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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6947833" data-attributes="member: 7006">My main group just arrived at the Castle for a second time... this time with the intention to do three things-- finally find the Sunsword and the Tome of Strahd (both of which are in the Castle), and also to find Ireena... as she was already claimed by Strahd and was bitten for the third time previously, which I gave them a time-table of seven days to go find her and get her in order to possibly try and "cure" her before she became a vampire spawn of Strahd herself.  Things worked out such that Strahd wasn't actually at the Castle, as he was left out at Yester Hill daydreaming out over the illusionary home town seen in the mists.They arrived with a cask from the Wizard of Wines, using it as their excuse to get into the Castle (as the Castle is preparing for Strahd and Ireena's wedding once her transformaton is complete).  While most of them took the cask down through the servant's entrance to the wine cellar (and interacting with Cyrus Belview), for whatever reason a pair of the party went off in their own direction-- one of which found his way into the tower with the Heart of Sorrow via the secret door in the servant's quarters.  He then proceeded to do everything in his power to get to the top of the tower and then try and break the Heart.Now I honestly don't know if this player has ever read or played I6 before, so I can't say whether his choice was a bit of metagaming on his part, but if it was, he did a very good job of masking his knowledge.  He definitely made it seem like a logical choice of thinking "Hey, there's this huge beating crystal in the tallest tower of the castle, stopping the beating is probably not a bad idea!"  But needless to say I wasn't going to let him get away with it that easily, and after he threw Cyrus's treasure chest down onto it (losing the beautiful crown/tiara in the process) and causing a bit of cracks to form, the sound of the breakage reverberated throughout the castle and shortly after a pair of Strahd's vampire spawn brides arrived to try and stop him.Hearing the loud crash (and subsequent second crash as the fighter leapt down onto the Heart itself and smashed his two rapiers into the crack that had formed)... the rest of the party found their way back up from the wine cellar to find out just what the hell he was doing-- now having a nice little pitched battle between him and the pair of vampire brides on top of the Heart.  The rest of the party saw the Heart cracking open and starting to break, so they continued to assault it from near the base of the tower using long-range magic... and when the Heart finally did shatter I decided to roll piercing and lightning damage for anyone within the tower as the crystal shards exploded, fell, and released all its magical energy.Unfortunately for the party, six of the eight PCs failed their DEX saving throws (even with a handful rolling twice with Inspiration) and I rolled only slightly lower that max damage on the 4d10 piercing/electrical damage from the energized shards.  Thereby knocking unconscious those six of eight party members, including the fighter who had been on top of the Heart and had dived off a round earlier (and the Arcane Trickster having Readied a Feather Fall spell for him when he dropped into range.)  And thus ended the session.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />So next session I have a bard and a currently wildshaped druid that have to somehow recover six PCs before the two vampire spawn brides (who were hurt but not nearly killed) either fly off to find Rahadin to clean up this big mess of the loss of the Heart and bring back reinforcements, or they just start delivering killing blows to everybody if they decide that's the best course of action.  In either case... the brides know that when the Master returns to the Castle, he is going to be PISSED.It goes without saying that I was cackling the entire time this was going on-- as it was an absolutely awesome set of actions and fight on the one hand, and also the exact stupidest thing the group should have been doing with their short amount of free time there on the other.  Cause if they think they're going to get to just waltz around the Castle now looking for the two artifacts or Ireena unhindered, they're sorely mistaken.  Assuming of course none of them die from their injuries that is, ha ha!</blockquote>

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