Bodaks to Rimspire Canyon
Curse of Strahd = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Session 53 – 2022-04-2
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Session Summary
We are in the cave avoiding the bulk of the blizzard conditions. There is a tunnel leading off from the south. Rinn is looking at it. There is some dark lichen in the center of the path with some blood trailing through and around it. It smells very bad, like death. Haldar and Snoggly didn’t like the idea of leaving that tunnel unchecked and getting ambushed while we rested so Rinn started down the path, Haldar close behind. Rinn avoided the lichen as he doesn’t trust it to be simply moss, but possibly something that might attack. He did test it by throwing a firebolt at it. It burned as wet moss or lichen would. In the corner, on the wall is some written in common tongue, that reads, “the shadows lie”. Misty suggested that we should check for footprints heading in or out to see what’s been moving around in here. Rinn checks and finds some booted footprints heading into the tunnel. They don’t appear to be more than a week old, maybe less.
He eventually come to a crossing. Further ahead is a mound of rotting corpses and parts of corpses, from various animals. Standing nearby the mound is a creature. As Rinn listens, he hears some crunching and chewing. As he looks, he sees a figure, just barely viewable, as it reaches into the mound and pulls out something to eat. With that, he backed out and back to the rest of the group and let Haldar know about its existence. Haldar used the shadows as only he can do, to sneak up and and get a gander at the figure. Rinn feels a strange cold energy run through his body, more than just the general cold. Haldar gets a better look at the figure. Being an undead specialist, he was able to determine it was a Bodak, almost Wraith like. He remember’s that its primary attack is a gaze attack. Haldar feels a sudden cold that damages him and he withdraws. Rinn looks up and down both side tunnels to see if there is anything that might be attacking us from there. He doesn’t see anything. Rinn then feels the cold energy hit him again and takes a little damage as well.
Rinn joins Haldar with the rest, and they formulate a plan. While we are discussing using a fireball to get his attention, we feel the cold again, and this time Boo vanished. Kyanna moves forward to use her amulet to bring daylight to the tunnel. We are all assaulted by the cold energy again. Kyanna, as she prepares to use the amulet spots something coming from the north and turns to look at it. She feels the negative energy strikes her again, but she shakes it off. She finally activates the amulet to bring forth sunlight. The creature steps back but doesn’t leave. Rinn takes more negative energy damage. The battle begins. We start moving into the area, Snoggly using magic missiles while Rinn is able to sneak attack the one that came down from the north. Haldar gets there and takes a couple of shots at the one that has moved against Kyanna, ending it. He then turns and fires on the undead creature to the north. Dain moves into the area and is stunned by the angelic appearance of Kyanna in the Sunlight. He makes it to the tunnel by her.
Rinn and Kyanna take damage again from the negative energy that keeps assaulting them. Zanfyr asks Snoggly what is going on? Snoggly replies that we are battling undead ahead. Zanfyr casts Protection from Good and Evil on himself. Moves forward a little then holds. Ezmerelda moved forward and passes Zanfyr. Misty moves forward to find out what is going on. Misty also shakes off the negative energy. Kasimir moves to a defensive position and holds. Snoggly sets off a fireball near the back of the cave. He managed to cook their rotting food pile and burns at least one of them. Kyanna moves further in and prepares to cast a guiding bolt. Rinn casts protection from good and evil on Misty to offer her more protection and backs up. Haldar moves north around a corner and fires at the one up there and backs away a little. Dain moves next to Kyanna and casts protection from good and evil on himself. Kyanna uses her Guiding bolt on one of the Bodaks and it in turns and uses a withering stare on her and she appears to wither a little. Zanfyr moves up and fires at one but misses. Ezmerelda moves up and magic missiles one, ending it. Misty follows Haldar’s path. Kasimir moves into the intersection and moves down the southern tunnel.
Snoggly moves in further, rounding the corner, he turns, and a look of fear crosses his face and he collapses. Kyanna moves towards Snoggly and as she turns, the whole scene resets. Kyanna goes back to where she started, Snoggly pops up and instead of collapsing, he takes quite a bit of damage. Now, Kyanna casts a magic circle to protect her and Snoggly but then it got called back by the DM because iot takes a minute to cast. So instead, she cast a fireball. Rinn moves to the intersection and moves deeper in. Haldar moves, spotting another room behind them, turns and moves down to attack the Bodak. Dain moves to a Bodak and finally gets to hit one. It is ended.
Kyanna collapses from the battle, not dead but seriously damaged. Dain dumps 30 points of healing into her to strengthen her. Haldar moves to the north again and checks out that room to find it’s a little like a nest. Kyanna casts a mass healing spell. Rinn and Haldar move deeper into the southern tunnels. They find no creatures but do find another nest. In searching the nest, they find a small bag, a mail bag sized bag. In the bedding Rinn finds an amber colored amulet. Rinn opens the bag and finds an old piece of paper and some coin. They move back to the group and to the light and read the note. It’s written in common and reads;
“Cassius, I know I’m breaking my promise, but I can’t ignore these visions any longer. If there is a way to bring mother back, then I have to take it, no matter the risk. Signed Dierdra”
Rinn checks out the amulet, turns ridged, frozen almost. After about 15-20 seconds, he is released and begins to move freely again. He looks at the stone and says, “I’ve found a way to save my sister!”. Kyanna sys, “What?”. Rinn adds, “it could be so much help!”. Snoggly says, “Looked like you locked up there, lad!”. Rinn looked a little confused and asked, “Locked up?”. Kyanna said, “Yeah, like your brain had a glitch!”. Snoggly agreed! Rinn tried to explain it off and get back to the fact that he can save his sister. He says, “I can’t quite explain it. It’s fuzzy, but a voice spoke to me and let me know there is a way to save my sister. There is hope for her!”. Snoggly asked, “What makes you say that!”. Rinn replies, “I can’t see or hear it clearly.”. Zanfyr asked, “Is the stone related to someone in your family?”. Rinn says, “Not that I am aware of!….I can’t explain it!”. Snoggly asks, “What happened to you, did you look into the stone, and something happen?”. Rinn said, “I heard someone….*concentrates for a moment * …there is someway to save my sister, but I don’t remember much more than that!”. Snoggly said, “Sounds like you got yourself a bad piece of jewelry there, lad! Maybe Kyanna needs to check it out to see if it has some kind of evil on it!”. Rinn says, “I can cast Identify on it!”. He casts identify on the amulet! He gets a very sense that there is an element of enchantment to it but it’s really not registering as a magical item. Snoggly suggests that we leave it here, to which Zanfyr suggest it might be something that came from the amber temple. Rinn replies, “except that something about this may help me save my sister. I think I want to keep it.”. Zanfyr asked, “Your’re going to bring it with you to the Amber Temple?”. Rinn says, “I can put it in its bag.”. Snoggly replies, “It’s on you then!”.
Haldar says, let go check out the other nest. Rinn and Haldar move to the northern nest and find a set of shredded clothes, another old piece of paper, and another mail bag sized bag! Rinn scooped up the paper and the bag. The only thing we can tell about the clothing is that it is very old, perhaps 100 years old. We take the items back down to the light and read it. The piece of paper actually turns out to be a map, very fragile. It maps out a course up Mount Ghakis. After a little more examination, we can se the split we took to make our way up to where we are going. It appears to be a map, possibly, to the temple. Rinn studies it carefully and attempts to commit it to his memory and suggests that Haldar do the same. Haldar replied, “Okie Dokie!”. He passes it on to Zanfyr for him to look at. Rinn opens the other mail bag. Inside he sees 6 silver pieces and another necklace with an amber amulet. In the first mail bag, he had found 56 gold pieces and 12 platinum pieces. Rinn pulls out the necklace and looks at it. He freezes up again.
They see he freezes for about 15 to 20 seconds and during that time, they can see him mumbling, inaudibly, much as Dain remembered seeing Kasimir do in the room when the Roc had us trapped at the bridge. Snoggly tells Rinn that he needs to give up the amber as it’s making him see things. He tells Rinn that he froze up again. Rinn replies that again, “l can save my sister if I go to the temple, this will help me, it will help us, I will acquire knowledge because of this. Knowledge of how to destroy Strahd, and how to save my sister.”. Snoggly reminds him, “You remember the message coming in the door, the shadows lie! I wouldn’t take anything from it as truth!”. Zanfyr points out that “These could me manipulating you, these amber necklaces, if they came from the Amber Temple, nothing good has come from the temple. At least from what me and Snog have seen.”. Snoggly agrees, “It wasn’t a very nice place.”. Rinn says, “I still feel like I need to bring these with me.”, and puts them both inside his main bag. Snoggly says, “If you start acting like a nutter, we’re going to knock you on the head!”. Rinn replies, “If you started acting like a nutter, I would knock you on the head to, so I I expect you to knock me on the had should I do the same. “.
We finally move back to the entry area and Snoggly cast the tiny hut spell and we all slept. Rinn did re-summon Boo as well. Misty took the first watch, and Rinn took the second watch. Misty sees the storm continue on, maybe snowing less. Rinn takes the second watch. The blizzard weakens and by the end of the second watch, the storm seems to end. We eat and set out again. Haldar does point out the potential for avalanche. We’ll need to be quiet and careful. We wind our way around, through this pass and that, all the while making towards the crown of Ghakis. Around 2:00 in the afternoon, we come to a formation near a peak and the path moved back down into something akin to a volcano crater. Kasimir tells us this is a place called Rimspire Canyon. We can’t see across due the mists. Kazimir says, “We are very close! The Amber Temple is concealed here, in the crags of the canyon.”. We have to make our way down an almost fully covered path, carefully into the canyon. We travel down about 150 feet to reach the canyon floor. We work our way across this plane area. Ahead of us eventually looms a chasm. On the far side of the chasm is the sheer wall of the mountainside. The chasm is about 70 feet across, but it is deep. We keep following Kasimir. From here we can see little cutouts, almost cave like shapes. There is a thin bridge that crosses the chasm. Looking down, we see sharp jagged rocks and ice. There are strong winds blowing through the area. Kasimir says, this is it, we have made it to the temple.
Kasimir moves across the bridge; Dain tries to figure out a way to anchor pitons to tie off to but the bridge is far too brittle for that. Kasimir moves across with little difficulty, being mindful of the gusts as they pick up. He looks as if he wants to tell us something but thinks twice about shouting, for fear of avalanche. Rinn messages him and he explains the winds are strong, be careful, the avalanche is a very real potential, be quiet. Rinn passed that on, but Haldar had already followed. He made it about halfway across when he ran into a gust that causes a little concern, but he is able to hold his path and makes it across, Kyanna has a similar experience, but her gusts struggles happen as she starts across. She still manages to make it across safely. Ezmerelda makes her way across and after about halfway there, she slips and begins to fall. Snoggly was able to intervein and cast a feather fall spell to ease her fall. She landed safely. She begins trying top find a path up on the far side. Snoggly goes next. The wind buffets him but he manages to stay on and makes it across. Rinn steps up to move across but turns to find cover when he hears the screech of the Roc as it approaches.
Everyone moves for cover. Misty lays down, the rest move back for cover and find a place to hide. The others, on the far side, move to the alcoves to hide there. Rinn tries to help Dain make it to a hiding place and in doing so, makes himself more visible. The Roc lands on the cliffs well above the temple, clamping his talons to the rocks. Some of the rock crumble and begin rolling down the cliff. The Roc spots Dain and Rinn.
Batman, doom music, plays.