Chernovog unleashed (EtCR possible spoilers)

[weckar]

So I'm taking a group of players through Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, and they have decided to ignore the warnings about Baba Zelenna and her witches. They will not be there to interrupt/stop the summoning of Chernovog.... but the adventure doesn't actually stipulate what should happen when the summoning succeeds?

Maybe I've missed it somewhere, but it seems like quite the major oversight. Can someone help me out with this major campaign-changing situation?

[wizardpants]

Remember Disney's Fantasia? Well, the scene with the big demon guy in the mountain is what happens when Chernovog gets out.

Honestly, roll with that.

Just have a portion of him out (fitting all of your mighty god body into a tiny mortal world is hard), and then he just starts turning the world to a place that he likes. This could include, but is not limited to:
- Permanent Overcast/Night
- Anything that dies comes back 1d6 rounds later as a low level ghost or shadow (only do shadows if your players can handle them, otherwise you're asking for an instant tpk. Or a gpk (Global party kill?)).
- The witches that summoned him all turn into crazy undead versions of themselves
- The head witch is now the head lich
- Chernovog is being kept here by a ritual: Have the ritual be research-able and able to be stopped

Of course, this all assumes that you're okay with accepting the massive derailment for your party not stopping the witches and are willing to write for a new improvised branch of the campaign.

On the other hand, the party could just run away and summon a good deity to duke it out with him.

[atemu1234]

Remember Disney's Fantasia? Well, the scene with the big demon guy in the mountain is what happens when Chernovog gets out.

Honestly, roll with that.

Just have a portion of him out (fitting all of your mighty god body into a tiny mortal world is hard), and then he just starts turning the world to a place that he likes. This could include, but is not limited to:
- Permanent Overcast/Night
- Anything that dies comes back 1d6 rounds later as a low level ghost or shadow (only do shadows if your players can handle them, otherwise you're asking for an instant tpk. Or a gpk (Global party kill?)).
- The witches that summoned him all turn into crazy undead versions of themselves
- The head witch is now the head lich
- Chernovog is being kept here by a ritual: Have the ritual be research-able and able to be stopped

Of course, this all assumes that you're okay with accepting the massive derailment for your party not stopping the witches and are willing to write for a new improvised branch of the campaign.

On the other hand, the party could just run away and summon a good deity to duke it out with him.

The last bit is ill-advised. Railroading and all that.

[wizardpants]

Railroading: The bit about the good deity?

I threw that out there as a "What if the party panics and needs a way out that involved 0 effort till they're back to where they're comfortable again." My group can be pretty spoiled sometimes, I didn't know if others went through that as well. Social conflicts are hard to handle when you get a bunch of passive-aggressive people together.

[Mr Adventurer]

Out of interest, what have they decided to do instead? What was their reasoning?

[SiuiS]

Play it straight. The appropriate answer to "what if my players don't stop the world ending, continent shaking phenomenon from taking place?" Is that the world ending, continent shaking phenomenon takes place. A dark lord of unfathomable power gets drawn into the mortal realm and begins to corrupt matter and spirit by his existence. Night lengthens, the creatures of the dark become his hands and eyes and claws and fangs, all acts of hubris and sin turn one towards him as leader and controller. Goodness itself recedes – not just the alignment but the existence of good things. All food, all drink, putrifies. No action can ever have a good result, just a least bad one. Relationships break; parents treat children as slaves. Children treat parents as tyrants. Resentment between lovers leads to violence and unrest. Parishioners demand service and aid while clergymen become mafia Dons more interested in temporal power and tithes than piety. Pets Rebel and go feral. Society as we know it fractures and skeletons rip themselves bloody and screaming from the unwilling bodies of the livingn, to dance and give proper tribute to that fell blighted beast.

As more and more wickedness spreads, those prone to wickedness are converted first. The blight extends ten furlongs. Hundreds of furlongs away. Men of sin and iniquity just... Leave. They commit a few crimes for supplies or to settle their business and migrate, becoming feral beasts and eventually demonic or undead servitors. The wicked flock to chernabog. The dutiful and good slowly become wicked... The. Flock to chernabog. Eventually, enough black obeisance will fall his way to completely free him from the mountain, and then the dark work of unmaking the natural world will begin.

Plenty of clues for the players to see this and stop it, and plenty of cases where otherwise smooth criminals do drastic and obvious things for the party to intervene with – the sky Duke goes from cunning schemer to feral murderer under this new influence, so even many kingdoms and lands away the effects will be felt.

[Sith_Happens]

...Damn, and this is supposed to be a sidequest to fighting Strahd?:smalleek::smallconfused:

[weckar]

All interesting replies. One problem with the whole 'make the world go worse' strategy is that, well, Barovia is a pretty bad place as it is. Hundreds of years of abuse and supernatural torment will do that. Unless Chernovog makes a firm statement, his presence would be just another drop in the bucket.
I may have to go the easy route and do a 'god over god' sort of thing; calling in the Dark Powers to keep things fair...


...Damn, and this is supposed to be a sidequest to fighting Strahd?:smalleek::smallconfused:

Ayup. Summoning of Chernovog, Zombie apocalypse, confronting a mad taxidermist... This adventure LOVES its crazy sidequests...
And that's not to mention all the crazy curses and other ails that can happen to the players.

[ksbsnowowl]

I may have to go the easy route and do a 'god over god' sort of thing; calling in the Dark Powers to keep things fair...Are you running this in the Domains of Dread? Presumably EtCR occurs before the DoD and the Dark Powers are involved.

I'd say let him come (and a more powerful version than the Aspect statted up in the encounter), and let the PC's reap the reward for their complacency. Instead of a CR 12 vampire, now they have to defeat a CR 18+ demon lord. Sounds good to me. The original I6 was supposed to be a character-killer anyway.

[weckar]

It's in the DoD for reasons. EtCR still works fine in that context, mostly.

[Thurbane]

As much as I liked the concept of doing a 3.5 version of the classic module, I found it was very poorly thought out and many parts of it with no advice on how to handle obvious consequences of things that may happen in the story.

It felt like they tried to shoehorn a grand story into a glorified dungeon crawl, with little wiggle room or ways to handle some obvious eventualities.

[ksbsnowowl]

You know, dealing with the witches is the matter most important to Strahd at the moment, aside from his obsession with Ireena. He presumably brought the PC's to Barovia specifically to deal with this issue (assuming you still used the plot hook letter). He is going to do everything in his power to make sure the witches are dealt with.

Have Strahd and his minion vampires use brute force to compel them to deal with the witches of Lysaga Hill. Dominate the entire party, and direct them to deal with the situation. Sure, it's a bit of a railroad, but it is precisely the kind of thing Strahd would do in this situation.

Bonus points, the longer it takes the PC's to deal with said situation, the more time Strahd has to woo Ireena via his intricate plan (presumably to make her his bride) without the party's interference. After all, they are busy hunting down the witches.

Dominate the party, order them to do nothing that would end the domination, then direct them to "hunt the witches," or something like that. I in fact did this very thing when I ran EtCR six years ago. I only dominated two of the PC's, but it was enough to subtly direct the actions of the rest of the party.