COS II Session 12

logical progression

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> ***“You and your friends have caused an awful lot of trouble tonight.”***
> *- Amelia d'Avenir, believing the situation has calmed down*
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## Starring...

* The Barovian Freedom Fighters
	+ Red, the normalest guy at the party
	+ Tokili, ripping and tearing
	+ Anna Trey, charming wine-throwing bitch
	+ Galia Trey, justice under arrest
	+ +2 shortsword, screaming for a civil solution
* The Van Richten Society
	+ Amelia d'Avenir, girlboss girlloss!
* The New Barovian Police Force, defacto firing squad

Cameos: Xadriel Maverran, Pushing a boulder up a hill for all eternity (the boulder rolls back down when it reaches the top).

Notable absentees: Twiggy

Unremarkable absentees: Max von Austrahlung

## Looting and Scooting

Just prior to the discovery of Iris's body, Tokili makes a dignified exit by turning into a bird and smashing headfirst through Iris's bedroom window at Castle Delvana. He spends the rest of the night snooping around the private suites of the more esteemed guests, stealing wallets, jewelry, letters to the baron, and old pictures of Iris's adventuring party. Tokili spends most of the night in a storage closet, watching his party's hijinks from a distance via *scrying* and occasionally getting a more personalized update via *sending*.

## Mysterious. Dignified. Subtle.

As the curtains pull back to reveal the bloody heap of Iris the Incredible, screams erupt all over the room. Strahd Von Zarovich runs on to the stage to embrace the body of his beloved Tatyana. Reginald Van Richten is able to contain the chaos by firing a warning shot into the air, calming the crowd. The gunshot, however, scares Alucard, who runs around "at like 60 miles per hour" before diving out the intricate stained glass window. This only rekindles the panic among masquerade-goers, who understandably assume that such a man is dangerous and unhinged. Al is immediately shot multiple times by event security, which does not clue him in to the fact that he is now a wanted criminal. He then begins climbing down the walls of ~~Ravenloft~~ Castle Delvana and begins questioning why he did that.

Upon giving it more thought, Al regrets his actions and climbs back through the broken second-floor window to apologize, even putting his hands up and surrendering when asked. The guards advise him to "stay put", to which he responds by jumping back out the window, taking a bullet to the chest in the process. Once outside, he sees cars with flashing red and blue lights approaching the castle. He evades the newly-arrived police's fire from the ground (being out of their effective range) before scurrying up the spires of ~~Ravenloft~~ Delvana and hiding on the blind side of the tower from his pursuers.

Stone and Xadriel, who were invisibly backstage at the time of the body's reveal, mess with Strahd a bit before taking the service elevator down to the kitchen. Stone seems pretty sure the murderer was hiding in one of the carts, and together they find a slightly modified cart that was used to conceal the murderer. However, they do not find a trace of the actual murderer, leaving them back at square one\*. Both of them take spare chef outfits "just in case", then Stone casts *locate creature* to learn the murderer is in the same second-floor ballroom as everyone else. She then convinces Xadriel to subtly interrogate a chef suspected to be involved in the murder.

Alucard slips back inside via a conveniently pre-broken window. It appears to be Iris's room, but turned upside-down, like someone was searching for something. He swaps out his actually formal dragon mask out for his 8-year-old, never washed, potato sack found on the side of a muddy road and takes off his suit jacket to sneakily re-infiltrate the masquerade (via window of course). He spies a seemingly unguarded window on the first floor and heads right through it, ending up in the kitchen.

By this time, the police have arrived and appear to have a hold on things, placing yellow crime scene tape on just about every surface imaginable and questioning witnesses. Stone slips back upstairs, pretending to be very surprised at the murder. She asks if either Galia or Red took the artifact off of Iris's body, to which they of course respond that they have not. The trio overhears Reginald Van Richten discussing the situation with some police officers, 8 people are missing and he contacted the Van Richten Society who will be here shortly.

Surely the party will not oppose the Van Richten Society in any way, shape or form.

Stone (in full chef garb) tells a police officer she needs to head back to the kitchen to resolve a minor emergency. She argues for an awkward amount of time that "you really don't have to accompany me downstairs I just have to turn a burner off just stay right here please man I'm sure you have a job to do up here I can handle this", eventually conceding and taking the officer along. When Stone and the officer arrive in the kitchen, the truth comes out: there was never any burning appetizer, and it was all a ruse to cast *charm person* on the officer following her. Stone puppets the charmed officer around the masquerade, being granted clearance wherever she wants by proxy. Al, who had been hanging on the wall just outside the kitchen, attempts to signal to Stone, only to be shooed away.

Red and Galia are pulled aside by a police officer for a quick questioning however he soon declares the inquiries pointless as when asked if they'd seen any specific activity, Red giggled for 30 seconds before responding "No officer, just been here chuffing back that normal guy pack" while Galia berates the officer with insults. They are informed the Van Richten Society is arriving soon and they should be allowed to leave shortly (fuck).

Al, in classic Al fashion, hops through the kitchen window to re-infiltrate the masquerade. He finds an elevator and manages to figure out how it works, despite not knowing what elevators are and having the lowest intelligence in the entire party. The service elevator dumps him backstage which inconveniently puts him right beside the battalion of guards and police officers investigating and guarding the crime scene. Due to the comical 'ding' of the elevator he is noticed immediately. He expertly plays the "confused and lost attendee" right up until 10 seconds in to his act they ask him his name and he pauses for 12 seconds, before blurting out "My name's Red". An officer escorts him back down the elevator and he makes pleasant small talk over the inexplicably long elevator ride, before attempting to knock him out without regard to the officer's excellent quickdraw ability, he quickly responds to the unsolicited punches by embedding a bullet in Al's stomach. Thankfully Al knocks him out shortly afterwards and he's pretty sure nobody heard it. He swaps his outfit to the only semi-bloodied police officer outfit and does the classic Alucard Evade, which is to say he jumps out yet another god damned window. Following shortly after the Alucard Evade, Al attempts to re-re-infiltrate the masquerade. There's no prizes for guessing which entrance he takes to get to the third floor. When he tries to go downstairs he is spotted by a waiter and a police officer who take note of the fact that he has blood dripping down his uniform. He very calmly explains he got punched in the face 3 times by his alter-ego and has been concussed but is fine don't worry about it.

## The Van Richten Society Ruins Everything.

Stone is the first of the party members to meet the head of the Van Richten Society: A tall, curly haired woman adorned in white and gold robes, surrounding her are powerful-looking, well travelled people of all shapes and sizes who spread out to begin their own line of questions for all the guests. However the woman herself focuses her attention on Stone, asking her all about what she's doing and what she knows about the insane serial killer with a vendetta against windows. Luckily Stone's ability to lie is approximately 1 better than this person's ability to detect lies, allowing her to get off scot-free, but not before throwing Al under the bus more by making him look as bad as possible and making claims of premeditation.

Galia decides just because she's a lawful good paladin of justice doesn't mean she shouldn't get to join in on all the chaos and casts *misty step* to quickly teleport on stage and grab the lifeless corpse of Iris the Incredible. Before she can cast the follow up *Dimension Door* every guard in the room shoots at Galia. Due to the fact that Galia's armour kit was meant to block sword and arrow blows, the plate armour does not do much to stop the 15 bullets flying directly at her. She is shot 4 times in the head, killing her instantly. Luckily the Van Richten Society member Stone is engaged in conversation with quickly runs upstairs to *Revivify* and handcuff Galia.

Alucard, in full police garb, attempts to very extremely subtly talk to Stone and Xadriel who rushed upstairs after the gunshots. Apparently not subtle enough as an officer once again asks him to surrender, Al responds with "Who me? But I'm just a regular guy! A normal guy! A hardworking fellow!" The police do not enjoy this response in the slightest and shoot him 14 times unfortunately only connecting a couple of shots before Al jumps out another window.

Casually ignoring the copious amounts of gunshots and glass shattering are Galia and her interrogator who is immensely irritated with the Barovian Freedom Fighter's actions. Galia gets stuck on the very first question when asked "Do you know Alucard", a cacophony of glass shattering and gunshots echoes through her mind before she comes to her final answer: "I don't see what's in it for me". The interrogator (now known as Amelia d'Avenir) Stares daggers in to Galia for minutes before she finally agrees to cooperate, at which point Amelia brings a *Zone of Truth* over Galia and herself, ensuring cooperation. Galia tells Amelia everything she knows about Al, but quickly realizes she knows basically nothing about Al. Without being prompted with another question, Galia tells her "everything" about everything that led up to this moment, including but not limited to: the events of Curse of Strahd 1, descriptions of the party members, Flix, time travel, the adventures through the cretaceous period and how they came to attend The 57th Annual Delvana Masquerade Ball.

Smash cut back to Al who holy fucking shit. He's going to try to assault Amelia isn't he. He thinks he's invincible, far worse than that he thinks he's in the right and morally correct. Thankfully for once in a god damned blue moon he decides to actually listen to his sword and turns himself in. He yells in to the broken stained glass window that this is all a big misunderstanding and he deserves legal immunity and the ability to do whatever he wants. The police of course oblige to these conditions, just kidding they just agreed to bait him inside and get him to stand still for 6 seconds so they can put handcuffs on him and tackle him to the ground. Even being tackled to the ground Alucard finds time to pout, complaining that this is all the police's fault because

Galia is waxing poetic about her battle with the fiend Strahd Von Zarovich however she has to pause and try to come up with a way to respond to a *Sending* from Stone without alerting guards closely transcribing the story, eventually saying screw it and just continuing with the story, again being interrupted when Al is brought backstage and complaining about how unfair this whole situation is. Galia resumes her epic only after Amelia explains very thoroughly to Al how a murder investigation works and how he made all of it not work. Galia decides to spill the beans about which party members are attending the masquerade to spite Alucard. Galia's story ends with the explanation of why the party is at the masquerade in the first place, which signals the beginning of the manhunt for the remaining free party members.

Red is immediately "captured" with no resistance whatsoever. Not even handcuffed, he just continues standing around with a drink in his hand, quietly listening in on Alucard slowly shaving away at any good will the party has earned. Xadriel's "capture" goes extremely similarly, being plucked from conversation with Stone, he too cringes at Alucard trying to interact with someone instead of punching them and jumping out a window. Stone extremely closely evades detection due to a clever disguise, a Van Richten Society agent actually attempts to describe Stone to Stone, however in attempt to throw the guards off the scent Stone accidentally points guards in the direction of Tokili's hiding place. With that extremely close call, Stone disappears in to a crowd funneling towards the exit.

Tokili, who had been scrying on the backstage interrogation area, sees Xadriel push through the curtains. He casts *Sending* on Stone to check on her status, she is courteous enough to tell Tokili where she directed the guards, which is very inconveniently where he happens to be hiding. Right on queue, heavy footsteps begin approaching Tokili's location. He quickly casts *Arcane lock* on the door to the cramped storage room as he hears them search a room a few doors down. he begins conjuring an elemental via *Conjure elemental*. The spell is not halfway done casting when the agent's reach Tokili's door, thanks to the arcane lock they are unable to open the door and are aware that breaking the door would result in a dock in their pay.

Before the VRS agents can decide what to do they hear what sounds like a furnace igniting on the other side of the door, it swings open and a fire elemental is hovering in-between them and Tokili. Before they can act, there's a sudden immense increase of gravity just behind them, crumpling their bodies in to a heap. Three agents down the hall watch their colleagues die instantly. One manages to duck behind a corner right as a bolt of lightning soars down the hall, vaporizing the other two.

The party members downstairs hear the shouts of a Van Richten Society agent, screaming for backup. They watch Amelia head towards the source of the distress. While waiting for the inevitable arrival of Amelia, Tokili loots a gun off of one of the mangled corpses right as Amelia rounds the corner to see Tokili, crouched down at the end of the scorched hallway. They exchange pleasantries as Amelia dispels the fire elemental slowly approaching her. 'What would an archmage battle be without a fireball' Tokili thinks, unfortunately Amelia is a no-fun mage and casts *counterspell.* Tokili briefly considers his options and weighs the outcomes and ducks in to a room. He spends a few turns waiting for Amelia to get right next to the door, at which point she casts *Antimagic Field*. Tokili decides that he's bought enough time for his compatriots to escape their unfortunate capture and takes a page out of Al's book, hopping out the window and falling far enough to be outside of the antimagic field before *Polymorphing* in to an eagle and soaring away in to the night.

Amelia blankly stares out the window, watching what she believes to be the only escaped party member slip in to the black void of night and disappear. The rest of the party however, does not plan on staying in Amelia's custody long...

## Developments

* The 57th Annual Delvana Masquerade Ball has dissolved.
* The party is wanted by the New Barovian Police Department.
* The party is being hunted by the Van Richten Society.

## Session 12 Crime List

The crimes committed by the Barovian Freedom Fighters this session are as follows in descending order of severity and quantity

* **Tokili**
	+ Destruction of property
	+ Breaking and entering
	+ Theft
	+ Colluding with known criminals
	+ Resisting arrest
	+ Murder (4 counts)

* **Alucard**
	+ Destruction of property
	+ Defenestration (innumerable counts)
	+ Impersonation of a police officer
	+ Unarmed assault
	+ Colluding with known criminals
	+ Resisting arrest
* **Stone**
	+ Impersonation (3 counts)
	+ Unlawful use of enchantment magic
	+ Obstruction of justice
	+ Colluding with known criminals
	+ Resisting arrest
* **Galia Trey**
	+ Tampering with the scene of a crime
	+ Colluding with known criminals
	+ Resisting arrest

* **Xadriel**
	+ Colluding with known criminals
	+ Resisting arrest
* **Red**
	+ Colluding with known criminals
	+ Resisting arrest

## Trivia

* This session cements Galia being shot to death as a reoccurring motif.

1. ↑ Alucard cited "It was scary" as his reason for jumping out the window when asked about it by his sword.
2. ↑ It was revealed in session 15 that Al's bag is actually negative 200,000 years old