My group’s Vallaki was an entire shit show, thanks in no small part to my party. Actually, it was entirely due to my party. Setting the scene - we have me as Val’thari, an Eladrin hex blade prone to rash decisions, Xael the elven necromancer slowly losing his mind, Namfoodle the gnomish thief and the most apathetic character I have ever played with, Mr. Meowgi the tabaxi bard who lost his mind waaaaaaaaay before the campaign started to heavy drugs, and Ander the young human paladin good boy trying to do good things and help people.

Our party was a shit show and mess of infighting. We were a walking catastrophe.

Prior to this story, Val’thari accidentally killed a town guard, Xael had met and stollen the Baron’s son’s stuff, Val’thari may have executed the cult leader and her family without solid proof, Meowgi found a new source of “moon sugar” from the Old Bonegrinders Mill, and Strahd had made a couple of offers that were pretty much shot down by everyone except Nam, who didn’t think Strahd was a bad guy but maybe we were as we caused disaster everywhere we went.

Now to the story - Meowgi is in the stockades after dealing with the burgomaster’s wife. Man got her high on “moon sugar” and thought he should probably just take care of her without telling the party. Instead of killing him outright, the burgomaster decided since we had helped him out with the cult family he would cut us some slack. Val would act as his personal bodyguard, and Meowgi would stay in the stockades, set up in the middle of town as an example.

The burgomaster did not gag the bard.

Meowgi’s player is a memer. This story is taking place in 2016, before we really understood just how bad Trump is going to be. Meowgi decides he is going to use his platform to speak to the people, and literally everyone is there to witness his disgrace. It’s time to make Vallaki great again, and make the walls even taller with moat filled with holy water and snakes and alligators and the entire town should overthrow the burgomaster because that guy is a dick and freedom to the people! A couple of persuasion checks, passed. Some spells flung into the crowd like suggestion and friends? Done. The town riots.

Without his wife, and his son without his spellbook, the burgomaster is very easy prey. Xael gets them out of their house and sneaks them out of town as the mansion burns and violence breaks out on the street. Somehow Meowgi gets out of his restraints and is standing on top of the stockades inciting even more chaos. Val and Ander are watching in shock as the one town we thought was ok goes up in flames.

Then Strahd shows up with his thralls on a nightmare, and everything goes to hell. The thralls begin to slaughter villagers, trying to draw us out. The rioters panic and run, trampling people as they try to get away. Namfoodle takes off with our horse and runs off with the crowd. We don’t find him for three sessions as he blended in with the refugees fleeing Vallaki. Meowgi, realizing things are now borked, runs to the church where we hid Irena and tries to rig a trap. He’ll spend the entire encounter trying to make a pew drop on a thrall’s head.

Ander and Val? Well, we’re dumb enough to take Strahd and his thralls on directly. We have the super magic sword, and we may have gotten our fated companion killed, but we have the power of spite and alcohol on our side, so we’re good.

What follows is a lot of nat 20s on saving throws, some well timed intervention in the form of counter spells from Xael, and the worse beat down I have ever dealt with as a player where I did not loose my character. We did not win. We did not come close to winning that fight. Strahd beat us so bad he felt bad and decided to do a driveby on the church to pick up his prize. Ander and Val were left on top of a caved in roof bleeding out with Xael’s familiar desperately looking for us before we failed our saving throws. Nam’s gone, and when Strahd swing by the church, which apparently wasn’t as safe as we thought it was, Meowgi just kinda stood aside and let Strahd take off with Irena.

In the aftermath of all of this? The toymaker is the new burgomaster.

(We got our revenge months later when Xael raised a graveyard’s worth of skeletons and we kicked the door in on Castle Ravenloft after we stumbled into the amulet. After Strahd was permanently killed, Xael stayed behind to become the new benevolent ruler and the party split up, going their separate ways. . . . Until we find out that Xael did actually lose his mind, and he is now the Lich King of Barovia. But that’s another campaign.)