COS II Session 14

wake up

> "Ayyyyy... what's the big Idea pally?"
>
>

- Rahadin's first words upon waking up from his 300 year dirt nap

## Starring...

* The Barovian Freedom Fighters
	+ Red, normalest guy at the museum opening
	+ Xadriel Maverran, collectible hoarder
	+ Tokili, trying something new
	+ Stone, tired of this
	+ Galia Trey, keeping up her streak
	+ +2 shortsword, doing his homework
	+ Twiggy, enemy of pest control
* The Van Richten Society
	+ Amelia d'Avenir, sleepless
	+ Doven, The Sniper
* Rahadin, a little less put together
* Vermilion Stormfang, Barovia's first and worst historian

## A Calm Day

Stone, having recently awoken from her $0.70 inn room, heads out on to the streets of New Vallaki before being quickly stopped by her own hunger. She immerses herself in New Barovian culture by disguising as Davian Martikov and purchasing a cheap, to-go meal at "Big Berez Hammed Burgers". As she's leaving, greasy paper bag in tow, she hears a voice ring out from a nearby alleyway:

"Excuse me sir, you wouldn't happen to know the location of the nearest CLA store would you?"

Stone responds to the stout, dwarven man who called to her with a classic "never heard of them, but fuck it let's search for one I've got nothing better to do I'm geriatric!" They both duck into an alley away from the prying eyes of the public before the dwarf reveals himself to be everybody's favourite old man: Tokili! They exchange bits of information they've gathered before Tokili gives away the classic ***Masquerade Murder Mystery Info Dump.***

While Stone and Tokili are doing fun stuff, the captured party members are getting the day's itinerary from Amelia: NPCs go back to Castle Delvana and actually solve the murder, Al go to your room and do your homework because you fucked everything up the last 2 sessions, and Red, Xadriel and Twiggy (Galia at the time excluded because she was chosen to go on a coffee run) go put up wanted posters for your friends. And absolutely NO funny business.

Stone and Tokili go where they suspect the murderer is, a large energy company known as Eventide Energy. They shift their disguises to be far fancier, and in Stone's case, far younger. They approach the receptionist and put on the most decadent presentation they can: scoffing at the size of the company, loudly declaring how little money means to them, and offering "whoever's at the top" a "deal they'd be silly to excuse". The receptionist informs the two upper crust businessmen that unfortunately, the CEO—Voltenir Eventide—is occupied with a therapist appointment, but a meeting can be scheduled for later in the day. Tokili and Stone agree to come back later, but not before Tokili leaves a hefty $10 tip.

Because the rest of the party does minimum wage work for the entire day, we skip to the 7 PM meeting with Voltenir Eventide. It sadly seems the businessmen wasted their valuable time, as the receptionist once more informs them that Eventide refuses to come in to work after the traumatizing events of the 57th Annual Delvana Masquerade Ball and his wife died recently or something. The point is there's no meeting today, but maybe tomorrow morning!!!! Before leaving, Stone leaves the receptionist an $11 tip to show up Tokili's pitiful, insignificant $10 tip from earlier in the day. With no hope of discussions, they leave for an inn, setting up the MMMMM inside the room. Meanwhile, the captured party members retire in their different VRS-sanctioned rooms.

## The Longest Long Rest

During the long rest, Tokili casts *dream* on Amelia to answer questions, Al to scream at him, and Xadriel to chit-chat. Stone manages to roll a divine intervention and Red is contacted by a dream independent of Tokili.

### Amelia's Dream

Amelia finds herself in a freezing blizzard, walking aimlessly for almost 30 minutes. Eventually she comes across Tokili staring blankly in the direction of a blood trail. At his invitation, she asks Tokili why he killed 4 guards in cold blood (unfortunately, Tokili is a cold-blooded creature and is incapable of any other type of murder). Just as the dream is wrapping up, Tokili and Amelia shift to backstage at the masquerade, right in the middle of Galia's dramatic description of the BFF's adventures. Galia is so appalled that they would interrupt her that she rushes offstage as a blue light washes over Tokili and Amelia, ending the dream.

### Al's Dream

After that strange encounter, Tokili then turns his attention to Al. He appears to Alucard against the backdrop of Pandemonium, where he berates him for jumping out windows, causing nonsensical chaos, and not listening to his sentient *+2 shortsword*. He closes his tirade by warning Al that "[the sword] was supposed to keep you stable, but apparently it isn't strong enough", before ending the dream.

### Xadriel's Dream

Apparently not tired yet, Tokili *dream*s yet another person—Xadriel. In stark contrast to his last two dreams, this one takes place in a verdant meadow under a clear blue sky. Tokili asks for a status update, which Xadriel provides ("we put up posters for eight hours while Amelia just stared with a kind of defeated look on her face"). Tokili and Xadriel wish each other well and part ways.

### Divine Intervention

Stone manages to get in touch with her goddess during her nightly prayers, and proceeds to never mention it to anyone.

### Red's Dream

Red also has a dream—being at the masquerade and being interrogated backstage by Amelia. He answers such questions as "name every VRS member", "tell me everything you know about the VRS's operations", and "what is the VRS's darkest secret"; as well as more personal inquiries like "where did you get your wings" and "how was your day". As soon as Amelia concludes her questioning, the dream ends.

## "Don't Attract Attention!"

In the morning, Tokili and Stone once more depart for Eventide Energy, packing up the MMMMM and doing some of this fun powder stuff Tokili bought behind Big Berez Hammed Burgers. In the same vein as their other two meetings, they are turned away at the front desk with the receptionist citing "Mr. Eventide is planting magical artifacts—I mean attending a museum opening in Ravenloft". The business-obsessed personas of Stone and Tokili cite "impromptu negotiations at this museum opening" and dash out the front door, gone as soon as they arrived. Ducking into yet another alley, they *polymorph* into giant birds and begin approaching Voltenir Eventide at 80 feet per round.

The VRS-captured party members also make their way to the "Stormfang Museum of Ancient History" at Amelia's request, as any VRS agents would be too recognizable. It's a good thing then that the 'S' in 'BFF' stands for subtlety! Doven tags along to babysit the party and try to flush out the artifact, which will hopefully lead to the murderer. Twiggy agrees to at the very least Wild Shape into a bird, which simply enables him to fly around the museum with reckless abandon. Vermilion Stormfang, wielding a broom, tries to shoo Twiggy out to no avail. Eventually Twiggy makes his great escape by smashing his head into a vent cover, knocking it off then flying outside.

### An Old Foe

While Twiggy is distracted by the great outdoors, Vermilion takes the opportunity to talk about how good he is at being an ancient historian (please note not a single artifact in the museum is more than 200 years old, save for Rahadin but you don't know he's there yet shhhh!). After some posturing, he unveils the reconstructed wax body of "an adventurer that helped defeat Strahd 400 or more years ago", which is unexpectedly clad in a powerful magic breastplate glowing bright green. Though warped by reconstruction, most of the party finds the "adventurer" familiar—and certainly NOT a member of the BFF, past or present. Moments after being unveiled, the wax melts off of the remains, being replaced by new flesh growing and dying over and over again. Brandishing a sword and having grown several sizes, the undead abomination once known as Rahadin looks over the terrified crowd. He out members of the Barovian Freedom Fighters and exclaims, "YOU!"

The tortured and undying soul of Rahadin encourages others around him to also be tortured and undying, summoning wells of necrotic soul energy, which screech and scream but most importantly "look very volatile". Al valiantly moves civilians out of the way, resisting the urge to introduce them to his pastime of window-jumping. Despite his efforts, Al finds the civilians very capable of rushing to emergency exits on their own—just in time, too—as several soul clusters scream and burst, dealing massive damage. Red takes the first shot at Rahadin before having his consciousness forcefully transferred to Tokili's control. Doven, from a second floor balcony, scores a great shot, blowing off Rahadin's arm. The arm quickly grows back and gains a glowing green magical shield. Rahadin hucks a screaming soul towards the BFF and allies, causing damage and fear upon its explosion.

Suddenly, what appears to be a dwarven museum staff member pushes through the crowd of fleeing civilians *towards* the fight with a dozen glowing motes of energy floating around his head. Without losing a moment he draws a pistol as a magical disguise burns away revealing a disgruntled Tokili. He fires 2 magically enhanced shots in to the rotting bulk of Rahadin. Rahadin responds by knocking out Vermillion, who was still up on the podium with Rahadin. Stone, also disguised as a museum employee, follows behind Tokili, but takes a wrong turn and ends up in a zen garden with a window facing into the room with all the fighting. Several party members become frightened of Rahadin, ironically preventing Xadriel from delivering life-saving healing spells to the commonly low-health Galia Trey who would end the fear condition if only she could stay alive.

The consequences of Galia's low health are immediately realized as Rahadin draws all the lingering souls back to him before releasing them in a cataclysmic blast: Galia drops to below 0 hit points due to this attack, at which point her soul is ripped from her body to be added to Rahadin's vast collection. Despite the fear of Rahadin effectively blocking the magical enhancements of his attacks, Tokili still manages to land 3 devastating blows, totalling up to almost 100 hit points of damage. Stone declares her hatred for healing before sending her disguised duplicate to perform emergency resuscitation on Stormfang because Galia's soul is entirely missing and that probably can't be replaced with 300 gp of diamonds.

As Rahadin begins reading out his manifesto, claiming "I am a god", he is burnt to death by the chestplate fused to him being heated to 600° C. The captured souls fly out of the artifact, including Galia's, who is quickly healed back to life. Rahadin's remains melt into the floor, leaving the Pyramid Artifact for the BFF to take.

## The End of an Era

Vermillion reassures the combative Barovian Freedom Fighters that the Van Richten Society will be arriving to clean up shortly. Tokili immediately senses his welcome wearing out and disappears, sneaking over to the other side of the room and lifting some magic items from a shattered display case. Vermillion invites the party to take the Pyramid Artifact, $100 to split among them, and anything in the gift shop. The party indulge themselves by grabbing souvenir coffee mugs, T-shirts and a lifelike Blinsky-brand "Vermillion Stormfang" doll.

Amelia and a squad of VRS agents arrive at the scene about half an hour too late. After some teeth-gritting, Amelia pardons the few party members that she can find by giving them a handful of authentic silver VRS badges and begging them to get the hell out of here.

The party reconvenes at the time machine platform via teleportation circle, and in Stone and Tokili's cases, giant eagle form. Xadriel distributes the VRS badges—Tokili, Xadriel, and Al banish their badges to their inventories, while Stone, Twiggy, Galia, and Red put them on. Before they can place the artifact on its pedestal and leave this era behind them, Stone collapses to the ground.

## Developments

* Rahadin is dead.
* The VRS knows who the murderer is.
* The following dolls have been obtained: Vermillion Stormfang
* The Pyramid Artifact has been recovered.
* The BFF all received a Van Richten Recognition of Bravery Commemorative Badge.
* The BFF are off to the next era.
	+ Stone is unconscious.
* The party is now level 15.

## Trivia

* In development, Rahadin was only meant to have one winery gem, while Voltenir Eventide would use the others to power his mech suit. However, as this era was too bloated, the Eventide boss was cut and all the gems were given to Rahadin.
* The next era is said to "explain everything" and reportedly has "a lot of cool lore".

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Exclusive interview with the CEO of Wizards of the Coast