I Finally Finished Vox Machina!!!

I finally finished Vox Machina!!!

So Simon is the only person alive who saw Evelyn beat the Soulmonger. I wonder if he’ll tell them? I wonder how they’ll react.

My Curse of Strahd Campaign - latest session. The Feast of St Andral.

Warning, heavy spoilers for Curse of Strahd.

So this is how our Curse of Strahd game went last night:

The party are in Vallaki staying with Fiona Wachter, the Tiefling Warlock’s long lost cousin. She thinks they will help her overthrow the Burgomaster. They agree things in Vallaki need to change but don’t want either the Burgomaster or Lady Wachter in charge.

Since arriving in town, Ireena was snatched by Izek, the Burgomaster’s henchmen. The party want to make sure she’s ok and as they’re heading there anyway Lady Wachter asks them to bring her proof of whatever the Burgomaster’s son did to drive her daughter mad.

The party ended the last session having taken Victor’s journal from his secret lab. They ran into the Burgomaster, made nice and were told that Ireena is now betrothed to Victor. She is very clearly against this.

I was about to start the session when the Druid turns to me and says:

“Question, Octopuses...”

Me: “...ahuh...”

Druid: “they can breathe air for an hour out of water. So say I summoned some. Would they have full air?”

Me *knowing I’m about to unleash hell on this town and imagining everyone being attacked by Octopuses.*: “I’m gona say, yes.”

So we start the game in the Burgomaster’s mansion. Victor, invisible, follows the rogue who snatched his journal but can’t do anything to get it back because of all the people. He settles for glaring at him from the doorway of the dining room making it very clear that he is gona get it back.

The party and Ireena discover that Lady Lydia’s old wedding dress is being altered for Ireena to wear the next day during the festival of the blazing sun. She tries to protest but the Burgomaster acts like she hasn’t said a word. The Rogue starts to loudly tell the Burgomaster that “All is not well” and there is a runour that something is happening at the Coffin Makers that will ruin the festival. They have no proof and the Burgomaster is not pleased to hear such blatant nay saying about his beloved festival. He orders Izek, who is towering over Ireena, to arrest the rogue. The Rogue dodges him and yells that the coffin maker is doing something that will hurt Ireena.

Izek runs out of the Manor to take care of the Coffin Maker ignoring the Burgomaster who is yelling after him.

The Rogue is then grabbed by two remaining guards who are told to give him 10 lashes in the town square. He’s dragged outside.

The Druid immediately says to the Burgomaster that he is perfectly right, nay sayers are terrible for putting everyone in danger and the Rogue’s punishment is clearly justified. He offers the party’s assistance in investigating the coffin maker and retrieving Izek. He’ll even give Iteena away at her wedding tomorrow.

The Burgomaster is delighted and sends the party on their way.

They follow the guards and see them stripping the rogue of his shirt and belongings in the middle of the square, before chaining his hands to a pole.

They ready the whip. The bard casts Minor illusion and from a side street a voice yells “This festival is a sham!! The Burgomaster is insane! All is not well!”

What few townsfolk are around hurridly disappear. The party even see one poor man trying to hide behind a barrel his arse sticking out as he assumes the crash position.

The guards drop everything to chase down whoever said that, leaving the party and one guard who is standing watch over the people in the town stocks.

The Tiefling warlock sneaks away and uses mask of many faces to make himself look like another guard. He walks over to the one on watch and casts suggestion:

“Have you heard the rumour that Izek is planning to marry Ireena instead of Victor? You should tell everyone.”

The guard fails his save and immediately turns to the nearest person who happens to be in the stocks and says “Have you heard-“

While he’s destracted the bard takes the rogue’s lock picks out and tries to undo the manacles with no luck. The rogue at this point is thanking the party for the great destraction but wondering what the fuck they actually plan to do about getting him out of there!

Behind them the guard is moving down the line of prisoners, “Have you heard-“

At this point the Warlock turns to me confused that the guard didn’t walk off and i answer “you told him to tell “EVERYONE””

Finally as the guards are returning the druid has the bard cast minor illusion again to make fresh whip marks appear on the rogues back. The warlock takes that moment to walk back behind a house to change back from being a guard.

The spelled guard walks up to the party “Have you heard-“

The other guards return. See the whip marks and a guard walking away and assume the sentence has been carried out. They let the rogue go with a warning to be more careful what he says in future and hand him over to his friends.

The spelled guard is in the background peering over the barrel at the man trying to hide “Have you heard-“

As the party walk away towards the coffin maker the bard asks the warlock how long the suggestion will last. “8 hours or until the task is complete” poor guy.

Meanwhile, knowing what’s at the coffin maker’s I was rolling dice behind the screen to see what happened when Izek got there. Turns out, he wasn’t doing great...I rolled the last dice and choked on my drink. The players were confused as i recovered laughed and started crossing things out on my notes for future sessions.

So they get to the Coffin Makers and see that the front door has been kicked in. As they’re debating whether to go in or not they see Van Rickton/Rictavio lurking in the shadows.

They ask why he’s there. He gives an unconvincing story about hearing strange noises. Realising the PCs don’t believe a word he very grandly reveals the shocking truth, he is none other than THE Rudolph Van Rickten, vampire hunter.

The Druid says “I know, your monkey told me.”

They team up and enter the coffin makers.

Inside they find evidence of a scuffle. Several of the empty coffins in the showroom have been broken.

They hear voices coming from beyond a door and approach. From inside a silky voice calls out that they are welcome and asks “Henrik” to let the party inside.

A terrified older man wearing carpenters clothes opens the door and tries to motion for the party to run but the voice calls him out for being rude and he quickly opens the door stepping aside for the party to enter.

Seated at a table, stroking a curled up ginger cat and sipping from a goblet is a young man, handsome with long blonde hair, wearing a pink ruffled shirt. Escher, greets the party making side comments to Henrik who is curled in on himself in the corner of the room.

Escher recognises Van Rickten but only makes a brief comment anout him looking familiar. As his eyes fall on the Vistani rogue he immediately leaves his seat and goes over declaring him to be a “beauty” and being heavily flirty.

The rogue looks up at the ceiling and after the last few days decides this is all too much. He leaves the shop to wait outside much to Escher’s disappointment.

The party ask where Izek is. Escher is evasive, meering saying about how rude Izek was. He declares what a wonderful day to make new friends seeing as how it’s the feast of St Andral. There were others staying with him and Henrik but they’ve already left to begin the “festivities”

The party asked where they went and he answers “where else my dear boy? The church of course!” He says it’s getting late and he must be going. The bard is blocking his way so he charms her. She lets him pass with a smile as he bows and takes a subtle taste of blood from her hand.

Outside the rogue was leaning up against the wall of the shop. He turns to find Escher beside him. The vampire gets close and comments on his looks again then tells him that his Master bids him to join them. Rooms are already prepared at Ravenloft for him and Escher dearly hopes that he will agree to go back with him. He tells him they’ll take their time on the journey and get to know each other a little more.

The rogue sighed and said he’d think on it. Delighted Escher left and the rogue went back inside the shop yelling that, that dude was totally a vampire!

While he was outside the party had discovered that the ginger cat had been dead for s long time, the goblet was full of blood and instead of a chair behind the table, Escher had been sitting on the fresh corpse of Isrk Strenzni.

The rogue loots him and finds an old family picture where a much younger Izek is standing with his long lost sister. Noticing the resemblance between the sister and Ireena the rogue quickly hides the picture.

The rest of the party question the coffin maker who admits to agreeing to house the vampires. His arms and neck are covered in puncture wounds where they have fed off him. The wwrlock casts froends on him and asks where the bones of saint andral are. He said he didn’t know so they all start searching for the bones. The rogue eventually finds them in a secret compartment in the upstairs bedroom.

They leave the shop and race to the church. The druid turns into a horse with the rogue on his back carrying the bones. They leave the rest of the party on foot. As they run through the streets they see Ireena running towards them and sweep her up on to the horses back.

The night is drawing in. In the distance there are screams and the glow of flames. Above their heads thunder sounds and when they glance up they see the silhouette of strahd against the clouds astride his nightmare.

When they arrive at the church they see chaos. Terrified by Strahd’s appearance the townsfolk ran to the church only to find the vampire spawn already there. The party see two vampires on the steps cheerfully feasting on the confused townsfolk.

They rolled initiative, from somewhere in the painicking crowd they hear a familiar voice yelling in terror. “HAVE YOU HEARD-“

and that’s when the game ended.

I can’t wait to run the battle in two weeks.

Random Vaxleth Headcanon

When Vax took Keyleth’s virginity, he was caring enough to cast lay on hands in the instant it happened so she wouldn’t feel the pain.

Working on a teeny murderbot to go with Paultin pony

I made Vox Machina plus Matt Mercer as ponies so naturally I have to do The Wafflecrew too! Strix is first. Her hat and robes are in progress but so far so good!