The Lightbringers' Expedition to Castle Ravenloft - updated 12/19

[Dr Midnight]

It feels like just a few people are reading. Lurkers, want to throw in here? I'm considering dropping the weekly write-up. The lack of responses is getting depressing, boo hoo.

 

[Qwernt]

I have been reading your material for some time now and would really appreciate if you could PELASE CONTINUE WRITING! If this requires me to reply daily with Great Write-up, I will.

I enjoyed The Silver Quill, Spellforge Keep, The Starwars adventure (sorry can't remember the name), the Super's (can' remember the name). They were all well written, and exciting. Right now, beyond Lazy Bones, this is the only story I am reading. Again, it is well written and has an interesting story line (even if you lots one of your more enjoyable to read about characters by a certain players - Jee Was).

Please keep writing!

 

[Peterson]

Doc

Great storyhour, as always. I've been considering picking up Expedition to Castle Ravenloft myself for a while now, so I've been following this storyhour with extreme interest.

Please, keep writing this.

Peterson

 

[Sabriel]

I'm a chronic lurker, but I've been greatly enjoying your story. I definitely was not expecting Jade to come back as a giant cro codile. Given Ashlynn came back as a troglodyte, it almost makes me wonder if there's a higher than normal risk of reptilian reincarnation in ravenloft...

 

[richshea52]

Lurker

I normally am a lurker, but your request for a reply and the fact that you are local has forced my hand. This story is fantastic, and you bring it to life. There are few that I follow that keep my interest this is definitely one of them.

Since the wife and I had kids, I have not played for almost 5 years and these story hours keep me going.

Keep up the good work, I have not read the Quill or Spellforge Keep books but I will now.

 

[Dr Midnight]

Session 7 - Chapter 3
FIRESIDE CHAT​

Strahd held his hands over the bonfire. “How bravely, and how bright, the fire burns against the darkness… not knowing how easily it can be extinguished.” He looked like a kindly grandfather warming himself at a fire, until he turned his head to her and the eyes flashed with the threat of his words.

“Uncle Strahd,” Arianna said, immediately unnerved. “How nice to see you. Did you travel by coach?”

“I am wondering, beloved niece, how your new friends saw fit to put on a performance condemning me in the center of Barovia.”

“That was a miscommunication… uh… You saw that?”

“Word spreads quickly. Tell me, how is it a miscommunication that the ‘Lightbringers’ are ‘the newest group to go up against’ Count Strahd Von Zarovich?”

“That… he wasn’t supposed to say that. Bildrath, he…”

Strahd shook his head. “Bildrath is not the problem. The problem is that you yourself doubt what I tell you, and that you’re taking the words of the idiot peasants to heart. You believe what they say about me and aren’t acting against their slander.”

“We’ve been doing our part. Seeds need fertile soil to take root, and it will take time to turn them back to you.”

“Lies. You may have a silver tongue, but know this: I have a forked one. ” He waved a hand at her disgustedly. “I have given you enough time on that count. You will focus on finding the Tome, and when you find it, you will destroy it.”

“Just a moment,” Arianna said. “I think I’ve had just about enough of your orders. I’m not here to serve you and to be honest I’m not even sure I want this inheritance. I think-“

“Silence!!” Strahd hissed and leveled his clawed hand at her. His eyes closed like a fist around her mind and she couldn’t move or look away. His words melted into her as he spoke. “You will find the Tome, and you will destroy it as soon as possible. You will not read it, nor will you allow any of your companions to.” He lowered his hand. “You will not disobey my directions this time, I think. Should I hear of these ‘Lightbringers’ acting against my best interests again I shall have to take further measures.”

Strahd stepped back into the shadows and disappeared against the night. Arianna stared after him, still feeling him in her mind. Her eyes were open wide and aside from trembling she didn’t move at all.

​

Gerrit, Thendrick, Toufghar, Ashlyn and Jade emerged from Madam Eva’s tent. They’d gleaned from her just about all they could and grew frustrated with her cryptic answers. They came upon Arianna outside the tent, staring off into the darkness beyond the fire. She’d have looked relaxed if her arms hadn’t been pinned to her sides. Tendons stood out in her neck and she was breathing quickly.

Ashlyn stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “Arianna?”

The elf gasped and whirled. A thin sheen of sweat was on her brow. “Oh, it’s you. You… uh… you scared me.”

“Is everything all right? You seem tense."

“Fine! I’m fine. I just got spooked by the reading. Did she tell us anything else?”

Thendrick looked down at his notes. “Yes. She mentioned a few things. Here’s what we’ve gathered… for the Holy Symbol, we’re going to find a place ‘where humans plumb their darkest nature.’ I’m betting that means it’s in that church somewhere. Once we’ve got it, we’ll have to take it ‘to the place of its antithesis, where hellish magic is made.’ No idea where that could be. Luckily, we won’t have to worry about that for a bit- she did mention that we’d have better luck starting out for the Tome of Strahd. The Tome will give us a clue to his weakness, it looks like, which may explain why he wants it destroyed.”

Arianna tensed at this and said nothing.

Thendrick continued. “The Tome will lead us to three defiled places, where we must unearth three relics. Once we have them all, we must destroy what we have created. To find the Tome, we go where ‘the moon is hidden but most powerfully felt,’ and we’ve got to watch out for the moon’s children.”

“Whatever that means,” Toufghar sniffed.

“Wolves,” Gerrit said distantly. “Those huge wolves that live in the forest.”

“What, that forest?” cried Thendrick. That’s the scariest looking patch of woods I’ve ever seen. There are huge wolves in there? I’m not going in that!”

“I have to,” Arianna said. She shook her head and spoke again. “We have to. We must find that book.”

Thendrick sighed. “Great. Well, after that Eva mentioned that Strahd will find us many times and we will find him only once. This is our time to strike. We’ll find him ‘among his riches, hidden from might.’”

“Sight,” Ashlyn corrected.

“Oh.” Thendrick looked at his notes. “That does make more sense. Anyway, uh… ‘every piece moves with a purpose, and none but the master can know the objective of the game. No piece on the board, however, is as important as the queen… who is but one move away from her king.’ We thought that might be Ireena, so we asked about her next. Her card was the empress. ‘She has loved him before and will again. The master covets her.’ Not sure what that’s about, and what part she has to play in all this, but she’ll be one to keep an eye on.” Thendrick folded his notes and placed them back in his pocket.

Arianna said “So. We go to the forest?”

“Are you crazy?” Toufghar asked. “It’s nighttime. If there are werewolves out there to be dealt with, the dead of night’s not the time to do it. I say we spend the night here.” The others nodded. Arianna, who was unnaturally eager to get moving, resigned herself to the delay with a pout.

“You guys watch my stuff,” Toufhgar said as he stripped off his armor. “I’m going swimming.” He ran to the Tser Pool and jumped in with a splash.

A voice spoke behind Gerrit. “You go to fight the werewolves. Yes?” The halfling turned to find a Vistani man standing there wearing gypsy clothing. He had a curling mustache and a colorful scarf. His eyes crinkled with a kindly smile.

“Yes,” Gerrit said. “How did you know that?”

The gypsy laughed. “I am Vistani. You needn’t have the second sight to see some truths. For instance, your friend just now broke the surface of the water, fragmenting the reflection of the moon. Thus, I know you’re going to fight the werewolves. Little signs like this exist all around us if we have the wit to see them.” He extended a hand. “My name is Miolho. I am very glad to meet you and your people.”

“Gerrit Applecatcher,” Gerrit replied, happy to meet a friendly person in this land. “You have a lovely encampment here.”

The gypsies were beginning to filter back out of their tents and into the common area. Some kept a watchful eye to the sky and the darkness beyond the tents. They broke out a few bottles of some spicy tasting Vistani cherry ale and over the course of the next few hours, they toasted, danced, wined and cheered the adventurers.

In the morning, Toufghar and Ashlyn found that they’d each been robbed over the course of the night. They’d each had so much fun, though, that they called it an even trade-off and waved to their new friends as they left for the Svalich Woods.

Coming up
THE SVALICH WOODS​

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[Despaxas]

Great writing, as always, Doc. People might not post, but I'm sure they read Keep up the good work.

 

[Dr Midnight]

Session 8 - Chapter 1
THE MOON’S CHILDREN​

They walked south, past the crossroads. They hurried as the shapes of black mist began to re-form from the graves there.

The road curved to the east and they walked until the road came close to the thick wall of trees that marked the start of the black forest. Beyond the first few coniferous trees the forest was steeped in mist and what little sunlight entered it filtered through in pale rays. The forest floor had scarce underbrush, as the canopy of evergreen needles and ash leaves didn’t allow much to grow down here in the dark. The woods looked as forbidding as any dungeon entrance.

Arianna and Gerrit were especially wary of the woods as they recalled their first night in Barovia, walking the road. The feeling of being surrounded by immense lupine shapes that glided through the mist like sharks came back to them now and they shivered at the thought.

Luckily, they had some time to prepare. They continued walking on the road and entered Barovia. Once there, they located the blacksmith’s shop that Gerrit had found on their second day in town. The door still hadn’t been opened- apparently the blacksmith had never returned.

The group pulled off the planks that covered the door and forced it open. Once inside they gathered a pile of the silver they had on hand- silver trinkets, silver belt clasps, silver coins- inside a pot and lit the burner beneath.

You must use the color of the moon’s own light, Miolho had said the night before after a few snifters of drink had been downed. To kill the werewolf, one must use the metal that is as born of the moon as he is. Silver is only made under moonlit mountains, or so I have heard it said.

Once the silver was melted Arianna began dipping her arrowheads into the mixture and placing them to cool on a rack. Toufghar was studying his immense greataxe. “Does anyone actually know anything about smithing or metallurgy here? I mean, dipping arrowheads is great, but how are we going to apply this to our main weapons?”

“I don’t think anyone here knows,” Gerrit said. “We don’t even know if a simple silver-plating will work.”

“So why are we even wasting our time on something that could be a dead end?”

Gerrit didn’t look up from the set of thick silver rings he was attempting to solder together. “I’m guessing you haven’t been in a tree at night, surrounded by these things. They’re the size of ponies.” He held up his makeshift set of silver knuckles and turned them over as he examined his craftsmanship. “I’m not taking any chances.”

​

The Lightbringers stepped through the trees from the plains and entered Svalich Woods.

Here, the mists turned slowly in the shafts of light. The trees faded away in the fog to tall pale lines in the distant gray. The dead pine needles and black soil crunched softly as they walked to the south.

None of them really knew where they were going. The Svalich Woods were vast, and Madam Eva had only told them to seek the Tome where the moon was hidden but most powerfully felt. The werewolves were all they really had to go on. Arianna kept a watchful eye out for tracks.

They had been walking for twenty minutes when Gerrit cocked his head. “Listen… does anyone else hear that?” Everyone stopped and listened. The pale notes of a pan pipe were drifting from the forest ahead.

“Stay here, I’ll scout it out,” Arianna said. She moved towards the music, passing silently and quickly through the trees as if she were walking on feathers. The trees thinned somewhat as she made her way. Dim gray light spilled through the canopy, and the ground grew choked with undergrowth. A wide swath of clearer ground formed something like a path or trail.

An elf was seated on a branch, some thirty feet above the ground, playing a slow and ethereal song on his pipe. He didn’t look at Arianna, but she knew he had seen her- she had made no effort to stay hidden. She decided to join his song as a means of offering peace and began singing softly along with the song, which was an elven lullaby she recalled from her childhood.

When the song was through the elf lowered his pipe and spoke in soft elven. “What evil do you bring to these woods?” He never turned his head to look at her.

“We bring no evil. We come in search of the moon’s children.”

“You ought leave.”

“Perhaps, but we have rather important business here.”

“You ought leave.” The elf went back to his pipe and played on.

Arianna, having nothing more to say, turned to rejoin the group. When she reached them, she relayed the information and as there was nothing for it, the party all readied their weapons and walked forward. When they reached the clearing, the elf was gone. They were about to walk through when Toufghar stopped. “Noises. Movement.”

Arianna whipped out an arrow and nocked it. “Where?”

“Just beyond the mist. Saw a shape. I think we’re not alone here.”

“You’re not,” the elf said as he stepped out from behind a tree to the rear of the group. They whirled to face him. He was unarmed and looking irritated. “You’re surrounded. I don’t believe you understood my meaning when I said ‘you ought leave.’”

Thendrick, who was closest to the elf, was known to Toufghar and Arianna as having something of a quick temper. He wouldn’t anger easily, but if he perceived a threat, he was more likely to attack than to back down… and he would attack swiftly, with a frightening glare in his eyes. This often belied the thin and affable sorcerer’s demeanor, but it was just as much a part of him as his aptitude for grooming and dressing in finery. He stepped closer to the elf and looked him in the face. “By what right do you have us surrounded? We’re as free to walk in these woods as you are.”

“You should turn around.”

“You should make us.”

The elf sneered. “Did you come from that village? Did they send you? They will die screaming if you don’t-“

Thendrick blasted him in the face with a powerful rash of purple light-bolts. The elf cried out and leaned on the tree. He looked off to his left and nodded, and something there broke from its position in the underbrush and ran south. At the same time, several large shapes began loping in from behind the clearing’s thick trees. These were wolves that stood five feet tall at the shoulder and slavered pinkish froth from their maws.

The elf stepped behind the tree he’d been near and sounds began to come from behind it. Wet sounds, popping sounds, like celery sticks being snapped inside a waterskin. The elf’s grunts of pain turned deeper and throatier.

Arianna fired at the wolves as they ran in. Toufghar swung his axe up to meet the first one as it leaped and his silver-coated greataxe thunked into its ribcage. It yelped with pain and circled the group, favoring its side. “I think the silver-plating worked,” Toufghar said.

Gerrit smashed a wolf in the face with his fist, which was holding four silver rings that had been melted together. The silver “brass” knuckles did their part and the halfling cartwheeled away from another wolf’s attack as the first reeled from the punch.

Thendrick stepped cautiously towards the tree as the noises slowed and the elf stepped back from behind the tree. He was now nine feet tall and still standing on his hind legs, though his body was entirely covered with fur. His elongated torso rippled with muscles and shaggy fur. The head was a mockery of a real wolf’s head- a lengthy muzzle lined with too many teeth, furious eyes that were bright yellow, triangular ears that were long almost to the point of being lapin. It growled deep in its chest and swung at Thendrick, clawing deep tears in his expensive robes and flesh.

Thendrick stepped back quickly, trying to summon the energies for another spell. The werewolf stalked toward him.

Ashlyn’s silver-coated sword cut through fur and bone. She had dropped a wolf already and was holding off the others with some effort.

Arianna did her best to keep some distance so she could fire her silver-tipped arrows, two at a time, into the faces and torsos of the werewolves that tore at her companions.

Gerrit mostly served as a bait and distraction, flipping about and lashing out with a well-timed blow here and there.

Toufghar was having a fine time wheeling his greataxe about and hacking off werewolf limbs until a set of jaws clamped around his upper arm and shook, tearing free a number of tendons and almost shearing off the skin there entirely. The half-orc roared in pain and clubbed the werewolf in the face with the butt of his axe, then finished him off with a furious horizontal slash.

Thendrick unleashed a palmful of bees that glowed like embers and shot into the face of the elf-wolf. The monster howled in pain and died, its face immolated by Thendrick’s magical attack.

The other werewolves were dealt with in short order and the party was left gasping for breath, surrounded by the bloodied corpses of several elves. With a quick round of healing spells and potions the party got moving again. It wasn’t even noon yet but they were hoping to be done and out of the woods before dark.

Coming up
THE DEN​

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[Dr Midnight]

Session 8 - Chapter 2
THE DEN​

Drizzle fell as they continued walking. The moisture collected on the branches and large cold droplets fell down the backs of their cloaks, making them even more miserable than they’d been, trudging through a werewolf-infested black forest as they were.

Arianna had picked out a definite path. She stayed twenty feet ahead of the group and watched the ground for signs of pawprints. “The trails are all converging,” she called back. “We’re getting closer to some kind of hub for them.”

“It’s been an hour and a half since we were attacked by that elf,” Ashlyn said to Gerrit. “But Arianna says we’re deep in their territory. What do you make of that?”

“It’s curious. Maybe we’ve just gotten lucky.”

“I don’t like it. It feels like a trap.”

Arianna held up a fist: I see something, everyone halt. She crouched and was still for almost three whole minutes, then motioned for the group to follow her. She drew her bow and stepped out into a clearing from which the trees seem to lean away. A rocky outcropping was at the far end of the clearing, and a cave opened there like a screaming mouth. The group stepped quietly across the clearing to the cave, watching for traps and watchful of any movement in the treeline.

The reached the cave’s opening. The ground here was hard-packed and heavily traveled by wolfs’ prints, Arianna saw. The humid air coming from the cave smelled like damp animal fur. Only the sound of dripping water was heard from within. They entered.

They hid in the darkness for a bit and waited to see if anything approached the cave from outside or came up from within. When nothing happened, Ashlyn used her hat of disguise to take the appearance of a bipedal werewolf. She stood twenty feet to the group’s front and led them slowly down, holding a torch up.

The tunnel was a well-worn one. It was about six feet wide and seven feet high and its girth was fairly consistent as they traveled steadily downward on its slick stone slope. Small rivulets of rainwater moved with them over the lichen-stained rock.

A passageway opened on the left-hand side. They explored it briefly only to find that it branched out geometrically into smaller passages that not even Gerrit could pass through. “This area isn’t even used,” Arianna said. “It’s useless to them. Let’s keep moving downward.”

The air was growing more and more stale. It seemed there was no circulation in this cave, and what little air there was stank of fur and hot breath. It was cloying and almost suffocating, adding to the claustrophobic dread of the thin passageway as it moved deeper.

“We must be at least a hundred and twenty feet below the ground at this point,” Toufghar whispered. “This is… I gotta get out of here.” He tugged at the neckline of his hide armor and his eyes bugged.

“Easy,” Thendrick said. “We’ll kill something soon. That always makes you feel better.” The half-orc nodded and kept walking.

The tunnel finally opened into a small cavern. Ashlyn stepped towards it carefully and looked inside. Here, the dank animal air was almost unbreathable. The cavern was perhaps forty feet long and twenty-five wide, and lit with dancing shadows from Ashlyn’s torch. The last ten feet of floor weren’t visible, as the floor dipped there into some kind of pit.

There were no werewolves.

A young woman was crouching on the ground, facing away from them, wearing the remains of tattered purple robes. Her ribs stood out from her skin in the torchlight and her lank hair hung like seaweed from her head. She was trembling.

Ashlyn was at once relieved and troubled to have found no werewolves. She let the wolf illusion slip from her and replaced it with the one of her human self. “Ma’am? You’re safe now, we’re…” her speech caught in her throat as she saw that the woman wasn’t trembling after all- she was gnawing on something. The woman ripped something free with a squelching sound and tossed a legbone off into the darkness of the pit, where it landed with a clatter.

Ashlyn concentrated and then spoke over her shoulder to the group. “I detect evil.”

Thendrick shot the woman through with a ray of bright white light. She screamed and the sound echoed a hundredfold through the stone of the cavern. The sudden light and sound dazed everyone, and when their vision returned, the woman was lying, shuddering, on the stone. A blackened hole was burned entirely through her midsection.

“You shot her in the back,” Gerrit said. “We weren’t even fighting.”

Thendrick shrugged. “Better her than us.”

Ashlyn went to the woman and knelt by her. The woman turned her face upward and she was just a girl, maybe seventeen years old, beautiful and innocent. The eyes were crinkled in pain and despair. Her tormented splendor was so heartwrenching that Ashlyn’s eyes failed her even as they welled up in tears. She was blind. “Easy,” Ashlyn said. “Just relax.”

“So… you came to destroy us,” the girl choked. “Not thinking we were… clever enough to…”

There was a loud thud and the girl stopped talking altogether. Ashlyn heard the others gasp behind her. “What just happened?” Ashlyn asked with some alarm. “What just happened, someone answer me!”

Toufghar spoke from nearby with a proud smile in his voice. “Not good. Dangerous.”

He had casually walked up and crushed the girl’s head with a boulder.

“You’re an ass, Toufghar.” Ashlyn sat nearby with Gerrit attending her blindness. She was still steaming over his killing the young woman, but in her time with the Lightbringers she’d seen many such instances. For Thendrick and Toufghar, shooting first and questioning the corpse was a common occurrence no matter how often she pleaded for reason.

Arianna and Gerrit, however, were aghast at the blatant disregard for adventuring protocol. “That was horrible,” Arianna said in disbelief.

“She had it coming,” Toufghar said with a dismissive shrug. “She was going to get dead one way or the other.”

“At the very least we could have listened to what she was saying,” Ashlyn grumbled. “She said something about how we didn’t think they were clever enough to… splat. Clever enough to what?”

“We’ll never know, so let’s not worry about it,” Thendrick said. He stepped to the edge of the pit and looked into it with the help of the torch. It was filled almost to the top with the mouldering bones of the eaten. Skulls, ribcages, legbones, spines, armbones and pelvises of dozens of different kinds of creatures lay in a flat heap. Rotting chunks of brown-black meat still clung to the sickly greenish bones in the nooks where werewolf teeth couldn’t reach. Scattered with the bones were scraps of cloth, bits of belts, a few rings and necklaces. It seemed the bodies weren’t used for anything other than food, and then the corpses were tossed into the pit along with all their belongings. Thendrick put a hand to his mouth, closed his eyes and leaned on a wall to help ease the rising nausea.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Arianna said. “This is clearly the werewolves’ den. Number one, no werewolves. Number two, no Tome. We’ve wasted our time here. There’s no damned Tome!”

Toufghar kept his eye up the tunnel and said “The night’s not over. We can be sure that the werewolves are out there somewhere.”

Miles to the northeast, beneath the light of the moon, over a dozen pairs of yellow eyes shone from the bushes surrounding Barovia.

The howling began.

Coming up
THOSE LEFT BEHIND ​

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[Dr Midnight]

Session 8 - Chapter 3
TORN TO PIECES​

The group left the cave and searched the crag of rock around it. They didn’t find the Tome or any werewolves, but evidence of their living around the cave was everywhere. Bones, tufts of shedded fur, and spoor marked this as their home. Arianna even found a place at the top of the rock where she guessed that the werewolves gathered regularly to bay at the moon.

The group sat at the top of that rock overlooking the forest around them and took a rest. The moon was full, as ever, and it shone down through the mist that walled off the horizons. The view was almost clear from up here, and they could see for almost a mile over the treetops.

“We shouldn’t stop moving. We need to find that book.” Arianna paced restlessly.

Gerrit stretched. “’Anna, we’ve been on the move for hours. Five minutes isn’t going to make the Tome any more lost than it already is. Relax.”

Toufghar said “I’m really getting tired of this place. Mystery upon mystery. I truly miss kicking open the doors in dungeons and stabbing monsters. Things are so much simpler when you don’t have to investigate shadowy motives and worry about political machinations.” Thendrick and Gerrit agreed with sighs and nods.

“We’re still doing the will of Urso,” Ashlyn said. “If we can find this Tome and rid Barovia of…” she stopped and looked around, recalling that Eva said Strahd watched constantly. She cleared her throat. “…We’ll be doing a great deed for the innocents of the region.”

Thendrick tossed a pebble off into the forest. “I just wish we knew where all the damned werewolves went to.”

With that, Ashlyn remembered the words of the elf-wolf they’d met earlier in the day. Did you come from that village? Did they send you? They will die screaming… After Thendrick had attacked the elf, he’d signaled to another wolf that had run off to the south. The paladin stood up abruptly. “Damn it. They went to Barovia. Come on, we have to move!”

The group hustled through the forest back to the northeast, where a trail was visible. “A dozen and a half, maybe, moving at speed,” Arianna huffed as she ran. Jade the giant crocodile crashed along after them as fast as her legs could carry her, but all the same she slowed the group down a great deal even with a haste spell cast on her.

Thendrick leaped over a stump. “Maybe we can still catch them in time!”

“No,” Gerrit said. “They left hours ago. They’ve had a good long time to do whatever they want.” No one spoke and after another minute of running, he concluded his thought. “There will be blood, and lots of it.”

They reached Barovia sometime just before midnight. Only a handful of lights were on in all the village and as they moved closer, they saw that those houses with lights on all had doors that had been smashed in by powerful furred arms.

The Lightbringers drew their weapons and entered the village, walking slowly.

Bodies lay in the street. This bore little semblance to the scene after the zombie infestation, however, as these bodies were little more than wet red rags. They had been torn to pieces. One corpse was a sinewy skeleton lying in a paw-smudged pool of its own blood. All soft tissue had been violently ripped and from it, and splatters of blood on the walls and doors facing the street here were still inching downward in slow drips. There wasn’t a sound in all of Barovia save the heroes’ footsteps on the cobbles.

“It’s so quiet,” Thendrick whispered. “Is everyone dead?”

“The werewolves are gone as well it seems,” Arianna noted. “They dodged us and hit our weak spot.”

Toufghar sniffed. “I don’t know these people. They ain’t my weak spot.”

A wailing cry came from the south of town and the Lightbringers broke into a run. They came upon the burgomaster’s mansion. Before it, Ismark lay dead. His sister Ireena was screaming and cradling him with his blood on her clothes. She appeared untouched.

Ashlyn reached her first. “Ireena. Ireena! What happened, where did they go?” The grieving woman didn’t even seem to recognize that their presence. Ashlyn reached out and shook her shoulder. “Ireena!”

Ireena’s head snapped toward the paladin and after a moment seemed to recognize her. “You! What… did you go into the woods? You went out to the werewolves, didn’t you? You brought this upon us!” She slapped Ashlyn’s hand away and continued to glare at her with clenched teeth. “You brought death upon Barovia!”

Thendrick said “Ireena, we understand that you’re upset, but you have to-“

“You did this to us,” Ireena growled. “Go to hell.” She went back to weeping on her dead brother’s chest as the Lightbringers stood nearby, watching her, feeling utterly powerless to help.

Next Session
REVENGE ​

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