Divine Intervention 2: Praise the Sun
I can’t help but notice that Handbook-World seems to be on fire. Again. Kind of makes you wonder whether the giant fuck-off magnifying glass has anything to do with the situation. At the very least I’d suggest Lady Celestial keep the lens out of alignment with her halo.
Of course, after our discussions on Monday’s comic, the notion of full-force goddery is on my mind. Getting your deity to notice your plight is hard enough. Preventing them from inadvertently force-of-naturing the setting is harder
Here’s the comment that got me thinking about the subject:
My setting has a county-sized anvil shaped hole in the mountains from the last time the gods decided to intervene without going through a cleric. The gods don’t come with a dimmer switch. If they’re going to manifest in all their deific glory, you’re going to get your world hit with all their deific glory. Makes it really appealing as a weapon of last resort, because the world won’t end, but you might end up obliterating a civilization or five.
So that of course leads us to the larger question. If you’ve decided that your gods are going to manifest and perform miracles, what exactly does that look like? The shock and awe treatment is only one option. You can opt for crazy, fortuitous coincidence instead. (The tunnel floor collapses beneath your feet! …And dumps you into the relic chamber you’ve been seeking.) You can have your deity join the party as allies. (What’s up, old dude that’s clearly just an old dude?) You can also do the hands-off approach, simply relying on existing game mechanics. (I gave your a buttload of divine aid already, ya slacker!)
But as per usual, I’m not interested in my own brainstorming. I want to hear how the rest of you guys like to play it! So for today’s discussion, I want you to 1) Pick a PC; 2) Tell us why they need help; 3) Tell us how their god of choice intervenes (magnifying glass optional). All clear? Then I’ll see you and your divine intervention du jour down in the comments!
*looks nervously at they’re cleric of fertility god*
The invasion was called off when the entire army discovered they were pregnant… men included.
Dudes out here like https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/Juniorposter.jpg
Pregnant with what, exactly? Because human fetuses are not meant to develop outside of an uterus, so I would expect something different from this event…
https://justkillingti.me/wp-content/2017/05/d3829372ffd6d909ca7bdbdadd8372b4.jpg
Dudicles, a //god// did it. They want men to be preggers, they gonna be preggers.
Just hope “modern chirurgy” figures out cesarean sections within the next 7 months or so… or you pic may become highly relevant.
Of course, it could be a mad/evil god, so everyone might be pregnant with “something” random.
I have a custom pantheon from a highish-powered game, somewhat influenced by the Malazan novels. Most of the gods, they meddle rather than intervening directly… if you pray for help, divine assistance is most likely in the form of some other figure who owed that god a favour. And of course, now *you* owe that god a favour, and may find yourself thrown into some other desperate situation halfway across the world. Yay, plot hooks.
The same pantheon does also include a few exceptions to that… the “elders”, something akin to Exalted primordials. They’re mostly uninvolved in mortal affairs compared to the “gods”, but if they do get dragged into the fray, they don’t meddle, and they’re not subtle. If the Mistress of Storms manifests in all her “deific glory”, don’t expect a lot of survivors… you’re basically in “unleash the Kukla” territory.
Kukla vs. Kraken. Who ya got?
Oh, Kukla definitely. Kraken is terrifying, but it’s not an apocalypse-tier threat. Kukla isn’t quite end-of-the-world, but it’s going to make one hell of a mess across most of Creation
How does a divinity gain freckles?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8mTwCRZLWA
This may sound like a cop-out, but it really depends on the deity – and the specific pantheon they belong to.
My Underworld pantheon rarely ever manifests for mortals to see; they move in shadows and visions, dreams of sleep and fever. The pantheon of the Higher Heavens likes to make a big show of their appearance, smiting unbelievers, razing cities that haven’t been very devoted, kicking over all the anthills before they party on the ruins (demanding 5-star service). The deities of the Lower Heavens are more in tune with mortals; they always have an avatar in the world, but usually keep it hidden by cloaking their aura until they need to put on a show. The rival pantheons of Law and Chaos are in a tenuous and very strained balance; if Law deity A puts in an appearance, Chaos deity A has leave to do the same, so both groups go for speed and efficiency; they drop in with a lot of fanfare, do an info drop and get out.
The god of weakness always has a few avatars running around, but these do not appear awe-inspiring at all – until the deity actually starts talking and people realise an oft-overlooked deity still has eyes and ears and a cunning mind to compensate for the weakness portfolio. They didn’t survive with that by being stupid.
On the other hand, Laun, goddess of magic can choose to appear with a bang or a whisper. Most folks who don’t worship discover they met one of her avatars when unique spell scrolls and items have mysteriously vanished from among their possessions… leaving a very average spell scroll of roughly the same level as what was taken. If the lady’s feeling spiteful, there’ll be a note that says ‘average’ magic is more appropriate to whoever she robbed.
I’d be automatically wary of a God of weakness, since portfolios usually tend to include creating/inflicting that thing it governs.
Let’s put it like this. Fighter needs help increasing his Strength score beyond racial max. He asks the god of weakness for help. What happens?
The god of weakness, who needs to be aware of threats, reads Fighter’s aura and lies about a well whose waters will increase Fighter’s strength by a factor of 4. They lie very convincingly, since the weak that kind of skill to avert the wrath of the strong. Fighter happily runs off to a well … situated in a Thought Gorger lair.
(The god of weakness is N with NG tendencies and sides with, quelle surprise, the weak.)
If Paladin, post-character development, had made the same request, the god of weakness would reply: “I can’t give you strength, big guy. What I can and will do, is tell you about a treasure chest some pirates are too dead to dig up. Inside are several toys, but the ones you want are the Gauntlets of Over-Strength. Leave the other gizmos, though; I might be able to find them a good home later.”
As the patron of weakness and the weak, the deity doesn’t have to spread weakness: there’s plenty of it and in so many forms. While they can’t grant strength, the deity has become an expert at finding workarounds for its faithful. Like a martial art based on speed and leverage. Or farming so people don’t need to hunt. Or crafting tools and weapons – and especially crafting traps. In short, the god of weakness is a big sponsor of civilization, research & development, and using your brains instead of your brawn.
A quote from the Book of Weakness: “The strong never look quite as intimidating again after they’ve fallen into a pit trap with spikes at the bottom.”
1) Arcane Archer
2) Needs the perfect Xmas gift for Druid
3) Awaken animal spell in 10000 mile radius
3) Tsunami/tornado destroys local industry center
3) Demiplane is created for Druid/Arcane Archers exclusive use, acts as ‘Garden of Delights’ from Seducer Witch archetype
Only tricky thing here is knowing which Deity (besides Druid) Arcane Archer worships.
I am open to suggestions. Dude probably worships “The Eastern Pantheon,” but couldn’t tell you any of their names if you put a gun to his head.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/eastern-flavors
Well we could have a classic sexy shape-shifting fox spirit-god kitsune (they could represent yokai the same way Faerie Queen represents fey, Lady Celestial celestials/good God, etc.) But an amusing idea injust had would be a two-headed oni (one side blue the other red). They get really frustrated since they’re worshipper didn’t read their bio and thus creating disastrous misunderstandings.
One head, two head
Red head, blue head
Old head, new head
This one has a little horn
This one has a little scorn
So wait, our PCs or yours?
I shall take a PC of mine and a God of mine, never the twain shall they meet. For Mendax lives in a world not my own.
PC: Mendax Vuhlpes
Need: The battle has turned against them. Their fellow party members are injured or stunned and too far away to save the illusionist. The enemy is badly damaged as well and the battle will likely be won, but Mendax won’t be there to see it.
3) Iriel, God of Healing, chooses to intervene. Iriel is a God I wrote whose only focus is on Healing. His priests would oppose causing any wounds to those that have not caused wounds and would heal anyone who needed it so long as they could.
In this battle, the blood that stains the snow and the desperate need to protect the civilians behind the group moves the God’s heart or attention. The God of healing blankets the land. Wounds heal, sicknesses are banished and afflictions are removed. Even those that have died breathe life once more, if only barely (at 0 hp). From Everyone there, including the enemy whose fallen friends are now able to br brought back into the fight.
How does the healing manifest? What does “blankets the land” mean? Did Mendax just sneeze-heal everybody?
More details then. I would imagine that the God is like that of a fire. Warm healing waves but also a furious bonfire in the wrong circumstances. The Positive Energy Plane will kill you just as fast as the negative one after all.
So the start of the healing is that of light. The snowstorm they fought in brightens as the every snowflake seems to light up. Then the heat begins. Flesh that has been struggling with the cold suddenly burns with warmth and everyone gasps. Yet the heat does not turn to comfort but a continuous burn. Wounds resist the warmth for a moment, terribly cold against the fire, but then the heat surges towards them and the pain focuses. Flesh crawl as wounds are knit together. Arrows are pushed out and blood is forcibly created.
Around the dead, a fire burns over their entire forms and then they breathe in air once more. With that breath, the light dims and then the battlefield is silent for a few seconds as friend and foe stare at one another, both wary to gain the Healing God’s Ire for reopening wounds they had undone.
In Golarion there’s certainly the Kitsune deity, Daikitsu.
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Daikitsu
But we also know Arcane Archer kind of skimmed/didn’t invest in his backstory much, so he might have a connection to a Wayang deity…
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Lao_Shu_Po
I feel like my personal answer might already be known here, so instead, I’ll go for one from the other forever DM in my group!
So for context, the existing gods in the setting had a Convent, capital C, with a bunch of god rules in place that stopped the gods from just getting involved in an all out brawl over every trivial thing. Unfortunately, that meant when there was a big crisis, all the more proactively minded gods couldn’t intervene to fix it, even when they were threatened, because the gods couldn’t collectively agree on an attack plan, and even the evil gods knew that the kind of posturing and fighting that would result from breaking the Convent would just make the problem worse.
How they ended up getting around it was instigating the elevation of our PCs to demigod status or equivalent, slowly feeding us power and pointing us in the direction of other little soon-to-be-godlings for us to harness power from/with to stop this big god-threatening menace, and then renegotiated the Convent after the fact to apply to these new gods rolling around and establish a new place for us in the divine hierarchy. Part of the process also involved basically electing a sort of war leader who is trusted to recognize these threats and allow people exceptions to the Convent to intervene a little more directly next time.
So the gods intervened by making Exalts? Sounds familiar. 🙂
Gods in my group’s setting tend to behave more like immortal superpowered monarchs than anything else.
Just want to comment that the god showing up and smiting too hard thing is fully canon in Pathfinder. The Pit of Gormuz was opened up when Sarenrae came to smite those that had settled into a forbidden cursed place. She sent visions and portents, and even a herald down first to get them to leave, but ended up having to come down there herself to do it, and ended up creating a massive hole in the world, and making everything worse in the process
All my gods are mostly regular mythology gods, with a few other fantasy pantheons thrown in for flavor. Which means they are more than familiar with popping into the prime material plane in a form that doesn’t immolate the worshippers with it’s glory. Most of them are also familiar with getting up close and personal with their worshippers (talking about you here Zeus) in various ways.
That said, it’s really rare that a god ever shows up themselves. All the gods have levels of bureaucracy to handle all the nuts and bolts of taking care of the needs of their power supply. I visualize a demigod sitting in his corner office down in the basement, surrounded by pizza boxes and empty coke cans and playing on the celestial version of his Switch. Just waiting for the time a party makes a god call for his particular specialty and he gets to shine.
Most god calls end up with an action happening, rather than a physical manifestation. Group is down to one party member and they yell for generalized help? Both groups get resurrected and healed. That’s what happens when you get through to the god Mar’s organization. More fight for everyone! Fight for you, Fight for you and FIGHT FOR YOU! No guarantee it’s going to go any better, but you have another chance!
Cleric needs a specific action to happen at a specific time? Time to warm up the ritual ingredients and getting the request to the right office! It’s the god’s version of getting all the signatures on the forms before you can request the widget. Still might be shot down, but at least it gets eyes on it.
Because my gods are so involved in the daily life on the mortal plane, I have to put impediments in place or it would be, “Wake up, god call for a good day ahead. Go to work, god call for everything to go well. Evening, god call for the spouse to be in the mood.” My god’s might not be omniscient, but neither are they dummies (well most aren’t. I’ve got a few that make a rock look brilliant). So there is a lot of structure and stricture’s built into the system.
I usually go for an all of the above approach. Different deities are different after all, and might have a myriad of different reasonings for why they can’t always appear. If you actually treat your players’ Patrons as full NPCs themselves, it should be quite reasonable that they aren’t always able to be there. That’s why players have character levels instead of just being nobodies protected constantly by divine coincidence. It’s an investment made by those greater forces that both have a multiverse other than the party to contend with at any given time and/or could crater their world if they even slightly overreact when they HAVE their attention on the situation. Clerics have power themselves because they are trusted with that power, and DI exists because the deities want to let the character choose when they need more.
I’m reminded of a deity that a friend of mine has in their games. (This is the player that surprised me by calling the cops that one time, for context.) They’ve got a deity that is rather explicitly in control of the NARRATIVE. I’ve not seen them in action yet, but I have seen them referenced in my game with them. (Specifically, that my character who had just showed up in an anachronistic tattered office worker uniform reminded the character of said deity.)
Oops, kinda burned a good answer for that yesterday. Short version : I sided with a Demon Lord after being ambushed by our Inquisitor, she called for Iomedae to get rid of him. No epic longsword strike or long chanting prayer. Inquisitor just called in her favor as a free action, a flash of light, and Shax was gone.
Was it unimpressive ? Yes, if it had been meant to be a critical plot point, that would have been disappointing. But it wasn’t that important – she got rid of the weakest of four opponents. So it just left my gunslinger looking at the pile of ashes and thinking for herself that she was glad the answers from yesterday’s questions protect her. It made her realize that, even though she could easily decimate an army, gods and mortals just don’t play by the same rules.
In a way, it was somewhat more scary that it wasn’t just cinematically impressive – it was exceedingly simple, but swift and definitive, and completely turned around my position.
Well in my old personal D&D setting I was more or less using the 4e deities, but in a cosmological system I’d come up with myself.
Since I’d decided that alignments didn’t actually exist, this had all sorts of impacts on the cosmology and how gods interacted with each other.
One of these things is that every god, even the traditionally even ones (even Asmodeus) had angels in their service, as these were things they each created themselves.
Of course these came in a variety of strength, but aside from the ones that involved the most divine investment to create/raise up, they were all generally the same for all deities other than maybe very minor cosmetic differences and who they served.
The most powerful though I dubbed “Angel of X” where “X” is the deity’s name. These took on an appearance and other aspects more related to their god. And were powerful enough that you could even summon a “shadow” of them. Basically just them using some of their power to create a temporary copy of themselves with a fraction of their power.
(I’d basically just made this an option as like a random thing that could happen in the right circumstance, basically so I could hint at the lore of the setting to the players. The second time I was using this setting we weren’t even playing with D&D, so criticals on various things was a thing that could happen and this was one of the possible results I’d thought up.)
So while I’d of course typically answer today’s question with “Well that depends on the circumstances/whatever I think up that I feel would be interesting”, my no-context default answer would be said god just sends an Angel of X to help out. That’s still an action of enough oomph that the other gods would notice, but it’d still be much less of an issue than actively directly intervening.
This story may be apocryphal, but it’s one of my favorites for describing how a god may directly intervene, even outside of their own clerics.
Asmodeus and Sarenrae are enemies, of this there is no doubt. But they HAVE worked together in the past- most notably the sealing of Rovagug during the age of creation would have been a failure without both of their parts being played.
A cleric of Asmodeus kneels beside his dying, poisoned comrade. With no magic left, and only a potion that would barely keep them alive for a few seconds longer, he’s out of options. Asmodeus is a utilitarian deity, and likely would not respond to a request for aid- the man is dying, he is useless. Move on and find new servants. The cleric closed his eyes, took the potion out, and spoke very quietly. “Sarenrae, Lady of mercy. I have come to make a deal.” With that, he administers the last of his medicine, and hopes.
The warmth of the sun intensifies. His hands fill with white fire, and it spreads across his fallen friend, cauterizings wound and revitalizing flesh as it scours the poison, healing the fallen ally to their prime. The cleric of Asmodeus watched his friend get back to his feet, both relieved, and terrified. There would be a price to pay, of that there was no doubt. But they would both live to see the next dawn.
Was an Npc, daughter of..
the Pc shadowed her into a store where they heard her talking to ‘herself’:
No Daddy, you don’t need to send the ‘Death-squad’ (notice sign saying ‘sale is off’), actually wait a sec, (turn to shop clerk), remind me, what was your name again?
When I’m running I prefer the gods to be less “huge miracle and manifestation” and more “subtle and devious”. Yes, even the gods well known for being blatant and unsubtle, I still want there to maybe be some questions or possible doubt involved… except that one time.
So I was co-running a Boffer LARP in a fantasy setting of my co-creator’s. However, she wasn’t as “myths and stories” savvy as I was, so I was put in charge of wrangling creating (with input from her) and then running and wrangling the gods and other extreme supernaturals.
We briefly had a Priest of AEstus*. AEstus was the god of fire, technology, and beyond dangerously intense pathos (basically anyone said to be “consumed by their passions into a state of being dangerous to themselves or others). The Priests usually found a specific following in AEstus’ ‘church’ (smithies, factories, firepits, hospitals, etc, the building had to have a purpose other than worship, though worship would take place there on holy days).
So one of AEstus’ rituals could create a “flame of learning”, any fire that knowledge (like a book, or an artifact of knowledge storage (IE computer) or a even person containing knowledge) was burned in that destroyed the knowledge, the flame would retain it and pass the knowledge on to any who bathed in it (and thus also burned a bit, the longer the burn, the more complete the knowledge gained) so long as the flame remained lit.
So cue up a PC who had fallen into complete melancholy over their failure to save their lost (and recently found) love… and our Priest of AEstus who had taken the focus of “preserving knowledge”. A rare path and actually largely useless in game terms, but it did make them a very uniquely skilled individual for ferreting out secrets, determining guilt or innocence (knowledge of an event someone witnessed could be shared if the witness and those who wanted the knowledge would accept being “burned”†), he could even give a group of Burned a vaguely telepathic connection as long as they kept a part of the flame that burned them all on themselves. He wasn’t super powerful, but he had some very “out of the box” utilities.
So the Priest eventually convinced the melancholy to “give themselves over to AEstus into the fires of knowledge and be blah, blah, blahed”. The Priest then drew the absolute best set of stones from the Bag of Fate‡ (basically rolled a crit) to get a manifestation of their deity/supreme miracle in their favor.
So we GMs talked it over a second and then decided that the fire erupted into a firestorm, leveling the forest in the immediate area, setting everything on fire, including the Priest and everyone witnessing the ritual. Everyone but the Priest fled with minimal burns (they all had to give up one Secret or 5 exp worth of skills). The Priest decided to remain and in their words “Feel the full fiery focus of AEstus”. The local Druidess had to summon a rain storm to temper it and save the Priest before they died and then needed expensive resurrection.
The Priest ended up almost dead, but now the Keeper of the Flame, in possession of new ritual knowledge, duties, and The Eternal Flame of [Melancholy PC Name], but also lost some of their prior knowledge, forever (he chose a few things, one was the names of everyone he knew before the fire, and then he fed the names of everyone he newly met after – so basically he never knew anyone’s names). As long as the Priest fed the flames with fuel, secrets, and his own flesh or blood (he chose blood, basically losing some HP to coat the wood he fed the fire with each month – we played monthly) nothing short of godly intervention could put the fire out.
Suddenly he went from being an interesting but sidelined PC in the campaign to being a “power Player” in the local (and regional) politics, as lunatics and Priests of AEstus sought the place out for pilgrimages, Lords sought the Fires of Knowledge, etc.
Even the Great Burning Wrath of the West (an elemental fire dragon) came to pay respects to the Eternal Flame and sacrificed a single scale to it.
So yeah, despite preferring subtle interventions, sometimes the dice come up “blatantly obvious godly powers involved”.
* Yes, it short for Hephaestus, this world was one that very post-post apocalypse, where the old gods re-emerged to repair the world after humans royally f-ed it up and tore rifts into the Lovecraftian “places man was not to go”. And while that was in the ‘before times’ there were occasionally ancient ruins of the before times with ancient wonders like robots, computers, lasers, etc, that a few PCs struggled to use, but most just sold to the various Guilds that maintained a monopoly on those skills.
† HP lose that was harder to heal. We didn’t actually want people burning themselves. They the Priest also brought red-stain to stain those “burned in the fires of AEstus holiness”. Since the PC was the first Player to engage with AEstus, they decided that AEstus was neither male no female, or both, or whatever as needed, so the PC always refereed to AEstus as “AEstus”. We GMS would use “They, Them, Their”.
‡ Our system didn’t use dice, we drew coloured stones from a bag. White for “Yes/Positive Outcome” and Black for “No/Negative Outcome”. That was simple tests, for more complicated tests or if the Player chose to make extra draws, we’d add other colours, usually Yellow for “Yes and Partially Negative Outcome” or Orange for “No but Partially Positive Outcome”. Some tests were influenced by other factors, like PC skills/rituals/(un)favorable events in game, etc. Such as Red “No and extra Bad”, Green “Yes and extra Good”, Blue was “Yes and Double extra Good” but also added more White and Black stones, and then Clear “Bad with Double extra Bad” but added more Black and Red stones (because there were plenty of skills that added more White and Yellow stones, but very few that added more Black or Orange, so to keep the Clear stone events extra spicy, they only added ‘fail’ or ‘extra bad options’).
In my GM’s setting, if you call on a god, you get their Archangel. Which, funnily enough, happened to a player in their backstory. They prayed to the god of (among other things) sailing when their boat was attacked. The Archangel of Wrath showed up, stabbed the player in the chest and killed them instantly, revived them as a Warlock in the Archangel’s service, gave them some magic powers, and said “save yourself then.”
Probably my favorite series for divine intervention is the World of Five Gods / Chalion series. Because the Gods explicitly cannot affect the material world directly. So they engage in subtle knudges and are very good at it.
There are several cases where someone is praying to the Gods for an intervention, only to find that they are it. They’ve been put in just the right place with the right tools that they can solve the problem.
This is, of course, a lot easier for a writer than a DM to pull off.
Arthur Grace, Paladin of Iomedae, defending a town against an orcish horde that far outnumbers the town’s defenders.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What looked like a bolt of lightning fell from the sky, striking Arthur and causing him to disappear in a blinding flash of light. A moment later, the watchers’ sight cleared to reveal Arthur still standing, but transfigured. His armor had been been replaced by a suit of impossible design, with countless pieces fitted together, sliding over and under each other at the joints to provide mobility while leaving no chink or crack. The armor shone as bright as a mirror, the edges of each piece glowed blood-red, and Iomedae’s Sword was etched on the breastplate in scarlet light. Arthur’s sword was likewise transformed, now nearly as long as he was tall and easily two handspans wide at the base, with flame-like designs etched up both sides in ruby light.
Arthur let out a whoop and charged the orcish horde, moving with a speed and a grace that should have been impossible for someone in full plate. The rest of the defenders followed him at a trot. Orcish archers released a veritable hailstorm of arrows, but they could not pierce the interlocking protection of Arthur’s transfigured armor.
At the front of the charge, Arthur met the charging orcish warlord, a hulking brute as tall as two men and as broad as three, wielding an iron mace the size of a small tree. The orcish champion brought his mace down like a thunderbolt, but Arthur leapt to the side with impossible speed and the blow cratered the ground. Arthur’s retaliatory swipe of his sword cut through the orcish warlord’s armor almost without resistance, but passed through the flesh beneath without leaving a mark. Instead, the orcish warlord fell dead, his eyes burning in their sockets.
Before the horde really had time to process what had just happened, Arthur was among them, swinging that oversized blade as though it weighed no more than a willow wand. He cut deep into the orcish formation, leaving a trail of bodies with burnt-out eyes in his wake. Swords and axes and maces struck him again and again, but rebounded from Arthur’s transfigured armor with barely a scratch. The defenders followed his lead, exploiting the break he had opened in the orcish lines to throw them into confusion and inflict casualties out of proportion to their numbers.
Within minutes the orcs broke, throwing down their weapons and fleeing, unable to stand before that impossible blade and that armor that none of them could breach. As the last of them disappeared over the horizon, there was another blaze of power, this one like lightning leaping up from Arthur to the heavens, and when it cleared he was equipped as he had been before. He promptly fell to the ground, exhausted near to death but victorious.
Aconite Carrioncall, a manic vampire dryad and prophet of the Revenant Forest, a godlike, non-sentient force of resurection and thirst for the sensations of life. He’s gotten in an argument with Strahd von Zarovitch over whether or not the Church of the Revenant Forest can have the Barovians.
His request: “Strahd is a somewhat demi-deific entity, so can you grant me equal power?”
The Result: Something along the lines of a forest that acts as a portal out from Barovia, any barovian who dies and is buried with it’s heart mostly intact being reincarnated as a manic vampire dryad, and Aconite being transmogrified into a Plant-Flavored Lich with bard and druid spells instead of wizard spells