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Curse of Strahd
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Session 68 – 2022-08-06
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We are making our way down the stairs. Haldar is out front, he’s made it to a floor where there is a corridor leading to the north. Rinn comes down behind him. There is a wooden door at the end of the corridor and the stairs continue to our east. We stop and wait for Piddlewick to catch up and point the way. Misty is carrying him. Piddlewick indicates that our stuff is down the stairs. We all continue on downward. When we reach the bottom of the stairs, We see a hallway headings off to the west that is partially flooded. The water is dark, like mirrored glass. We can see, further down the hallway that there are archways with passages leading off to the north and south. Further down the main passage, there appears to be another chamber. Piddlewick squirms to be put down and begins making his way down the passage way. He is mostly submerged. Haldar and Rinn follow along, but Misty sits on the steps, unwilling to get into the water. Dain comes down the to the edge of the water.
As Rinn and Haldar proceed, a giant water spout splashes up where Rinn is standing and engulfs him. When it subsides, Rinn is no longer there. Misty calls out to Haldar, “That’s why I don’t like water!”. Haldar points out that we should be following Piddlewick‘s path directly, do not veer from the path. The rest follow the path. Haldar asked Piddlewick if he knows where Rinn went. Piddlewick, submerged, turns and there are gestures under the water, but you can’t make out where he is pointing to. Dain reaches around in the water where Rinn was but doesn’t find anything. Haldar says, “Let’s follow Piddlewick’s path, exactly!”. Even staying on Piddlewicks path, Haldar barely managed to avoid the same fate, as another geyser explodes where Haldar was. He managed to avoid being pulled in. The walls are too slimy and slick to hold on to any part of it. Haldar can see some light ahead.
Rinn finds himself in a cell, familiar to the cells where he and Misty were held during their trip through the portal door at Mordenkainen’s mountain home. Misty Shadow Steps to a spot in front of Haldar, appearing briefly, saying something along the lines of, “I hate wat..”, before experiencing the water spout, flushing action, and disappearing. Zanfyr moves into the water, changing his form to that of a Reef Shark. He tells everyone before he does. Piddlewick continues on to the room ahead. Haldar follows and see’s two tables, like the kind you chain people to as you torture them. Hanging from the ceiling are thick black chains. On the north side of the room, is a raised platform with two thrones facing the inner room and a red curtain behind them. Piddlewick climbs onto the closest of those tables. He is dragging a weapon up onto the platform. Haldar moves further and triggers another trap but avoids being pulled in. Dain has decided to swim the rest of the way in hopes of avoiding triggering any traps. Figures begin popping up in the room. The figures appear to be some sort of Zombie’s. The battle is joined.
Misty ended up in cells mulch as Rinn did. She checks the door, it’s locked. She then searches for a mechanism that might flush her back out of the cell. Haldar checks the sword, it appears to be Ezmerelda’s rapier. Haldar took the rapier from Piddlewick and used it to attack Zombie2, twice. It is, at least, a +1 magic rapier. Kassamir triggers a trap and pops up in Rinn’s cell. Ezmerelda triggers a trap and pops up a couple of cells away from Rinn. Zanfyr, in Reef Shark form has blind sight and he can tell that there are more creatures than the two zombies we see. One is near Dain. Zanfyr attacks one of them. He also catches a glimpse of some silver beneath the water. Zanfyr is attacked and lightly injured by the zombie. Rinn is still in the cell. He tells Kassamir that there is something in the water. He attempts to pick the lock on the cell but fails. Something large brushes against his leg. He lets Kassamir know that there is something beneath his feet. Ezmerelda’s voice comes from one of the distant cells. Haldar is attacked and missed. Somewhere along the way, but I missed it in the recording, Dain turned undead and sent several of the Zombies scurrying away.
Misty searches around and doesn’t find any buttons or levers. She jumps up and down on the floor but nothing happens. Haldar attacks Zombie6, Zombie down! Zanfyr attacks the Zombie in front of him again. Rinn feels a burning sensation around his waIst. It was acid damage from something that had wrapped itself around his waist. Kassamir approaches Rinn asking if there is anything he can do. Rinn tells him that something has grabbed him around his waist. Kassamir begins stabbing down into the water and manages to hit something. Ezmerelda suggests that she can cast a knock spell but that it will be very loud and likely alert everyone to our presence down here. Rinn suggested holding off. He can pick the lock and get us out. The Zombie next to Zanfyr attempts to move away from him, Zanfyr gets a parting shot. Dain, moved to one of the Zombies and attacks it destroying it. Kyanna swam over to the rack and climbed up on it. She then turned undead hoping to destroy many of them. She destroyed some but no count was spoken so I don’t know how many. Snoggly swam over to the location where the items appear to be. He swam down and appeared again with Zanfyr’s Long Bow. Rinn is still feeling the burning sensation around his waist. He takes the Sunsword and inserting it in the water, see’s a body and a mass that is attacking him. He attacks the mass and really kills it. When Rinn holds the sword out of the water, he hears Ezmerelda to his north. She asks about casting the knock spell but Rinn has her wait. Now that he is not being attacked, he should be able to get us all out of here.
Misty listens to see if she hears another moving around. She doesn’t see anything. She begins prying, with per pole, where the bars connect to the stone. Haldar begins searching for weapons and finds Kyanna’s quiver of arrows. As Rinn’s sword light’s up the cell they were in, Kassamir sees a mass floating in the water beneath Rinn, surprised, he starts stabbing at it asking if it is attacking him. Rinn lets him know, it’s not. It’s apparently a dead body that was in the cell. He drags it out from under Rinn. Ezmerelda asks about casting the Knock spell but Rinn has her hold while he tries to pick the lock. Zanfyr senses the obvious creature in front of him but also another underwater behind him. He deals with the one he can see and ends it. He moves to the next one. Dain started trying to pull up items. He finds Kassamir’s Rapier, holds on to it for him. Kyanna searches as well, but didn’t find anything. Snoggly continues searching and finds one of Misty’s items. The Zombie that Zanfyr moved towards takes a swipe at him but misses. Rinn finally picks the lock on the cell door.
Misty continues digging at the bars, using some silver utensils that she found along the way. Haldar found Dain’s great sword. Kassamir pulls the body up that he found in the cell. He finds a long sword and a couple of belt pouches that he takes off of it. In those he found some gem stones and a potion. Ezmerelda waits on Rinn to get her out of the cell. Zanfyr takes another bite out of the last Zombie. He finally succumbs to the Shark and the battle is done. Everyone in the main room starts searching and pulling up their belongings and eventually find everything. Rinn does get out of his cell and gets Ezmerelda out of hers. The cell directly across from her’s has another body in it. Rinn picks the lock and moves to the body to check it out. As he touches the body, it suddenly wakes to attack. It’s a vampire. Rinn, Kassamir, and Ezmerelda take it out pretty quickly. There was a brief discussion about how lucky it’s was that the person with the Sunsword was one of the one’s dropped in this trap.
Misty makes it out of her cell. She can see more cells to the south and a door to the north. She calls out to see if anyone responds, no one does. She turns her attention to the door. Rinn moves to the door of his cell cluster and picks the lock. He opens the door and steps out to see where they are and sees everyone else. Asking if anyone else is missing, he finds out that Misty is not with them. While trying to see if he missed her in their cell cluster, Rinn triggers another trap and ends up in the cells again. He pops up in the cell with the vampire. Rinn leaves the room again, this time remaining afloat. He finally determines that maybe she is behind the other door to the south. He picks the lock and opens the door. Misty hearing someone pick the lock, hid in the shadows. When the door opened, there were no more shadows as the Sun Sword lit the whole room up. Rinn calls into the room, “Misty, are you in here?”. Misty responds, he tells her to try to float as much as possible to avoid setting off traps. We all make it back to the main room and collect their stuff. Zanfyr morphed back into himself.
Misty climbed onto the platform at the north end of the room. She’s tied off a rope and threw it down for the others to use to climb up. Rinn peaked behind the red velvet curtain to see what was behind it. Haldar started looking at the thrones. There is a door behind the curtain. The thrones, at first glance, are unremarkable. Misty thanks Piddlewick for helping us find our stuff. Rinn echoed the thanks. Piddlewick struck a heroic pose. Dain thanked him and apologized for smashing him, back when he did. Piddlewick gives Dain the stink eye with that statement. Rinn searches the door behind the curtain for traps. Rinn opens the door and exposes a 30 foot square room with a 20 foot high, flat, ceiling. A stone brazier burns fiercely in the center of the room, but it’s tall white flame produces no heat. There are seven cup shaped indentations spaced evenly around the circumference of the room. Within each indentation is a spherical stone, twice the diameter of a human eyeball, and made of colored crystal. No two stones are the same color. Overhead, a wood framed hourglass, as tall and wide as a dwarf, hangs 10 feet above the brazier, suspended from the ceiling by thick iron chains. All the sand is stuck in the upper portion of the hour glass, seeming unable to run down into the bottom. Written in glowing script at the base of the hourglass is a verse in common. Two nine foot tall statues of knights on horse back, poised to charge with swords drawn, stand in alcoves, facing each other, the brazier sits between them. There are three doors to the north.
Rinn carefully moved forward to read the inscription at the base of the hourglass, he doesn’t read it out loud. The script is written In common and glows a little. It reads as;
Violet leads to the mountain spire, Orange to the castle's peak, Red to lore if that you seek, Green to where the coffins hide, Indigo to the master's bride, Blue to ancient magics womb, Yellow to the place of tombs,
A lengthy discussion ensues. Zanfyr suggests that we move to save the bride. Rinn brings up the point that she is likely guarded by Rahadin, and by now, maybe even Strahd. Are we strong enough at this point to take them on. We are very depleted. Kyanna brings up the point that the dead never sleep and are likely moving through the castle looking for us. It is roughly 10:30 at night. We start guessing what the locations truly are. The coffins and tombs create the first bit of confusion. It would seem they take you to the same place which doesn’t seem likely. Is the Red stone for lore maybe the library? Snoggly pointed out that there is no way of knowing that, if we figured out how to use a stone, and if it did teleport us to one of those places, that it would provide a way back from that place so we can go to any other place. Snoggly suggests that we look at the doors first. Rinn moved to look at the doors.
Piddlewick moves to the doors and points above one of them and pretends to be reading a book. Rinn asked if that led to the library? He gave a thumbs up. He moves to the middle door and lays down on the ground and crosses his hands like he is dead. Rinn asked if that is to the coffins or the tomb. He nods his head ”Yes”. At the last door, he ponders a bit and begins making gestures. I couldn’t see the gestures in the audio recording. We made several guesses and never figured out what this one probably was. Ismark walks over to Piddlewick and yanks him up of the ground and begins yelling at him, “Where is my sister!”. Piddlewick is freaking out. Kassamir goes to the middle door and says, “The place where the dead are, no doubt. Come, this is where I leave you if you do not want go here. He cracks open the middle door and you see a set of stairs going up. Rinn says to Ismark, according to the writing on the hourglass, the Indigo stone is tied to the master’s bride but we don’t know how to activate it or what will happen.
There is an item in the artwork that looked like a chest but it’s not in the description so it doesn’t appear to exist.