Mordenkainen's Path of the Planes 23 - Allies or Enemies

A fairly long-running show at this point, Mordenkainen's Path of the Planes is a higher-level D&D campaign that I've been playing in on the greyhawk channel. The first section of the campaign placed us in Hell, and now we're in Barovia.

(Kelli) Bruilinde - A sassy bard who has a thing for Strahd. In real life, Kelli is an opera singer, so she actually sings her bardic powers on the stream!

(Elly) Lux - An intense, brooding rogue once linked to the evil Scarlet Brotherhood.

(Zippy) Shallot - A gnome wizard who is obsessed with defeating a planar threat named Morandagana. Shallot is a bit of a wild card.

(Me) Odos - A githzerai monk. Basically, this character was an excuse for me to use all the cool lore from my guide to the githzerai. Odos walks the planes and tries to understand the teachings of Zerthimon.

My D&D Character's Girlfriend: For me, the biggest thing on this show is the relationship between my character and Lux. We started off the campaign absolutely hating each other, but things changed when we kept trying to one-up each other in mid-combat.

I'm not sure if I've ever done a romance in a D&D campaign as lengthy as this one. It is a lot of fun, though I never quite know where the line is and I get worried about handling it properly.

There were two incidents in particular that signaled turning points in the relationship.

• The Flower: I had found this frozen flower in a castle. Every time we rested in Hell, I'd check it to see if it had melted. It never did. When we got out of hell, I gave Lux a little speech about how the flower endured, just like my feelings for her.
• The Camp: We actually camped right outside that wall in Barovia that I wrote about quite a bit in my review of Curse of Strahd. It was very cold, and so Lux and Odos were bundled up. She took me completely by surprise with an "I love you", which left me pretty much speechless.

At this point, our characters are very in synch and we have plans to move to an island together.

Battle Flirting: So far, it has been a lot of fun and added quite a bit. In combat, we've begun fighting in tandem. Between my stunning strike and her sneak attack damage, single foes don't last long against us. We continue to do acrobatic moves in battle, mostly just to impress one another.

Where does the whole thing go? Who knows? I've cooked up some backstory complications that may or may not come into play, but for the most part we just play it by ear.

In this session, we were in the Amber Temple, looking for a magic dagger. Barovia has been invaded by Vecna, and apparently this dagger is something both of them want.

First, we fought a demon and rolled a ridiculous series of critical hits. We kept hitting this fiend in the groin and frankly I felt sorry for it.

The Magic Dagger: Once the dagger was in our possession, we had to figure out what to do with it. I realize now that we didn't even study it to see what it could do! Shallot, being a difficult little guy, wanted to have it, but we've been burned by this dude before.

I personally want Strahd to have it, mostly because Bruilinde has a thing for Strahd and I get a kick out of seeing them interact.

Giving it to Vecna might mean the end of Barovia altogether, which would be odd.

I, Strahd: Then something weird happened. Shane, the DM, switched scenes. I was suddenly playing Strahd. Kelli was Madame Eva, Zippy was Kas the Betrayer, and Elly was a minion of Vecna's.

I got to moan about Tatiana for a few minutes and then made an alliance with Kas. Apparently we're going to go try to kill Vecna!

Crazy stuff! It's a fun show. You can check it out right here:

Watch Mordenkainen's Path of the Planes - Ep 23: Allies or enemies from thegreyhawkchannel on www.twitch.tv