the concept!

#wastepaper basket #curse of strabo #I'm too shy to put this in the main tag so like 🥺 DMs following me pls tell me your thoughts.......

[terrified-spider]

Here's another NPC my Curse of Strahd players have run into: Arrigal, who, in my game, is the vampire spawn son of Madame Eva, and father of the dhampir Arabelle, thanks to me messing up the family tree a bit.

#cut some corners with this one but it's for a mini so I don't mind that its a bit messy in spots #damn tumblr doesn't want decent image quality tonight oof #uhhhhh tag time #curse of strahd fanart #curse of strahd art #curse of strahd #cos arrigal #cos fanart #dnd fanart #npc art #Ez is next on the list #just gotta figure out the pose #might not even make a full body piece for her - I have a painted mini already for her

[rosexknight]

CURSE OF STRAHD SESSION 18 TONIGHT AT 9PMCST!!

Last session we went to the Vistani camp south of Vallaki, rescued a Vistani girl named Arabelle from the monster of Lake Zarovich. We also met Kassimir the Dusk Elf, and learned of a mysterious place called The Amber Temple. Now we find ourselves back in Vallaki. Hopefully, we can find this wedding dress and get the hell out.

All roads lead to Vallaki, I guess.

Would love for y'all to come watch us tonight~!

https://www.twitch.tv/metaisfutile/ Promo image by fellow player @/zenaquaria

#dnd #dnd stream #stream promo #dnd sream promo #curse of strahd #cos #tmif

[xmoriartea]

Fun Barovian Nonsense!

I'm playing Remi, a batfolk/hexblood shadow monk Barovian orphan. He grew up not knowing where his shadow powers came from. He's certainly not part of any order or way like a traditional monk. He's just someone who learned how to defend himself and fight to survive and somewhere along the way found the shadows.

His perception and understanding of his hex and shadow magic is that he asks the shadows for aid and they answer:

He saw a monster or a hunter in the woods and he wanted desperately to hide, he wanted to be hidden with all of his being, and so the shadows welcomed him, silenced his steps, darkened his hiding spot, and he cast Pass Without Trace. He wanted to pass on the roads without drawing attention, and as a caravan grew closer he wanted so badly to not cause a scene, to be looked over without question, and the shadows wrapped around him and he cast Disguise Self.

Because every ability he has is flavored with shadows, one thing I did for funsies early on was say that when he cast Pass Without Trace he stole shadows. In my head, it was one way to avoid being caught. No one can see the shadows flicker as you move if you have none. So Pull Shadows has been my phrase to signify Pass Without Trace.

Flash to Curse of Strahd. We are drawing the attention of Things. We have our fated ally with us. Strahd is aware of us. Ireena is trusting us to protect her with Ismark dead and buried.

We're afraid of being watched by something, we don't know what.

I pull shadows from everyone, just to protect us.

One shadow remains.

If a shadow could grin, it would have. It just watches us, stretches into its true form, no longer confined to one of ours. And then it goes.

Now every time a shadow is stolen, we hold our breath. We wait and see. Is something following us now? Are we actually alone?

We go to the Amber Temple. We spend days in the library with a restored Exethanter to guide us. He offers to beseech greater powers than his to answer our lingering questions with cryptic one word answers. We have five.

"Who we speaking with?" -Gambler [Part of] "the group that includes The Inquisitor, Dignitary, Emissary. Did they create the the dread domains?" -Yes "Would the people of Barovia benefit if Strahd would die?" -Experiment "How can I leave Barovia without the consent or death of Strahd?" -Unlikely And then the final question: "Who in Barovia has the best potential to replace Strahd as the Dark Lord of Barovia?"

At this point the room felt weird. Everything started to get heavy with power and arcana. Above table, our DM is giddy with the possibility and we hold our breaths waiting for the answer.

I decide that as things get weird, I'm going to pull shadows.

All the shadows that we expect to leave, leave. (Some of our party made deals at the temple, and they have new lingering shadows with their pact makers.)

Except. Exethanter's shadow explodes outward. Instead of one skeletal shadow, now 13 shades reach out from him across the walls, all looming larger than life and focused on us as the lich briefly becomes their puppet and the Dark Powers themselves answer our final question:

The Young Card The Resurrected The Crone The Loyal The Administrator The Hunter The Fortuitous

Seven potential new Dark Lords that the Dark Powers are eying across Barovia. Seven souls we may or may not know who could reshape the domain if Strahd is dealt with. And the Dark Powers are watching them and us.

Right now, I've got some theories, but nothing solid.

The Young Card is likely Arabelle, the young seer child we rescued. Definitely something up with her

The Resurrected might be Patrina or Ismark, as we have the means to resurrect them both. Patrina I think will have the rage and ambition to become a Dark Lord, Ismark I think might be broken enough when we call him back.

The Crone could be Madam Eva herself, seeing as Baba Lysaga is dead.

The Loyal and The Administrator, I think, could be Ludmilla and Rahadin. Both titles can apply to both of them imo. And Rahadin definitely has some reasons to possibly want his dear brother put to fucking rest. He got politely Sergei'd and Strahd stole the mother of his child. Also hello hi. My Remi is his child.

The Hunter has to be Rictavio, he's got his own curses going around and fates and Dark Powers are already messing with him.

The Fortuitous is the one I have a lot of questions about. It feels... very open. Arrigal? Viktor? The Abbot? One of us? No one is really "fortunate" in Barovia

#dnd #curse of strahd #overture of mists

[shrimpari]

Curse of Strahd spoilers especially if ur campaign is using other dark powers

Can’t stop thinking about dnd last week had a bomb drop that Izek was accidentally the first person to make a deal with a DEMON OF ROT in order to see his sister (my character, tho Ji is transmasc) again when he was a child and now is coming back and eating his arm 😵‍💫😵‍💫

It’s funny because we’ve discovered other characters with this rot disease far sooner than discovering Izek as involved. Those other characters in order being Arrigal (we don’t know why he ended up in contact with the demon. He got help from strahd to halt the rot process so he can continue being with Arabelle), a player created NPC Rowan (we don’t know a lot but he had alluded to Saoirse, another PC, that he made a deal to save her), and Victor (he got trapped in a teleportation cycle of sorts and couldn’t stop teleporting around Barovia after the coup against the Vallakovich’s. A couple PCs found him rotting in the woods, half way to death, caught in a bear trap and just put him out of his misery. Sometime later, we discovered me may be a kind of rot zombie running around but we’re not entirely sure). Who knows if anyone else has been contacted by this particaukr power. We didn’t think it was a thing that could affect izek, but Izek and Ji are earth Genasi so it only makes sense that that rot would be affecting him differently. Slowly eating away at the outter protective layers while it feeds him images of the younger sibling he thought he lost.

His desperation makes sense. Izek and Ji with their father spent their entire childhood running away from people who wanted to use them to get rich off of because they were made of precious gems. Ji at 9 taken by those people and izek at 13 fell into Barovia. He ended up at an orphanage in Vallaki where he got really sick, which he said is when he first heard from the demon, before being picked up by Vargas for being “bigger and stronger looking” than the other boys (also an earth genasi bodyguard? That’s a win!).

The fact that this dark power can access snippets of Ji’s life 100’s of miles away outside of Barovia and feed them Izek is very scary. The fact that it was able to access info outside isn’t great!!! Who knows what else it is capable of. Didn’t realize this dark power had been a facet of our campaign from the beginning really. The moment we stepped into Vallaki for the first time was when it really became prevalent.

We thought the only dark powers we had been running into were vampyr being annoying with like Fidatovs and other shit and another one that tried to make a pact with our cleric after he started losing his powers. He know NOTHING about that one, but it’s very clearly not the same

Okay enough rambling, things have been starting to get really interesting. We’re about to start heading down to go to the Amber temple soon so haha yay!!!

#cos #curse of strahd #ramble #spoilers

[aqours]

psssssssst i'm curious, since i'll be DMing this for the first time:

if there's anyone here that's ever used Arabelle as the Destined Ally (either you just drew her or stacked the deck), how exactly did you use her mechanically and socially? i'm making her a Caster Sidekick with a specific focus on Divination magic + a few of the School of Divination PC traits replacing the Sidekick traits- give her useful powers but also next to no combat utility at all (incentive to have her stay where the party is saying where it's safe with Ireena, or at least having her hang around the back of the party away from the fighting)

i'm just curious if there's anything any of you have done, or if you were in a campaign where she was the ally and your DM did anything cool with her!

#com players no reading #starposts #curse of strahd #arabelle #arabelle zarovan #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #vistani

[generic-cleric]

Another Discord Server Challenge. The theme for this one was Sailor Moon / Curse of Strahd crossover. 

Ireena as “Ursagi”, Jander as Tuxedo Mask, and Arabelle as “Chibiursa”

#CoS #Curse of Strahd #Ireena Kolyana #Jander Sunstar #Arabelle #Vampie #Vistana #dnd #dnd 5e #ttrpg #d&d #dnd art #d&d art #dnd character #dnd character art #d&d character #d&d character art #Ravenloft #Barovia #NPCs #art challenge

[tea-with-eleni]

Curse of Strahd vs Dracula

Spoilers for Dracula AND Curse of Strahd. 

Curse of Strahd is a vampire story clearly descended from the same genetic stock as the original Big Bad Evil Vampire, Dracula. Many characters have direct parallels. Others are unique to either one story or the other. Still others have been decomposed into multiple characters to allow full utilization of their rich individual stories in a new context. Consider Lucy.

Lucy’s most obvious parallel is Ireena Kolyana, especially if one looks at the text of the Curse of Strahd adventure. As written, both are passive, both have been fed upon by the vampire, and both are ultimately doomed. Lucy is sweet, a people pleaser, and more or less housebound by the time anyone starts to do anything about her blood loss. Ireena is more action-oriented, in that she does leave her village in a bid to find somewhere safer, but does so largely at the urging of her brother. Complicating Lucy-as-Ireena is Ireena’s ultimate fate. Most of the time, Ireena does not die at the hands of Strahd, nor is she made into a vampire spawn. It is for this reason that I suggest Lucy’s character has actually been split into a few other people for purposes of Ravenloft: Stella Wachter and Doru Donovich. 

Part of Lucy’s narrative role was an element of mystery. Dracula is a slow-burn story reliant on suspense and the slow reveal of lore. We don’t initially know what Dracula is, nor what precisely is happening to Lucy. Curse of Strahd doesn’t have this luxury; everyone knows from the start that they are about to play a vampire story. Thus, the role of a slow-burn mystery regarding a mysterious ailment has to have a different source and a different target. Stella Wachter fills this role. The player characters have no way of initially knowing the source of her madness or its precise nature. They know little to nothing about its source (Viktor Vallakovich) or said source’s capabilities. They have the opportunity, like the Dude Squad, to save Stella or leave her to her fate. The only difference between this aspect of Lucy’s characterization is that Stella’s fate is open-ended - a key requirement of a DnD game. Just as Stella’s madness could not have been caused by Strahd in order to maintain a true mystery for player characters, she cannot be forced into an ultimate fate to maintain true player agency. 

Lucy’s ultimate fate, the Bloofer Lady, could not belong to Ireena or Stella. Ireena must live for most of the story, as Strahd is motivated by love rather than... whatever motivated Dracula. (Hunger?) To turn Ireena would allow Strahd to win. Stella could not turn into a vampire spawn because, as stated above, her madness was not Strahd’s fault. Therefore, the role of the Bloofer Lady must go to someone else. While a case could be made for the vampire spawn unleashed at the Feast of St Andral, a better case can be made for Doru Donovich. The point of the Bloofer Lady in Dracula is to allow the Dude Squad to face a vampire in the flesh for the first time. She convinces them that vampires are real, a threat, and need to be dealt with. Doru Donovich offers a similar narrative role. Many players will encounter him as their first major fight against anything vampiric. He also has similar threads in his backstory to evoke player sympathies. Players may not have known him in life, as the Dude Squad knew Lucy, but Doru was an adventurer. This is a deliberate inclusion to invoke player empathy; he could have been one of them. 

I’m also reasonably convinced that Mina was decomposed into at least three other characters (Ireena, Arabelle, and Ezmerelda d’Avenir), Strahd and Dracula are more different than they are similar, and modern takes on the Brides of Strahd borrow and diverge heavily from the Brides of Dracula. There’s also the significance of Jonathan Harker’s arrival and meals at Castle Dracula vs the significance of the players dining at Castle Ravenloft.  I’ll save those for another time tho. 

#curse of strahd #dracula #ravenloft #Lucy vs Ireena #in this essay I will