I joined a group with an acquaintaince of mine to run through the Curse of Strahd campaign using 5e rules. Unfortunately the game never reached its conclusion but my character managed to become so embedded into the plot that she derailed an entire segment in the best way. Spoiler alert for Curse of Strahd, I can’t really tell this tale without giving away some of the secrets to the campaign.
As a little backstory, at this point I had roleplayed a lot using other systems but this was the first time I had ever played fifth edition DnD and I decided that Warlock was what I really wanted to try out. Tiefling, of course, but rather than an edgelord I went over the top in the other direction. Meet Sienna Naxxremis, basically the walking incarnate of a succubus who flirted shamelessly with damn near anything even remotely attractive by her sensibilities and was constantly looking for drugs and alcohol. She came off as a party girl who didn’t really care about anything but I had worked out a full backstory with my DM that established her as a broken individual, the type who hid behind her charisma and charm and sought hedonistic pleasures as a crutch to cope with her pain.
The rest of the party was an interesting mix of players with varying levels of past experience. Two of the players were OG gamers from first or second edition who were trying to get back into the groove of roleplaying again, two were very familiar with fifth edition, and the last was a novice to roleplaying in general. The characters, in a rough order, were a Dusk Elf Warlock, a Human Paladin, a Human Cleric, a Human Circle of the Moon Druid, and a Half-Elf Divine Soul Sorcerer. Mechanically we had a fairly well-rounded party but everyone was here for the roleplay rather than the powergaming.
In the beginning there was some friction as the party found themselves trapped in a foreign land but things worked themselves out fairly quickly. Sienna became somewhat beloved by the players and tolerated by their respective characters due to just being the most eccentric individual possible. She was a warlock who beat people over the head with her staff (casting Shillelagh to empower it first) and ended up multiclassing with Sorcerer so she could toss out Fire Bolts like nobody’s business since her theme was heavily based upon fire and mental manipulation. I won’t detail too much about her antics for the sake of brevity but she grew golden scales as a result of her draconic blood, dumped out her waterskin and filled it with wine instead, stole a portable hole from a crooked merchant and ended up sleeping naked in this massive pile of gold and jewels like a dragon (alarm spells laid out around the opening for safety), and let slip through subtle hints that she was really not a happy person and hated the life she had led. Oh and she owned a mandolin which she was actually pretty good at playing and she rode her beloved heavy horse: Nibbles. A few other party members were curious to get to know her backstory but they ended up not really knowing how to approach her in a way that would make her open up to them. Thankfully the DM gave them that opportunity on a silver platter.
The party has a rough idea of some of the horrors going on in these lands and knows they’ve been trapped here for a reason, that Strahd is playing a game with their lives. It doesn’t take long after they arrive in the town of Vallaki for things to really start heating up. Almost immediately Sienna is approached by a red-skinned, somewhat misshapen man who has one side of his body twisted and demonic while the other remains fairly normal save for the skin color. Before anyone can react he wraps her in a hug and proclaims that he is her brother, Izek, and that he knew his sister would come back to him. Everyone, including Sienna who certainly doesn’t trust strangers, is suspicious as hell but when they question him a bit further they can’t sense any lies or ulterior motives. For note, Sienna grew up in the High Forest of Faerun as part of a small village in her backstory. She had no siblings and it was established that her entire village was killed. She only survived because she was wandering the forest and playing with the local fey at the time. So she called bullshit before anyone else, only to be swayed by Izek’s honesty and his child-like happiness.
Jump ahead to finding out that Izek lives in town with their supposedly shared mother, Fiona Wachter. When Sienna goes to talk with her Fiona tells Sienna the truth, that Sienna was born a human girl and her body and soul were fused with a fiend to give her strength and power. Unfortunately she was smuggled away from the realm by traitors to her will. Fiona proceeds to evil-monolouge about how Strahd deserves their service and that together they could overthrow the town and sacrifce them all to him. Together they could rule Vallaki as a family. Sienna of course has done bad things in the past as a Warlock but she wants to get away from these things, her fear and hatred is to be bound or controlled. Knowing that’s exactly what this woman has done to her own children she of course declines and rallies the party for war.
The party storms the home and battles the cultists. The fight happens and the party wins with Sienna managing to use Command to get Izek to land the final blow against Fiona by giving the one-word order to “Betray”. Sienna convinces Izek that Fiona was a bad person, getting him to come with them, but he reveals the depths of manipulation that Fiona had worked upon him. She had used him as a hitman, effectively having him murder any opposition to her cause with the belief that he was doing good deeds. With the illusion of his innocence shattered he becomes depressed and desires death, submitting himself to the judgement of the burgomaster. As far as the party is concerned, this can only end in Izek’s death and they all prepare to console an already emotionally unstable Sienna for yet another loss in her lifetime but Sienna is not having any of that.
The trial happens and evidence is laid out against Izek’s missdeeds. The whole situation was incredibly one-sided against him and intended more as something the party gets to see rather than something to interact with. The outcome was supposed to be pre-set. That was, until the burgomaster asked Sienna if she had anything she wanted to say. Sienna stands up before everyone on display and proceeds to give a speech that pours her heart and soul out to everyone in attendance. It’s worth noting that I, as the player, also stood up at the table and delivered the speech as if I was the character pacing around the space of the room. Channeling every shred of capability she had to sway the courts mind, Sienna focused on the fact that Izek had done terrible things but he had done them unknowingly. She explained the depths of the manipulation that Fiona, their own mother, had tried to work upon them both and she asked that they see his kind and noble heart and give him a chance to find redemption just like she herself sought redemption for her past.
In these moments I was so wrapped up as a player that I simply forgot we were playing a game. This wasn’t just a few sentences and a dice roll, no. This was literal minutes of laying out every point that I, that Sienna, wanted to make in her arguments and I truly was on the verge of tears damn near the entire time. When I finally finished my speech and managed to sit back down there was a lingering silence within the room as the players and DM simply struggled to process everything they had just witnessed. Nobody said a word as the dungeon master tried to figure out what to do in the face of Sienna’s pleas for mercy and compassion until finally he gave the verdict. Izek was asked if he felt that he deserved to live. After looking at Sienna for one last time, heart filled with sorrow and gried, he replied “No” and every player including myself immediately deflated at the thought that Sienna’s efforts could have been for nothing. But then the burgomaster continued. “Then you will live.” Izek’s crimes could not be forgiven so he was exiled from Vallaki instead, becoming a companion to his sister who found her own hope for a better future in the fact that she could save her brother from the bonds of his own servitude. She had given him another chance and in so doing she found happiness and hope, hope that she could one day break the contract that bound her soul.
[zombify_post]
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