Category: ravens

After a long break, we have managed to get the group back together for D&D. We’re in a forest, and two of the party members have gotten into a fight and exploded. Currently, the forest is on fire because of their fight.

And we are running away from it. The elfadin has the stag, the bard casts cat’s grace to make it easier to weave through the trees, and the mercenary is in trouble. There is also a druid, who has recently assisted the party in finding their way through the woods. The bard attempts to inspire the mercenary, and then the druid turns into a dire wolf for the mercenary to mount.

We escaped from the woods, and there was a strange voice that we didn’t hear, memories that we no longer remember, and now we know that we need to find the Leader of the Feathered Ones, who lives among the vines. Though old, he has one more flight in him.

And we are now some place near the Wizard of Wines, and we’ve noticed that there are lots of vines around.

The swordsman that we’ve been dragging along with us seems to have a different set of memories than we do. And when the bard checks his notebook, he notices that his notes aren’t in his hand. There has been a shift in reality, someone has handcrafted a patch over this reality. But the changes seem fairly minimal and benign.

 

So, since Reive is stuck working with an unreliable schedule, we’re starting a new campaign.

We’ve got a human criminal who woke up after his execution in a strange metallic body, and had to craft himself a human suit to be able to blend in. It took him a while to realize that he’s a continent and a few hundred years away from where he died.

He was buried with a rather large rifle, which despite having no memory of, he knows intimately, including how to fire it, reload it, and craft ammunition for it.

For those who were wondering, the skin for the human suit came from “recycling” a bandit who died during an ill-conceived attack on the people who had recovered him from the ruins. The bandit continues to contribute to the greater good, post mortem, despite his ill intentions in life.

Speaking of the people who dug him up, one of them is a strange elf, and the other is a catperson.

He looks much like a beggar, wrapped in stained rags.

The adventure began with some traveling down a road, approaching a village. The party was look forward to relax over a nice roast beast at the village, but the village is currently be roasting by a beast. Kobolds and humans wearing purple robes are running around causing trouble, while dragons fly around overhead, spitting flames.

Running into the village, we ran into kobolds running out of the houses. They don’t live long, facing of against a tabbymonk, a elvish swordswomen, and angry half elf dragonstalker. Oh, and a tall silvery man who did some healing.

However, they were just a scouting party for something much larger, so we fled into the nearby keep, getting inside just before they sealed it.

Inside the keep, we helped with the defenses, and waited out the attack. There was talking about why the cult would be attacking the city. The old man kept smoking his pipe and mended things.

There were people who we probably should have killed, but they wanted to take things slow, so we went down the tunnel.

The door was locked, so the strange ragged man pulled off his gloves and then his finger tips, and then inserted the metal underneath into the lock. After a bit, he’d cleaned enough of the lock for the key to work properly again.

On our way out of the sewers, we ran into a rat swarm, which would have eaten our faces, if we hadn’t had a ranger who knew how to whistle for the rats.

Then the ragged man ripped something wiry from his arm, and dripped liquid from it onto the hinges. After that, the sewer exit opened silently.

Outside, a couple of kobolds and some dragonborn and a guard drake are searching for the party. But since they don’t know where we exited, the party manages to surround them.

The monk throws darts, the ranger manages to calm down the drake, the funny man shoots the leg off one of the dragonborn, and the other kobolds get knocked out.

Then the monk gets a skunk thrown into their face, which sickened her. After the battle, the ranger made the drake into a pet, and stored it in the basement of the tower. The beggar picked up the dragonborn’s severed leg, with the spoken intent of creating a lamp out of it later.

 

The party continues to try to get off the crumbling bridge. Ismark tried to leap onto the wagon, but failed, falling to the ground.

One of the werewolves leaps up and tries to pull Vellos from the wagon, Vellos resists, and then throws a thunderwave into him, knocking him off the side of the wagon.

The merc tried to press on, his horse was slashed by the larger werewolf as he got into range.

The elf drew the sun sword, which blazed to life, filling the forest with light.

Ismark gets up from being run over by the cart, and leaps onto the back of the cart.

Ianyor drops flat as the cart rushes towards him. The cart rolls over him harmlessly, but he fails to grab Ismark’s hard to pull him onboard.

We continued to flee from the werewolves, heading down the road.

After an hour of riding away, we ran into a barricade with children attached to it.

The party attempted to parley, but this didn’t work.

The elf rode his horse up to the barricade, then teleported over it, stabbing the werewolf as he arrived.

The huge winter wolf landed on the roof of the wagon and blasted with it’s breath, knocking down the strange sorcerer. Vellos fed a potion to the sorcerer, and then blasted the wolf’s mind. As it flew from him, Ismark stabbed it through the throat, killing it.

There was much fighting, and people keeping knocked down.

At some point, a strange woman on a horse showed up.

The wolves were killed or driven off, then stuff needed to be sorted out. Including the woman stealing the wagon from us.

The party hid in the woods, and then set up inside the tiny hut.

And in the morning, we woke up someplace else.

After a day’s walk, we found a barbarian and had a conversation.

Returning to the Vishtani encampment, the party partially split up to rest. The bard and mercenary ate and quickly went to sleep in the encampment. The wizard and the cleric studied the book, to figure out what would need to be done to weaken Strahd’s hold.

The wizard summoned a new familiar to replace the one that melted earlier. She attempted to summon a snake, and ended up with an undead snake. Cause Ravenloft.

Half the party headed back into the town, using disguises to get past the guards, who are still looking for us after that whole coffin maker’s house fire issue.

The cleric made some new friends, and was told about something that needs to be investigated in the west, the Wizard of Wines and his shipments.

The sellsword scouted out the town, determined that the guards have brought in reinforcements.

The party headed west, towards a covered bridge that we’d visited before. Nothing happened as we crossed it. We decided to head west, towards the Tower, the Winery, and the Hill.

They decided to approach the Tower. They passed a woodsman on the way, and then found a wagon near the base of the Tower.

The wagon was boobytrapped, and inside were alchemists fire.

We read a note and decided not to loot the wagon.

Then we opened a door by dancing in front of it.

The wizard sent in the snake. Then the Paladin decided to ride the elevator up the tower.

At this point, it started to get dark, so we went into the tower.

They found a suit of armour in the tower,  it turned out to be animated, but we couldn’t find the command word.

Then they noticed it had gotten dark, and the wolves were howling. So we took watch and rested over the night.

In the morning, they took the armour outside, and then proceeded to use identify on it. While they did this, the bard took up a position on the gargoyle, outside the window, securing himself with a piton and rope.

There was a command word to activate the armour, discovered by the wizard.

At which point the bard had the bright idea of telling the armour to “bring me the Sword of the Sun”. The armour rode up to the top of the tower, pulled the sword out of the stone wall, and held it up triumphantly.

At which point the sword melted the armour, and then dropped through the floors, before landing point first in the tower floor.

The bard used his rope to drop to the ground, and pulled the sword to him with mage hand. At which point the island started to collapse.

Vellos climbed onto the wagon, and proceeded to attempt to come up with a variety of command words for the wagon. This failed to actually summon the horses. So he tried famous Vishtani horse names. That didn’t work either. Then he screamed “Damn it, how do you summon these horses.” And that summoned the horses.

At which point we fled from the island, towards the wolves.

The paladin fired an arrow at one of the wolves and killed it outright.

The wizard threw fire at one of the wolves, burning them.

One of the wolves howled, and froze the ice. At which point, wolves moved onto the ice floe.

Then the cleric threw more fire at the wolves, sinking one of them into the ice.

Vellos decided to send his hand forward, handing off the Sword of the Sun to Twin Blade.

Twin Blade slashes out at the wolves, burning them with the sword.

Ianyor’s being pulled from his horse has blocked the bridge. He managed to kick his horse corpse off the bridge, but it’s slowing the rest of the party down.

The wizard manages to take control one of the werewolves, and turns it against it’s fellows.

The hand delivers the Sword of the Sun to the paladin, and it blazes up in his hands. 

The wagon continues to push forward, into the group.

The wizard continues to blast away, and in the process creates a cloud of fog around herself by accident.

The priestess fought the werewolf, the bard distracted the him while he fought against the drunk.

Then the bard blasted the fog back with a thunderwave, tossing the party out of his way, as he drove the wagon forward. This also cleared the fog away.

And then we got everyone back onto the wagon, as and rode off the causeway, running down the werewolf.

There are still more wolves in the woods ahead of us, and many of our resources were used up in the escape.

Two players are missing, so today’s game will be a little odd. 

The cleric is going to set up the tower to properly burn after we killed the hags in it. The bard will study the book, in an attempt to translate it.

The paladin and the fighter went down the hill to talk to some ravens, and then into some ruins. There appear to be some giants guarding the ruins.

The ruins contain an altar, likely the altar of seasons.

The batten down the tower as best we can. The strange barrel of ichor is moved in front of the door.

The first two watches passed rather uneventfully, or so we thought. Turns out that the vampire lord snuck into the tower in the middle of the night, took one of the NPCs out of the tower, by turning her into a vampire.

In the morning, we loaded up the wagon and headed towards the nearest town. The elfadin decided to load the ichor barrel on the cart.

We ran into a skeletal knight along the road, riding on a skeletal horse. The knight wore an emblem of a silver dragon, and didn’t seem hostile, so we let it pass.

We reached a village, and when the guard’s questioned our intent, the bard broke into song, stories and even played the drums for the priestess to dance.

This almost worked, but the village has rules against the Vistani. So he explains that he’s an En Meda, rather than a Vistani; explaining the whole origin myths of the two peoples. This gets the party into the town.

We visited a stockyard, and after disturbing something large and feline sleeping inside a wagon, Twinblade got hired to perform guard duty.

A strange man followed us through the town, but we mostly ignored him.

In the cathedral, we were told to go find some bones. We visited the gravedigger, he told us that he’d been hired by the coffin maker. Visiting the coffin maker, we find out that there is a vampire nest upstairs.

The elfadin decided to head into the the house, to search for the bones. He manages to get upstairs, get the bones, and get out the window before the vampire spawn catch up with him. This is partially because of the Cat’s Grace he’s had cast on him.

They return the bones to the priest and quickly devise a plan. They’ll get a ladder from the stockyard and the bard will balance on top of it outside the window, while the elfadin holds the ladder. The bard will blow the windows open with thunder wave, then backflip away, while the sorcerer begin throwing flames into through the openings.

Getting the ladder is simple. While the merchant wants to charge more for the ladder, the bard points out that if he fails to kill the vampires, he’ll shortly become one and he’ll come back for the merchant.

This mostly worked. The sorcerer disappeared into puff of blue smoke after throwing the fireballs in through the open windows. And the vampires don’t scream when we burn down the building. The sherif, who the mercenary brought to the coffin maker’s house. This was not the best outcome, since he decided we were troublemakers, who had burnt down a house after murdering a citizen. But at least he didn’t arrest the party.

While returning the bones, we found that there was a bribe stashed in the bag.

At which point, we left the village through the northern exit. Noisily and obviously. And then we went through the woods, around to the western exit.

Arriving at the Vishtani camp, we found the missing priestess whipping some random guy for not doing his job. He’d lost the headman’s daughter. So a bargain was struck, we help them recover the girl, we get a treasure from the wagons.

The elfadin’s character explores the elven encampment that is around the outside the vishtani camp. He finds an elderly elf, who confirms that he probably came from the village, and was kidnapped from it, roughly 500 years ago, their time, and roughly a hundred years ago his time. The wear on the coins fit that story. The old elf wants us to visit the top of Mount Ghakkis with him. We have a mission into the bowels of Mount Ghakkis. And he shows the Bard the Map, so the Bard can now access the world map button. We also got confirmation that the road we were taking to the west to the druid’s hill was a good plan, though we may want to stop at a tower near a lake along the way.

During the break, the bard decides he needs a pair of banjos, so he can play dueling Banjos on his own, well, with mage hand anyways. 

The following morning, we meet with the fellow who had been whipped. He was appreciative of the healing word that had been cast on him. He led the party to where the girl had disappeared. With Owl’s Wisdom, the bard was able to determine the trail of the probable abductor. They led to a fisherman’s shack, and the fisherman had recently gone out into the lake, with a large sack.

Following him out into the lake, the bard pulls out his fishing gear, in an attempt to be nonchalant about the encounter, but the fisherman panics, and throws the bag of the side. So the bard casts Bull’s strength, and then dives into the water after the bag.

Under the water, ghostly apparitions appear, which terrify the bard. The rest of the party leaps into the water and dive towards the bag. The fighter is scared, and the paladin casts a quick spell to prevent fear, before diving in. Together they bring the girl up. The brute is pulled into the boat with a command and a charm.

Then heading back to the village, guards attempted to bring the party in for questioning, but a quick charm person convinces them that we aren’t the adventurers that they are looking for.

And then we return the girl to the village, earning a treasure in the process. We also brought back the villain, who will be punished by the priestess of pain for his attempted sacrifice.

While attempting to figure out what treasure to take, we accidentally summoned Kevin the sorcerer back. We were offered a delightful rug, for saving the girl.

We took the gold instead, and used it to buy horses.

We returned to the town, entering into the Inn for knowledge.

In the Inn, A man’s name, Kazan, up at a tower on a lake. Dangerous wards guard it.

We also learn of the weaknesses of the vampires, running water, sunlight and wooden stakes. They can’t enter a residence without permission from one of the occupants. They aren’t fond of sunlight. Resistances to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from non magical.

We visited a few other places in town, but didn’t learn anything useful.

We rode back across to the river to pick up the boats, so we’d be able to search the shore tomorrow. We took the row boats down to the bridge. The next few days, we’d be able to search the north side of the lake. It took half a day to cross the lake, but we’ll be able to return to the encampment at night. The process is long and may be unwise.

We got timestopped by a strange wizard, and this resulted in us getting trapped on the wrong side of the lake. So we decided to anchor the boat in the river, hoping that the running water will protect us from the vampires.

During the night, we were attacked by a pack of dire wolves. Cutting the line, we managed to flow out towards the lake, slowly. It was a nasty fight, and people nearly died. The usage of colour spray to blind two of the wolves let us escape into the lake, and we managed to kill one of the wolves.

 

We awoke after sleeping in the gypsy camp, to find that Kevin now has breasts and considerably more curves than the night before. Most of the party don’t comment on this. The paladin, goes out of his way to comment, and seems okay with it.

The party backtracks past the gallows, before heading to a bridge that crosses the river that fed the lake that the gypsies had camped near.

We reached a second set of gates. Passing through them, we secured them closed and camped for the night.

During the third watch, when Silion and Vellos were on watch, something brightly lit came out of the woods and attacked them. The zapping attack was loud enough to wake up the rest of the party.

The paladin smote it, which resolved the threat. Untying the gates, we continued west.

We encountered a body that had been savaged by wolves.

We carried on, until we reached a mill on a hill.

Approaching the mill, we were warned off by a raven.

The mill seems fairly fortified.

The mage and the paladin went into the mill, while the fighter tried to find a place to climb up.

They go up the stairs inside the mill, silently. The top floor appears to have witches, who are eating children.

The mage and the merc surprise the witches, while the paladin surprises himself and loses his footing. After that, he gets tossed out the window and crashes into a heap at the base of the windmill.

The mage hit one of the hags with a lightening based spell, which connected them with a chain of energy, but the hag escaped it by turning invisible. The other hag turned into a seagull and flew out the window. Vellos attempted to shoot down the seagull, but missed completely.

The cleric attempted to force the seagull to grovel.

There was combat, eventually one of the hags was killed, and two were driven away.

Twin Blades found a book in the attic, the Tome of Strahd.

Bottles of Youth, Laughter and Mother’s Milk were taken, along with six Dream Pies.

The bucket of Black Ichor in the corner glowed brightest of all, and it appeared to be conjuration. The barrel turns out to be demon ichor.

So we’re going to be burning down the mill.

There are now four altars that we need to visit to reconsecrate as part of a ritual to destroy the Heart of Sorrow, which protects Strahd.

The altars are at  Luna Lake, the Velacian Valley, the Swamps of Iviliss, and the bowels of Mount Gahkis.

Iannyor, Twin Blades, and Vellos are sitting around a camp fire, while Sileon is sitting nearby, manacled. Iannyor is cooking, Vellos is strumming his lute, enjoying the captive audience, while Twin Blades is looking for trouble. 

As the sun goes down, the mist rolls in. The mist is rather creepy, and chilling. 

The strange priestess attempts to bash her head in against the tree, and while Iannoyr wanted to stop her. Vellos felt this was a religious, so told them not to.

In the morning, while Vellos was checking around, he noticed that they’ve gone to a new land. A land that he previously thought was only in legends.

Kevin, the Magnificient asks where we are, and Vellos explains that we’re in Barovia. A land ruled by a dark lord known as Strahd; a legendary vampire.

Kevin attempted to open a magic door to exit, but it didn’t work. This attempt made everything really bright. All the magic glowed.

Iannyor climbed a tree, we only saw mists. Kevin attempted to summon his familiar, but this didn’t work all that well. The familiar burst into flames while attempting to come into existence.

The road that we’re on, is a very nasty road. As soon as we leave the clearing, the mists swallow it up. Maybe the Vishtani will be able to get us back, if we can find them.

Walking down the road for several hours, we eventually found something rather large and stone, with huge rusty iron gates.

The huge iron gates slam shut after we pass through them.

As it gets dark, the strange cleric begins to glow.

Iannyor found a body, and decided to bury it. The rest of the group left him, though Vellos stayed with him. The peasant had been murdered by wolves. Wolves, not werewolves.

Down in the valley, we see a village.

We figure it’ll take us about an hour to get down there.

And we walk towards it, and it’s taking much longer than an hour.

And now we’re fighting Zombies. In grasslands. While the mage is throwing magic fire around. He summons a pair of fireballs which splatter on the zombie.

Vellos takes a shot at the zombie, puts an arrow deep into it.

The zombies rush in and attack.

Twin Blades slashes at one, killing it.

Sileon uses her faith to push the zombies away.

Iannyor takes an arm off a zombie, and then Twin Blades rushes up and slashes that zombie.

Kevin accidentally multiplied himself, then splashed rays into the other zombies.

Vellos stepped into the bushes and thundered into the zombies, tossing one of them through Kevin’s illusion.

Iannyor moved to slash at the other zombie, but the severed arm reached for him first, so he had to take a break to throw it away first.

Then we finished off the zombies, with Twin Blade walking up and slashing at them.

And then Kevin started speaking pink bubbles, his hair fell out, he became covered in grease and then started teleporting around, before finally settling down.

So we took a bit of a rest.

And then we wandered into the village.

Iannyor heard some wailing, so he followed the sound, ripped down the boards over the doors, went upstairs. Kevin and Iannyor talked to an old lady, while Twin Blade tried to climb up the balcony.

Sileon went into the tavern, Vellos stayed outside, looking confused.

The crying woman inside gave them a doll, named Gurtruda, which belonged to her daughter Gertruda, who was named after the doll she had had as a child. Iannyor made an agreement to try to save the child, which is why she gave him the doll. Kevin had plied her with shiny rose to get her trust.

Meanwhile, Sileon in the tavern had made friends with the Vishtani, and secured herself a line of credit. When Vellos walked in, the Vishtani recognized him of being part of the enmeda ( inspired by the edema ruh), another troupe of gypsies.

We are told of Madame Eva, who talks to Travellers, and knows the way out of the land that we’re trapped in.

We’ve also learned that the burgermaster wants us to kill Strahd, because this land is cursed.

As we leave the tavern, the churchyard starts glowing with green light.

So we went to the mansion, and were greeted by a woman in armour, who was carrying a sword.

The party bedded down for the night. The priestess molested the son of the burgermaster.

In the morning, the elf decided to carry the coffin, while the bard used his minor illusion to create a funeral dirge.

The mage wandered off to get a brass brazier, while the rest of us solemnly carried on.

We entered in the chapel, to bury the body.  There was some screaming, followed by some hollering.

We found out that the priest’s son had become a vampire and is locked up in the undercroft. At which point, Iannyor decided to go down to cure him. With steel. In the chest.

The plan of going down into the undercroft to stab the vampire is not a great idea.

Once again Iannyor had his throat bitten. This time, by a vampire. We managed to put it down, eventually.

Vellos stopped at the tavern to get some details, and managed to learn a bit of history, about the burgermaster’s daughter, but nothing overly useful to the campaign.

After that, we headed towards the gypsy camp. We crossed a bridge over the river, and the mists were less oppressive. Our journey was fairly uneventful, at least initially. We managed to reach the crossroads, without incident.

At the crossroads, the gallows haunted Vellos. His face on the hanging body, which hadn’t been there moments before. They were infected by the madness, each suffering a minor curse.

Then to the camp, where they were fed, and given a tale. And then to the fortune teller, to learn of their futures.

 Charlatan – The book – The Past – History, Knowledge of the ancients and an understanding of the enemy.  “I see a only mill on a precipice, the treasure lies within.” –

Druid – The holy symbol – Powerful symbol of good. “A evil tree grows atop a hill of graves where the ancient dead sleep. The ravens can help you find it.” – There are druids in the far west, a place called yesterhill.

The wizard – the weapon – Power and strength, a weapon of vengeance. – “look for a wizard’s tower on a lake, let the wizard’s name and servant guide you to that which you seek.”

The broken one – one who will help you. – ” your greatest ally will be a wizard, his mind is broken, but his spells are strong.” – Black robed mage who rallied the peasants a year ago, and after a titanic battle, he plunged off the walls. His body was never recovered.

The Raven – creature of darkness, the place – “In the castle. Look to the mother’s tomb.” – The Tomb of Ravonia, of Ravenloft. Lord Strahd’s mother.

 And with that, we rested.