Mordenkainen's Path of the Planes 24 - Clashes & Questions

The character art in the above image is by my dude turtlestance.

On Wednesday, we played some more of our plane-hopping campaign! Currently, we are in Barovia, stuck in the middle of a struggle between Strahd and Vecna!

The Party

• (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! 
• (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.

Say Hello to the Bad Guys: Last time, we had ended with each of us playing different characters. I actually got to play Strahd! I wrote a big guide to Strahd a few years ago, so before we started playing, I read through it again to help me get a handle on this dude I was playing.

Elly couldn't make it this week. She was slated to play a drow aligned with Vecna - Vocara, "the heart of Vecna". I'm not sure if Vocara is from a published product - I suspect she is. All I know is that in 4e, a woman named Osterneth has the heart of Vecna, and that she is an NPC from Chris Perkins's real-life Iomandra campaign (which is a setting I'd like to see wizards of the coast actually publish).

Zippy played Kas the Betrayer (!), and Kelly played Madame Eva!

I couldn't tell what was "meant" to happen here. Vocara wanted us to go and meet with Vecna. We didn't like her tone, so we attacked her and her pet dracolich!

Kas kept rolling criticals and did massive piles of damage with the legendary Sword of Kas.

I bit Vocara's neck, drank her blood and did a bunch of "mu-hu-hahahaaaa" kind of things. Basically, we killed Elly's character. Sorry Elly!

I think the dracolich flew away in fear.

I was surprised that, throughout the session, we kept jumping back to our normal characters. I figured that Shane (the DM) would run the whole session with us playing the evil people, but we ended up switching back and forth, which I've never seen done before. I liked it.

Meanwhile: Our normal characters got on a flying carpet. Kasimir, an NPC from Curse of Strahd, wanted to take us to Mordenkainen. This whole campaign is about how Mordenkainen shattered into "pieces" - different versions of himself - that are scattered throughout the planes. Our job is to find all of them and smoosh them back together.

Shallot, Zippy's character, is trying to snatch away this magic knife we found in the Amber Temple. We kept it away from him. I definitely feel like we're walking a thin line here as far as whether or not PVP is going to take place. I'd really like to avoid it if possible, but it's a distinct possibility. Zippy is aware that his character is selfish, but I still would feel bad if we got into a battle and somebody's character died.

Shallot killed Kasimir when we got to our destination over a dispute that happened a number of sessions back. It was another instance of the dude going rogue. Not good!

We met Mordenkainen and got to talk to him a bit before flashing back to our villains.

As Strahd, I decided it was time to summon all of the "creatures of the night": Bats, wolves, Strahd zombies, even the ghostly procession that rises every midnight in the village of Barovia's graveyard.

I forgot to specifically mention my favorite 5e monster of all from the Curse of Strahd book: The Barovian Witches! Hopefully Shane will let them come, too.

So we're leading an army to Citadel Cavitius, Vecna's lair in Barovia. The next episode should be epic!

You can watch this episode here:

Watch Mordenkainen's Path of the Planes - Ep 24: Clashes & Questions from thegreyhawkchannel on www.twitch.tv