The Lightbringers' Expedition to Castle Ravenloft - updated 12/19
Dr Midnight
Explorer
Tonight's session was KILLAH... the players did things I didn't expect, which has been par for this campaign, but this time it completely worked out. Great drama.
Action, intrigue, and a cliffhanger.
Aaaand
Action, intrigue, and a cliffhanger.
Aaaand
another death.
Dr Midnight
Explorer
Session 9 - Chapter 1
SECRETS AMONG FRIENDS
SECRETS AMONG FRIENDS
In the morning, the group woke and shuffled out of the blacksmith’s shop into the dim light of the city street. The night had been miserable and the day offered no cheer, just the same overcast gray murk that was every day in Barovia.
There were more survivors among the villagers than just Ireena. Wary folk had turned off their lamps and remained silent to escape detection in the midst of the werewolf attack. Now these people were out on the street, carrying their dead to the cemetery. Pails of river water were poured on the cobbles to wash off the blood. The dead of the zombie plague hadn’t even been fully removed from the streets, and now there were fresh bodies from an entirely new horror. The people of Barovia went about their duties with numb detachment.
The Lightbringers saw that the church had several pieces of timber stacked up against it, and more scattered on the ground. The werewolf siege had begun at dusk, as the people were readying to burn their profaned church to the ground. It was to be a celebration of the end of an era of fear.
“What now?” Toufghar asked.
Ashlyn shook her head. “I don’t know, give me a moment.”
“We’re supposed to find the Tome, but it wasn’t where she said it would be and-“
“I said give me a moment, damn it. Let me think.”
“Sorry.” The half-orc wandered over to Gerrit and spoke to him. “I just can’t stand this feeling. We did what we were supposed to do and didn’t find anything.”
“I know. More people just got hurt.” Gerrit shifted his weight and crossed his arms. “Maybe we should concentrate on finding the Holy Symbol. It’s in a place ‘where humans plumb their darkest nature’. That has to be the church.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Arianna said “No, no, we have to find the Tome. First thing.”
“It wasn’t there, ‘anna.”
The sound of horse’s hooves on the ground echoed up the streets. No one in Barovia rode a horse, and so every head turned to watch a gypsy man with a bright red neck scarf riding towards the adventurers. He pulled to a stop and looked around warily. He seemed nervous. “Which of you is Arianna?”
“I am,” the elf replied. The man pulled out a parchment note sealed with a blob of wax. Arianna held out her hand for it. He gave it to Thendrick, then turned and rode off.
“That was odd,” Thendrick said as he broke the seal. He read it silently, took a breath to read aloud, then stopped as his eyes traced the last parts of the page.
Toufghar asked “What does it say?”
Thendrick folded the note and quickly placed it in the folds of his robe. “Nothing. Just a personal note. I think we should head back to the werewolf den. We may not have searched it properly.”
Arianna said “Why would a note for you come from a man who only wants to know who I am?”
“I’m heading to Bildrath’s, I want to stock up on a few potions.” Thendrick began walking toward the center of town. The others followed.
At the entrance to the shop was a sign. It read
Official Sponsor of the Lightbringers, the Newest Group of Strahd-Slayers!
Thendrick sighed and pushed open the door. Ashlyn followed.
Bildrath was doing brisk business again. It seemed that he thrived on the town’s hardships. People needed rope, locks, wood, hammers, weapons, holy symbols and more. The shopkeep looked up from his sales and yelled “look who’s here, it’s The Amazing Thendrick and Ashlyn of the Lightbringers! Welcome, welcome!”
Thendrick sidled up to the counter. “So we’re ‘sponsored’ now?”
“Oh, that’s just a promotion. You know how it is. Don’t worry, as a sponsored adventuring team you’re entitled to anything in the store… at cost.” Bildrath beamed with pride.
“Great. We need two potions of cure paralysis, three of cure moderate wounds, and a few material components.” He thought for a second more and said “And do you have a pencil I could use for a moment?”
Outside, Toufghar, Gerrit and Arianna were leaning against the wall. Arianna was petting Jade. The passing people gave them odd looks.
Gerrit studied his nails and tried to ignore the glances. “Why are we being stared at like we’re evil outsiders again?”
Arianna replied “They’re not sure if we brought the werewolf attack down on them. Ireena seems certain, but these people only have suspicions. They haven’t broken out the torches and pitchforks about it.”
Toufghar said “What happens when they find out we did?”
“We didn’t, don’t say that.” Arianna exhaled and slid down the wall to sit on the cold cobbles. “I didn’t come here to fight the undead and werewolves. I just wanted to meet a supposedly rich uncle.”
“It’s odd,” Gerrit agreed. “I think about it now and then. You came to look into an inheritance and I came for the travel. Here we are all caught up in aristocratic intrigue, fighting against an evil we haven’t even confirmed the existence of yet.”
“In horrid weather.” She looked up and crinkled her nose at the deep gray sky. “I’m so sick of drizzly dark days.”
Gerrit nodded and smiled. “Are you saying you’d like to leave? There’s really nothing keeping us here…”
“No. I’m staying.”
“Me too.”
Arianna stared off into the distance and muttered to herself. “We have to find that book.”
Later, they were walking again through the woods to the south. Arianna was scouting ahead, looking for tracks. The others lagged behind.
Thendrick slowed and got Gerrit’s attention with a look. He slowed and the halfling followed along until they were fifteen feet or so behind Toufghar and Ashlyn. Thendrick handed Gerrit the folded letter and Gerrit read it silently.
I blame myself. I do so enjoy my riddles. Your mission benefits me as well, though, so I have further information.
You would hem and haw over the place where humans plumb their darkest nature. The time is not right for you to make that journey, but when it is, find the coven on the hill.
Your focus right now should be the Tome. Tsk tsk... you were right there. You lot are going to have to learn that to know the secrets of death itself, you're going to have to walk knee-deep in the dead.
Do not reveal any of this to Arianna, as she is... watched.
-Eva
You would hem and haw over the place where humans plumb their darkest nature. The time is not right for you to make that journey, but when it is, find the coven on the hill.
Your focus right now should be the Tome. Tsk tsk... you were right there. You lot are going to have to learn that to know the secrets of death itself, you're going to have to walk knee-deep in the dead.
Do not reveal any of this to Arianna, as she is... watched.
-Eva
Gerrit looked up at Thendrick with a confused expression. Of course they all knew Arianna was being watched. Strahd was scrying on her… almost constantly, if Eva could be believed. Then again, Arianna had been acting oddly lately. She always seemed a bit more motivated than the others to find the Tome. She’d been a bit irritating about it, in fact.
At the bottom, Thendrick had quickly scribbled something in pencil.
If we find the Tome, keep it from her. If we get separated, meet back at Madam Eva’s.
Gerrit folded the note and handed it back to Thendrick with a look. The two nodded and walked on in silence. Thendrick broke away from Gerrit to move towards Ashlyn. He was about to signal her to move back as well when something rustled in the underbrush, two hundred feet ahead.
“Damn,” Arianna said. “Just a sentry. Wolf. Saw us and ran off. Damn! We should stick more closely together. They could attack at any time now.”
They closed the group up, putting an end to Thendrick’s attempts to notify Ashlyn as to the plan. They trudged on through the brush toward the werewolf den.
Coming up
KNEE DEEP IN THE DEAD
KNEE DEEP IN THE DEAD
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Dr Midnight
Explorer
More stuff's coming, we've just been in a hiatus and I've been lazy about writing.
Dr Midnight
Explorer
Session 9 - Chapter 2
KNEE-DEEP IN THE DEAD
KNEE-DEEP IN THE DEAD
Once more they breached the clearing and Arianna patiently searched the field for traps as they made their way across it.
“The cave seems uninhabited,” Gerrit said. “Again.”
Toufghar muttered under his breath as he spun his axe’s haft in his palm. “This is stupid. They’re never home and we keep wasting our time.”
“It’s not a waste,” Arianna said. “We have to find the Tome, and this is the only way.”
“I bet we don’t even have to find the Tome,” the half-orc grumbled.
“There were definitely werewolves in the area, and recently. One moved quickly – here – within the last hour or so. I’ll bet it’s the sentry. He came and warned them, and now they’re ready.”
Ashlyn unsheathed her sword and cracked her neck with a swift head-jerk. “So what’s the plan?”
Thendrick stroked his chin and thought for a moment. “We go down. We should leave someone up here to defend the entrance. They may be trying to close us in.”
Toufghar laughed. “Split up, we’ll be safer that way, right? We should stay together. We’re being hunted.”
“We’ll leave Jade to guard the entrance,” said Arianna.
Gerrit looked at her. “All alone? Are you sure?”
“Not a bad idea,” Toufghar said. “She all but blocks the tunnel anyway, and she’s more n’ big enough to take on a group of werewolves.”
“Yeah, but… Arianna, Jade doesn’t have silver-plated tee…”
“She’ll be fine,” Arianna said curtly before entering the cave. Gerrit and Thendrick exchanged another look.
Jade was left filling the mouth of the cave, facing outward. What with the shape of the rock around the cave, she somewhat resembled a monstrous turtle with a small mountain for a shell. The heroes descended carefully, as before, testing the rooms to their left and right as they went, listening for noises. There were none.
They reached the inner den and unlike before, not a creature was within. Ashlyn gasped and pointed. The body they’d left behind, that of the mad nymph that Toufghar had crushed with a boulder, was gone. “Do you think she’s still around? Could she possibly have survived that?”
Toufghar tilted the rock up and looked beneath. “Nope.”
“How do you know?”
He pointed and grinned. “Most of ‘er head’s still here.” It was true- the underside of the rock was still smeared with skull fragments, brain and hair.
Arianna examined the few remains. “Her body was pulled free.” She traced a line of blood on the slick stone ground. “She was torn apart and eaten, right here. Spatter on the walls, some drips on the south end of the cavern, her corpse was picked clean and tossed… here.” Her torch illuminated the pit of bones. They glistened wetly in the light.
“Knee-deep in the dead,” Thendrick whispered.
Arianna squinted at him. “What?”
“Nothing. Look, I don’t think there’s much chance of it but I think I should search the pit. ‘Anna, you guard the cave mouth and listen for Jade.” Arianna looked at the sorcerer suspiciously as he clambered over the rim of the pit and lowered himself into the pit. He quelled the waves of rising nausea as he pushed his foot down past the first few bones. A ribcage tumbled aside as it brushed his two hundred gold piece bullywug-skin boots. As the bones neared his knee he felt for the bottom and didn’t find it. He lost his balance and pitched forward, scrabbling for a grip on the rocks behind him but finding none. Thendrick hopped off his perch and plunged into the grisly pit. The bones clattered around him as he fell in deeper than he’d guessed the bottom would be. This wasn’t knee-deep at all. With a splash, he was standing up to his neck in filthy skeletal corpses. Water had pooled in the pit at waist-level and he felt the cold, loathsome corpse-soup soak into his robes.
Thendrick was horrified beyond telling. The first time he’d seen the pit, he’d had to turn and lean on a wall to keep from throwing up. Now, very keenly aware of the slimy clicking of the bones all around him, nausea was a distance behind him. What he felt was more like the first tickle of real madness. He shut his eyes and concentrated, employing the skills he’d learned as a spellcaster to keep his mind focused and alert.
Ashlyn called to him. “By Urso, are you okay Thendrick?”
“Heh… s’cold,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He got to work on casting a detect magic spell- it gave him something to think about other than the bones. When he was finished, a dim yellowish light appeared to his eyes as coming from beneath the bones, roughly seven feet to his left.
Thendrick waded there, making a terrible sloshing, crumbling noise that echoed through the cavern as he did. He reached out and felt with his hands, trying to ignore the bones he recognized by feel (mandible, patella, tarsals) and concentrate on finding the magic item in the pit. His hands fell upon a floppy leather shape and he clutched at it, then moved back to the lip of the pit.
With Gerrit’s help he climbed out. His robe was ruined: immersion in the brownish water had turned it into a mucous-slicked horror.
Arianna approached. “What did you find? Let me see.” Her eyes seemed to bug slightly, but that might have been a trick of the torchlight.
Thendrick opened the leather satchel and looked inside, hiding its contents from Arianna. “Ahh, we’ve finally made some money on this little excursion. We’ve got quite a few gold pieces here, and at least one large gem. Here’s a ring… that’s our magic item.” He held it up. It was made of clear glass, with no markings on it at all.
Ashlyn, looking over Thendrick’s shoulder, said “Hey… a book! Is that it?”
Arianna snatched at the satchel. “Let me see.” Thendrick quickly grabbed the book out and held it away from her. It was dry, very luckily above the water table of the charnel pit. Its cover was without a title but a metal crest on its front had a small, clear banner reading Von Zarovich.
Tension mounted in the cavern. Thendrick and Arianna were staring each other in the eye, squared off. Each mouthed words- Thendrick’s arcane, Arianna’s divine. They were preparing to cast. Gerrit shifted his weight nervously from foot to foot. Toufghar and Ashlyn, having no idea that Arianna should not be trusted, watched all this in confusion. “Uh,” Ashlyn said, eyes flicking between the sorcerer and the druid, “What are you two doing?”
All at once, Arianna lunged at the book and her opened palm gushed forth a volume of water. It splashed over the book just as Thendrick finished his spell, turned and ran from the cavern. He ran so fast that he appeared to be a blur, leaving drops of pit-water suspended in the air behind him. Gerrit, whose boots of striding and springing made him almost as fast as the spell of haste that Thendrick had cast upon himself, took off for the tunnel as well.
Arianna screeched in alarm as the book moved away from her at a frightening speed. She had to destroy it, just had to, Uncle Strahd had told her to and that was that, she must. She would kill to do it. She ran up the tunnel after Gerrit and Thendrick, screaming for them to give her that book.
Toufghar and Ashlyn, left behind, didn’t even have time to ask each other if they knew what was going on. They just ran up the tunnel as well.
They didn’t want to be left behind. Not here.
Coming up
RUN FOR COVER
RUN FOR COVER
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Dr Midnight, you have a flair for the disgusting er dramatic.
I do have to wonder, why is it that the groups you run invariably have one of the party members turn evil/try to destroy the rest of the party? Out of the 4 that I attribute to you, only the super heros didn't have this issue.
I do have to wonder, why is it that the groups you run invariably have one of the party members turn evil/try to destroy the rest of the party? Out of the 4 that I attribute to you, only the super heros didn't have this issue.
