Editing I10: Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill

{{dnd-stub}} {{WTF}}

'''I10: Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill''' is an adventure module for the 1st edition of [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]]. A direct sequel? Side-quel? Spinoff? to [[I6: Ravenloft]], it revolves around the players encountering three characters that would go on to be notable Dreadlords when in the future unified Ravenloft setting books; the [[vampire]] [[Strahd von Zarovich]] and the [[lich]] [[darklord#Azalin Rex|Azalin Rex]], and [[darklord#Lord Wilfred Godefroy|Lord Wilfred Godefroy]] the ghost. Rather than just straightforward dread, the module also recommends you gaslighting your players when appropriate about what is actually going on or if anything that happened in [[I6: Ravenloft]] was just a [[what|mass fever-dream]]. Given this book needlessly put into question the canon backstory of fan-favorite Strahd, a ton of things were included in the domains of dread setting but the model itself only gets ambiguous references, and keeps to the ton, the canonicity to modern lore is dubious.   

following up if the party beat Strahd in the last adventure or was [[TPK]]ed in the first module (the book even recommends Strahd kills the party even if they win) the players wake up from a fever, equipment scattered across town for "[[murder hobo|everyone's safety]]" in the town of [[Demiplane of Dread#Mordent|Mordentshire]] with no memories how they got there except for receiving a request letter from a local church about Lord Byron Weathermay wanting the party to investigate his daughter's mysterious fiancé, an alchemist and sage, Count Strahd Von Zarovich... Dun Dun Dunnn. 

Well... not exactly that Strahd, this one is a blond not vampire, and the couple is also suffering from the same delirium fever as the players and can't answer questions about why he ran from his House on Gryphon Hill, a now re-haunted house that was built 400 ago by [[darklord#Lord Wilfred Godefroy|Lord Wilfred Godefroy]]. At the end of the Gryphon Hill dungeon, they only found that a massive machine in Strahd's lab was recently moved. 

Returning with the information to Lord Weathermay's manor, the players are suddenly trapped inside by a thunderstorm and find the place overrun with undead (which no one noticed until now for some reason, including Lord Weathermay depending on how the dm rolled). In the basement, Azalin Rex is hanging out as an optional fakeout boss while Lord Wilfred Godefroy is uncharacteristically repentant. The true goul of the add venture is finding the "Apparatus of Mordent".

Turned out this is now a body-swapping Jekyll and Hyde story. Human Strahd wanted to exercise evil from his soul so created a machine to banish evil Strahd to a [[warp|parallel dimension where he claimed the land of Berovia and ruled for 400 years as a vampire?]] time fuckery aside, evil Strahd escapes Berovia as a spirit and possesses one important NPC (DM rolled before the adventure). His end game is dm randomized to be Dracula in London or steal the life of Human Strahd.

the party has five days to trigger the unskippable cutscene where the Strahds use the Apparatus and then wrestle until they both fall off a cliff and ambiguously die while the party has to fight their evil duplicates and the Apparatus explodes. If the party dili-dalies,  Vampire Strahds is using the Apparatus of Mordent to bodyswap Mordentshire villagers with his undead minions when the party isn't looking and will turn citizens against them. 
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[[Category: Dungeons & Dragons]] [[Category: Modules]] [[Category: Roleplaying]] [[Category: Ravenloft]]