Thursday, June 3, 2021

The Priests of Osybus - The Implacable Foe

 As much as Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft avoids dwelling on what stat block you should use for your Darklords (giving suggestions that are often lower-level than you'd expect a primary villain to have, but with suggestions on how to use an underpowered villain to still pose a major threat to the party) the book does also contain some really brilliantly cool and original monsters.

The Priests of Osybus have a pretty fantastic lore background that goes into the deep history of the Ravenloft setting.

Osybus was a powerful necromancer who bargained with anyone who would grant him power, seeking to attain immortality. He attracted a cult that sought to share in his power and immortality, and eventually he became a Lich. Among the powers that Osybus dealt with were the Dark Powers themselves... before the domains of dread were even a thing.

In fact, Osybus had as a nemesis one Strahd von Zarovich - before his transformation into the first vampire. Strahd and his allies in the Ulmist Inquisition hunted Osybus down, ultimately defeating him thanks to the betrayal by his priests, who feared he would one day consume their souls.

As he was slain, Osybus cursed his betrayers, that the immortality he had shared with them would fail them when they least expected it. The curse took hold, and the priests turned to the Dark Powers for a way to break the curse. The Dark Powers gave them a mission in exchange for this service - to find a champion who could conquer the world in their name. The priests chose Strahd von Zarovich for this role, and guided him to the Amber Temple, where he would fall to evil and become a vampire.

But little did they know: Osybus had, in fact, become one of the very Dark Powers with whom they had bargained, and their mission was doomed to fail, as Strahd's fall to evil led to the Mists of Ravenloft swallowing up Barovia and the priests with it.

Priests of Osybus are a great villainous organization to throw into a Ravenloft campaign - they're sort of an independent evil, working against the Dark Powers, but not with any sort of good motivation. They seek to break Strahd out of the Mists and unleash him on the world.

I think an interesting way to use these priests as treacherous allies - you could have some named NPCs representing them that present themselves as experts who can help a party navigate and, they'll claim, eventually escape the Mists, while their true goals are quite malevolent.

But what about the stat blocks?

The central and most horrifying thing about a Priest of Osybus is that you're going to have to kill them over and over if you want to be sure they're dead. When a living one dies, you roll on a table, and they rise with half their maximum hit points, becoming undead and getting a random buff depending on your roll. This continues every time they die until they roll a buff that they already have, at which point the priest dies. Still, that means that at bare minimum, you're going to have to kill one of these guys twice if you want to be rid of them, and likely many more times.

But beyond these buffs, the priest has some nasty abilities. Its main melee attack is a dagger that, when it hits, automatically paralyzes the target (no save against this). Furthermore, if that dagger reduces the target's HP to 0, it automatically kills them and the character's soul becomes a magical tattoo on the priest's body - which it can then turn into a Shadow with a bonus action (on a recharge.)

It can also effectively cast two tier-3 Chill Touches per turn if it's not attacking with the dagger.

While only CR 6, I'd be cautious about throwing too many of these at a party, given that each of them can potentially be as many as seven fights in one, getting more powerful with each death. I'd also think about having them play dead (especially if they can "die" by falling off a cliff or otherwise being inaccessible) and coming back later as an undead menace.

If you want to run a Ravenloft campaign that gets really into the broader fantasy underpinnings of the setting (as opposed to just using it as an excuse for horror adventures) these folks are a really great group to use.

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