#so when he charms people its the illusory azalin that azalin uses on everyone

[ask-the-crimson-king]

Tales from D&D: Polycule Therapy

[Hello. It's been a bit since I wrote one of these.

This is about my Ravenloft campaign, with a party that I had to split (scheduling became nightmarish with getting 8 schedules to align so the party was split into 4/3 players instead of all 7) while doing some neat schenanigans.

So I met with the 3-player party Sunday night and they were the group who were going to get a parleyance with Azalin Rex. The entire reason why is kinda complicated, but TL;DR is that Azalin wants to fuck over the God-Brain and Harkon Lukas in order to help out his adoptive son get the fuck out of Kartakass and Bluetspur. There's more to it/the party's current goals, but it's not relevant to the story. What IS relevant is the conversation Azalin had with Varis, an Astral Self Monk, concerning Barovia.

Varis has been hunting down a group of Ba'al Verzi assassins who had killed his mentor for a while now. Azalin informs him that they're headed for Barovia, and then goes on a small tangent about how Strahd von Zarovich will probably find the party and how he's pathetic and mentions the whole Tatyana situation. He also says,

"He already has an entire harem as well. Three wives and a husband, and yet he still goes after this woman! It's pathetic!"

And then Varis says, "Maybe I can help them out." Azalin does insight, gets a Nat 20, and realizes that Varis may be able to help Azalin annoy an old "comrade" of his.

They formulate a plan where Varis is going to try and message the polycule and slowly pry them away from Strahd. Azalin is 100% on board with this because hey, more ways to torment von Zarovich will forever be a win in his book, and gives him a medallion that can cast Sending 3 times/day to the polycule, or once/day to anyone else.

Operation: Polycule Therapy is a go.

So the party already was making plans on the side to visit Barovia because Azalin's "son" wants to find the Mad Mage and see if he can get the enchantments Azalin had woven around him off, and now they have additional goals; find the assassins and fuck over Strahd's day.

(Of course, Azalin has more plans for Barovia, but that will be revealed later)

The player has already planned out the Sending messages and everything. I get to reprise my role as Escher. This is going to be fucking hilarious. I will give an update (or try to) with the results of this.]