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

[Richards]

Ah, so your childhood friend was playing Ashlyn...looks like she's in for some "interesting times" in the very near future.

I can't wait!

Johnathan

 

[Dr Midnight]

Session 6 went off splendidly tonight with new player Mike and his house... which was just the best, most atmospheric room that I've ever thrown a die in. Mike's not too shabby either. He has a Sega Genesis connected to the TV, two very cool dogs, and a great disposition. Dream player, dream game room. Score!

The last two sessions had little to write up. Big things happened this time and it may take four or five updates to get it all in. Oof.

 

[Dr Midnight]

Session 6 - Chapter 1
REINCARNATION​

The adventurers had lost a party member. They didn’t dare go below the trap door to face the priest, but nor did they dare leave. They could reincarnate Ashlyn in the morning, once Arianna memorized the spell. Of course, they’d only just woken up and come to the church… it was maybe 9 in the morning.

Gerrit, Arianna and Toufghar would have almost twenty-four hours to pass while locked in a room.

They spent about three hours bringing each other up on the relevant events of their time in Barovia, making as long and detailed a story of it as they could. That got them to lunchtime. After a meal of trail rations, they began telling stories of their respective adventures outside of Barovia. That got dull around five o’clock, and Toufghar was pacing the room.

He opened the hinged stained glass window and let a little air in. Zombies passed by outside, heedless of the window or the living watching them. Toufghar rested his elbows on the sill and said “They almost look like people, just walking around like that.”

“They are people,” Gerrit said irritably.

The half-orc shrugged in reply and kept watching the world around them. “Sun’s setting. At least it’ll feel like night soon.”

The group checked and re-checked that the door was well blocked against intruders. After the sun went down, they lay down and tried to go to sleep. After a time, they did.

​

Gerrit woke up, the side of his face lit by a pale greenish glow. The light was coming through the window, from outside. The halfling yawned and got up. He leaned out the window and looked.

Green-white radiance was blossoming from the center of the meager graveyard behind the church. From this point of spectral light marched a ghostly procession. Wavering images of doughty women touting greatswords, woodwise men with slender bows, dwarves with glittering axes, and archaically dressed mages with beards and strange pointed hats – all these and more marched forth from the graveyard, their numbers growing by the second.

They marched slowly with shoulders hunched up the west road, a pale green line of ghosts. They went over the Ivlis bridge and up into the hills that curled about towards Castle Ravenloft. When the last one disappeared around the rocks near Lysaga Hill, Gerrit turned from the window and went back to bed. There had been no need to wake the others- it was only a pretty midnight distraction.

Something about the procession of spirits bothered him. His mind gave in to sleep again before he could figure out what it was.

​

“Okay,” Arianna said. “I haven’t ever actually cast this spell, so I’m not sure what the likely results are.”

“What do you mean?” Toufghar asked. “She’s going to come back to life, right? Isn’t that the point of the spell?”

They stood over Ashlyn’s body in the room. Morning light was streaming in through the window. The three of them were eager to have Ashlyn among the living again so that they could leave the room with confidence.

Arianna covered Ashlyn’s body with a sheet they’d found on the high shelf. “Yes, but it’s complicated. She could come back… different.”

“Different how?”

“She may not come back as a human at all,” Gerrit said. “She may return to us as something else.”

“Oh, like a dwarf or a half-elf?”

“Or a goblin.”

Toufghar looked horrified. “She might come back as a monster?”

Arianna shrugged. “Technically, yes, but she’d be the same inside. Same soul and mind, different body. Or she might come back in the same body. We won’t know until the spell’s cast.”

“Well, can you cast it right, so that she’s not a monster?”

“It’s not that simple. Okay, stand back.” Arianna kneeled and said some words, then made some gestures over Ashlyn’s covered body. She concentrated like this for ten minutes or so, moving her hands in swirling patterns and speaking indecipherable words. With a final flourish, it was done.

The sheet covering Ashlyn slackened and fell away where the head, hands, and feet were. Her plate armor alone seemed to be holding up the sheet now.

“She’s gone,” Toufghar said in wonder. “Did you do it right? What happens now?”

“It’s not immediate. It may take a moment to work.” They kept staring at the draped armor.

Something beneath the sheet moved, and then the head, hands and feet areas of the sheet were rising again, filling out in new forms. The head especially took on a bulbous, misshapen cast.

Arianna pulled at her collar uncomfortably. It wasn’t looking like the pretty paladin woman they’d known with the braided pigtails was coming back.

The draped form moved slightly and began to sit up. It pulled the sheet off its head and looked at them. It wore Ashlyn’s full plate armor, but the head was that of a scaled, brownish lizard-thing. The cruel green eyes blinked at them.

“Hi!”

Toufghar’s jaw dropped open. Gerrit reached up and politely shut it for him. Arianna forced a smile. “Welcome back, Ashlyn.”

“Back? What happened?” The lizard’s tongue darted out of its mouth, testing the air.

“You died yesterday in a battle with a mad priest of Bellethanne,” Gerrit said. “Arianna brought you back to life just now. How do you feel?”

Ashlyn shrugged. “Fine, I guess. Wow, I was really dead? Thanks for doing that, then. You have my gratitude.” She stopped and looked at Toufghar. “Touf, what in the world are you staring at?”

Toufghar continued to stare with his thunderstruck expression. Arianna answered for him. “Uh. Well, it’s not every day that you wake up as a lizard, eh?”

“What? A… what?” Ashlyn raised her hand to look at it, and instead of her strong pink hand with closely trimmed nails she saw a scaly clawed mitt that was purplish-brown on the outside and pale white on the inside.

Ashlyn screamed and almost immediately there was a flush through the room’s air- a noxious scent that wasn’t unlike a latrine pit full of burning hair. Arianna, Gerrit and Toufghar all wretched as Ashlyn wore out her throat shouting.

When the ruckus had died down, a rheumy-eyed Gerrit was covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief and trying to fan the smell out of the window. Toufghar was still vomiting into a trash bin.

Arianna was trying to comfort Ashlyn, who was crouched in a corner. “What in the world am I?” Ashlyn sobbed. Her long forked tongue shot out of her mouth repeatedly as she spoke.

“Well, I think… based on the lizard attributes and… um… the musk, I believe you came back as a troglodyte.”

“A what? This is awful.”

“It’s not so bad. You’ll secrete a scent when frightened or excited, but otherwise you’re not much different. It’s just your body. Your soul is unchanged.”

Ashlyn nodded and reached into her bag of holding. “I understand. Well, no point crying over it. There’s a job to do, and Urso is my judge.” She took out a hat and placed it on her head. The hat allowed her to magically change her appearance, and her lizard form melted away to reveal the human paladin they’d known. She stood proudly, affecting the noble poise of a holy woman. “If I’m destined to be a troglodyte, then I’m going to be the best damned troglodyte I can be.” Her small, pink human tongue darted out. “Let’s go.”

The others exchanged a look as they followed.

Coming up
INTO THE PIT​

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[Dr Midnight]

Session 6 - Chapter 2
INTO THE PIT​

Ashlyn and Arianna searched the main level of the church properly. Arianna found a nook in the altar with a hidden journal, some religious trappings, and a piece of ancient parchment. She looked at this last item and skimmed the text. “It seems to be a necromantic procedure. It’s for raising a… a ‘blaspheme’.”

“Huh,” Toufghar said. “Maybe we should have used that on Ashlyn.”

Arianna shook her head immediately. “That would be bad. This is black magic… the wicked stuff. It gives me a headache even reading it.”

Gerrit took the journal and began reading. “Re-ordered candles from Bildrath’s, washed robes in river, held mass, heard confessions… it’s an accounting of Danovich’s day to day life. Pretty standard fare.” He flipped ahead, looking for the breakpoint. “Here’s a longer passage… ‘Ireena Kolyana is not the natural daughter of Kolyan Indirovich. Ireena never knew, but old Kolyan found her one day at the edge of the Svalich Woods near the very foot of Ravenloft’s crag. She was but a girl then and had no memory of her past. Kolyan adopted her as though she were his own and loved her dearly.’”

The cleric went on, then stopped and flipped back. “Wait, wait… saw it… here. Listen to this. ‘There is a book, the Tome of Strahd, that might shed light on the steps necessary to destroy the monster of the castle.’”

Ashlyn said “Wait. Didn’t you say Strahd wants you to find this book? Why would he want it if it might help to kill him?”

“He doesn’t want it,” Arianna answered. “He wants us to destroy it. Gerrit, I’m having some very severe second thoughts about my dear old uncle. Where does the journal say that we might find the Tome?”

Gerrit went on. “’It is well known that Strahd kept meticulous notes from ancient times on all he did or said. Perhaps some weakness of his could be found there. This tome was once located in Ravenloft’s library, but now I’m not sure where it is. I asked Madam Eva about it, and she mumbled something indecipherable. Why do seers always speak in riddles?’ That’s where the entry ends.”

“This Madam Eva we keep hearing about seems to have all the answers around here,” Toufghar said. “We had three mentions of her come up before we even met you two.”

Arianna nodded. “If we’re going to find this book, maybe we should talk to her.”

Gerrit pointed to a page in the journal. “I’ve found it. There are no entries for four days, and then one that reads ‘I’ve lost Doru. Bellethanne has seen fit to take from me my only son. My son is dead. I found him laying on the altar. He’s dead.’” Gerrit rubbed the back of his neck. “Hard stuff to read… his penmanship gets more and more scratchlike as his mind unravels. ‘Found something. Could have a way. My son could return. Found a piece of paper that could let me have my son back. Doru could come back! I’ll bring him back. Bellethanne be damned, my son will walk again.”

Toufghar shivered. Gerrit added “That was thirteen days ago. The last entry is three days old. ‘Doru has returned and we’re happier than ever. I laugh more. Today two men came and asked questions about the zombies. I don’t care about zombies. I sent them away. Then one returned. I was struck by how much he looks like my boy. Doru doesn’t look like he used to, but this new fellow resembles him. I could have two! I’ll make another and have two sons. Then I’ll laugh even more than I do now. I tried some of what my son’s friends are having. Doesn’t taste bad. Tastes like pork, and pork tastes like dinner. Fill my plate and laugh and laugh together.’” Gerrit closed the journal. His face was very pale.

“That man was Thendrick,” Toufghar said. “He has Thendrick. Downstairs.”

Arianna said “The spell apparently won’t work on something that’s not a blood relation. He might still be alive.”

Ashlyn nodded. “So… we go down there and get him.”

​

The group walked to the back room, the one with the trap door leading down. “We should formulate a strategy,” Ashlyn said.

“Right,” Toufghar said as he opened the hatch and stepped down into it. “You guys do that, I’m gonna take a look.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Touf…”

“Oh relax, I’m not going all the way down. I just want to look and see what they’re…” He stood on the steps and hunched low to look beneath the floor level. He saw all the walls of the cellar, a hard-packed dirt floor, and light coming from the hole in the church’s floor. There were no creatures to be seen. His eyes widened. “Oh n-“

Something bit through the back of his left ankle, severing his Achilles tendon with a moist splurch noise. Instantly a magical infection paralyzed his limbs and he began to plummet forward into the cellar. Both Ashlyn and Gerrit lunged for him but failed to stop his descent.

Things began to lurch from behind the staircase towards the helpless half-orc. Arianna, at the back of the room, broke into a run for the main church area. Gerrit tumbled down the stairway with two cartwheels, landing perfectly and kicking at a skeleton that had begun to chew upon Toufghar.

Ashlyn lumbered down and swung her longsword into a zombie. The cut that was opened along its chest glowed bright white for a moment and the thing hissed in pain.

The mad priest Danovich emerged from his hiding place and began casting spells. “I told you you’d never take my son, never take my son!”

Arianna landed in a kneel on the dirt floor, firing two arrows past her friends and into the darkness behind the staircase. Something there giggled with black sharklike teeth and eyes that shimmered like a cat’s in the darkness. It walked out and Arianna recoiled at the sight of it.

It resembled a corpse that had been surgically modified by a lunatic. Skeletally thin, its arms were too long while its head was wide and wedge-shaped, with a mouth split so that it was able to open wider than a normal person’s would. Its teeth glittered like shards of black, steaming ice. Two arrows jutted from its chest.

“You must be Doru,” Arianna murmured as she put more arrows into the priest’s undead son. “Pleased to meet you.”

Whatever in Doru’s bite had paralyzed Toufghar wore off and the half-orc stood up with a broad slashing motion. He’d been entirely conscious of being eaten alive by skeletons as he lay helpless on the ground, and the sensation had driven him mad. His eyes bugged, his veins bulged, and his clothes tore from the strain of his muscles. A bloody froth had begun to seep from the corners of his mouth. He smashed at the skeleton with his cleaver.

Gerrit was dealing with two zombies and a skeleton all at once and taking a good number of hits. He called upon the power of Vennia and drove two of the undead away from him with holy power.

Doru was rushing at Arianna. It ran with a loping stride that didn’t keep to a straight line- it zigzagged across the earthen floor and giggled with a boy’s voice. It reached her and sank its teeth into her shoulder. The elf screamed even as her body went limp.

Ashlyn leapt forward and laid her sword across the thing’s back, opening a long, dry wound that was filled with dead maggots. White light from her sword shone from the gash. Doru turned on her and lunged for her and bit at her arm, almost tearing it entirely off of her. Ashlyn’s muscles went dead and saw Doru move for her throat.

Arianna’s body unfroze and she called out “No! Here!” Doru turned to her as she stepped back, casting a spell. A blade of fire grew from her hands and she swung it into the blaspheme.

Toufghar was bleeding from almost a dozen different wounds and running on rage. He cackled as he cut and hacked at the dead.

As Ashlyn had been bitten and paralyzed, she had become frightened. The foul waft of troglodyte musk filled the already dank cellar. Gerrit and Arianna gagged, Toufghar didn’t seem to notice, and Danovich vomited.

The priest was focusing on Gerrit, who was defending himself against the remaining zombie. The priest cast a spell and moved towards the halfling with a finger, about to deliver death by touch alone. Gerrit saw it coming and lashed out with a punch in an attempt to distract the madman and ruin the spell. The fist and the finger passed each other on the way to their targets, and the priest’s nose was smashed flat. In his pain he lost the spell and the black energies fizzled as the finger touched Gerrit’s shoulder.

Through his bleary eyes, Danovich saw Ashlyn cut a wound open in Doru. “No, not my son! Don’t you hurt my boy!” He ran forward, forgetting magical crafts or tactics entirely. He just wanted to attack the witch that was hurting his son. Ashlyn saw him coming, whirled around with her sword and plunged it through the priest’s gut, right up to the hilt. Danovich gasped and slid off the sword to the ground, muttering his nonsense as his broken mind died.

Gerrit limped towards the blaspheme and attempted to land a cure spell upon it. He overextended his reach and stumbled forward, and Doru bit into the halfling with its knifelike black teeth. Gerrit fell to the ground and his eyes rolled slowly up into his head. They were yellow underneath.

Toufghar, gibbering and howling in fury, cleaved a chunk of meat off of Doru. Arianna landed a blow with her flaming blade and Ashlyn landed another with her longsword of undeadbane. The blaspheme wounded and paralyzed them with every attack, but it couldn’t keep up with the massive amounts of damage it was taking. With one more raking blow from Arianna, the top of its head came off and its body turned to dust.

All over town, zombies stopped walking. Their white eyes fell back into their skulls and their bodies tumbled to the ground limply. Not a zombie was left standing… every one of them died its second death. The necromantic infection had been put to an end.

The three remaining adventurers barely noticed that just before Doru was destroyed, Gerrit had been slowly attempting to stand up.

Coming up
THE AMAZING THENDRICK​

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[Gold Roger]

I don't think the module makes such liberal use of it, so I take it you really like Libris Mortis?

 

[Dr Midnight]

No, only kinda flipped through the art once in the store...

 

[Richards]

They could reincarnate Ashlyn in the morning, once Arianna memorized the spell.

"Memorized?" You going old-school on us, Doc?

Hey, I've been meaning to ask: what pantheon are you using? I don't recognize any of them - are they a homebrew? In any case, I'm loving the adventure so far.

Johnathan

 

[Dr Midnight]

I don't know what the hell druids do. I hate druids.

It's all homey-brewey... This is the campaign world I was going to use a few years back, never got a chance.

 

[Gold Roger]

No, only kinda flipped through the art once in the store...

Doh!

It is one of the best 3.5 books out, imho. Might be worth a second look.

 

[Dr Midnight]

Session 6 - Chapter 3
THE AMAZING THENDRICK​

“I think Gerrit’s dead,” Toufghar wheezed as the rage left him.

“Damn,” Ashlyn said. “Can’t we have four party members for more than a half hour?”

Arianna began gently loading the halfling’s body into his haversack. A muted call came from the wall behind the staircase. Toufghar recognized the voice immediately. “It’s Thendrick! Thendrick’s alive!”

Arianna walked to the wall and found the hidden door. Inside, she found a man in a dark room strapped down to a wooden table. All around the small room were foul greenish chemicals and body parts. “Who’re you?” the man asked feebly. “I dun know you.” He was dressed in fine black and gray robes with a burgundy vest as a colorful accent. He seemed to be in his early thirties with handsome and kind (though exhausted) features. His closely cut hair was snow white, as was his pointed goatee.

Toufghar and Ashlyn appeared and helped Arianna with the straps. “Took you long enough,” the man said.

“Thendrick, it is you! Are you alright?” They stood him up and he leaned on them as they walked him to the door.

“Just need to walk it off. I feel better alread…” They reached the church’s main cellar area, with Ashlyn’s troglodyte musk still hanging heavy in the air. Thendrick was suddenly and violently sick.

​

The fresh air did wonders for him and before long he was walking on his own as he sipped from a cure light wounds potion. They exchanged pieces of their stories as they walked. “It was awful, but thankfully I don’t remember much of it,” Thendrick said. “Toufghar and I were jumped by ghouls and were separated. I ran back for the church and hid inside. I told the priest I was hiding from ghouls, turned to look out the window and then everything went black. I woke up later strapped to that damned table. The priest came in and fed me some awful-tasting stuff and kept calling me ‘Doru’, said we’d be a family again. I think the gruel was drugged because my memory gets really hazy around there. I must’ve been trapped in there for… how many days has it been?”

“Five,” Toufghar offered cheerfully.

“Huh. Feels like six. Anyway, he kept trying to cast some spell on me from this ancient yellowed parchment. It never worked and he’d get frustrated and march off. I came and went. Dreamed a lot.”

Ashlyn said “He was trying to turn you into whatever he’d turned his son into… a blaspheme. Very nasty undead, we can tell you.”

They walked through town towards the village square, past fallen zombie corpses. They were silent for a time. Sorrowful women wearing headscarves were examining the dead, looking for loved ones they could finally bury.

Thendrick turned to Ashlyn. “So you’re a troglodyte now.”

“Yep.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

​

Back in the center of town, a cautious group of villagers were eyeing the returning heroes. “How are we going to deal with this?” Arianna asked. “They were about to lynch us as we left last time.”

Thendrick said “We walk in and tell them we’ve defeated the evil of the church.”

Toufghar winced. “Maybe we shouldn’t put it that way.”

“Well,” one of the townspeople called out as the adventurers neared. “You leave, the zombies all fall over and you come back. Is this your doing?”

“Yes,” Ashlyn said with her head high. “We discovered that the source of the necromantic infection was cloistered in the basement of the church. We destroyed it and now the town of Barovia is free.”

The villagers looked to one another and no one could seem to find objection to allowing the adventurers in. They parted and Arianna, Ashlyn, Toufghar and Thendrick walked among them.

“You left with a little fellah,” an observant older man said. “You come back with a big fellah.”

Ashlyn nodded. “Our little friend died fighting the undead. We were hoping you could tell us where we could bring him back to life.”

The man pointed back, the way they came. “Danovich is the local holy man, lives up yonder.”

“Um. That won’t do. I’m afraid he… uh… perished in the fight.”

“Ahh. Now that I come to think on it, he never was good at bringing back the dead anyhow.”

Toufghar looked very much like he was holding back a joke. Thendrick didn’t give him the opportunity. “Is there anyone else that might be able to help us? We have a fallen friend and we’d like to bring him back as soon as possible.”

“I’ve got what you need,” a voice called out over the crowd. All heads turned to see a fat man smiling from the entrance to Bildrath’s Mercantile. He beckoned to them and walked inside.

The group walked towards the shop. “I think Gerrit had a quick dealing with that man,” Arianna said. “Charged him fifty gold pieces for oil. A gouger and a profiteer.”

Ashlyn nodded. “We’ll have to be careful… don’t worry, Thendrick has a silver tongue when it comes to dealing with churls like this.”

Inside the shop, the fat man introduced himself. “I’m Bildrath. This here’s my shop. I got a roll of paper you might be interested in. It brings back the dead.”

Arianna asked “May I examine it?” She took the paper and looked it over. “It’s for real,” she said. “A scroll of reincarnate.”

Ashlyn looked to Bildrath. “How much?”

The shopkeep leaned back and smiled. “Times like this, stuff that brings back the dead goes for a good penny. I could get three thousand gold for it from the more wealthy townspeople. The burgomaster died not long back. His family’d pay prettily for this.”

“Three thousand?” Arianna’s mouth hung open.

Thendrick stepped in. “Really, sir. This is for a hero of the town. This man died helping to destroy the evil that was keeping Barovia under siege.”

“And I’m sorry for his loss,” Bildrath said.

“Well, is there perhaps some way we can make up the cost of this scroll to you?”

“Yes. Gold.” The shopkeep laughed to himself.

Thendrick thought for a moment and adjusted his strategy. Affecting a look of tired boredom, he glanced around the shop with a sniff. “This won’t do. I’m afraid we’re going to have to take our business to a competitor if you won’t budge on the price.”

“Be my guest,” Bildrath laughed. “Go, seek, find another shop in town that managed to have held off the zombies. Just remember that if at first you don’t succeed… please come again.” He ushered them out the door and closed it with a polite click.

“Well that didn’t work,” Toufghar muttered.

“What are you doing?” Arianna asked. “We need Gerrit back! We have three thousand gold pieces, it’s going to be pricey but we can pay it.”

Thendrick shook his head. “It’s always best to give a hard negotiator some time to think that we’re not motivated to buy. He’s asking a ridiculous amount. Besides, we get Gerrit back in less than two days anyway. Three thousand gold to bring him back forty hours ahead of schedule really does seem like a bit much.”

Toufghar sighed. “So what now? Do we go see this Madam Eva?”

Arianna thought for a moment. “The burgomaster’s daughter. Ismark’s sister. She’s been locked in the family mansion with her father’s body since the plague began.”

“How do you know?” asked Ashlyn.

“It came up just before Ismark had us thrown out of town.”

Thendrick scratched his head. “So… why visit her? I mean, no disrespect intended and I’m sure she could use the company, but why her, now?”

“Her father was the last known person to stand up to Strahd… with something called the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind.”

Coming up
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD​

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