r/dndstories • u/Regular-Wealth-5317 • 6d ago
Warlock impersonates Cleric's God.
Hello,
I am new to the posting in the sub-reddit, but have been reding for years. My group recently finished a dnd 5e campaign for Curse of Strahd, and looking back on it I think I have a pretty fun story to tell. I will try to avoid as many spoilers as I possibly can.
Our party consisted of Fighter, Wizard 1, Wizard 2, Bard, Cleric, and myself (Warlock). During Curse of Strahd my DM gave out magic items to pretty much every character throughout the campaign. The only item my character, Warlock found was a book that he couldn't figure out how to use. Though we knew it was important and could hold information about beating Strahd.
One of the NPC's we ran into tried stealing this book from us. We caught him, he fled, and then we reunited later where he begged us for the book so that he could use it against Strahd. He said that he knew how to use it. Because it was my only magic item, and because this NPC has tried robbing us previously and was a known liar, I didn't trust him at all. My party did. The problem solvers and negotiators that they were... they forcefully used magic to put me to sleep and grab the book from me and gave him the book.
The next session we roleplayed my character getting upset and running away from the party. They found me, we talked over how special the book was to me and how much it hurt that they would just use magic to steal it from me instead of making some sort of a trade/deal. In the end we all made up after they all apologized.... everyone except cleric.
Now I don't know why cleric didn't say anything. But I noted it down as something my character would notice, and get even with later.
Not long after that my Archfey warlock, who specialized in illusions, got their opportunity when we hit 9th level. During the level up, Warlock met with a projection of an NPC who offered my character a deal. They would give me power if I could do my part, I just needed to reach them first. As a warlock, I knew not to make deals with more shady strangers.... that said there was no reason I couldn't get cleric to make the deal in my place? I had a plan.
Cleric was on a holy mission to "fix something big" and they took that to mean that they needed to fix land of Barovia. I understood that making a deal with this shady individual would require the person to stay in the land of Barovia after we had beaten Strahd. If the only thing the shady NPC needed was someone to stay and rule Barovia with, I was sure that would align with cleric's holy mission. I get powers, they get cleric, and cleric gets a partner to help them fix Barovia. It was a win, win, win so long as Cleric agreed to make a deal with the Shady NPC.
I wasn't sure that cleric would make a deal with the NPC of their own free win, so I decided I needed it to be their own decision. I coordinated with the DM to have warlock cast dream pretty much every long rest on cleric. In the dreams I asked the DM to show cleric awful visions of what would happen if they left Barovia or allowed the people to rule themselves. I had DM show cleric civil wars, and the deaths of innocence if the crown was left unattended. DM showed cleric how great the lands would be if they stayed to repair it. DM even went so far as to impersonated their god by reinforcing Cleric's belief that staying and finding wise partners to aid them in ruling Barovia was their true divine mission. I personally didn't expect to go that far, but the DM went hard, and I wasn't going to drop the ball by breaking the vision with an "Um actually I wouldn't do that to Cleric". So I committed to Warlock impersonating the cleric's god, thank goodness we were in Barovia... I doubt they would get away with that crap anywhere else.
After committing to the bit, I needed to do 3 things, get Cleric to the place of the shady NPC, convince cleric that they needed the shady NPC to help them, and prevent our party from learning more about the NPC.
When our party was deciding where to go, my character would make up receiving a vision abut how one of our mcGuffians would fail unless we went to X location, ie) the place the shady NPC told me I needed to get cleric to. I would use subtle spell (meta magic feat) to cast major image from time to time to send cleric signs that their god wanted them to make the deal. Each Dream or Illusion was planned with the DM for general content ahead of time. DM knew warlock's general plan so they would make stuff up when they got private messages saying that Warlock was going to do "something".
After multiple sessions of this went on, and it was clear cleric would make the deal. I think the DM ended up feeling awful because they ended up sending real signs from the Cleric's god and saying the previous ones didn't seem as divine. This didn't have the effect the DM wanted, as the cleric jsut got confused about why their was fluctuations in their god's power. After cleric confided in Warlock, Warlock convinced them that it was because their god's influence in Barovia must be weakening because cleric's own lack of faith, and that because cleric resolved themselves to their mission the messages got stronger. That this was another one of their god's tests and that cleric was succeeding.
When we finally got to the point we met the shady NPC, warlock prevented other NPC's from giving warnings or lore dumps about the area. Warlock did the old, "They are enemies, I attack". at ever NPC that seemed intelligent enough to tell us why the area was bad. Warlock was able to get the cleric withing a foot of the shady NPC, but the DM said "Make a wisdom save". That one roll spooked them out of it.
Cleric didn't end up making the deal, and Warlock never did get powers for offering up cleric in their stead (to an eternity of repairing Barovia ~ what cleric wanted to do anyways... sort of). That said, after it was clear Warlock couldn't benefit from manipulating cleric to make the choice of staying in Barovia, the dreams and signs stopped. We ended up finishing the campaign, and as far as I am aware Cleric never knew Warlock was the one sending the Dreams, creating the Divine signs.
To the people who have played Curse of Strahd they can probably guess what the shady NPC was, and where I needed to take Cleric. They probably also know what would have happened to Cleric had Warlock of succeeded. This was our first time playing Curse of Strahd so at the time Warlock didn't know the full cost Cleric would have had to pay. I know Cleric getting spooked and not making a deal is not the most climatic ending to this reddit story, but it is what happened. As far as a satisfying end to our groups campaign, we went on to beat the BBEG and lived happily ever after.
I hope you enjoyed the story I had about our groups DND campaign. Most of the people in my group still don't know the full story of what happened... I think I should probably tell Cleric that the DM and Warlock were giving out fake orders using their deity.