5e: Fall of the House of Durst

I wasn't able to attend the last session of the first chapter of the Curse of Strahd, but one of my fellow players gave me the bullet points.

• Hani's wizard had a strange dream while unconscious that the house was smoking and burning
• The sprite (worse for wear) re-appeared and woke up Hani's wizard, who then managed to sneak away to a shadowy corner of the altar room unnoticed.
• Tener's dwarf continued to stall Elizabeth, who LOVES to hear herself talk.
• I snuck upstairs through the trapdoor to the front door and made a big racket with Thaumaturgy to get some of the monsters out of the altar room. I was ignored. But I noticed that things were feeling very spooky and vengeful upstairs.
• Andrew and I met back in the jail room. Where we ran into the orb of light (the dead sprite). The orb lead us to the altar room, where we lurked and watched still more talking from Elizabeth.
• In another attempt to stir the pot and troll the Dursts, I used my last spell to disguise myself as THE DEAD NURSEMAID who Mr. Durst knocked up and Elizabeth killed. I made a big entrance and started yelling at them in Infernal about where my baby was. That DID cause a reaction. Mr. Durst AKA the Ghast fell for it and started getting very agitated. Elizabeth did not fall for it, but her head spun around and she started monologuing angrily at me. I also tried to turn undead to thin out the herd a little. That didn't work.
• While they were yelling at me, the others snuck away from the undead and regrouped in a corner.
• Elizabeth started yelling that she needed a blood sacrifice from one of us on the creepy altar or no one was leaving.
• Elizabeth started stretching out and looking generally weird and creepy
• Weird sulfur smell started filling the room.
• Someone (I can't remember who) noticed that the Elizabeth-thing was actually blind (which was why my disguise didn't fool her)
• I started using Thaumaturgy to throw my voice around the room, further distracting Elizabeth - who was controlling all the monsters.
• Elizabeth looks even creepier. Room smells more like sulfur.
• None of us can figure out the sacrifice thing. I'm sorry to say we did briefly consider the sprite before snapping out of it.
• In a Hail Mary move, I throw the dead nurse's locket (which we found upstairs) to the Durst-Ghast. Thank you for not making me roll for that, Diana. Remember that Elizabeth stabbed the nurse AKA Durst's latest girlfriend to death. Durst-Ghast loses it and starts attacking Elizabeth.
• Elizabeth starts melting into a horrible slime monster as they duke it out.
• We run like hell.
• When we get back upstairs to the den, we find that the ghosts of Elizabeth's victims have animated all of Durst's animal trophies, insect collections, and furniture into a huge angry SOMETHING that is dead set on kicking Durst ass.
• Slime monster Elizabeth erupts through the trapdoor and casts hold person on everyone except Hani.
• The ghosts continue to tear up the house and incorporate the wreckage into their house-monster.
• Hani runs to the door - the killer fog is gone and we can see some houses in the (not killer) mist.
• Hani desperately drags the rest of us out of the house one by one.
• The Elizabeth slime monster starts crawling up Tener's leg and dissolving it.
• Going out in a blaze of glory, Tener headbutts Elizabeth (thus having his face melt off while maintaining a sarcastic smirk of defiance)
• The house monster starts to pound Elizabeth in a battle royale not fit for low level characters.
• From just outside the front steps, we watch as the house implodes, totally destroying Elizabeth and everything inside it. The sprite orb does make it out - seeming having been the ringleader for the ghost vengeance revolt.
• The cellar door opens and you climb out, having finally rouge-ed your way out of the basement. WHERE WERE YOU GUYS?!
• Creepy ravens are in the trees, mocking our terror and general poor-ass condition.
• A creepy (but strangely extremely helpful) lady appears from amongst the ravens and leads us to a caravan of wagons where we can rest
• We collapse
• Apparently somewhere in Barovia Strahd is slow-clapping our hijinks
• The end

Looking forward to seeing what tonight brings...

Strahd: House of Durst, Dust, and Death...

Have you ever had a sprite stab you in the chest? Has that ever been the best thing that’s happened to you that day?

I do not understand these people. They have this amazing house. They’re clearly rich, but completely off their rockers. Resting up a bit, we headed back down into the basement, and back to the bone room. Some weird worm thing with these tentacles was in the closet. It’s tentacles were all sorts of tingly, and not in the good way. They made Vetsun have the shakes. Well, it might have been the getting smacked against the wall that did it, but I think it was the tingly tentacles. Also the smell… How can anything alive smell that foul? It was like the slaughter house on a hot summer day.

Moving deeper we came to a… theater? There was a really cheap statue that Ember said was probably Strahd, based on a window that only he saw in a vision….. We could also hear rats diggin in the walls.

We’ve gotta get out of here.

But the statue was holding an orb… And, well… We took it, and broke the statue. It was just cheap wood scraps and plaster anyway… The candles flared and suddenly our shadows were after us. We ran… but you can’t out run a shadow, not really. We booked it up the stairs, all the way to the 4th floor… and there wasn’t a door at the top. Just a solid brick wall… and then they were on us. I’ve never felt so cold or so scared. They just reached into me and… then it was all black.

That’s where Vetsun stabbed me in the chest with a needle. Drained, and hurt we caught our breath, looked for a way through the wall, and then slowly headed back down… Maybe we can find a way out. I’m so tired. My arms feel like wet pasta. Even holding the torch takes more effort than I can describe. The scratching in the walls was louder, and as we got back to the theater, the dirt walls crumbled open and hungry corpses covered in dirt crawled out of the mess…

Lady, you sent us here… is there no hope?

Strahd: Haunted House of Durst

The private thoughts of Zaadia as she finds herself trapped in a haunted house...

Durst Family Mansion

Where the fuck are we?

Yes, haunted house in the middle of nowhere. Got that part. But those mountains over there? They don’t belong there. And where is “Barovia”? And dead kids? And dead pregnant nannies?



This place is seriously messed up. We made it upstairs, and things just got worse and worse. The haunted armor? Sure. The master bedroom with the haunted tiger skin rug? Wasn’t really creepy until we discovered the display case of murder and torture memorabilia in direct line of sight of the bed. That was fucking haunted too.

Most of the time I don’t care what people do in bed together. Or on a tiger skin rug… I know they never washed it. I just know it…

Then we got to meet one of the nannies. Dead of course. And her baby? A bundle of ratty old rags. And her desiccated body was locked out on the balcony.

Bathroom? Haunted, and the dwarf got the shits. Even better was the belladonna, rue, and juniper in the medicine cabinet. Of fucking course there was.

Then one of the ghosts possessed Ember when we tried to go upstairs. I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS. She said it was bad and we shouldn’t go up there.

Kid, I am with you 100%, but we’re all stuck here, maybe FOREVER if we don’t. And I don’t even know where here IS.

The kid was right, it was bad. They were locked in their room until they starved to death. And across the hall? The old storage room where a chunk of the wall and ceiling were missing? Amazingly free of fog. I guess the haunted house at least is keeping that out… and a good thing, as there was a broken window in Gustav's studio, where the creepy paintings of the dead nursemaids sat.

And the broken window? Haunted. Honestly, I was more shocked it wasn’t one (or all) of the paintings. But hey! We found the servant's stairs down to the basement and the family crypt. Ember put the kids bones to rest, and they just kinda… faded out. Checking the crypt of Elizabeth just revealed bugs. I hate bugs. Way too many legs.

Further along and down some more stairs was a weird room… lots of bones, both on the table and all over the floor. And a makeshift altar. We headed back upstairs to decide what to do… I really hope nothing crawls out of the walls… or if it does it brings back my rapier.

Zaadia (aka Cailleach Deargh) part 1

Following the conclusion of Storm King's Thunder, our group has started The Curse of Strahd, and I decided to play a thief. Going through my collection of minis, the River Widow mini from ReaperCon called out to me. As usual, after cleaning the few bits of flash and mold lines, I paused... How did I want to base her. I've made extensive use of the Ruined Temple Courtyard stamp from Happy Seppuku... but for this game I decided that I was going to use the Fishscale brick pattern which I'd picked up during their Black Friday sale. I clipped the tab connecting her feet, leaving only 2 spikes from each foot to anchor her into the greenstuff.





Once the greenstuff had cured, I glued her in place, and after waiting for the superglue to dry, I primed her with Reaper's Brown Liner. I then immediately tackled her eyes, trying to mirror what Derek did on his. Seriously check this out, it's amazing...





So... I didn't quite achieve this, but it's probably the closest I've ever managed. Also I don't have a camera (or the skill) to capture a pic of this quality. Side by side though I can see what still needs to be worked on, and where I can still improve things for this mini.



I basecoated her flesh with Ruddy Flesh, and then used Tanned Shadow on top of that. The bodice is based with Rich Indigo with Burgundy Wine over it. Her hair and lips are Auburn Shadow.





So far, so good, but I've got a lot more work to go.

Strahd: An Unkindness of Ravens

I thought we’d come to an agreement. I leave you alone, you leave me alone. I get it, being raised in a temple, there’s a certain bit I owe you, and I’ll drop coins in the poor box when I have them, but I didn’t want to get involved, you see? With any of it. There’s life to live, to enjoy! And you, all of you, have PLANS and SCHEMES and I don’t want any part of that.

And I grumbled when you gave Ember his holy moment, but at least it wasn’t me. We grew up together, and I thought we’d gotten out together, but no…

The warrant was totally not my fault. Okay, I know the bone wasn’t actually a relic, that’s why I had to fake the provenance papers, but it isn’t like you can actually find the mad archmage’s remains, and it didn’t hurt anybody. How did I know they wanted to resurrect him? So we made ourselves scarce and out of town. The harvest festival was great, I hope you enjoyed all the offerings.

But then, the way back to town (I really hope things have cooled off, I’m tired of being out in the middle of hicksville) we somehow ended up with a couple of paladins too? Subtle. Real subtle.

Then the flash flood, the ravens, the lady in black who gave me these shiney boots?

Come on… Nothing good was going to come from that.

Well, okay, the dwarf falling into the river was funny.

And aside from the boots, I also really appreciated the directions to the dry cabin not too far away, but a heads up about those dusty crab things would have been nice. And yes, I won’t deny that the paladins were helpful, but so was the ranger! Not everything has to revolve around you all! And it wasn’t like I wasn’t holding my own.

Really, they probably couldn’t have handled it without me. And Karl didn’t seem to mind my dagger in his back. I had dust in my eyes. I didn’t do it because he’s a paladin or anything.

Honest! A little credit please.

Anyway, I’m finally dry so I’m going to bed.

…

These boots came from a dead lady, didn’t they? Seriously, you gods are the worst.