#curse of stahd

[erzfreu]

one of my beloved dnd campaigns is coming to an end soon. take some doodles of my character <3

[dungeonsandkobolds]

Strahd in this session arrived and instantly called them out for robbing him

I'm dYing they pickpocketed Strahd at the first little introduction i did with him after death house

[tea-with-eleni]

All RIGHT!

Today's the day! the day where I get to find out if I can turn a friend's character into either a vampire (amber temple TOS apply, so good luck!) or a lich (amber temple TOS apply, so good luck!)

>:)

Meanwhile, back in Castle Ravenloft, a conspiracy to replace Strahd as darklord is well underway and the motives are likely to end badly enough for his would-be replacement that the dark powers might accept it. Maybe.

[reengeen]

Some art I made of my brothers (@beanbowlz) dnd character :D

(his art of the left, mine on the right)

(his arm is supposed to be like that, the right one is longer)

[curseofthebloodcountess]

Best Laid Plans - A Blood Countess Fic

Summary: Ilona doesn't know exactly what Alek's plan for the twins is, but she knows that whatever it is is risky. A dream/memory sequence for my party's warlock, who is Lady Ilona Darovnya reincarnated.

“It’s a bad plan, Alek,” you hear yourself say as a tall, broad-shouldered general prepares a carriage. The sleet makes it a bad plan to travel at all, but he has two little ones in tow. Precious cargo, twin boys. The man, Alek, grunts and you can tell he has more to say, but is clenching his teeth together – from the cold, you think. Cold has never bothered him before. Perhaps it’s something else. You feel like you should be upstairs, tending to the mother, but she is proud and stubborn. Maybe that’s what Alek meant to say instead of grunting at you. You suck in a breath and try again, “Where can you expect to keep them safe? The elves will be furious if they find out there are bastards that jeopardize a union between her ladyship and their prince.”

“Well, then I won’t shelter them with the elves,” Alek says. “I can’t tell you where we’re going.”

“She hasn’t ordered you to kill them, has she?”

“Even if she had, my loyalty does have limits,” Alek said. “Not many limits, but… they’re my sons.”

He tucks them into bassinets in the carriage and you watch as he catches and kisses a pudgy hand that flails towards him. The babes will be hungry and you wonder if the girl hired to wet nurse them, who sits, bundled and wide-eyed in the carriage, will survive beyond her use. You recognize her: one of Alek’s top lieutenants who left the service to give birth to a fatherless stillborn. She looks nothing like the boys. It’d take a miracle to convince anyone she was the babies’ mother. You make the sign of the Morning Lord, pull your scarf to your mouth, and stifle a sob. You’ve always been strong enough to hold back tears, but you’ve held your tongue for nearly a year now. Something has to give. You can fix this, you know you can, you have one card you haven’t yet played…

“I promised Ravenovia that I would ensure her daughter’s marriage to the elf prince,” you say. You feel stupid for trying to make such a fool’s errand succeed. “If I should fail, if another man were to marry her ladyship before I have a chance to succeed…”

“If I step between Strahd and an alliance with Dusk Elves, it will mean war.”

Strahd. The Countess. You love her fiercely. You crave her happiness and Alek could bring her that, with his keen, gray eyes, and tawny hair, and scarred face. He’s not only handsome: he’s weathered in laugh lines and is a fierce protector. He is the father of her children and pain etches into his features as he speaks of the possibility of war. It seems… uncharacteristic. You know that, somehow.

“Admit it: you’d take up the blade again.”

“I would, but it would never come to that. She will not have me, Ilona. Do you think we never spoke of marriage in all these months? She would sacrifice me for the good of her country. It’s the right thing to do.”

Alek isn’t the sort to care about doing the “right” thing. Principles don’t become him and he doesn’t pretend to be a principled man. His voice is hollow and heartbroken. You realize his trunk has been loaded up as well. Your pulse quickens.

“You’re leaving Ravenloft?”

“Not for long. Just long enough to get the children to my family home.”

“You never speak of your family.”

His eyes glint in the moonlight, more silver than gray for once. His lips twist to a smile, something hard and bitterly amused, almost inhuman, but you blink and he’s just Alek, keeping a secret from you as he often does.

“Thank the Morning Lord for small miracles, hmm? Don’t worry, Ilona. Not about me, not about the children. If you want your prayers to do some good, pray for Strahd. Shchhe’d hate it, but it might do her some good. Better yet, pray for Barovia. It’s not natural for mothers to be without their children like this. Who knows what’ll happen?”

He shuts the carriage, kisses your cheek, and squeezes you the way a brother might before swinging into the driver’s seat of the carriage. His parting words are swallowed by gray and white as he disappears into the woods and so too, the memory fades.

[tea-with-eleni]

Okay here’s an idea

Strahd doesn’t have to disguise himself as Vasili.

He could disguise himself as someone who already passed the mirror test.

Imagine the paranoia you could instill when, say, Vargas Vallakovich passes the test first meeting, but the second time they meet him he has Lydia or Victor with him and they have to test this new person. They pass, but Vargas….oh no, he doesn’t anymore. Bones crack, thunder rumbles, players get the briefest glimpse of Strahd Von Zarovich before he dissolves into mist… and what happened to the real Vargas? Could be fine. But perhaps not…

Bonus points if you pull this off more than once! 🧛🏻

okay listen I had no interest in having Vasilli von Holtz actually show up in the game but one of my players bought a mirror in the general store for the express purpose of looking for vampires by checking to see if they don't have a reflection

and god now I desperately want to orchestrate a scenario where Mr. Holtz befriends the party, helps them fight monsters, chills in their camp, and then one day the player tries to use their mirror for something and happens to see he doesn't have a reflection

the chances of it actually happening that smoothly are next to none but imagine the looks on their faces if I pulled it off

[kiss-my-asymptote]

So, I’ve been in a D&D campaign for about two years now, and we’re wrapping it up with our Dm’s take on Curse of Strahd, where a lot of our characters’ personal stories are going to resolve. Our wizard is looking for her mentor who was last heard from while leaving for Barovia, My ranger/cleric’s long-lost mother is in league with Strahd and killed the uncle who raised her and kidnapped her estranged father in order to lure her to the castle and make them a family again, our werewolf blood hunter needs the blood from three of my mother’s lieutenants to cure himself of his condition and our sorceress is looking for a powerful legendary object in Stahd’s possession that might help her brother pull off a coup and save her homeland from a tyrannical king.

We’ve been dreading the castle this whole time thinking it’s going to be rough and impossible, but then last session our wizard sits down and was like “hey, so, I had a thought. Remember that time we explored that crashed Netherese city full of wizard shit and I pretty much spent the whole time in the library? I found this scroll to summon a tarasque there, how about we just summon it on Strahd’s front lawn as a distraction so we can do the things we need to while they’re distracted? It can be like a heist!” we were all like “that sounds so fucking insane, we’re so down for that plan…hey, we did that module like, almost a year ago/ six in-game months ago, have you had that scroll this entire time???”

So we take these giant barrels of magic fire wine we collected earlier and we set them up about a mile from the castle and then we walk right in because we had been invited as guests. We immediately scooby doo this shit, splitting up, my ranger goes down to the dungeons to find her mother/the catacombs where their coffins are so she knows where to find them once she and Strahd turn to mist and retreat, the blood hunter and the wizard go up to the tower to get my ranger’s dad, and our sorceress goes looking for a treasure room as well as the bones of an old dragon we’re supposed to bury to lift the curse on Barovia. The ally of ours who gave us that quest is like an undead dude who’s been quietly following behind us for like a week at this point and we put him in a bag of holding so he wouldn’t get in the way, and we forgot to take him out this entire time.

Eventually, my ranger finds her mom and our sorceress gets in trouble, running into one of the lieutenants. Sorceress sends a message to our blood hunter telling him to follow her scent with his werewolf nose and help her fight because they’re in love, my ranger has a back and fourth with her mom and has to fight her, another lieutenant and like six zombies by herself and immediately casts sending to the wizard saying “Tarasque! Now!!”

The wizard ( who has been leading a running joke about becoming ranger’s stepmom) found my ranger’s dad at this point and he’s not looking great. She summons the tarasque right in front of the wine barrels, so the thing gets drunk and has several charges of firebolt (because it was magic fire wine, you might recall) and starts charging towards the castle. 80% of the enemies in the castle go out to fight it off and immediately get gobbled up or scorched or both, meanwhile my ranger/cleric has the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind (which is a cleric object used to hunt vampires), so she casts hold vampire on her mother and destroy undead getting rid of all the zombies and putting her mother in the position where she’s frightened and *has* to use her action to dash away but physically can not move so she’s sitting there taking psychic damage while my ranger absolutely molly whops her and her little helper. She’s got spirit guardians, her bow is cursed by the vengeful spirit of her dead uncle, the blood hunter put a lightning effect on her bow… it’s absolutely disgusting how much damage she was putting out.

Elsewhere, our sorceress and blood hunter are using a wild magic rod to produce a stink cloud around their enemy and then lighting it on fire and causing explosions that shake the whole damn castle like lethal MacGyver and our wizard is just happily skipping through the castle pointing out the rapidly approaching living bulldozer to anyone who tries to stop her from walking around the castle with a recently freed prisoner and making her way down to my ranger where she precedes to just sit back and watch what’s going on until the hold vampire spell is about to wear off at which point she gets up to my ranger’s mom while she’s still stuck, yanks her crown down over her eyes and then casts immovable object on it so that she still can’t fight and my ranger can keep wailing on her. The other enemy in the room is fucking dust at this point, the spirit guardians demolished that dude.

In the end we managed to finish the ranger’s vengeance quest, find the object the sorceress needed, and got the blood vials for our blood hunter with very little effort and looney tunes tactics. This whole time we’re like “where even is Strahd?” but by this point we’re like “Seriously, where is that dude???” no one rolled an investigation check above a fucking 7, so our DM was like “gee, I don’t know 🤷🏽‍♀️” .We got out safely right before the tarasque hit the castle, demolishing it and burning it to the ground before it got up and started making its way towards one of the other unsuspecting towns and we’re like “…now what?”

At this point my ranger goes “OH SHIT THE DRAGON BONES WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BURY, [SORCERESS], DID YOU GRAB THOSE?”

Our Sorceress says “Oh… no, I saw them but didn’t grab ‘em, I was kinda busy…” then she lets out the undead npc THAT WAS STILL IN THE BAG OF HOLDING THE WHOLE TIME and points him towards the rubble saying “it’s in there, still, good luck” before we all have a discussion about if we even should lift the curse at this point because the trasque is still here, it won’t unsummon until it has no more hit points and it’s almost impossible to kill. It’s stuck in Barovia so long as the curse remains, we could just get one of the nomad people to help us get out and just leave the thing here because the whole place was doomed anyway and the people here kinda suck really bad.

That’s where our session ended that day, and it’s been almost a week since then but I’m still reeling over the way we essentially Bugs Bunny’d our way through Strahd’s castle—and where the fuck even is Strahd???

[aidenwaites]

One day,,, I'll get to do curse of stahd,,,

[broeckchen]

Tamilo has a patron, and I am trying very hard to design a cool look for them.

Askiasa used to be a Lamia and is now a mummy, thrice awakened (whatever that means lol). They're genderfluid, but very slowly so - like, it changes over decades to centuries.

They're of the opinion that everyone should have the right to not stop living just because they die. Because death sounds unfun, okay?

So when people die, they like to show up occasionally to offer them undeath. It's usually fairly free of charge - so long as those people pay it forward. No killing anyone sentient without making the same offer! Standing up for Undead Rights!

... this is a problem for Tamilo in Borovia, where the undead are the main enemy type.

I chose this.

Also, Askiasa is usually wrapped in bandages, I just never finished that digital drawing because I was unhappy with the hair, which I like more in the ink doodles...

[tea-with-eleni]

I loved the pose for this one so much that I had to reference it for a sketch of our own Strahd and Ireena. ^.^

Still a work in progress, obviously, because I find Strahd muuuuuch harder to draw than Ireena.

Our players recently let Ireena go to Ravenloft, so things are going really well for our girl.

A bit of a redraw of some Strahd and Ireena art I did almost 3 years ago… I feel like I’ve improved quite a bit

(I was so proud of this one at the time as well💀)

[kenkuarchive]

The Werewolf Den in CoS be like

[generic-cleric]

A comic I made of Bedlam performing a song he wrote for Anastraya!

[caninescreations]

so i played Curse of Stahd as my first long-form DnD campaign ever and i have to tell you there’s nothing quite like falling out of the sky headfirst into strahd’s unsuspecting skull and calling him a bitch to his face for murdering one of my friends in front of me

[tabletopbrainrot]

The harem needs to unionize, his behavior is atrocious

We all know Strahd likes his harem, but he CLEARLY has priorities

[starry-peachies]

“I think I need you to make a con Save”

love the curse of Stahd reference

[wozwaald]

I drew some discord emotes of my two D&D characters I’m currently playing in a Curse of Strahd campaign! I love them both dearly and that means they have an equal chance of dying :)

The paladin is currently Stahd’s 5th wife if that gives any indication to how we’re doing :)

Credit to BrightGoat’s picrew for Kheres, my Triton

And credit to HunBloom’s picrew for Jupo, my satyr