Iron & Gold, Curse of Strahd
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Being an actual play of Curse of Strahd, using Precis Intermedia Games’ Iron & Gold, with Mythic as the GM.
40 — Loose Threads Cut Short[1]
The stairs led to a short corridor that opened into a room or wide hall with a pair of alcoves on either side. They paused before going because the ceiling was covered with yellow mould. Felewin hoisted Uthrilir up to look at it. Uthrilir said, “Yellow lichen, not mould. No idea if it’s lethal but it’s not the same thing.”
“Hold your breath anyway,” said Felewin, putting the dwarf down.
“We’re under it,” said Ninefingers. “Shallow breaths.”
Felewin nodded. “Do what you can,” he said. “It might be harmless, but it looks similar to the yellow mould in the caverns that Uthrilir said was dangerous. So treat it as dangerous until we know otherwise.”
There was material jumbled in the alcoves but they went past the alcoves without searching. Ninefingers grabbed the door and pulled.
The next room was large and nearly square, but the ceiling wasn’t covered by mould. The room had seen a tremendous battle — tables and chairs were broken, and shields and weapons had been thrust into the wall. There were two other doors, left and right.
“Do we split up to check both doors?” Hrelgi asked. “It’s faster.”
“No,” said Felewin. “Strength in numbers.”[2] He indicated to the right. “Stairs down might be there.”
“So might foes,” said Ezmerelda.
“I’ll open, and in case of foes, Ezmerelda shoots,” said Ninefingers.
“Shut it again and keep them inside,” suggested Uthrilir.
“We whittle them down,” said Felewin. “Vampires heal too quickly.” As Ninefingers was reaching for the door, Felewin added, “But let’s not be stupid about it.”
The goblin pulled open the door. Candles were lit, and seated at a desk was Rahadin, the elf.
Rahadin looked up, saw it was them, and stood. “Ah. Come in.” His hand went to his side.
Without further conversation, Ezmerelda[3] shot him. The bolt sank in clearly, and Felewin pulled up his crossbow and fired as well. He also hit, and Rahadin fell, dead.
“Oh, thank goodness,” said Hrelgi. “I didn’t want to deal with the voices.”
“We are reducing Strahd’s forces,” Ninefingers said. He stuck his head in. “No obvious stairs. Think there’s maybe a secret passage?”
“Every room here has a secret passage,” said Uthrilir with disgust.
Ninefingers suddenly screamed[4] and Uthrilir, who was closest, could see the shadowy form clinging to him and cutting at him.[5]
Felewin brought back the blade of his sword, which made the shadowy demon visible, but Felewin was too far away to do anything. Ninefingers[6] flailed at it but missed; Uthrilir[7] hit it (and only it) with the mace he had blessed. The shadowy demon evaporated.
“Thanks. Gone forever?”
Uthrilir shrugged. “No way of knowing. Given the way things reincarnate here, probably not.”
Ninefingers scowled. “Of course.”
Felewin asked, “You okay?”
“Fine,” said the goblin. “Embarrassed.”
“You want to search the room?”
“What, searching makes me feel better?” asked Ninefingers. “No, let’s go.”
The other door led to a long macabre room decorated with bones. Piles of bones occupied the four corners, while garlands of skulls led to a chandelier of bones at the top of the room. The centre of the room held a table made of bones, with a wooden top; ten chairs of bones sat around the table. The walls were decorated with bones.
“Former adventurers, I’ll bet,” said Uthrilir.
“A hundred, based on skulls,” said Hrelgi.
They moved carefully in. Straight ahead, on the far side of the table, was a door covered in bones. Ahead, to the left, was a set of double doors with a huge skull above.
Felewin asked, “Is that…?”
“A dragon’s skull,” said Ezmerelda. “Probably Argynvost.”
“Great. Didn’t we hear something about the dragon in Argynvostholt?”
“We heard a great deal about the dragon, but none of it useful. ‘Show them the light’ is the only part I remember,” said Ninefingers.
Hrelgi was looking down. “Something happened here,” she said. “Stains on the floor.”
“These are distractions. We’re trying to get to the catacombs,” said Felewin. “Straight ahead or under the dragon skull?”
“That door ahead is covered with bones,” said Hrelgi. “The one under the dragon skull isn’t.”
“The door behind us is covered with bones,” pointed out Ninefingers.
“Then let’s take the different one, the skull door,” said Hrelgi.
“You just don’t want to go through a door decorated with bones,” said Ninefingers.
“Again,” said Hrelgi.
Ninefingers opened the door without standing under the dragon skull. Nothing happened, so they all moved through the doorway.
The floor of the room beyond was shrouded in fog. Ezmerelda swore. “I was here.”
In the light of the sword, though, Felewin spotted a stairwell. “We can take stairs down.”[8]
From beyond the stairwell, they heard “Oh, no,” and the clatter of dropped and broken dishes.
Hrelgi said, “Cyrus!”
The mongrel butler came into view, wearing different clothes than before, but with damp fur.
Ninefingers muttered, “Do we kill him now?”
Felewin didn’t answer yet.
Uthrilir said, “Your master has sworn to kill us. How do you stand?”
“Please don’t kill me,” said Cyrus.
“That doesn’t sound like you’re with us,” said Hrelgi. “What happened to Emil?”
“He left. Snuck out.”
Ninefingers said, “I don’t actually believe you.” He stood on tip-toe to see over the mist. “I think if we look around, we’ll find him.”
“No!” Cyrus protested.[9] He glanced at the door behind him.
Ninefingers looked around.
The sword tingled in Felewin’s hand. “He’s here nearby,” said Felewin. “Can you get rid of the mist?”
“Maybe,” said Hrelgi. “For a bit.” She started flipping pages in her grimoire[10] but before she got far, there was a sound like a hammer hitting beef[11] and Hrelgi was yanked to the floor.[12]
Ninefingers had been half expecting something like this[13] and he slashed out with his sword.[14] They heard the blade spark against the stone floor.[15]
Ezmerelda had drawn her silvered sword, not her rapier[16], and she lashed out. They heard a bestial roar.
Felewin looked and (mindful of Hrelgi) slashed[17] once, and the roaring stopped.
“He’s dead,” said Felewin. “Is it Emil?”
“Probably. I think he’s dead,” said Ezmerelda. “Yes, he’s changing back. It’s Emil.”
Ninefingers, nearly hidden by the mist, advanced on Cyrus and[18] killed him. “You get no more chances to betray on behalf of your master.”
Felewin looked sadly at his body. “I wish it had been otherwise.”
In the meantime, Uthrilir was examining Hrelgi’s wound. “Claws, not teeth, so you will not become a werewolf.” He said a prayer over Hrelgi,[19] and healed her.
“I could have done that,” Hrelgi admonished him, but with affection.
“Now you do not have to,” Uthrilir replied.
“The stairs,” said Felewin. “Ninefingers, can you see how far up the stairs go?”
Ninefingers advanced up the stairs cautiously, and then started back, saying, “They are walled off. The wall is cracked, but we can’topen it quickly, even with tools.”
“Which we don’t have,” said Uthrilir.
“So only bats, rats, and vampires can get through?” Felewin asked.
“Or ghosts, or any of a dozen other things, some of which we’ve seen,” said Ninefingers as he rejoined them.
“Point taken. We want to go down, anyway.” Felewin led the way down the stairs. “You smell that? Guano.”
A floor down, the spiral stairs opened to the catacombs. It was not the place they had been before, but it was clearly the catacombs.
Felewin looked to the left and right. Left was possibly vaguely familiar; right was not. Straight ahead was unknown.
“Footprints,” said Ninefingers. He pointed at the ground. The footprints of two people, one barefoot, left the catacombs and came into the stairwell.
“Recent. Someone tall,” said Felewin. “Kasimir and his sister?”
“Probably. Not going to be a lot of barefoot people here,” said Ninefingers.
“We could use his help,” said Ezmerelda.
“He’s got his sister to worry about, not us,” said Uthrilir. “If we’re there, the
Felewin traced the bare prints to the nearest crypt and looked at the name. “He did it. This was his sister’s crypt. So they left and were upstairs where we were.”
“We didn’t see them,” said Hrelgi.
“It’s a big castle,” said Ezmerelda. “But where’s Strahd’s crypt? That’s what we’re looking for.”
“Kasimir’s footprints come from that way, so that must be the direction of Sergei’s tomb,” said Felewin. “Straight ahead would be the windows we saw from the overlook.”
“Strahd’s tomb?”
Ezmerelda shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he would want to be accessible through the windows.”
“It was a thousand-foot drop; ‘accessible’ might be the wrong word,” said Ninefingers.
“No, she’s right. He’d have a nicer tomb entrance, like Sergei’s, but trapped somehow. To the right?” Ezmerelda nodded. “We don’t look in any crypts.”
“What about depleting his resources?” Ninefingers asked.
“We’re on the move now,” Felewin said. “We don’t beg trouble until we can get somewhere defensible.”
They had to dodge around several crypts until they reached what they figured was the wall. From there, they went slowly, with Ninefingers casting a wary eye for traps. The goblin found none. Finally, they were thirty paces away from another lever like they had seen on Sergei’s tomb, with a dimly-visible set of stairs down. Hrelgi cast a spell[20] and said, “There’s a spell ahead, but I can’t tell anything else about it except that it involves teleportation somehow.”
Uthrilir said, “Can you block it while we walk through it?”
“I don’t know. A month ago, I couldn’t teleport at all.”[21] She set her jaw and flipped through her grimoires, and then she started a spell, stopped and looked at the grimoire again. Then she said a spell.
“Did it work?” Felewin asked.
“No idea,” she said irritably. “I have to drop the spell to cast the spell to see if this spell works. No way to check.”
Felewin said, “Then I’ll try.”
Felewin walked forward and then he and the guano underfoot were replaced by an undead monster. Ezmerelda yelled a Vistani curse and slashed at it,[22] staying away from the clear circle on the floor. Uthrilir held back to say a prayer.[23] Ninefingers stepped in and from the other side[24] and stabbed at the wight.
The wight attacked Ezmerelda first[25], then Ninefingers, missing both of them; Ezmerelda[26]’s blade hit its blade — but Ninefingers[27] cut its torso in two.
Ninefingers said to Hrelgi, “I don’t think you disabled the trap.”
Ezmerelda said, “Now that it has activated, is it disabled for the day, like the dungeons, or is it permanently disabled?”
Uthrilir added, “Or is it not disabled at all?”
Hrelgi got the words right and cast her spell of assessment again.[28] “I didn’t manage. It’s still there.”
“I’ll go next,” Ninefingers said. “Felewin will need someone to protect him while he’s there.”
Uthrilir said, “He would want you to stay here and help with defeating Strahd.”
Ninefingers stared at the dwarf. “The stupid oaf would, wouldn’t he?”
Ezmerelda and Uthrilir both nodded.
Ezmerelda said, “Can you open the shutters on the lantern? Without Felewin’s sword, it’s dark here.”
Ninefingers handed her the glowing sword, which he had tucked as spare in his scabbard. “Here. It glows.”
It brightened when she took it, and she felt its “greeting.” “It thinks,” said Ezmerelda.
“It does,” said Ninefingers. “It disapproves of my lifestyle.”
Ezmerelda laughed. “You travel with Felewin. You are effectively a knight, a paladin of sorts.”
She felt the sword’s disagreement.
“My heart is not pure,” Ninefingers explained.
Monsters
The only new one is Rahadin, but I’m not sure I included Emil and Cyrus Belgrave. Probably not, because they weren’t combatants last time.
Rahadin
| Abilities | Fitness 4 Awareness 5 Creativity 2 Reasoning 3 Influence 4 |
|---|---|
| Skills | Dueling 8 (≤12), Interrogation 5 (≤9), Investigation (≤10), Stealth 8 (≤12), Subterfuge 7 (≤10), Fabrica Ge (≤9) |
| Gimmicks | Striking Appearance, Sure-footed, Mindscream (Fearsome Scream but on stopped successful R+C roll difficulty 2 or stopped entirely by F. Mentus | Inner Wall), Descrying facet (F. Ge) |
Cyrus
Cyrus is an extra. We sum him up as Creativity 3 and skills as needed.
Emil
Emil is pretty standard as a werewolf, but e does have
| Abilities | Fitness 3 Awareness 3 Creativity 1 Reasoning 2 Influence 3 |
|---|---|
| Skills | Athletics 4 (≤7), Brawling 4 (≤7), Dueling 3 (≤6), Leadership 4 (≤7), Survival 5 (≤7), Tracking 4 (≤6), skills as a human (might use armor and weapons) |
| Gimmicks | In hybrid form, though I'd probably let him have Acute Smell as a human): Acute Smell, Musclebound, Special Weapon (teeth: 1 inj, claws: +1 inj), Toughness, Immune[non-magical or non-silvered weapons] |
Game Mechanics
[1] Mythic suggested theme: Violate Leadership (NPC Action)
[2] Mythic: Left or right (odd left, even right). Roll a 6, so right to the chamberlain’s office.
[3] Ez rolls a 6 on Archery; she hits.
[4] Shadow demon only rolls 10 but it has no opposition because no one noticed the demon. However, yay for armour because it ends up stopping the 1 injury level (2).
[5] Reactions Felewin 14 Ninefingers 13 Uthrilir 10 Hrelgi 9 Ezmerelda 8 Shadow Demon 6
[6] Ninefingers rolls 11 (margin -1). Shadowy demon rolls a 4 (margin -4), so Ninefingers misses.
[7] Uthrilir rolls a 3, margin 7, and shadowy demon has margin 0, so Uthrilir hits with a triumph.
[8] Mythic: Is Cyrus back down here? (CF 8, 50/50) Rolled a 1, so extreme yes.
[9] Cyrus rolls a 10 (margin -4); Ninefingers rolls a 6 (margin 0).
[10] Hrelgi’s intent is to use F. Motus to draw all the mist to her.
[11] Emil has difficulty -2 on Stealth because of the mist and rolls a 7 (margin 2). That means that everyone can detect him but too late.
[12] Emil rolls a 7 on brawling and Hrelgi isn’t expecting it, so down she goes. Her armour activates only once, so Emil does 2 Injury levels.
[13] Ninefingers has Awareness 4, so he knows where Emil is.
[14] Ninefingers is at 2 Difficulty because avoiding Hrelgi makes this a called shot. He rolls a 9, which isn’t enough.
[15] Reactions: Felewin 14 Ninefingers 13 Uthrilir 12 Ezmerelda 11 Hrelgi 11 Emil 7 Cyrus 9
[16] Ez rolls a 3, margin 1 (because of the called shot and drawing).
[17] Felewin is at +2 difficulty for called shot but he rolls 8 (margin 1); Emil rolls 10 (margin 0). Toughness has no effect, and it’s a magical weapon.
[18] Ninefingers rolls 3; Cyrus rolls 11, so it’s a triumph for Ninefingers and we’ll say that Cyrus is dead.
[19] Uthrilir rolls an 8, which now makes it.
[20] Hrelgi rolls a 6 (margin 4) which spots that there is magic ahead but nothing about what kind it is.
[21] Hrelgi rolls an 8 which is margin 2, and doesn’t make the difficulty of 4.
[22] Ez rolls a 7 (margin 1), wight rolls a 10 (margin -2). Her attack is 2 injury levels, its armor is {5,3} so no protection. Wight is now at -2.
[23] Uthrilir rolls a 2. The bonus is that his mace is now permanently blessed.
[24] Ninefingers rolls a 5 (margin 5) and wight rolls an 8, which would be margin 2 if it weren’t already defending. Wight’s armor is 5,3,1 so protects from one.
[25] Two opponents, -2 for each; it’s also at -3 for injury, so -5. It rolls a 12 (margin -8 vs margin 3) and a 7 (margin -4 vs margin 0), misses both of them.
[26] Ez rolls a 12 (margin -4); it rolls a 5 (margin 0).
[27] Ninefingers rolls a 3, margin 5 with the called shot, which is cutting torso in two.
[28] Hrelgi rolls 6 on the spell (margin 4) and 9 on the R+C (margin 1).
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