A DnD Tale: Curse of Strahd - Tanze Der Vampire (Finale)

What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets! But enough talk, have at thee!

The final confrontation is upon our heroes. From the top of the largest tower they descend to the catacombs once more, guided by Sergei's Sunsword. They deduce that Strahd has retired to his tomb and they follow him. And as they get closer to the portculis blocking their path, Toby gets transported away and replaced by a wraith they kill instantly. They use a dispel magic to unblock the invisible teleporters pad then they realise they can just use the teleporter brazier to enter Strahd's tomb. Toby's still gone and missing. So they teleports right in to the lion's den and begin the fight of their lives.

It begins bad as Echer attacks and destroy Pidlewick II, here on called Fu (don't ask me why, my sister named him). But then the table turns. Immeral cast wall of flame from a scroll blocking Strahds vampiric brides in their alcoves, burning every turn. Katrina uses Banishment on Escher and sends him to another plane of existence. Cygnus meanwhile uses the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind to trap the vampires, succeeding on two of the brides and Strahd, but with one Legendary Resistance he just shakes it off. Meanwhile he summons with the power of Ravenloft a Shadow from Hope's shadow. Don't last long since Rahadin tries to psychic damage everyone and succeeds in hurting our heroes, but destroying the Shadow. At least he got away with two poison darts against Katrina, which hits, but she is able to keep her concentration and keep Escher banished.

Strahd then summons 5 swarms of bats that will appear 1 turn from now. Meanwhile Toby have finally arrived by lifting the portculis and entering the tomb. As he was transported to another tomb where he had to push open a casket and then break free and run back to where he was. Can't do much this round, but he's here. Immeral starts attacking Rahadin and lays a long row of attacks on him (which we learned afterward was not allowed with the rules, so we shall try to remember that for next time). Sir Godfrey meanwhile who used his first turn to lay magic weapon on his sword now could use two attacks on Rahadin. Katrina tried to use a scorching ray, but missed all three. Hope begins sneak attack Strahd after using the first round to shine light from the sunsword. Cygnus starts using Divine Smite dealing 5d8 on each attack. And here it's pretty much over. Two of the Brides burns to death behind the wall of flame as they are paralyzed. The last one is able to escape, very badly burnt I might add by spider walk over the wall since it only goes 20 feet above ground when the ceiling is 30 feet above ground (I felt really smart when I recalled that tidbit so that they at least could escape, not as smart when I probably should have used the run action so she could have left the burning flame one turn earlier). 

After that, the radiation from the sunsword kills Strahd that turns him into mist and goes in to his coffin. Then Immeral spears Rahadin, Cygnus destroys the last bride and the others systematically destroys the bats and shadows that have been summoned. Getruda lies on the coffin so they pick her up and hand her to Geofrey as the others open it. There lies Strahd, resting. They put a stake through the heart and he finally dies (for now, but the players doesn't know that) and turns to dust, leaving behind a part of a rod. They take that and since it's about midnight stays the night in the sleeping quarters. The next day on the overlook they see the sun finally break through the clouds, bring peace to the valley. The spirits of Sergei and Irena appears and thanks them for their help as they walk away into the sky. A month passes and they set up shop in Ravenloft as headquarters. The corrupt politicians are ousted and the foundations of their emporium are being laid. I guess I will have to speculate their treasures are being used to restoring the castle and pay all the employees. And so, the final step is trying to get customers to the domain or trade routes to get the flour out.

Luckily a vistani wagon appears that want's them to come with them to Madam Eve. As they pass through the gates of Barovia they enter the mist and appears in a large chamber where Madam Eve sits at a table near a corridor. As they begin to talk to her she appears to get younger (well, in her 50's at least) and look closer to her half-brother Stradh. She lets them in to meet her master. Passing through the corridor they enter another chamber, a circled room where for portals with beams in the colours red, blue, yellow and green converging on a golden triangle with an elvish looking old man meditating inside. From his forehead the four beams emerge again flowing into a black hole in front of him. With telepathy he welcomes them to the Temple of Elemental Evil where he guards the Nameless One, and that they have found the first part of the rod of seven parts which is needed to stop the Spider-Demon. The Master have localised the other parts in other planes of existence, opening 6 portals for them to choose from. The planes being the different adventure books I have that would be fun to play. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Out of the Abyss, Tomb of Annihilation, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden and Baldur's Gate: Decent into Avernus. After some debate (and a roll of a die) they end up with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the search for a dragon treasure.

So that ends the Curse of Strahd-campaign, 4 years after it started. And it all began when I watched Dice, Camera, Action and felt that this could be a fun adventure to play with my sisters. And they seemed to enjoy it. I've already figured out how to get them to Waterdeep (besides teleporting them there since they want to continue their emporium idea). Basically Madam Eve decides that since she is the rightful heir to the throne of Barovia have a proposal. Since the Vistani can travel freely across the planes they might help with the transports, for a fee or something like that. So they summon a ship to the harbour in Barovia (I think there was some mention of some harbour to the south that was swallowed by the mist) where they load up on flour and materials and then will sail to Waterdeep across the planes. And maybe they need the help from a certain mercenary organisation that happen to have a dwarven cleric specialised in accounting.

Bayonetta (Switch)

 

Fly me to the Moon!

Finally got around finishing Bayonetta for the second time, but on Switch. Started on normal, but after four chapters had to go down on easy since without the combos and everything it ain't fun playing through the game. Also, at a point I stopped playing, maybe new games appeared that was more fresh or so. But that was... 3 years ago (as of writing)? Boy, times fly by. 

Nothing much to say, pretty much the same game. High-octane action from Platinum with different things to break up the usual action, like riding a missile, driving a motorcycle and so on.  Harder to follow the story though, mostly since I didn't pay attention. So if the story holds up now I don't know. Maybe that the film reel is a bit cheap in trying to convey the cutscenes without having to animate moving people.

Maybe I get a chance to play a bit more before the third game arrives... but maybe after the sequel. I think maybe the chapters are a bit long at times (goes for both games), but maybe that's me wanting to break up the chapters in order to not need perfection all the way through.

Murder By Numbers (Switch)

 

Miss Teri and her flying computer!

If you got tired on Ace Attorney you can always pop in Murders by Numbers. Picked it up at some Christmas sale on the eshop when I went home back in 2020. Finished it in November 2021 so I dropped it between that, mostly due to not finding the story that good actually.  

Story is that Honor, an actress in a murder mystery show is dragged into a real murder that she has to solve with the help of a flying computer named SCOUT. That continues for 4 episodes where they go through the Hollywood elite of San Fransisco, the LBGTQ-community and a shady mercenary group that has ties to the military that backed the SCOUT-project. And Honor's shitty ex-husband who tries to sabotage her life. 

I don't know why the story doesn't meld with me, maybe that it feels so over the top of liberal west-coast elite values that it's a bit virtue show of.  Then again, it's made by a British team so what do I know? But beyond that, the gameplay is rather fun. It's basically a visual novel where you gotta solve sudoku puzzles (well, maybe the correct term is picross) to get clues to continue the story. And I solved all of them. But the picture they show afterwards is rather hard to grasp what I actually was doing so no help there. 

It can be the ex-husband story line that really grind my gears when I think about it. Which is probably good story telling since you are supposed to hate that smug manipulative bastard, but it makes me detest the story, especially since Honor's mother constantly brings him in her life and such. Music's good though, but when it was one of the composer for the Ace Attorney-series, can it be bad? And I even recognised one of the landmarks mentioned, it was the bowler hat place, you know, the one Willie the giant picks up looking for Mickey Mouse in Fun and Fancy Free?

Superman: The Animated Series

 

Da-da-daaa - da - da - da - da

The continuation of Batman the animated series, now with the man of steel... who isn't the superhero Steel that also shows up in this series. Was shown on channel 5 in Sweden I recall, right before we had to go to school so the ending was missed a lot of times. Amazing how they could pull so much depths and emotions into 22 minutes episodes that took 45 minutes for Star Trek episodes to do. A great show, but it clearly isn't as good as Batman. First off, the villains ain't that good. They try to make them in the same mold as the Batman villains with tragic back stories that put them on the road to villainy, but it doesn't work that well here. Bizzaro is probably the only one that you feel sorry for and maybe Metallo. 

Take Livewire, I don't feel she is justified in her evilness, she's just some random radio host that got electrocuted with Superman as a conduit and she got electrical powers. She just straight up abused her powers to dominate others. Same with Parasite, a lowly dock-worker that got entangled with villains due to debts and got showered in toxic waste. And what does he do? He uses his powers to get revenge on the world. It's not that the Batman rouges did that, they did it a lot, but their introduction episodes usually are about them getting revenge for one special thing that tipped them over to madness and then Batman becomes the target for their obsession. Only Toyman follows that formula. 

The good things though is that it feels like Superman pushes a continuous narrative through every episode. As with Steel, in one episode he gets fired from LexCorp for trying to stop the use of this Robocop suit and a couple of episodes later he built his own fighting Metallo that also references his latest appearance in the show (that of being caught below a volcano). Also I like that we time to time check in on Lex Luthor on non-Luthor stories. Take the Lobo story where his office get destroyed, twice due to the Main Man or the Livewire episode where he is seen agreeing with her as a radio host since he also dislike Superman. Also the introductions of other Superheroes, like Dr. Fate, Green Lantern (Kyle Raynar) and the Flash. Makes the world be more organic.

On the other hand, Darkseid is the best archenemy introduction and execution across DCAU. As stated, good, but there are things laking. For one, there wasn't any movie in the package (probably due to not having any canon movies for that series, but they could have thrown in some of the non-canon ones... or Death and Return of Superman) and secondly, only for commentaries on 54 episodes and a couple of documentaries. I would have liked something more substantial.