COS II Session -1

> "Who could possibly think of such a thing?"
>
>

## "Five adventurers crash into a haunted manor..."

At an unfixed point in time, a small group of the Barovian Freedom Fighters are aboard Tokili's airship. This party (which will henceforth be referred to as the Dream Team) consists of Stone, Red, Tokili, Galia, and Flix Purpleriver. The airship, which has been flying to . . . for a period of time crashes into a manor that everyone immediately recognizes as Barovia's infamous Death House. The scale seems a bit off, with everyone occupying a 7-cubic-mile cube, but the house is scaled up to match. Thus, scale never matters in this session.

The adventurers disembark at Tokili's demand. They decide to explore the house because . . .

## Charting the ~~Un~~charted

The room the party crashes into conveniently contains a dollhouse replica of the manor, lifting the ~~fog of war~~ uncertainty from the party's minds. They continue confidently downstairs. They know there's something they need to do downstairs, it's the . . .

Tokili is assassinated by Shaw Communications and leaves the party as they head into the next room. This room, containing something, also contains a spectre. Red uses his most famous tactic, frontal barefisted assault, though it misses. Galia rolls dice that are not dice, doing nothing in the end. Tokili returns in time to use a spell certainly too powerful for the encounter, but doesn't quite manage the kill. The final blow is dealt by Flix, who "beats the shit".

As the dust clears, the party hears muffled chanting from beyond a secret door. They follow it downstairs.

## Deeper

One floor down, beyond the dollhouse's mapped territory, the party finds coffins. Stone opens one to find a swarm of centipedes that fail to bite through her ~~normal scale mail~~. Red, hearing the commotion, dashes into the cramped room to cast *fireball.* Because everything is based on a scale of 7 miles, and *fireball*'s radius is only 20 feet, neither Stone nor Red are affected by the blast. The centipedes are toast, ending the encounter.

Soon after, Flix disappears.

Suddenly, tokili's consciousness splits in two allowing him to act twice per round. Continuing on, the party encounters four ghouls - a laughable fight for a level . . . party. Tokili obliterates one and preforms the classic fortnite emote "orange justice" to distract his pursuers while he walks to a different room. He sees a ~~mimic~~ normal room. Galia tries tossing holy water at the ghouls, but this goes terribly. She forgot that her holy water absorbed the chaotic magic released upon slaying a power such as Strahd von Zarovich, which changed its effect from radiant damage to random wild magic. Her holy water summons a unicorn, which is instantly hostile towards the party, as unicorns famously tend to be. Stone takes several hits, then casts *spirit guardians*. Because *spirit guardians* has a radius of "like three squares", it affects all foes in a thirty-mile radius. Tokili, on his second turn per round, tries to hit multiple enemies with *fireball*, but forgets that it only has a radius of 20 feet and thus only hits one enemy. He walks through a (?) that should cause agony, but because he removed all of his nerves in his downtime, he passes unimpeded. Red shrouds the two humans in the party in magical darkness, decides he has done enough, and goes downstairs. Tokili, taking another turn, spies the orb that was so rudely ripped from his hands at the beginning of the campaign (he was a goblin at the time) when he steals it back from a statue of Strahd, several shadows appear and are dispatched in a moment of genius in which Tokili realizes that shadows disappear when you hit em with light. Galia succumbs to peer pressure and also walks away from the encounter. The unicorn and Stone engage in a one-on-one battle, with Stone emerging victorious and killing the remaining ghouls with her *spirit guardians.* She follows the others downstairs and unknowingly kills an injured, pleading, noncombatant werewolf, with her still-running *spirit guardians*.

The Death House Dog makes an appearance and a disappearance.

The party reaches the source of the chanting - apparitions of hooded cultists standing around an altar. Tokili, who popped an *etherealness* after the ghoul combat, drags one to the altar and sacrifices it. This both pacifies and greatly disturbs the cultists in one move, but what's important is they stop making such a racket.

The party, with nothing more to do, returns to Tokili's airship.

## Why?

As the mostly-unscathed party returns to the airship, Ezmerelda emerges, apparently woken up. She asks no questions, and the party gives no answers. They all board the ship and fly away. Tokili makes the executive decision to raze the Death House on their way out using the airship's impressive amount of munitions.

This angers Rose and Thorn Durst, inhabitants of the scorched crater that used to be a house. They wave their fists and shout obscenities, forcing the party into combat once more. But Tokili's not out of tricks yet - he uses his luck blade to *wish* the kids away.

Time dilates and contracts. The world spins too quick to register. The land goes from foggy and grey to dead and brown. Water pours in, and in the blink of an eye there's no land of Barovia at all - just a stagnant plane of murky water. The party sees the ruins of Castle Ravenloft far in the distance, drowned like the rest of the valley.

. . .