COH

2025

6/29	Session 0. We watched The Maltese Falcon (1941).
7/19	The party wakes up without their memories in a dark room. Introductions. Using divine sense, Avalon finds out two of the party members have something undead about them: middle-part Norwell and pretty boy Asch. We find ourselves in a fully furnished, pre-dome era mansion with food on the tables and a lit fireplace. The food is fake. The books in the library are full of jumbled nonsense. There is a Durst family crest on the wall. There is music playing, but none of us can figure out where it's coming from. Asch and Johnny try to play a song. The party hears a man who demands that the "train boys" go into another room. He interrogates everyone, somehow throwing them if they don't listen. Norwell's mentor sent him to a church. Donny and Jude were on a train. Asch is actually undercover and fucked his cover story up a little here. Avalon gives up nothing. Johnny was at a museum. The man reveals his name is Stanley & leaves to deal with something. The party goes upstairs and opens every door at the same time, and we get attacked by a ghost and a rug. Eventually, we do find a way out.
7/26	Everyone wakes up & finds themselves chained up and sitting on a pile of corpses. Disguised as Stanley, the mob-boss from before, Asch goes upstairs and comes face to face with Ireena Kolyana. Believing him to be the man who killed her father, Ireena stabs him. We are eventually able to leave after poking around in the torture basement for a while. Half the party stays at Jude's place. During the night, Asch is caught trying to steal bits of hair.
8/2	The party has 3 hrs of downtime before they meet up with Ireena at her father's burned-down store. Johnny goes into town to find someone who will make a replica of some ancient sword. Jude goes to an auto shop to get everyone a "respectable job." Isaiah Kolyana, the employee working there, recognizes Jude as one of the mafia grunts who trashed the shop and kicks him out. Isaiah is working on a very fancy red limo that Jude recognizes. The party goes to Irena's and is greeted by a woman wielding a big gun. Irena introduces us to Esmerelda. We discuss why we think we were captured & what to do next. Avalon finally wakes up (she was asleep last session). Asch wants to go to Harvey's, a speakeasy with mafia connections, to find out more. Jude leads everyone to the auto shop for that job interview. The remaining people decide we don't want a job and go to the bar. Jude, alone & ahead of everyone else, disguises himself to investigate. He finds a dorm for sex workers above the bar. Overhears two workers discuss how Stanley has been very angry/violent towards Vera (speakeasy owner). Watches the pair go down an alley obscured by fog and disappear. Rest of the party at bar: Talking to Vera, drinking, and/or gambling. Asch leaves to get more hair. Picks Ireena's & Esmerelda's hair out of the drain. Jude (hidden) witnesses Asch cut Donny's hair with his strange, long nails. He then goes back to the bar and gets hair from the rest. As the party leaves the bar, they're intercepted by Cooper Kittyhawk, a singer with a professional rivalry with Asch. Party sees Asch put the party's hair into her pocket. Avalon and Jude start dragging Asch (screaming and crying) back to Jude's apartment. They question him in the bathroom and find out he's a double agent working for Stanley. He fails every check he makes. The confrontation ends with Asch setting the apartment on fire.
8/9	After splitting up for a while and then reconvening, the party agrees to keep Asch around. We make a plan to kill Stanley, but first we need to get to where he is (beyond that mist). Asch asks Vera where to find the key. She tells us she needs help relocating a "stray cat" and has us agree to escort a drow named "Tav." They seem to be a member of some important family. Their face is branded. Our destination is up north in Yartar where the goliath caravans can be found. We get attacked by a large metal beast during our trip (roper?). Scavenge a car battery from it. There's a cowboy duel, and Donny is chased off by Jude's cop roommate.
8/16	We theorize why the mob targeted us and conclude it had something to do with artifacts we came into contact with pre-session 0. Avalon reveals that she was attacked by a bird person and fears that she has rabies. Norwell has disappeared. He leaves behind black ashes. We managed to get a car moving with the power of scavenged car batteries and Power Device. The party arrives at Yartar, the city of ice. It’s a rough area, controlled by the Foundation and the River Union. Johnny doesn’t want to be checked by the guards before entering. Asch plays a distracting melody on his fiddle while everyone sneaks into the sewers. Asch gets checked in by security, who find the bite scar on his neck. “Yeah haha my partner gets a little excited sometimes [lie].” The women at the gate give him a purple blanket and a flyer for a domestic violence support group. I, the player, feel bad. We enter the first motel we find. It's called “The White Lady.” The elderly deep gnome at the front desk is carving an ice sculpture of a “busty ghost.” He keeps asking us if we are here for the seance. Sure, why not? The seance begins, and nothing really happens at first. As a joke, Tav makes a busty ghost out of dancing lights. Then, something scary actually happens. The elderly man goes into a trance. A vision: black cauldron, children crying. The amulet around the man’s neck has turned black. It has the same symbol that was on Norwell’s cloak. Bar hopping time. Jude meets with a connection of his, Toive Gnazbright. Two women spot Tav, thinking they’re Asch because of the purple blanket Asch gave them. Playing cards with Toive. Avalon reveals she was a very demanding partner to her husband. Party gets intoxicated. I get 5 nat 20s this session.
8/23	Return to hotel room. Johnny is missing, we conclude he left of his own will. The old man is okay post-seance. Asch threatens him, but he doesn’t know anything. An old drow recognizes Tav in the street and says, "The Don sends his regards." She shoots Avalon. Avalon beginws to grow talons and feathers. She flashes back to the war. She climbs up a building and falls. Nobody seems to know where Johnny went. We learn that the leader of the River Union is looking for Tav. Asch and Jude commit grand theft auto. Ends when we meet with the goliath caravan and talk to their leader, Arabelle. Hand Tav off. Arabelle’s fortune-telling results: THE BEAST: this is a card of power, your enemy is a creature of darkness whose powers are beyond mortality. The beast sits on his dark throne THE MARIONETTE: Look for a man of music of two heads. He lives in a place of great hunger and sorrow. The man who sheds light will help greatly in the battle against darkness. SHEPHERD: Find the mother. She who gave birth to evil. DICTATOR: See a throne fit for a king. This card tells of a powerful force for good and protection, fortune, a holy symbol of great hope TRAITOR: Look for a wealthy woman, a staunch ally of the double, she keeps the treasure under lock and key with the bones of an ancient enemy Also, she tells us to find a store in Yartar.
8/30	Looking for Norwell. Looking to find the shop in Yartar mentioned by the prophecy. We find a poster with a symbol that was on Norwell's cloak. It’s Obscuran in origin. Only Asch can see the symbol. Other members see a heart. The poster is an advertisement for game night at a bar in Amphail. Asch recognizes the ink as being made of the same stuff Norwell left behind. The party starts looking for a key holder and ends up at the KEY Gym. Featherweight champion Francis Fisticuffs is working there as a bouncer. Learn that the boss, Sandy, is Francis’s ex-wife, and they have a thing going on. Avalon and Jude split up and find their own separate ways inside. Jude snoops around the office and finds pill containers with a cauldron symbol on them. Learn important plot-relevant things. Ends when Asch gets caught stealing pills with his unseen servant (“Minion”) and gets thrown in jail.
9/6	Asch gets the whole jail singing a sea shanty. Avalon and Jude pay bail. Jude overhears the cops talking about how Asch is a drug dealer. Party learns that the pills are sleeping and pain medication. Stay at The White Lady Inn. Asch has a nightmare that starts with him having sex with a woman and ends with him stabbing her. This is a memory from his anchor. He wakes up feeling awful. "Okay Avalon, Asch walks in on you shitting.” Avalon throws a frozen towel at him, and it hurts him more than it should. Avalon heals him and senses that he is being influenced by malicious magic. We go to the pharmacy. The front desk is being manned by a cute weasel and a not-cute crag cat. Its meows sound like people screaming and begging for mercy. Asch asks to speak to the human pharmacist there, Dr. Morgan. Asch tells him he’s dating Jude and Avalon [lie]. Asch summons his unseen servant, Minion (vaguely raven-shaped). Dr. Morgan has mistaken him for Ethan Velasco. Ethan looks just like Asch, but less pale. Asch picks up his medication and asks for a drink. Morgan gives him a bag of blood, and Asch learns he can drink it. Meanwhile, Jude is sneaking under the building and finds secret tunnels.
9/20	Dungeon time. There are two white-winged creatures are flying around a table, sorting little bottles. In another room, we find Shadar-Kai children being magically kept asleep. Find powdered bone and flesh. The Shadar-Kai children are being turned into sleep and pain medicine. There’s a purple, plague doctor creature with long fingers. More exploring, we find an old, frozen corpse who looks a lot like the figure from the inn. She is holding a silver statuette of a bird, a small platinum foot, and a letter. It’s an unsent love/farewell letter, addressed to the old man from the inn, Rinaldo. Avalon falls into a frozen river and gets three levels of exhaustion. Avalon has not gotten the hang of turning into a bird without hallucinating. She thinks Asch is the birdperson who attacked her husband. She leaves the evil tunnels. Children are screaming. In the distance, there’s a lady who looks like Ireena in a rowboat. Asch and Jude go back to the motel. Bird Avalon does bird courting movements at Jude. When Avalon returns to human, she thinks she fucked Jude. Asch has a dream. It’s a memory of Escher’s/Ethan’s. The party from the previous Curse of Strahd campaign shows up and kills all of his friends. Avalon and Jude see purple fingers(?) pulling something indistinct from Asch.
9/27	Avalon sleeps through this. Asch slinks off to drink from the old man, who we now know is named Rinaldo. Donny appears out of the sewer. He, Jude, and Asch go to the Leaky Tap, a sewer bar, to sell the pills taken from the Pill Mill. Sells pills to someone named Thumby. A little lizardman named Slime gives us weapons and armor. The party sneaks back into the pharmacists' lair and gets caught. We wake up in a room that might belong to a lamprey vampire? There's a pet undead lamprey in a fishbowl that we kill and turn into lockpicks. Party escapes, except Asch. Above table, make a plan to turn Donny over to Dirty Dan and get him to help save Asch in exchange.
10/4	Strahd is here. Combat encounter with the doctors/hags. Asch is cured of his curse.
10/11	Talking to Dirty Dan outside of the White Lady/Busty Ghost Hotel. Asch drinks blood from a sleeping gymbro (Lore). We take Dan’s motorcycle back to Little Barovia to get help to fight Stanley. On the way, we see election signs for Vaegan Meyer and Phione Walls. We arrive at the burned-down store and find it’s empty. Asch illegally parks outside and starts a fight with a police officer. He escapes on the bike. Asch goes back and forth about selling the bike. Joint-resolution: leave the bike in the sewer. End up at the car dealership where Ireena’s brother Isiah works, turns out Ireena was at a rally in the sewers. Napttime then into the mist. Everyone gets dressed up. Asch pretends to be in a freaky relationship with Avalon and Jude to get past the bouncer.
10/18	Jude hasn’t gotten in. He hides his hammer in his pants. Everyone is now in the brothel. Lots of sneaking to get upstairs. Asch goes into the bathroom to cast some spells. Jude sneaks upstairs with Donny by putting him in a mop bucket. Avalon goes upstairs with no issues. Asch disguises himself as a guard. While he’s poking around upstairs, he finds a crying person in the bathroom. His name is Clovin. Asch gives him a bad pep talk and tries to get him to fight Stanley with them. We break into Stanley’s office and fight him. We kill him; he almost kills us. Escape, and the mist spits us out into Yartar, the city under the bridge.
10/21	Let’s get out of here! Asch sends Minion, now a fully formed familiar, on one of the abandoned trains to map it out. Asch and Jude steal a car, and we head north to Amphail. We encounter three shadows along the way, and almost die to them. One of them stops before Asch and points him towards Westbridge (thanks).
11/8	Evil ass hotel arc begins. We arrive in Amphail. Go to a hotel, poke around a gift shop. Asch convinces Jude to steal a plush of the town’s founder for him (Jebidiah Amphail, a kenku). The hotel is very run-down, and we sleep on a moldy mattress together. Asch tries to call Vera while Avalon spies on him. We rest. Avalon takes a smoke break. Game night! We spend way too long gambling and solving the puzzle. Asch can see that each die has a flower marked on a certain face. I managed to get the dealer to give me one after I won a game, so, obviously, the solution is to get one of each die. Asch finds a combo lock in the bathroom that’s an “entrance” to a hotel. The party takes the elevator up, and everyone hears each other’s worst memories.
11/15	Party splits to find some hotel personnel. Going down, Avalon hears her best memory.
11/22	Mess around with the very safe wish-granting book. Our characters’ memories of what they wrote in the book get erased, so I don’t feel like copying all my notes right now. Asch trolls his anchor, Ethan, by sending mind videos of himself (Ethan doesn’t remember this either).
11/29	We cannot leave the chapel. We figure it’s the book’s fault and rip out all of its pages. We leave the chapel. Depression room puzzle with an evil blanket that makes you want to sleep.
12/6
12/13
12/20	Party and Newell go down to the 3rd lowest floor of the hotel. This floor contains a movie theater with many tapes. The tapes are labelled: a red sticker means sacrifice, and a silver sticker means ??? Something about Ireena Kolyana's skull circa the 1300s. There's a ward on it that the priest can dispel. The most recent silver sticker is of Gabe eating a sandwich. The session ends with the party entering the actual theater.

2026

1/3	Asch is the only one who can see in this theater. On the stage, the same stage in the films, is Norwell wearing the clothes of one of the mannequins. There is what appears to be a corpse with red hair. The 3 shadows look different, statuesque and androgynous with pink strands for hair. Norwell snaps his fingers and the "corpse" sinks into the floor. Norwell thinks Asch has brought the party to be sacrificed? We TPK. Party gets the "weakest" parts of them removed: Jude's arms and legs become elongated. Avalon disassociates and sees a priestly figure with three black birds and crystalline stakes tied around their belt. Asch is in the freezer and gets a dark metal spike driven into his frontal lobe.
1/10	Wake up chained and in jail cells. There is some kind of entity communicating through the moss & moulder: a warning that something is coming. The walls of the cells come down, and we hear a voice around the corner. It’s the priest/old man from the tapes. Avalon pisses him off, and we wait in prison for an hour. Learn that Crowley (the priest) has 6th-level spell slots after he beats Asch up and heals him. Wanted posters of Asch and Jude, but Asch has been misidentified as Ethan.
1/31	Searching for clues, possibly Darius Dryflagon. Trying to figure out how to make sure Asch doesn’t take too much psychic damage as we get closer to our mark. The damage has been exponentially worse. There’s a diner nearby called the Drowning Diner. Jude talks to a criminal contact. Go to Conybar to talk to the Ferryman. The first person Asch talks to is a non-human who is disguising themselves with fish-smelling magic. The Ferryman is tongueless, smells like fish, and possibly mute. He has headphones on. Avalon uses divine sense on the Ferryman and finds that there are hundreds of undead fish and undead humanoids. The undead fish are traveling through pipes underground and talking to the Ferryman. Fish point us in the direction of a maid named Glinda. Talk to the kid working at the hotel, who points us in the direction of Walkerhaus Midnight Theatre, an esteemed place of work for performers. At Walkerhaus, the man at the door, Fernando, mistakes Asch for Escher and lets us in. While we are waiting in the lobby, Jude sneaks off to the dormitories. While we wait in Walkerhaus a gnome named Salve knocks on the door. She’s with the local Obscuryan cult called the Silent Choir. She’s looking for a cursed object that entered the city this morning. It’s the metal piece in Asch’s brain. She waves a metal detector in Asch’s face. Asch lets Salve poke in his brain, scrape off some pieces, and place them in a jar. Asch takes them. Salve begins following us because she needs those. The city’s power goes out due to the other party. Salve gets frightened and runs away, leaving us with the shavings. All hell breaks loose as buildings collapse and shadows begin attacking people.
2/12	At a gala honoring the party’s community service during the blackout. Every party member has received a badge to commemorate their rise in rank. Various people are here to donate. Taddle plays cards poorly. Kelly talks to a greasy young man. Loraine has had her mobility aids taken away. She spots lots of fellow academics in the crowd. Carter Brack is at the gala; he’s wearing a porcelain half mask. He takes Asch by the hand, but he’s staring at Kelly the whole time. Brack donates diamonds to the fundraiser. Asch spots Cooper in the crowd and begs her to save him. “Coopina Puppycrab” spills wine on him and drags him to the bathroom. While Cooper is toweling the wine off, Dorothy walks in. She’s making her makeup bad on purpose, so she stops charming people. Asch gets her autograph and gets charmed; Cooper also gets charmed. Back at the gala. Feldsman gives a speech, then gives Avalon an elvish blade he’s named the “Conyblade.” The light fades. Feldsman launches into another speech. They bring up a shadar-kai kid to the stage, the same one the other party accidentally framed for horse theft. The party tries to stand up, but Avalon is the only one able to stand. Avalon fails a Wisdom save when Feldsman offers her the crop, thinking she’s volunteering. Asch gives an okay speech and convinces some of the people. Feldsman puts the crop away, but adds two strikes to the kid’s criminal tattoo. Feldsman, Enoch, Carter Brack, and an unknown person leave. The party is free to roam. The party starts planning on how to save the kid. Asch starts drinking (there is no open bar). Loraine goes to talk to Finch (her old mentor). They are talking to a shadar-kai archmage, Archie, and an older human man, Vant (David’s instructor). Vant does social engineering and left academia a while ago. He’s not enjoying the conversation. Finch tells Loraine that the sentient mushroom that she dropped off eats a lot of food and begs her to check on it. Finch tries to talk to Loraine about her mushroom addiction. Jude is getting wasted. Kelly finds Madame Walker, learn that Glinda is a performer who was asked to step down from this performance (what?). Avalon goes hunting for twinks for some reason. She tries to hit on Jaxis and fails, but we get information on where he is headed next (Amphail). Asch also tries to get with Jaxis.