#firan zal'honen

[itsmalachitenow]

Both are Ravenloft era.

Reblog for sample size please!

[tea-with-eleni]

This week in Barovia...

My players, DO NOT READ FURTHER.

So the players debated, then continued to read the Tome of Strahd. Revelations were made. A very uninvited guest showed up. Relationships progress.

The short version: they read the chapter where Strahd mildly lost his mind, made his dark deal, and drained Alek Gwilym.

Not much to say about that one; if you know, you know.

The funny thing happened AFTER...

So, if you're in the minority that read The War Against Azalin, remember how Strahd got around the geas against Darklords going to each other's domain? He possessed a guy. The problem was that the guy fought back.

Well.

Now Tatyana has gone to Darkon and Strahd must follow. It takes time to brew the potion again, time to dig out those old notes, but who's on hand who would never fight back? Who's expendable?

Hi, Escher. Sorry dude.

It's almost like your master is a dark lord and not a great guy.

It gets worse.

The wizard has had a crush on Escher for a while.

And Strahd, being Strahd, has been extremely interested in the wizard. Like, he will kill the rest of the party. But the wizard really is interesting. He's kept a single adventurer from a party before, if they're interesting enough. (Side-eyes Volenta...)

I think the wizard was way too wrapped up in his own head/Vampyr whispering in his ear Dark Urge style that it would be so easy to kill a party member who so utterly trusts him, that it would be so easy to follow in Strahd's footsteps and embrace vampirism without the risk of a sire that may or may not allow you your free will afterwards. He didn't notice that Strahd's portrayal of Escher was anything but perfect. Either that, or he didn't care.

(Strahd did actually, maybe even sincerely?, warn him about Firan Zal'honen, on the grounds that he recognized the description and do not trust Firan Zal'honen. Pfft. Pretty sure Firan might very well prove a very, very, VERY interested ally if they actually approach him...but he's a little busy, he has a dinner party of his own to go to. Something about Lord Darcalus and vengeance for his son. If you know, you know.)

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that Strahd banged the wizard and my players might actually kill me when they find out, because this is like the third time Strahd has been acting via a false face to get close to them.

Fool me once, amIright?

Meanwhile, I really ought to write a short on how Ludmilla and Volenta and Ireena are coping with the aftermath of having read Tatyana's introductory chapter of the Tome of Strahd.

[churchyardgrim]

KING OF THE DEAD by Gene DeWeese

[intro post]

oh boy, oh happy day, i get to talk about Azalin Rex

this book does some fun stuff with mild fakeouts and starting at the end and then jumping back to the beginning in a way where it's not immediately clear how one connects to the other, but it's not done in such a way that it's meant to pull the wool over the reader's eyes, which is good bc i already knew the end twist going in and lemme tell u it is very satisfying watching our charming protag charge headlong and heedlessly towards his own doom

Firan Zal'Honen is a wizard! he's the very best wizard who ever wizarded, and currently he has no idea where he came from or why he's not there anymore or what the fuck just happened

all he knows is, he was tortured with visions for a bit, as one does, and then the mist spat him out in a place called Darkon, and the guy in charge of Darkon, helpfully named Darcalus, is the object of Firan's utter and all consuming loathing, and also killed his son probably

so Firan does what any reasonable wizard would do and enlists the help of some local coup-organizers to weasel his way into the upcoming Met Gala for all the governors in this place. he sneaks out of the approved areas, argues with the ghost of his son for a bit, barges in some places he's not supposed to be, and finally finds what he's been after: the object containing the soul of his nemesis, without which Darcalus, an undead wretch, is mortal and vulnerable

smashy smashy!

unfortunately this is Ravenloft, where the universe can and will bend over backwards to fuck you over, and Firan has some conspicuous gaps in his memory. gaps that are helpfully filled when the punchup with Darcalus turns into a merging of souls and minds and oh shit, thats you Firan buddy! the thing you were hellbent on revenge for? you did all that!

and now the book takes 150 pages to explain itself, going down the laundry list of Firan's life up to this point. this is less interesting to me than what just happened, so suffice to say he was a stubborn and prideful magical prodigy that ended up the wizard-king ruler of a country called Knurl out in the prime material plane

the man's lawful evil all the way down, having some uhhhhhhh lets say draconian ideas about how to maintain peace and order, and yes it does involve a lot of beheadings how did u guess. eventually he figures out that magic can't, in fact, keep him kicking forever, and puts some effort into getting himself an heir. 

there's a frankly hilarious bit where he has a crisis of confidence upon realizing that a decade of trying has produced no viable results, and despite having mastery of the unquenchable fire of the stars he apparently never learned the Scan Ur Dick spell, so the problem might just be you, Firan, did u ever think of that before blaming ur wife

anyway turns out his wife did in fact curse his dick so once he got that taken care of he gets himself a lovely lil scion to raise in his perfect mirror image

shockingly, this goes as follows: 

Firan: "my son! i will teach you to rule as i do, with a fair and just iron fist!"

Irik: "hm. consider, tyranny bad? oh cool ur not listening immmmm just gonna go join the rebels real quick"

Firan: "........."

Firan: "anyway i need to execute you now"

Irik: "cool. i forgive you btw."

Firan, an hour later: [great sobbing wizard tantrum about how his son's dead now]

me: [also great sobbing wizard tantrum about how his son's dead now]

seriously, despite being the world's stupidest smart person, and also objectively evil, this guy has a lot of pathos! i feel for this idiot! i wanna shake him by the lapels and make him acknowledge how much he actually cares for his son!

the big thing here is he's baked Lawfulness into his own nature to the point where any emotion that doesn't follow what his idea of a Proper Ruler should be gets ruthlessly cauterized. except it doesn't work like that, you prick, so he ends up eating his own tail about how he did exactly the right thing, his only fault was not raising irik to be a "stronger" prince, and thats why he feels like his heart is breaking from grief and guilt.

except it can't be guilt bc he did nothing wrong. do u see the problem here.

anyway this is where the quote unquote Dark Powers get involved. they coerce Firan into taking the next step on his Foolproof Live Forever Through Positive Thinking And Magic plan, and one really bad baja blast later the man's a fullblown lich

lich powers! necromancy! shame the only form he's capable of bringing his son back to life in is a wretched rotting shadow of true life, in constant agony and despair, and not even Firan is gonna settle for that

so back to the drawing board! he spends the next few decades scouring the continent for magical secrets and tales of resurrection, trying to find a way to bring his son back properly and gain atonement for both of them

eventually the mists take him and drop him into Barovia, bc Strahd's the fuckign welcome wagon for new arrivals i guess, and Firan, by now called Azalin, sets up shop in Castle Ravenloft for forty fuckign years

they were tombmates

oh my god, they were tombmates

to my unending outrage, the book spends barely a chapter on this period. give me more damn you! show me the petty squabbles, the arguments over who keeps leaving corpses in the hallway, the lingering sexual tension on movie nights! i deserve to know who tops goddammit!

but no, we just skip to Azalin chasing after a mirage into the mists four decades later, and then uhhhhhh getting split in two? like when a cartoon character gets zapped with a science laser and splits into Good Half and Evil Half? except it's Human Half and Lich Half, which hate each other on instinct

and we're back at the beginning! with human Firan acting on his loathing for the lich Darcalus, only to fuse together again and force him to confront the fact that the person he holds such hatred and anger for is himself

thus, Azalin Rex settles into his final form. a wretched, undead genius, locked in his own prison domain and given a country to rule the way one gives a highly maladjusted macaw a rubix cube with a peanut hidden inside

in conclusion, i am now in the stage of grief labeled "memes"

[tea-with-eleni]

This week in Barovia Darkon....

Compiled from like four maps, including the VRGTR one. I had a proper think, read three of the Ravenloft books that detail information on Darkon/Azalin, read the VRGTR chapter on the topic and discarded most of it, and read part of an AD&D adventure set in Darkon/Barovia and discarded a lot of that, too.

Anyway. A few towns have flipped which side of the river they're on and I'm not 100% sure I have ALL small settlements, but if you want a high resolution map of Darkon for your adventures, hit me up?

But I digress.

This week, my players headed to Tempe Falls and were shocked to find a relatively normal town. Like. Okay, it's boring, but that seemed to be the worst of it. There was way more racial diversity than they're used to (Barovia being almost entirely humans with the odd dusk elf for variety). The innkeeper cheerily sold them four rooms and they settled in to enjoy some decent dwarven alcohol.

(Their was a funny moment when everyone collectively realized that a: they have a TON of gold and jewels from the amber temple and b: they probably can't use the gold because it all has Strahd's face on it and all they know about Darkon is that it went to war with Barovia at some point in the past.)

There were some people in the inn: assorted traders, a clerk who appeared to be staying in town while doing some audits or paperwork or something, and a couple of guard/soldier types with some kind of chain denoting rank as part of their uniform. They also had a chat with a somewhat disoriented sorcerer, one Firan Zal'honen. He claims to have only emerged from the mists himself a few weeks ago. I'm sure he's nothing to worry about. It's fine.

Anyway.

The party traded gold for a carriage and two draft horses, on the grounds that they now have

the cleric

the rogue

the fighter

the artificer

the wizard

the bard

Ireena Kolyana

Ludmilla Vilisevic

Volenta Popofsky

and of those, the wizard, the artificer, and the two vampires have issues with sunlight. Oh, and Darkon has an excess of suns. It's fine.

They then decided that they ought to try and find a larger town. The innkeeper gave them the skinny and said that Corvia is a decently big place, but Il Aluk is an actual city. She also warned them to please, fucking PLEASE follow the laws or else they're likely to end up in a world of trouble. The party did briefly lose their minds when they noticed a piebald raven flying around town that headed back to the inn where they're staying. Again, it's fine.

Then they headed out of the Balinok mountains and into the foothills and the town of Mayvin. It's a gnomish town with a massive clocktower and patent hall; the artificer is delighted.

The local scuttlebut is that something really fucking bad happened in Il Aluk and the golden star in the sky overhead appeared shortly thereafter. So naturally my players are like, "WELL WE GOTTA GO THERE!" They also heard the name "Castle Avernus" and the fighter (originally and quite recently from the Forgotten Realms) started freaking out about Elturel. The players also noticed something really off about the (as yet unnamed) Kargat stationed in Mayvin. I ruled that they have no good way of knowing exactly what the Kargat are, though, since the concept of ghouled mortals is basically nonexistent in DnD. (I saw a sidebar in the Ravenloft Gazetteer and thought it was interesting enough to include it...)

My reading list for this week is the first half of The Neverending Story, because I feel like The Nothing is a decent analogue for what's happening, slowly, to Avernus while Firan is swanning about near the borders.

[tea-with-eleni]

Meanwhile, in Darkon...

Yeah so Escher's dead.

Sparknotes:

If you've ever read War Against Azalin (I know tis not a common read) Strahd did manage to rules lawyer the prohibition against darklords leaving their domain. Not easily. Not without some morally icky stuff. But he's done it before, specifically to get to Darkon.

Anyway. He used that method, on Escher, to infiltrate Darkon and attack the party. Along with a handful of zombies and nosferatu. the nosferatu are interesting. they may make another appearance except they're so susceptible to radiant damage and BOY HOWDY can our party do radiant damage.

The party fought back and, after some debate, killed Escher.

Strahd sucks.

There we go. Slightly longer version (with spoilers!) under the cut.

Yeah so, uh, the wizard chose to sleep with Escher last session.

Only....

yeah.....

that wasn't exactly escher.......

that was Strahd using Escher.............

Which.

Squick.

In our version of events, which includes the War Against Azalin and most of Azalin's books too, Ludmilla was Strahd's original text subject for his possession circlet/potion combo. At the time, she was spawn. At the time, Strahd released her and used the circlet/potion possession combo on some mercenary since it didn't suit him to keep using her.

She repressed it as much as she could, helped greatly by the general fog on the memories of anyone except Strahd/Azalin about the events of the war.

But yeah, she and Volenta are Not Okay after seeing what happened to Escher. Like. Not okay enough that Volenta actually ensured they didn't just stake Escher and leave him to die in the sun, but gave him a pretty quick and merciful death. She never cared for Escher and they've very carefully not mentioned what happens if you stake a vampire to keep the party from getting any ideas, but there are some things you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.

well.

maybe they'd wish them on Strahd.

yeah, no, they'd definitely wish them on Strahd.

Ireena's now pushing for splitting the party, Girl Squad takes one of the remaining fanes, the boys take the other, regroup and tear Strahd's fucking head off if they can.

My players finished the session a little shell-shocked, I think. Emotions Were Had. They're going to find a cemetery (if there's one thing Darkon has in abundance, it's cemeteries) next session and maybe also message Firan Zal'honen, who is prepping for a party where he can take some Serious Revenge on a certain Lord Darkalus for killing his son, Irik. I'm sure that will go very well for him.

Ludmilla isn't sharing her spellbook, in part because she does not trust the wizard who clearly has his own very complicated opinions about Strahd (and also who made a deal with Vampyr, even if he has yet to fulfill it), in part because her spellbook was only compiled, only created, for one purpose. She's an abjuration wizard. She's built her entire existence, for centuries, around supporting Strahd and protecting Ireena. She's not ready to reveal that now or maybe ever, especially not to the party wizard.

[tea-with-eleni]

Meanwhile in Darkon...

So this week, PARTY AT CASTLE AVERNUS!

Dinner with Lord Darcalus!

Awkward conversations with Baron Alcio Metus! Who, this playthrough only? Is more overtly embracing the they/them. They also aren't gunning for the darklord position, because Darcalus was obviously the darklord, right?

A ghost of Irik Zal'honen appears to the rogue and Ireena! Ireena, because she's also the lynchpin of a darklord's curse, the rogue because he resonated most with Irik himself. The ghost begged them to prevent his father from seeking revenge against Lord Darcalus, his killer. They followed as Firan Zal'honen slipped away to look for Darcalus's phylactery... and were promptly followed by the cleric and artificer on a merry journey up and up and up and up and up and up and UP Castle Avernus.

(Castle Avernus is VERY tall.)

(I tried to turn the shitty scan of the poster map from the AD&D "From the Shadows" module into something usable but it's going to take a while to untangle. Whoever gave it giant round central keeps and sundry towers with no good illustration of the castle as a whole should be thrown off the topmost tower.)

The rogue tried to reason with Firan, but Firan was very determined to have his vengeance (or justice?)

But upon reaching the phylactery room, Firan realized that he was, in fact, the lich he sought all along.....

(Am I 100% ripping off King of the Dead? Yes. Yes I am. In our timeline, War Against Azalin happened. THEN Lord of the Necropolis happened. THEN King of the Dead happened. It kinda works and also lets me destroy Il Aluk which sorta works with the Ravenloft Gazetteer copy I found.........At this point I've basically thrown out most of the fifth edition stuff on Darkon. It's cool if you want to do the Neverending Story, but I want to do Darkon so...)

The artificer tried to grab Firan’s phylactery and book it. Fortunately, he failed a save against “hold person”.

Anyway, we ended the session with the party regrouping and revealing that, shit, we found another Darklord, do we have to kill this one too, while Firan enters the room and everyone recognizes the Azal'lan... Azalin Rex has arrived.

[tea-with-eleni]

This week in Darkon...

The party reached Corvia, a city carved into natural spires that got a front row view of That Thing That Happened In Il Aluk (the requiem). They found it FREAKED OUT and evacuating in case whatever happened came back and/or spread.

They also learned the name of the former? head of the Kargat, Lowellyn Dachine.

(If you are familiar with the Ravenloft books "King of the Dead" and "Lord of the Necropolis", then you can start to see what I've decided on for Darkon. I have concluded that, following the war against Strahd, Azalin settled down to rule for A While and generally get Darkon into some kind of order. He more or less managed it, then started trying to find a way out of the domains of dread for personal reasons. This was the events of Lord of the Necropolis, more or less as described: lots of people slaughtered by the Kargat, souls used to fuel a doomsday device, the whole thing exploded and destroyed Il Aluk, created Necropolis, and also created the King's Tear. Firan Zal'honen appeared near the Darkon border with Barovia not long after and is not on a revenge quest against the lich who killed his son as per King of the Dead. Necropolis isn't quite its own tiny domain of dread, but it is surrounded by the shroud.)

The party sent one of the necromancer's minions into the shroud to investigate Il Aluk. It was scried on by Ludmilla, who said the city still seemed inhabited and the residents were just....doing stuff? but she couldn't get a good look at them. The party decided that any populace that ignored a necromancer's minion booking it through town was not one they wanted to mess with.

(Which was somewhat disappointing for me, since I did look up some environmental effects that were basically identical to the Shroud in Tasha's guide that I did not get to use.)

The party left, more than a little freaked out. They're not sure what to do with Ludmilla, Volenta, and Ireena since their main goal is to find somewhere that Strahd can't get to them. They're pretty sure Firan is following them and they're very aware the guy is absolutely drenched in necromancy and illusion magic.

This is complicated since Ludmilla knows very well that while Strahd can't *directly* reach them in Darkon, there are ways around the barrier presented by the mists if you're a horrible enough person to use them... and Strahd absolutely is when it comes to retrieving Tatyana.

Which does tell me something about what I need to do next session. They've had a nice few days, but they're not safe. They're really, really, really not safe. They won't be safe until Strahd is dead...and who knows what will happen to the domains of dread if they manage that?