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Session 46 – 2022-01-29

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Session Summary

We entered the secret room in the library, searching it found a dark blue book with more notes in it and no writing. The notes in the book read as follows:

It took much longer than I had the patience for, but I’ve managed to convince enough of the villagers to assault Strahd at his Castle and end his tyranny over this realm. One villager in particular, Priest Donovich’s son Doru, shows promise. He would have made a fine protege given the right upbringing. Sadly, his father, a sniveling holy man, is petrified of Strahd so much so that he will not even speak the vampire’s name, for fear that it will summon him. My spirit is re-awakened with the anticipation and will to destroy Von Zarovich and his minions. A blight upon this land hiding in his ominous castle.

The second note read:

I have lost everything. My staff is broken, my spellbook lies I know not where, and young Doru has given himself over to The Devil. Strahd’s gift, from the vestiges, was more powerful than I surmised. The ancient matched my wit and my magic spell for spell. As before I am utterly defeated, useless. My attempt to finally destroy the miserable creature and set things as they should be, has only brought about more misery. The vestiges that robbed me, now mock me. Am I now trapped in this land? I cannot live among the villagers any longer, they are spies now and the shadow of my failure would be etched upon each of their faces. If I am believed dead, then that is how it must be. Strahd knows the truth. He will seek me out. I shall hide in the mountains where none shall find me. In time I will learn how to forget. Perhaps a spell. A lasting spell that will force me out of this misery.

Snoggly thumbs through the dark blue book and finds nothing else of note. Then he picks up the book and says “Kazan!”. Nothing happens. Back out in the main library, Dain lifts the podium and Rinn searches underneath and finds nothing. He puts it back down.

We moved to the second floor to the room with the lightning. Rinn remained on the second floor of the library. Everyone else went back to the room with the blue lightening. Misty followed the same pattern as we did in the library to open the secret room. This time it shut down the lightning field and when Snoggly opened and looked through the door to the library, he saw Rinn standing in there. Since there was no floor, it stood to reason that this door may be a portal to somewhere else. For curiosities sake, he tossed a coin through the door, it vanished. Rinn made his way around and Snoggly stepped through the portal and vanished. Dain, Misty, and Haldar followed. Next were Kyanna, Rinn, Victor, and Zanfyr.

Snoggly found himself on an octagonal platform that seems to be floating on in a thunderstorm. There are two doors unsupported by any walls, with an old, bearded man with long black hair. He turns and shouts out, “Ah, more of him minions! Well, we’ll see about that!”. He was being attacked by these shadow demons. Snoggly shouted back to him, “Peace be with you friend! I’m not a foe! I am an enemy of that bastard on the hill!”. There is nothing visible beyond the platform and the demons and the old man. The old man is building up a charge of electricity in his hands. Snoggly casts mirror image on himself. Wo demons attacked the other wizard by breathing a black cloud at him and another one did the same to Snoggly. One of his images blinks out. A fourth creature flew in and fired at the wizard again. He fires out a cone of cold spell catching several creatures and Snoggly. Two of the creatures perish in an explosion. Snoggly also takes a good amount of damage. Snoggly fires a magic missile splitting it between two of the demons. Another demon flies in. The old man takes another breath weapon and then fires out his own magic missiles hitting all three of them.

It was then that Misty, Haldar, and Dain arrived through the portal. Snoggly shouted, “Kill the beasties!”. Then he fired all three magic missiles into one of them causing it to explode. Misty throws a dagger at one of the creatures. The wizard throws a cone of cold at the new group of adventurers that just arrived. Dain moves closer and draws out his crossbow and fires at one of the beasts, while shouting to the old man, “Excuse me good sir, we are here to help you, not harm you!”. He slays a demon and again shouts out, “We are here to help you, not to harm you!”. Haldar takes out two of them in short order. Another creature flies in and uses his breath weapon at Misty and Snoggly and takes out another image. The rest of the team arrives! The old man shouts out, “Damn you Lord Strahd, I will kill all of them!”.

Kyanna, having only just arrived, casts a guiding bolt at the wizard. She hits him and does quite a bit of damage to him. Snoggly polymorphs himself into a giant ape. He proceeds to attack one of the creatrues and obliterates it. Misty moved to Dain and passed him a potion of healing. Rinn firebolts the last remaining demon but it was a glancing blow. The wizard, after taking in the whole situation announces, “I will leave you to your doom!”. He then casts a spell and vanishes. As he vanishes, a bright ball of fire explodes in the middle of the whole group. The Ape and Zanfyr took a lot of damage. Everyone else except for Misty, took half of that, and Misty through some exquisite skill, managed to avoid being hit all together. The last creature was also destroyed.

In the aftermath, Kyanna pushes healing out to a lot of us. Snoggly had to drop the ape form for the healing. We heard more of those monstrous creatures screeching in the darkness around us. Dain too one last shot at exclaiming, “Kazan, if you are still here, we are not your enemy, we are here to give aid. Please show yourself, we will not attack you!”. In looking around, we see the second portal standing on the platform. Haldar and Dain step through first. This group rolled a 4 and as a result ended up by a Lake. It appears to be the Lake Zarovich as there is only one real lake on the map we have of Barovia. They look back to the portal but don’t see anything. Behind them, they could hear the waves licking the surface, and turned to notice something rather large, moving through the lake, about 70 feet away.

Misty and Rinn stepped through next, Misty rolled an 8. They ended up in a room with a fireplace and two chairs facing it. There are ancient, well oiled, leather bound, tombs along the walls. The room is tidy and well ordered. The stone floor is concealed by a thick, luxurious rug. In the center of the room is a low table, waxed and polished. Everything is polished. Large overstuff divans and couches are spread out around the room. Above the fireplace is a portrait of the likeness of Ireena Kolyana. We turn to see if the portal is behind us, it is not. Rinn glances about for exits and windows. Misty doesn’t smell the dogs from the Burgomaster’s home in Vallaki so it seems unlikely we are there. It’s a cold place, seemingly much larger than any abode we have visited so far. Rinn didn’t find any windows. We moved around the room to gain a vantage point on the chairs. There were thankfully no people in them.

Snoggly ansd Zanfyr were next to step through the portal. Zanfyr rolled a 3. They wound up in a large room with a golden marble staircase with a black marble railing spiraling up a 30-foot shaft. Lying in the middle of the room are six rotting crates. The walls are covered in amber sculpted to look like n tentacles that entwine around marble reliefs of kings, queens, pharaohs, and sultans attended by myriad slaves. The west and east walls contain alcoves with a large block of amber. Two wide cracks have opened in the south wall spilling pieces of amber out onto the floor. They turn to find the portal behind them, but no portal seems to exist. Snoggly moves over to the crates and takes a look. The crate is in bad condition. As he opens it, it burst open, and a vampire leaps out. At the same time, the other 5 crates also burst open, and the vampires contained within also leap out.

Kyanna and Victor are next. Kyanna rolls a 4. They do not pop up at Lake Zarovich with Dain and Haldar. They ended up in a very cold stone room. There is a cold hearth stands across from a stone door. They hear wind howling down the chimney. There is a stone staircase on the south wall, and three windows. Kyanna goes to a window and looks out. From here, she can see a cliffside and the rest was a sea of fog. Victor looks out another window and asks, “What is this place?”, as he holds himself trying to warm. He looks up the stairs and says, “That doesn’t look promising!”. They look at the fireplace and there is nothing of note there. Victor starts up the stairs and changes his mind to go check the door. He listens at the door and hears howling winds. He pulls the door open slowly and is having to hold it as the wind outside blows hard. There is snow blowing sideways. He closes the door again and turns to say, “There is a road and massive gate with a green glowing portal.

Haldar and Dain back away from the lake. Haldar, after scoping out the area, decides that they are on the north side of Lake Zarovich. They can see the mountains where we followed the stag to the portal to Kazan’s home and lab. After many computer issues, they decide to return to Kazan’s home through the portal, moving northward through the woods.

Zanfyr and Snoggly rolled for initiative. The vampires attack first, the first one misses, the second one hits on his bite attack, with a critical hit. It reduces his max hit points by 12. Zanfyr is hit and his max hit points is reduced by 8. He is hit again by another vampire and suffers some slashing damage. Snoggly detonates a fireball sculping out Zanfyr. All but one of the vampires were engulfed. Zanfyr is hit by another and loses another 5 points to his maximum hit points. Zanfyr shape shifted into a giant Snapping Turtle and attacks the weakest link.

Misty and Rinn spot two doors, one to the south and one to the north. There is a large set of double doors to the west. Rinn searches for the area where the first appeared and then turned to see if he could reach out and find the portal. Misty moved to the double doors and listens. She hears some soft singing. Pretty and in key. She checks the henges to see if they are in good shape and if they’ll likely be quiet. She cracks the door and catches a pleasant, sweet smell. It’s well lit and there is, among the rest of the bedroom furniture, a canopy bed with a large “Z” carved into the headboard. There is a young lady laying across the bed, in her nightgown looking at some cloth or perhaps a book. She looks up as the door opens and calls out, “Who’s there?”. Misty closes it back and hears. “Who’s there?” again.

Kyana and Victor, he describes te gate and the portal that he saw. He says that outside the door, there is a well-travelled snow-covered road there is about a 20 foot path leading from the road to this door. He said that to one side, there is a gatehouse, like those of Vallaki, but instead of a gate, there is a large green portal and to the right, the road goes off into the mists. She gives him a blanket and wraps herself into one and pulls out her spyglass and asks him to open the door while she gets a closer look. As she looks out, she sees icy cliffs rising into the clouds. Ahead, through the snow, she sees a high wall of black stone (winter is coming!) lined with spikes and topped with statues of demons with horned heads. Set in the center of the wall is a closed iron portcullis, sits within a burning curtain of green flame. Above the wall, she can see cliffside and fog. There is nothing through the green flame. She looked to Victor, “Do we dare go through it?”. Victor replied, “We can have a look, if need be, I can get us to the other side!”.

That’s it for this week!