Wizard of Wines Guide | Running Curse of Strahd 5e

we sure do have a lot of Wands around here we're big Harry Potter family you know I suppose in the absence of Ollivanders we could start our own wand shop or maybe I could sell these out of a trench coat to poor wizards in Diagon Alley speaking of wizards we're gonna be talking about the Wizards of wine chapter in cursive strawed we're gonna be covering some unanswered questions that you find in the chapter expanding some motivations and adding a little bit of extra contents and inspiration to help you step up your game The Wizard of wines as a chapter is very tightly intertwined with the yester Hill chapter and the character of Babel as agha so before you make any changes to the winery you have to consider all three of those as a whole before you do anything now before we tackle the winery itself let's take a look at bauble Isaiah and why she's doing what she's doing why has she enlisted the help of these druids to attack the winery what's her end goal obviously she wants to get rid of the MARTA cobs at the winery because they're the keepers of the feather and they've been undermining her precious baby boy straud but there's got to be more to it than that what's her success criteria in this little mission of hers well here you go instead of just the MARTA cobs and the we're Ravens at the winery she wants to kill every single raven in burrow via lycanthrope and normal raven alike why because they all look alike you can't tell the difference from one to another and if there's no Ravens there's no where Ravens so that's that's her goal extinction of every single Raven in morovia now that we've got bobble azog as background motivation out of the way let's take a look at three of the unanswered questions that you find inside the winery's chapter the first is why did the Druids even come back to the winery after they stole the magic gem wouldn't it make more sense for them to just wait until their monstrous creation comes along and smashes everything down the second question is why are they poisoning the wine they plan on destroying the place anyway so what's with the poison that's it's a little bit superfluous don't you think and the third unanswered question is what is the goal for the tree blight winter splinter that they're sending in to destroy the winery there's got to be more to him right they went to an awful lot of trouble to create him so there's got to be more than just knocking down a single building in a vineyard right okay so now for our first question why did the Druids come back well we know that they came in and they stole the magic gem and then they ran all the way back down to yester Hill and they started creating winter splinter but then they immediately turned right back around hoofed it back to the winery shoved the martica family out and started ransacking the place it's obvious that they're looking for something but it's never specified what so let's talk about that and fill that little detail in now to do that I think we have to look at an unanswered question for the Druids themselves in the ester Hill chapter and that question is why can't they change into animals like other druids can well and I know the pragmatic answer to this and that's they don't have that ability in the monster manual snap-loc but let's forget about that reality for just a second and imagine that this band of druids was able to shape-shift once upon a time generations ago before the mists enshrouded monrovia now back then they were a young normal peaceful loving hippie dippie bunch of druids just like you'd expect them to be and then the darkness came they planted the goal theist tree they began to worship straw bonds Arabic as the icon of the land and they basically became evil at that point they lost their attunement to nature if you will and they could no longer change into an animal form and they've been salty about it ever since well now here they are amidst their holy war against the where Ravens and their aha moment is these folks that were going after can change into animals wonder if we can get that ability for us to so here the Druids are they're faced with a clan of people that can shape-shift into Ravens now that's just one animal but it's one more animal than the Druids can shape-shift into they're hell-bent on figuring out their secret so they've arrived back at the winery to figure out what that secret is take it for themselves now unfortunately for the druids this is a fruitless endeavor but they don't know that they're not gonna find anything at the winery that's gonna help them lycanthropy is a curse that can't be taken it has to be given willingly and there's no way that the MARTA cops are gonna bestow this curse on a bunch of druids that have been attacking the winery when the druids came back their intent was to interrogate the martica family forcefully if necessary but the MARTA cops have been on high alert for the past few days they're not gonna get caught by surprise again so when the Druids began to move through the forests northwards towards the winery the MARTA cops were ready they raised the alarm and the entire family packed their things to get the hell out of Dodge well except for one the patriarch Davey and Martha cough he ordered the rest of his family to pack up and leave as quickly as they could while he did whatever he could to stem the tide of the incoming druids and blights now unfortunately it wasn't much but it did allow the other Marta cops to escape to safety now Davian is held hostage in area w19 one of the two bedrooms take your pick either one let's put a pin in that and we'll talk about that a little bit later when we cover additional quests our next unanswered question is why are the druids poisoning the wine they plan on destroying the place anyway so isn't that just a little extra here's what's going on the druids worship straud like a god and they worship the land that he represents by extension they also revere the forlorn nature of morovia and its environment anything that goes against straw and the land is blasphemous likewise anything that brings levity and lets people escape from that forlorn and depressive mentality that's sacrilege so here we have the MARTA cobs obvious blasphemers and here we have their wine this is sacrilege incarnate so rather than bust open the vats and let this wine spill onto the land that they Revere so much they're gonna poison it and they're going to distribute it in disguise to all the taverns around morovia and they're gonna let the people drink it they're gonna let the blasphemers die they're gonna kill as many of them as they can with their poison of choice as far as the encounter inside the fermentation room goes when your characters show up don't just have the druid up on the catwalk pouring vials of poison into the vats that's a little too on-the-nose a little too hokey and Bond villain if you will instead have the bats already be poisoned when they get there and just have empty vials that have a putrid smell about them scattered about this is gonna provide a bit more of a satisfying mystery for the players to solve what was in these vials and what happened to it if you've got a player with a high enough passive perception score maybe they can even kind of smell something is a little off about these vats of wine and I don't mean the smell of the feet of the martica family although that's probably pretty funky too in terms of dealing with the poison wine I really like a suggestion by community member dragnet carta he suggested leaving a scroll of purify food and drink somewhere else before the winery not a lot of characters have this spell prepared beforehand why would you right so it allows them to cast that particular spell and clear the wine up no problem it also allows for a bit of foreshadowing to come into play before they even get to the winery our next on answer question is what's next for winter splinter now the Druids went to old awful lot of trouble to create him they had to steal a gem take it back do a ritual and all that whole song and dance so there's got to be more to his life and his purpose than just knocking down a single house at the vineyard so what's next what's bobble is augas goal for this big tree blight well like I said before Bobby Lozano wants to kill every single Raven and morovia to that end her spies have identified the blue water Inn as another potential haunt for the where Ravens and the keepers of the feather that's right winter splinters gotta head to Valachi if your players don't do anything about it now this is probably not gonna happen chances are the winter splinters gonna bite it somewhere around yester Hill but barring that he's gonna walk right up to the gates of a lucky start and knocking him down and he's gonna barrel straight forward towards the blue water Inn you think the feast of st. Andrew was bad vampires can't enter homes uninvited light s-- do double damage to them Milwaukee's just not a good place to be nowadays now that we've covered those mysteries of the chapter let's talk about some additional quests that you can add in here's where we're gonna circle back around to good old Davy and Marta cough he's being held hostage as I said by the druids inside the winery and they are well they're not treating him very good they're beating him within an inch of his life he's only got a few hit points left he doesn't even have enough hit points left to transform into a we're even and fly away now when your players come up on the smallish road toward the winery they're gonna be met by Adrian as per the module except when Adrian takes them back into the forest to the martica van caman they're not gonna be met by Davian obviously because he's not there instead Adrian has taken up his father's mantle as leader of the Markov family and he's obviously a little bit shaken a little bit to spawn it he has no idea if his father is alive or dead but he's going to implore the party to help him out to go and liberate the winery and find any information they can about his father and get him out alive if they can when viewed from afar the winery is a pretty idyllic scene even with the druids inside all the blights are hidden inside the vineyard and all the druids are inside the house so it looks fairly innocuous except when you actually tried to get in and walk past the vineyards and then you get mobbed by a bunch of needle and twig guys well that's all fine and dandy and I have no problem with that but let me pose an alternate approach to you so instead of that idyllic scene when viewed from afar the winery is surrounded by all of these blights they're standing guard while the druids inside are ransacking the place now instead of having to walk through the vineyards and get ambushed by the blights your players are aware of what they're walking into now that may sound kind of stupid except for the fact that there's about 60 blights and they have to figure out how to get in how are they gonna do that well one particular example is maybe they create a distraction they split the party one of them causes the diversion and draws the blights away the others get in or maybe they enlists the help of the martica family now I've never tested that but it seems like a fun idea so go ahead and try it if it speaks to you and let me know how it goes our next quest is all about figuring out what bobble azhagi and the Druids are up to now if you were the Markov family and your home had been attacked 3-4 times or whatnot you might be asking something like why or you know something to that effect now the MARTA cops have tried to answer this question already they've sent numerous of their scouts down to yester Hill and into the ruins of borås but none of them have come back so they have absolutely no information they're completely in the dark on this and that is not somewhere the keepers of the feather are comfortable being so they're gonna ask your characters your players to figure out any information that they can while they're trying to get those magical gems back this is more of a soft quest that rides along with the other ones but it's gonna be something that's kind of earned them some major brownie points towards gaining the trust of the keepers now remember the keepers are they're not a trustworthy Bunch so it's gonna take a lot for your characters and your players to gain that trust this is a big step along the way our next quest centers around rescuing those missing scouts now the scouts that went down yesterday have unfortunately all met their demise they landed in trees around the clearing and all those trees were infested with blights that ambushed them when your characters do go down there perceptive ones might notice a few where Raven corpses on the ground discuss the one tuber as on the other hand are alive for the time being they've been captured by Bob Ola Zog and they can be found inside the cages just outside of her Hut now that's every Scout except for one Ms Muriel Vince Shaw managed to escape but only just barely players can still find her in the ring of standing stones just outside the swamp but she's very badly injured she cannot transform into a we're waitin to fly away unless they heal her and she's not gonna get very far on foot either so when your players do arrive and they encounter her they're free to heal her if they do she shares the information in the module about the swamps and about Baba's Agha she can volunteer any other information that you deem pertinent but remember she's a keeper of the feather and they are a secretive Bunch so when she's able to she's going to slink away and when she's out of sight of the party she's gonna transform into a where Raven and make a beeline back to the winery to report to the market how a family now returning Muriel to the winery gives you a good opportunity to unleash reinforcements the battle against Bobby Lozano is a major major stumbling block for a lot of parties a lot of them end up wiping in this area Bob is a very tough boss and model having the extra backup from Ravens arrives several rounds into combat to give them the bolstering that they need to keep the module going one of the major goals of the chapter is to gain the confidence of the keepers of the feather and the MARTA cough family the MARTA cops will form the core of the keepers and they've been doing this for generations and generations they are not a very trusting and open Bunch as I've said before gaining their trust is going to be difficult it is important however if they want to defeat straud here players that is the keepers over the generations have seen adventurers come and they've seen adventurers go the folks roll in Borough via all the time and they die all the time either from the land or their own despair or from sometimes even straat himself but the pattern is the same nobody lasts long the ones that endure are the keepers that's because they keep their heads down and their mouths shut in order to gain the confidence of the keepers your characters and your players are really going to have to earn it those gems are going to have to come home those Scouts are going to have to be rescued winter splinter and the Druids are going to have to be defeated and because it's not all about the MARTA comps and what the party can do for them the party's gonna have to be doing some serious good throughout the land as well as your party travels through the land of burrow via doing this deed and that deed and hopefully getting under straw skin you need to ask yourself a series of questions regarding the keepers and whether or not they reveal themselves would they risk their legacy would they risk their livelihood would they risk their lives would they risk the lives of their children's children to help these people are these people worth it well are they

Channel: Lunch Break Heroes

Views: 64,264

Keywords: d&d, dungeons and dragons, dnd, 5e, curse of strahd, strahd, wizard of waines, barovia, martikov, wereraven, baba lysaga, yester hill, druid, berez, witch, wine, wintersplinter, tree blight, wizard of wines, curse of strahd guide, running curse of strahd, guide to curse of strahd, d&d druid, dnd druid, dnd blight, d&d blight, d&d wine, dnd wine, curse of strahd wine, curse of strahd campaign guide

Id: GQKdWq73aeg

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020