Strahd Shenanigans

A repository for all the dumb art I create in response to my group's CoS campaign. Also maybe some other things.

[sannencarts]

Hey! Are you interested in commissions? Cuz I'm open for commissions.

All transactions done through paypal. Message me if interested!

[strahdnanigans]

I'm also doing commissions! Please message me if you want one!

[sannencarts]

Welp, I'm doing it. I'm starting up an artblog again.

Welcome! The name's Sanne. I had an artblog once, years ago, but I nuked it during the great tumblr porn purge because it had some spicy stuff. So let's try this one more time and see how it goes!

[strahdnanigans]

I've started up another arblog, this time for general art! Expect a lot of my OCs, but occasionally some fanart. Please check it out!

[kanashimibeast]

My book may be out, but there’s still characters I can make sketches of. Here’s the last of the main cast: Mephis Shyde!

Mephis is also a Fey, but unlike Aleras, he belongs to a clan that left the forests years ago to live in the human world. These “New Fey” prefer to trick people with business deals instead of magic, so Mephis was born to an extremely wealthy family. As the current heir to the Shyde family, Mephis is polite, intelligent, and well-versed in social situations. But behind his pleasant mask, it’s difficult to know what he’s really thinking.

When Maia discovers that the Shyde family has ties to her father’s mysterious research, she enlists Mephis’s help to track him down. Mephis readily volunteers his social skills and business connections to help her in the search. Still, Maia can’t help but notice something a little… off about Mephis. He’s not really like the other Fey…

My book is now available! Buy it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXBCZTTT

[strahdnanigans]

Buy my booooooooooook

[kanashimibeast]

MY BOOK IS OUT!

SEARCHING FOR MAGIC is now available on amazon as an e-book! Please go check it out!

LINK: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXBCZTTT

[kanashimibeast]

Number three in the character sketches promoting my book: meet Aleras!

Aleras is a young Fey living in the Fey Forest beside Maia’s home. The two are childhood friends, and he taught her a number of devious spells that she uses to get up to mischief. He’s currently studying under a great Fey wizard in the hopes of becoming a great wizard himself someday. 

Aleras is a little more in touch with the modern world than most Fey, due to his friendship with Maia, but he’s still definitely an outsider. He’s rarely strayed far from the forest he was raised in, especially since leaving the forest means his magic will become weaker. But when Maia’s father goes missing, he pledges to help her search for him. 

Check out my book here, officially releasing tomorrow! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXBCZTTT

[strahdnanigans]

Reminder: Go check out (and hopefully pre-order) my book!

[kanashimibeast]

Next up in the character sketches promoting my book - meet Haley!

Haley is a Drakhan, AKA a human who has strong draconic ancestry. Their most striking features are typically pointed ears, sharp teeth, and golden eyes. They also tend to be larger than most humans, and possess incredible strength and stamina - however, they often struggle with magic and make poor mages. Haley bucks the trend and has earned herself a full scholarship to the same magic college that Maia attends. The two were roommates in their first year and quickly became best friends.

Despite her bookish tendencies (she’s the sort to read academic papers for fun), Haley is quite adventurous and always up to try new things, even if they’re dangerous. Especially if they’re dangerous, in fact, as it turns out that she’s dabbled in forbidden magic. But when she joins Maia in the hunt for her missing father, that forbidden magic may be necessary…

Preorder my book here! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXBCZTTT

[strahdnanigans]

Reminder to check out my book!

[kanashimibeast]

So I wanted to do sketches of the characters in my upcoming book, and figured I’d start with the protagonist herself - Maia!

Maia’s a 19-year-old mage with a talent for fire magic. She’s been attending college for magic studies, but hasn’t yet figured out what she wants to do with her life. Her father is a state-sponsored sorcerer who’s spent the past several years observing a local population of Fey, so Maia’s grown up alongside the Fey Forest and subsequently picked up a penchant for mischief. She has a bad habit of getting herself into trouble, so she’s gotten just as good at getting herself out of trouble through a combination of magic, wits, and sheer pluckiness. Turns out those three traits come in handy when she has to investigate her father’s mysterious disappearance…

If you want to read about her adventure, please check out my book here!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXBCZTTT

[strahdnanigans]

This is your friendly reminder that I have a book coming out! Please give it a look!

[kanashimibeast]

I’m publishing a book!

So It’s been my dream for as long as I can remember to be a published author, and that dream is about to become reality! I’m publishing my first fantasy novel on amazon and it’s currently available for preorder. Allow me to introduce SEARCHING FOR MAGIC, the first book in a planned trilogy!

SEARCHING FOR MAGIC follows the story of Maia, who comes home from studying magic off at college just in time for her father, an eccentric sorcerer, to disappear under mysterious circumstances. Armed with only her wits and a handful of clues, Maia recruits the help of her two best friends and sets off to discover why her father disappeared so suddenly, and why it seems to coincide with a mysterious rash of spell failures.

Set in a world much like ours, but filled with magic and gods, SEARCHING FOR MAGIC is a coming of age story filled with drama, mystery, and a dash of romance. It also features openly LGBT characters, a diverse cast, and NO LOVE TRIANGLE BULLSHIT. Also: there’s dragons! (Eventually. They’re planned for book three).

It’s currently available for pre-order as an e-book, with print versions hopefully coming in the future. Please check it out and drop a review if you’re interested! It would mean a lot to me.

LINK: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXBCZTTT

[strahdnanigans]

Hey, I’m publishing a book! Please go check it out!

[strahdnanigans]

How about no. 9 for the Curse of Strahd asks? :D

9. Did you attend dinner at Castle Ravenloft?

Yep! Although the party argued for an IRL week about whether or not to go - half of us were against it, half of us really wanted to. I was one of the ones that really wanted to because lavish dinners in spooky gothic castles is just my JAM, so I was really happy that we go to go. And my Paladin got to meet and bang Escher while we were there, which was fun.

[mandisawesome]

Ever since my group finished the campaign, I’ve been DESPERATE to read about other people’s experience playing Curse of Strahd. So I made this list of questions for y'all to answer, whether you've completed the campaign or not!

Feel free to repost and fill out wherever, but please consider tagging me (mandisawesome) if you do. I really want to read your answers!!!

Text version under the cut:

Curse of Strahd ask meme/prompt list

To help prevent spoiling other players, start off by noting how far into the campaign your party is!

Introduce your party: who are they at the start of the campaign?

How/why did you come to Barovia?

What did your Tarokka reading reveal?

Did your DM make any major changes to the module?

Did your party travel with any NPCs?

Who is your/the party's favorite NPC?

Most hated NPC?

How did your first meeting with Strahd go?

Did you attend dinner at Castle Ravenloft?

What was your favorite location to visit?

What was the scariest thing your party went through?

Did any player characters or beloved NPCs die?

Did anyone find love?

What is your favorite memory from the campaign?

Did you defeat Strahd???

Re-introduce your party: who are they currently, or at the end of the campaign?

[strahdnanigans]

Oh this looks fun! My Strahd group imploded before the final fight and some of the memories are kinda bitter because of it, but there were a lot of good times too, so it’d be nice to revisit those. Feel free to send me an ask!

[strahdnanigans]

So I’ve been running a solo campaign for my fiancee, and because DnD isn’t really built for a solo player (especially not a monk, which my fiancee is playing), I decided to give them some helpful NPCs.

Somehow this snowballed into the “party” consisting of their monk PC Riya, a half-elf fiend warlock, the warlock’s Rakshasa patron, the Rakshasa’s pet cat, and finally Riya’s twin brother Raj, who has to put up with all of the above.

Needless to say, it’s been a wild campaign.

[strahdnanigans]

Serious props to my fiancee, they’re actually building me a solo campaign where I can live out my crazy dream of seducing Tchazzar. If that’s not true love then I don’t know what is.

[strahdnanigans]

Update

I know I haven’t posted in a while, so I wanted to give an update as to why that is, as well as talk about the future of this blog. The TL:DR version is that I left my CoS group under less-than-ideal circumstances and I’ll be pivoting this blog away from CoS and into more general DnD art. The full explanation is under the cut.

Basically, I quit my CoS group because I no longer felt comfortable, and sessions went from a fun night with friends to a miserable slog. I tried to stick with it, telling myself that the bad sessions were just one-off and that they would get better, but they didn’t. It didn’t help that the GM was trying to rush us towards the end, basically railroading us into storming the castle and defeating Strahd. The final straw came when the GM skipped over an important story beat for my character (one I had been looking forward to for months), and then didn’t understand why I was so upset, even saying I was being selfish by wanting that character moment when when we should have been focused on Strahd. I dropped the campaign right then.

That was a month ago. I’ve since taken some time to reflect on the campaign and realize that the group dynamic wasn’t all that healthy. A lot of behaviors I dismissed or ignored at the time were pretty obvious red flags in hindsight. That said, the other players were still my friends even if they could be pretty shitty sometimes, so it’s hard not to feel regretful. I had a lot of fun times with that group, but things ended in such a messy way that all the memories are bittersweet. It’s been hard for me to even look at this blog, or anything CoS related, without it bringing up some very raw emotions.

I did try to join another CoS group, but I realized pretty early on that the GM’s style wasn’t going to jive with my playstyle, so I politely bowed out after three sessions. I’ve been without a group since then. That, combined with moving overseas to be with my fiancee and still trying to get settled in to a different country, has left me with zero motivation to draw DnD art.

Fortunately, I have a wonderful fiancee who saw how depressed I’ve been without a DnD group and offered to run a solo campaign for me. We did the first session yesterday and it’s helping to spark my creativity again. So while my memories of CoS are too wrapped up in bitterness and regret for me to draw more from that campaign, I do want to keep this artblog active. I’m just going to be drawing for a different, homebrew campaign instead of CoS.

If you read this far, thank you. You’re awesome. If the pivot away from CoS bothers you and you want to unfollow me, go ahead. I understand. But I do really hope you’ll stick around. I already have some art ideas bouncing around in my ideas that I’d love to share with the world.

[strahdnanigans]

What is your favorite class and or Race in D&D for character creation?

I haven't had a chance to play too many characters in 5e yet (I started with Pathfinder - that was an experience) but I really like bards, paladins, and barbarians. I also really like dragonborn... I know the breath weapon doesn't scale well and they're kinda underpowered in the PHB, but dammit, I just love me some dragons.

[strahdnanigans]

So have you read the I, Strahd books by PN Elrod?

If you could play any other D&D Module (i.e Storm Kings Thunder and the like) which one?

Do you have a favorite set of dice? (I am a dice gremlin)

I have not read the Strahd books. They're on my to-read list, alongside a mountain of other books. I really should read them tho, I'm a sucker for vampires.

I would love to play Waterdeep Dragon Heist. I've DMed it for my fiancee, but never had the chance to be a player in it.

I'm also a dice gremlin, hahaha... I have some nice metal ones that I really like. Recently I got a metal set that's blue with iridescence, been waiting for a chance to use those.

[following-the-drum]

Do you got pics of the dice?

Also Dragon Heist looked so fun when I did a glance through!

If you have a lot of driving the I Strahd Audiobooks are on YouTube to listen too I personally prefer the original length read by Paul Boehmer.

[strahdnanigans]

Here you go!

Sadly I’ve never been able to get into audiobooks, I always zone out and miss too much :p and it’s much harder to flip back a few pages on an audiobook.

[strahdnanigans]

So have you read the I, Strahd books by PN Elrod?

If you could play any other D&D Module (i.e Storm Kings Thunder and the like) which one?

Do you have a favorite set of dice? (I am a dice gremlin)

I have not read the Strahd books. They're on my to-read list, alongside a mountain of other books. I really should read them tho, I'm a sucker for vampires.

I would love to play Waterdeep Dragon Heist. I've DMed it for my fiancee, but never had the chance to be a player in it.

I'm also a dice gremlin, hahaha... I have some nice metal ones that I really like. Recently I got a metal set that's blue with iridescence, been waiting for a chance to use those.

[strahdnanigans]

Ask Box Open

Been having a pretty awful day, so if anyone’s got any questions they’d like to shoot at me I’d be more than happy to answer them. Doesn’t even have to be CoS related.

[strahdnanigans]

apparently I forgot to actually open the ask box... today’s been a rough day.

It should be open now.