Campaign Recap; Ravenloft #1

With the last post, I mentioned how I was running the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure. So I think that I'll get a little more indepth, since one of our PCs has been out since it began.

To start with, things have changed at work. We got moved to a new pod, or rather pod and a half, since most of the computers in the new section are broken. Odd, the computers for the Technical Support are broken. Some are because they were for another account before ours and just aren't taking to the new software, and another because it is a legal dispute. When they replaced the carpet in the building, apparently the carpet company actually cut one of the fiber optic cables for data transmission. This has lead to a legal battle between the carpet company and the data company over who has to fix it. Which is just stupid. Fix the damn thing, it will take all of an hour! But with so many of the computers broken, we had to take in a straggler. Darrien, who is not tech support, but showed interest when we would talk D&D. Which is more then Ed who joined us for a few weeks did.

Halloween is coming up in a few weeks, so I decided to pull out EtCR. Darrien asked to play, so I let him roll up a first level rogue as a henchman who would gain experience. This is something that Po and I disagree on. He'll take anyone and let them start with a high level character, but I think it is best to start low and build up. It's a matter of personal preference. One of many, but not one that prevents either of us from enjoying each other's games.

I allowed everyone to start with a level 7 character with 19K GP of equipment. Except Darrien, who would start at level 1 with standard starting equipment. I have no idea why so many of the PCs decided to play women when they aren't in real life. I guess cause its not going to be a long term thing, it doesn't really matter. It's not like those guys are going to be girls for the next few years.

Po; A female human paladin, breaking from his normal position of playing male characters with a slightly cowardly (if not evil) outlook. His paladin Cassandra Victoria rides a dire boar.
Megan: A female elf wizard with a fire mephit familar.
Tom: A male sorcerer with a weasel familar. This has been Tom's most successful character to date. He's really come into his own with it.
Josh: A female human druid with a polar bear companion.
Darrien: A male human rogue with jet black skin. This is interesting. I looked over his character sheet and under skin he wrote 'black'. I asked him if he meant African American or jet black. He thought about it for about two seconds, and then stated it was jet black. After running him through a few encounters to get a feel for the game, he was at 2nd level to start with.
Jim: A human cleric, who hasn't started playing yet. He's been off since the mini-campaign began, and our thoughts are with him.

So it started with the PCs getting a note from the Burgomaster of Barovia asking for help since there were werewolf attacks. So the PCs set off for Barovia, with the idea of saving people from werewolves. However, they found that there was a zombie apocalypse going on at the time. After a few encounters they reached the center of the village and met with the NPC Ashlyn, a female paladin of the same order as Po. After helping re-establish the barriers and destroy the zombies that were in the immediate area, the PCs rested.

The next day Ashlyn told them that her group had gone to the local church of Pelor to sanctify it and get clerical help. That had been two days ago. Ashlyn decided to stay to help the people and the PCs went to see what was happening at the church.

This is where things kinda went wrong. I had told Darrien that as a new player, and low level character to stay to the back of the group and let everyone else get in first. He took that advice at first, but then started to go forward.

When the group got to the church, the whole place radiated evil. The main doors were shut and barred. So the druid used woodshape, and turned the doors into bars. They could see the priest at the alter, his full plate with Pelor disgraced. The next round, things went poorly. The PCs found they couldn't open the door, since with wood shape, it doesn't destroy wood it just moves it. So they had the Polar Bear wreck the door. The paladin walked in, and then the evil priest dropped a circle of death from a scroll on them.

Everyone except Darrien made their save. So the poor 2nd level Rogue died. Even the stupid weasel made his save. The rest of the round, Tom blasted the evil priest with a lightning bolt, and Josh hit it with a flame strike. Killed the evil priest. End of turn one.

The next few rounds were all about taking out the other undead hanging out in the church. When the paladin went forward to examine the giant hole in the floor of the church and determined it was the source of the evil. So she walked out and had the druid hit the church with flamestrike again, collapsing the building.

The PCs took Darrien's body and the druid cast reincarnation on him. So the human with jet black skin came back as a black bear. An odd synchronicity to that, the druid with a white furred polar bear reincarnated a dude as a black furred bear.

End of session. More soon!