Ryan's Carrion Crown campaign journal

[Ryan Naylor]

WARNING: Obviously, there's going to be spoilers. Unmarked spoilers.

But, just to show off how I do things, and to demonstrate what I did to adapt the Carrion Crown adventure path to Ravenloft, here's the campaign journal.

It's based on the in-game diary one of the PC keeps, to which I will be adding appendages as I see fit and in my own idiosyncratic manner. Feel free to weigh in with comments, suggestions and so on. Particularly if I'm not being clear. I'd like this to be a discussion rather than just a file in the Veranda that no one ever looks at.

On with the show...

[Ryan Naylor]

The Campaign:

Because I'm now surrounded with adults, who have lives, we play via a mixed medium, with a few people in one room and a few over Skype. As the campaign went on, we had a bit of player turn over, and more and more of the game was taken over to playing through Skype. Or Google chat now, which has the bonus of allowing more than one person to speak at a time without cutting out. So far, it's been pretty effective, and because I'm running the game from pdfs rather than a booklet, it means I can copy out pictures and email them to everyone with only a moment's delay (although we haven't actually had to do that too often - usually I just generously interpret what they want to do in a logical way, or try to be very clear in my descriptions when there's a risk in it for them). However, it does mean I can’t generate atmosphere very easily, so it’s turned out to have the trappings of a horror game without much of the actual horror. Rather like an actual Hammer Horror film, then.

Generally, I have 3 copies of the pdf open at a time, so I can flick between the map, the text and the monster section at the end easily.

I've tried to stick fairly close to canon, although I'm perfectly prepared to envaguen or rewrite when I have to. Because I'm the sort of person who likes to stick to canon.

Finally, I try to encourage a style of play where the players are happy to embellish the game where they need to (by snatching up pokers to defend themselves with or swinging on chandeliers that may-or-may-not have been there a moment ago) provided it doesn't screw with the story, and in return, they trust me enough to believe I have good reasons to say “No you can’t.” I also try to encourage them to act like people in a horror story, which sometimes involves them doing stupid things (like walking backwards in haunted houses). And I try to keep the mechanics level and narrative level events as separate as I can, so if “the cleric casts flame strike”, “Eudora grabs her medallion of faith and prays for Ezra’s protection” with no visible flames.

The Characters:
All the PCs are native to Ravenloft. Note there is a bit of a reshuffle when we get to the end of Trial of the Beast, but I’ll talk more about that then.

We have:

Albert Renier (Damien, who is physically present): TN changeling arcanist from Richemulot. Yes, a male changeling – I didn’t want to flat out forbid Damien when he came up with the character concept by saying “changelings are always female.” So I’ve decided his mother was a bruja, who didn’t want to eat her son but didn’t want to raise it either. He doesn’t know he’s not human, or that he’s not the biological offspring of his parents. He had an unnaturally close relationship with his sister (who obviously isn’t really his sister genetically, but anyway). His father received a cryptic warning about this and his “cuckoo’s egg” from a Vistana. Upon finding the teenagers engaged in something unhealthy, he leapt to the wrong conclusion and beat his daughter to death and threw Albert out of the house, which has had some telling effects on his psyche since. He believes his claws and darkvision are the effect of failed Powers checks (or rather “the taint of his guilt and perversion”) rather than a racial ability. He constantly files his nails to disguise them, which is a tell in and of itself. The arcanist is a wizard speciality I designed. He also has a bonded amulet, which is my refinement of the version in Mistfinder.

Eudora Weathermay (Matt, Skype): LG Innocent human cleric of Ezra from Mordent. Spent her life in a monastery, and pure and pious but not very worldly. She turns out to possibly be the most liberal anchorite in the history of the Church.

Ignatious Scrivner (York, in person): LN human inquisitor of the Eternal Order from Darkon. He’s LN because he truly believes in the mission statement of the Eternal Order in protecting the Darkonese from the Hour of Ascension, and whatever its flaws, the Darkonese need the Church. He disapproves of the corruption and nest-feathering rife among his fellow priests, but is prepared to tolerate it as long as their actual orthodoxy doesn’t suffer. He is cold and awkward, but there’s going to be a blossoming romance between him and Eudora fairly soon. Sort of. It’s not going to end well though, particularly because he refers to Ezra only as “the Harlot.”

Julian Moss (Andrew, in person): NG dhampir gunslinger from Darkon. He was on a hunt to find his vampire “father” who fed on his mother while pregnant. I was looking forward to springing the fact that his “father” was actually a woman, and Lady Kazandra at that, but haven’t had the chance.

[Ryan Naylor]

The Haunting of Harrowstone

The ghost adventure. In each adventure, I tried to think of the main theme of that style of monster, and really bring that to the fore for the players. In this case, it was easy: the ghost represents the past that will not stay buried. So I was always looking out for ways to work that them in for the PCs. There was a lot of ruminating on the past, and little things I did (dreams, hallucinations etc) to draw out the mark of history on the lives of everyone, but particularly elements in the PCs’ histories that wouldn’t lie still. Albert’s rich and dark past was a particularly good place to mine.

1/7/755 BC
We inter the body of our recently departed friend, Professor Lorrimor. The townsfolk are reluctant to allow a “necromancer’s” body to lie in their cemetery. Fortunately for us and for Prof. Lorrimor’s daughter Kendra, the townsfolk see reason.

Father Vudren gives a solemn, if overly morbid, service.

In the evening, we are bequeathed Prof Lorrimor’s books for delivery to Rivalis. The reward: 100 pp. The catch: babysitting Kendra in Harrowstone for a month.

I changed the name of the town from Ravengro to Harrowstone, because I didn’t like the name. It’s now a tiny village in Darkon just off the road between Rivalis and Ludendorf.

I also altered the beginning to a cold opening. I told everyone during character generation that they all knew a Professor Lorrimor, a scholar of the macabre and sometime monster slayer, and knew him well enough to be invited to a family gathering “like a wedding or something like that.” They didn’t know it was a funeral until the actual game started, and didn’t really know anything about each other’s characters. As the narrative eye passed over the funeral procession winding along the dirt street north of Harrowstone, the bronze of the setting sun starting to darken to red, I basically just said, “Bearing the Professor’s casket is...” and pointed at each player in turn for a name and a brief physical appearance.

When they met the angry peasant mob at the gate of the graveyard, they were rustic peasant folk armed with righteousness and their fists, plus a few improvised cudgels, rather than weapons because I wanted to emphasise straight away a certain realistic approach to violence, so when the slaughter started later, it would have more impact. They were all ready to brawl (rather than try to kill anyone) because after all, they’re farmers. In the end, Albert and Ignatious talked them down anyway. Shamed them into leaving, really.

Other changes: Sentinel Vudran is human, not a gnome. And when they got back to Kendra’s house for the will reading, Lorrimor’s journal wasn’t in the chest with the other books. I’d read on the Paizo forums that upon receipt of the book, groups tended to rush off to the prison without the slow build of the statue graffiti, and I didn’t want them to miss that, so I hid the journal in plain sight and mentioned that he kept them (his house was full of books, as you’d hope) but not that there was anything important in it.

Oddly, none of the PCs thought to ask how he’d died.

Then, they sat up late into the night chatting with Kendra about how they knew her father. None of them knew Kendra even existed. It was basically just an opportunity for them to share as much or as little about their backgrounds as they wanted and get into character.

[Zilfer]

Good start. I've read the adventure, never ran it myself thus far however I do want to. I may have to tailor it a bit however, possibly if I ever decide to get rid of Van Richten. (I may have the irrestitable urge to bring him back dead as a villian... who knows?) I also read online that most of the time they rush to the prison so good idea there.

[Joël of the FoS]

And instead of working this morning, I edited my campaign journal

here!

It starts upon the PCs arrival in Martira Bay. They just did the Pathfinder Skinsaw Murder adventure (set in Mordent) and they are bringing the corpse of the slain wife (Iesha, Alder's wife) to her familly in Martira Bay.

So you'll see it was a lot inspired by CC.

I added a vampire rescue action to save Kendra, where they get Lorrimor's eternal gratitude. The campaign is ongoing since 2003, so I couldn't use the "it begins at the funeral of a long time friend" suggested start.

But then I needed to pass a week or two in martira Bay, hence the various stuff happening there until they get a letter from Lorrimor asking them to come to Harrowstone (I also used Harrowstone as the town's name, same here, didn't like Ravengro as a name).

We are now right in the middle of HoH, so it isn't finished. Also, there are two sessions played that are not written down, which I need to do until next game (around December).

When reading it, keep in mind the PCs are 7th level, so everything is boosted.

Joël

[Ryan Naylor]

2 to 5/7/755

We begin cataloguing Lorrimor's possessions and taking what little actions we can to make Kendra's life easier. She is still distraught at the death of her father, and breaks down often. We spend a lot of time together with Lorrimor's books.

The other pallbearers and I are an odd fit, each with very different reasons for visiting and knowing Lorrimor. We are not well suited to be friends, but the days pass agreeably enough.

On the night of the 5th, we are visited by a most grotesque parody of life: Prof Lorrimor returned from the grave, his face caved in where (I later learn) the stone gargoyle fell upon him. With great effort (and much noise) we dispatch the restless dead and disguise it as a gypsy. The constabulary are eventually convinced of this (while I cover over Lorrimor's grave).

I recall an encounter earlier at Lorrimor's grave with one Adivion Adrissant, a former colleague of the professor's. He was most evasive - and scathing of the professor's practices.

Adivion: Potential suspect for the animation of Prof Lorrimor's corpse.

Lorrimor’s return actually worked really well. While sitting down to dinner, there was a thunderous knock at the door. Kendra obviously went to pieces at the sight of her father’s zombie in the door. Everyone else was sitting down and unarmed and unarmoured (which made it a pretty tough fight really – they had to be quite inventive about trying to keep Lorrimor away from Kendra without exposing themselves to danger). To prevent him from bludgeoning them to pieces, Lorrimor was focused exclusively on reaching Kendra, so if the PCs needed a round to recover or collect themselves, I could just stumble towards her, arms outstretched and moaning.

Having half his head missing did have the desired effect of getting them to ask how he died though.

After the fight, Kendra begged them not to let any of the other villagers find out about Lorrimor’s return, or they’d prevent his reburial and drive her out of town as a necromancer’s daughter. But the fight had been extremely noisy (there was a lot of screaming) and the next morning, people were bound to investigate. So they quickly came to a very convoluted but quite ingenuous plan: Albert used sculpt corpse to make the corpse look like a Vistana’s. They redressed him in old clothes, and when the constable turned up later that night, claimed to have killed a gypsy who was trying to rob the house. The constable didn’t really believe them and interviewed them for hours, but couldn’t prove anything. While this was going on, Albert spent all of the night alone, dragging the body back to the graveyard and reburying it in Lorrimor’s grave (for Kendra’s sake, and to stop anyone from noticing that Lorrimor’s grave was now empty). And look, the Vistani must have come in the night to steal back their body! No necromancy here, no sir. So nobody got lynched or run out of town.

Adivion Adrissant was included just to put in a bit of foreshadowing. He was an old colleague of Lorrimor’s, and genuinely regretted Lorrimor’s death. Auren Vrood, who actually killed him, is going to pay for that later. He gave a letter to Albert and Eudora to give to Kendra, which I copied from the Paizo messageboards.

Ms Lorrimer,
Allow me to present to you my warmest regards and deepest regrets upon the death of your father. Petros was a man of great insight, with a keen and enquiring mind. It was perhaps inevitable that it would be his curiosity that brought him low, for his questing ways led him to dark places, and what he lacked in prudence he more than compensated for in courage. Regardless, I shall remember him fondly as one who was almost a peer; as a man of intelligence, tempered but lightly by good sense.
My thoughts are with you, my dear. I trust the path you chose to tread in life shall be a safer one than that of your late father – indeed, I would insist upon it.
With the greatest of respect,
Adivion Adrissant

It just perfectly captures his character, I think. Smug, a little bit threatening – needless to say, Kendra did not appreciate it.

[The Giamarga]

Care to post your arcanist school wizard rules? (archetype?)

I was very disappointed with the white arcanist prestige class from HoL(?) and always wanted to recapture the 2e arcanist feel. The archivist had some of the vibe but a real Ravenloft Arcanist was sadly lacking. I like the specialty school/archetype approach much better than a prestige class btw.

[Ryan Naylor]

New wizard speciality – Arcanist: Arcanists are specialists in both Necromancy and Divination. They must choose 3 opposition schools instead of the normal 2. You can Turn Undead (see Necromancer ability) and have Prescience (see Diviner/Foresight ability). At 8th level, you can choose any of the Necromancy or Divination special abilities normally available at that level (see the Core rulebook and the Advanced Player's Guide). Once the choice is made, it cannot be changed. Your extra spell can come from either Necromancy or Divination.


It's very flexible and quite powerful because of that, but since arcanists exactly capture the style of magic I like for PCs in Ravenloft, I'm reasonably happy with that. I am considering narrowing down the 8th level power a bit though - or perhaps shifting it to 9th or 10th level instead.

I am open to suggestions, if anyone has any thoughts.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I've only read the 1st two posts so far, but what makes a male changeling surprising? according to the Eberron wiki, "in their natural forms they are clearly either male or female." And according to our own VRS: Dopplegangers, the changelings of Zherisia are simply doppelganger calibans. What source says they are all female? I play a changeling PC in a non-RL campaign who is neither male nor female, being the result of a magical experiment that blended the people of a whole town together into a bunch of changelings, each one made up of bits and pieces of the entire populace.)


AND.... nevermind... I see now that PF has their own changelings, which are something different entirely. A hag's daughter, not a part-doppelganger, nor a shadow-stolen-by-the-fey human. I would delete this post, but am leaving it in hope of educating others...

[The Giamarga]

I'll have to check domains of dread but didn't arcanist get a bardic lore ability? Otherwise a very elegant conversion.

[Ryan Naylor]

Thank you.

They did, but it doesn't fit with the general model of the wizard specialisations to have something like that. Bardic knowledge doesn't work the same way it used to, and wizards have more than enough knowledge skill ranks to fill out what they need to fill out anyway. So I intentionally decided not to keep the ability for arcanists.

[Joël of the FoS]

Just finished my last two sessions in HoH.

Here's a link to the last document (sessions 45 to 54, 53-54 being new stuff).

It is all dealing in Martira Bay, Darkon. In it, there is:

- a prequel to Haunt of Harrowstone (pathfinder). I needed my player to know well Petros Lorrimor before he died, so that was the main use of that (fun) prequel, DM-machina wise.

- the destruction of an afflicted PC, who gets tricked into turning into a werewolf. This player wasn't having fun with this PC, so I made him on his way out, but the other players threw him out faster then I thought. Extremely fun role playing here.

- a cool (I think) "Bloody Mary" side treck, so Petros has time to exit the place back to the village where Harrowstone prison is. I needed him him to resume his investigations, where he gets killed so HoF can start.

- Crooked Kin/University theft of a statue/Vorkstag and Grine sidetrecks, from the second Carrion Crown adventure, which I do not plan to DM. Again, I needed time before HoH can realistically start.

- then HoH starts. You'll see it was changed in many ways, and beefed up a bit (the PCs are 7th level). At the end of this session, they have explored the second floor and the main floor. They also have about half of the deadly underground level still to explore...

Joël

[Ryan Naylor]

8/7/755

We scoured Lorimer's diaries for clues as to what happened to him in the days prior to his death. It seems he was investigating a cult known as the Whispering Way.

This cult has the same symbol as the Eternal Order, except it is gagged (a heresy). They work to preserve themselves eternally as undead. They are necromancers all... and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

The statue of a prison warden, who stopped a prison riot, has been defaced. This happens thrice in one week, each time a symbol is scribed in blood. These resemble Darkonese letters: V - E - S

When searching for meaning in these letters, we find out about "the Way" and references to Vesoriana (the wife of the warden) and the "Splatterman", a prisoner, who wrote the names of his victims in blood prior to their murder.

We finally start getting some hints as to what's going on. Unfortunately, Damien also decides to write in a very cod-ominous tone, which is going to be with us for a while.

Rather than just say, "Someone's drawn a V in blood on the statue of the warden", I put in a whole lot of alternative readings: “There are two lines scrawled roughly in blood on the statue, that run towards each other at about 45 degrees but stop short of touching. The one of the left is slightly larger than the other. You know, a bit like a V” And then (Albert being a victim of having too many knowledge ranks), told them it could be a Darkonese V, or the Draconic rune for fire, or a rotated Dwarven “th.” After a while, they managed to piece it together, but it kept them going for a while.

I let Julian know that it wasn’t human blood because he’s a dhampir.

After her shock, Kendra finally remembered Lorrimer’s diary, so the PCs now (on day 8 ) had all the information the adventure dumps on them on day 1. But they still showed no signs of wanting to rush off to the prison, being content to investigate in town. Which was wise.

I made the Whispering Way sigil a blasphemy to give Ignatious something to get his teeth into. Also, it does seem to fit – the sigils as described do sound very similar.

Obviously, there’s no Whispering Tyrant in Ravenloft, so here, the Whispering Way is (in false history) well known for the being associated with Lord Darcalus. No one knows what they’ve been doing since Azalin supplanted Darcalus – perhaps trying to steal his secrets, perhaps plotting to restore him to the throne, or possibly just trying to turn themselves into liches. Of course, Darcalus never really existed as anything but a reflection of Azalin, so over the campaign I’m going to start dropping hints about this. Hopefully, someone will eventually ask “If Darcalus never existed, what are they doing?”

[Joël of the FoS]

Is this an ongoing campaign? Or is it finished? If not (or yes, depending ), which adventure are you playing these days in this campaign?

I made the Whispering Way sigil a blasphemy to give Ignatious something to get his teeth into. Also, it does seem to fit – the sigils as described do sound very similar.

Neat idea. I might steal it

Obviously, there’s no Whispering Tyrant in Ravenloft, so here, the Whispering Way is (in false history) well known for the being associated with Lord Darcalus. No one knows what they’ve been doing since Azalin supplanted Darcalus – perhaps trying to steal his secrets, perhaps plotting to restore him to the throne, or possibly just trying to turn themselves into liches. Of course, Darcalus never really existed as anything but a reflection of Azalin, so over the campaign I’m going to start dropping hints about this. Hopefully, someone will eventually ask “If Darcalus never existed, what are they doing?”

I kept the WW's background as is, but of course, if they think about it one day, they'll say it can't be since Barovia has less than 400 year old!

So I kept it as false history. It was fun having the players eat that like a pie, without feeling the bone in it.

IMC, Vrood is at work to make a handful of liches within the WW's top circle, which would be dangerous.

But your link with Azalin / Darcalus is fun. Might steal that too. Or since he is active IMC, link it with Death's who is influencing the WW?

Joël

[Ryan Naylor]

We're going to finish Wake of the Watcher tonight. PCs vs the God Brain (sort of)!

Feel free to steal any ideas you like. That's basically what these things are for, after all.

I've also basically left the Whispering Way's history unchanged, with the exception of changing the Whispering Tyrant to Lord Darcalus. It's easier that way. I didn't want Death secretly behind things because it's only 15 years old and trapped in Necropolis, and is not really a very good strategic planner.