= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Session 27 – 2021-06-19

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Session Summary

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Session Details

We start off after having completed a battle with witches and walking scarecrows?

Looking further down the field, from the battleground, we see more scarecrows. We ran into another of those weird flowers and went on a burning spree. Snoggly and Rinn firebolt it to get rid of it. Rinn turns and throws a firebolt at the scarecrow closest to him. It hits! Snoggly throws a firebolt at it as well. Initiatives were called for. The scarecrows are animating. Haldar sharp shoots the one we hit with firebolts. Rinn is captured in the gaze of a scarecrow and is suddenly paralyzed with fear.

Snoggly throws another firebolt at one of them. Dain moves up a little and fires two crossbow bolts and hits with each. Misty double moves towards Rinn, and hip checks him out of the way. Then she tears into that scarecrow, literally. It’s down. There are still more on the way. Kyana doesn’t see any of these creatures standing or moving. She moves forward to see if she can see anything. Kyana scanning the area and taking note of her companions, does see that Rinn is down. Zanfyr moves forward to see what he can see.

Haldar can see better than anyone and can see that more scarecrows are moving toward us. He lets us know and starts firing. Rinn is un-feared now and realizing that it was the gaze that caused it, calls out to the others to avoid the gaze. He moves forward and gets within sight of one of the scarecrows. Upon seeing it, he throws a firebolt and hits it. Snoggly moves dashes forward. Dain dashes forward, still unable to see anything. Misty dashes forward and tosses a potion of darkvision to Snoggly. Kyana moves forward and casts a sacred flame at it. Zanfyr moves forward. Rinn is feared again by the next one.

Haldar fires at one and hits. Snoggly drinks the darkvision potion, chased by a wee sip of rheumatism medicine. A scarecrow targets Snoggly and he is feared as well. Dain fires a couple of shots at one. Misty throws two daggers at one and hits with both. Kyana casts scorching ray, throwing two at one of the scarecrows and one at another. One of them drops. Zanfyr throws a Web from his giant spider form but misses. Kyana saves her fear check. In the distance, Kyana and Misty hear a lot of birds in distress in the distance.

Haldar fires on one and hits all shots and drops another. Rinn and Snoggly snap out of their fear and Dain moves up towards Rinn as that is as far as he can get and it’s only then that he can see one of them. Misty climbs up into a tree and hides, waiting on one to pass. Kyana attacks the nearby giant spider, at least that’s what the gods want but she comes to her senses and doesn’t attack Zanfyr after all. Haldar hears a sound coming from behind a wall. Kyana moves out far enough to see one of them and fires and hits. Zanfyr sees Kyana fire and realizes that she must be able to see something.

Haldar sees something golemesc climb up to the edge of the wall of the remains of the building near by. It doesn’t seem to be looking at him but at more in the direction of the rest of the group. Haldar casts Zepher Strike and stealth’s quickly to the back of the building and looks at the figure from that opening. It’s in old, tattered clothing and waist coat. He is barefooted, has a greyish skin. He takes a moment to study it and determines that he’s like the boy in the basement of the St. Andral’s church in Vallaki. He appears to be some sort of vampiric thing. Haldar withdraws quietly. He then indicates this to the others as best he can, without drawing a lot of attention. Rinn sticks with the scarecrow he is fighting, firebolts it again and then uses his movement and bonus action to back away from it. Snoggly cast Protection From Good and Evil on himself. He then backs up a little. Dain moves a little closer to the enemy and fires on one and hits it. Misty holds her action and prepares to pounce on an approaching enemy. Kyana casts fireball on the remaining scarecrows. Zanfyr holds his ground.

More of the group hear the sound of the birds in distress. Rinn and Dain are still oblivious to that sound. Those that hear the sounds begin to realize that they haven’t seen a raven in a while, not since Argynvosthold. Haldar moves to an angle where he can see if the vampire is still up on the wall. He can’t see him so Haldar fires at another scarecrow and hits. Rinn moves a little and firebolts a scarecrow. Snoggly follows suit and firebolts one which falls. Dain move up under the tree where Misty is hiding and fires on the last standing scarecrow. Misty stays where she is. Kyana fires and misses. Zanfyr used a real dice and recharges his Web. One of the scarecrows finally moves into range of Misty’s pounce and she leaps from the tree and shreds it.

A conversation breaks out among the players as they try to determine if Rinn’s multi class status limits his firebolt to the rogue class limiting him to one firebolt of based off of his character level in which case, he sends two. After googling about it and taking a moment to research it, we find it uses the character level meaning Rinn does the fifth level damage and not the lower damage. Yay!

Now we turn our attention to the vampire. Kyana moves her way around towards the back of the building. Dain tries to keep the attention on him as he moves around the battlefield where the fighting has taken place so far. Kyana looks inside the building and sees the vampire has climbed higher. He’s looking out but he appears to be looking into the sky instead of the battlefield. Kyana stealth’s within range to use the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind against it. Haldar moves within range to fire on it. We roll new initiatives.

Haldar fires on the vampire and hits it. Kyana uses the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind but he manages to save against it. She moves behind Haldar for a little protection. Snoggly fires 4 charges from the wand of magic missiles against it. Rinn moves to a more advantageous position and fires and hits it. Misty picks up her daggers, walks by the giant spider and pets Zanfyr. Dain fires a crossbow shot and hits it. Zanfyr drops the giant spider form and casts moonbeam on the vampire and he takes damage as he drops from the wall and moves to another upper corner and looks off beyond us.

We look to the sky as well and we see the skull of a dragon moving down through the air and inside i=of it is a figure, a woman, standing inside the skull sticking partially out of it. Her voice calls down a warning, “Depart Berez at this time, you’ll receive no other warning”.

Haldar takes a couple of shots at the vampire, and it falls from the wall, inside the building. As Kyana moves to stake it, the woman in the skull begins to withdraw from wince she came. As the stake enters the vampire’s chest, it lurches with one final gasp of pain and then its form shifts to that of a handsome young man who smiles and says, “Bless you!” before withering away. The woman in the dragon skull seemed to move in the direction of the ravens cawing. From where he stood, Zanfyr noticed a small fenced in area with some sort of quadra ped moving around in it.

Kyana notices some sort of message scrawled into the wall of the building where we killed the vampire. The messages is written in Barovian common tongue and reads, “Begone, I beseech you!”. It is written in a other places, and we see written in a couple of other places messages that read, “Fogive me Morena!”. She points out the messages to Haldar who is nearby. As he starts looking at these, they notice other writings. One says, “I’m sorry!”. The vampire left nothing behind.

Kyana and Haldar search the area. Haldar finds a trap door. He opens the door and looks down. There are stairs leading downward. He pauses to get everyone to join him in searching this. The stairs are covered in dust and look as though nothing has been down here in a very long time. Snoggly casts light on a stone and tosses it down into the chamber below. He sees the lower halves of some barrels before the stone bounces out of sight. Haldar suggest this might be something that Rinn would like to take the lead on. He agreed and as he moved to the door, Haldar caught up to everyone and relayed what he had seen of the animal moving inside a fenced in area, just ahead. We decided to finish up in this building before investigating that.

Rinn checked the stairs for traps and made his way down into the room. It’s a storeroom and the barrels and boxes have rotted, and their contents have been spilled. As he scopes out the rest of the room for some sort of exit, and none are readily apparent. The barrels bare the mark of the Wizard of Wines and are identified as Champagne du le stomp. Rinn gives it a good toss before determining that there appears to be nothing of note down here. We move around the building some more and see more of the writings, one stating, “Beware the devil!”. Another read, “Killroy was here!”. Yet another said, “He is truly, the Ancient and the Land!”.

We decide to move towards the animal in the fenced area that Zanfyr mentioned earlier. It was then that the map presented, on the table, began to change, as the hand of the Gods moved items around within the world we were standing on. We move forward a little and start to see the fenced in area with the animal moving around and something else, gravestones perhaps? There are about 9 of the animals in the fenced in area. The creatures appear to be goats. We also see, on the tops of the fence posts, human skulls. There seems to be no gate. Also, closer but still distant, we can here the Ravens cawing. As Haldar moves closer to investigate the fenced area, Rinn maintains a message spell with him so he can let us know what he sees.

The goats appear to be normal. He tells Rinn that what he is seeing, and the rest of the group begins moving forward. Rinn checks to see what if left there for the goats to eat and notices the ground around them is mostly bare. There are, however, some piles of hay or straw. Apparently, someone is feeding them. We move towards the graveyard to investigate that. Zanfyr sees a large structure and coming from it, a little light. In looking at the gravestones, Dain sees that they are very old and any writing that would have been on them has, since worn away. They don’t stand straight but lean a little in different directions.

We start to move towards the area with the Ravens but Kyana points out that we are very low on spells and decided to rest before we move forward. We moved back to the building where we fought the vampire and Snoggly casts the tiny pizza hut spell and we set up to rest. Rinn takes the fist watch along with Boo. Boo starts to see this Yellowish mist starts to roll in, over the walls and through the doors. It’s yellow and looks like a noxious cloud crawling along the ground and weaving its way into the room we are in.

As we are awakened by alerts from Boo, we notice the woman in the skull returning. As we wake, we hear her say, “You were warned, now you shall die!”. She dispels the dome, and the cloud begins to invade our space. The Gods have decreed that we did complete a short rest.