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Collapsing Balcony Plus Vampires

Curse of Strahd
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Session 58 – 2022-05-07

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Session Summary

We are in a dining hall with Rinn inspecting a door in the back of the room when Snoggly and Kassamir notice two Flameskulls behind us. The Flameskulls didn’t notice us at first, but became aware of us when Snoggly magic missile’d them. Haldar immediately surrendered. In a short period of time, we took care of them. Ezmerelda and Rinn moved back to the door coming in from the steps and saw the glow of another Flameskull, Rinn used a mage hand and closed the door. Everyone prepared for the Flameskull to come through the door, but nothing happened. Dain used a piton to block the door. We went back to the dining room and closed the door. Zanfyr suggested blocking the door to the dining room with a chair but when Dain reached for the chair, he found it to be insubstantial. So, Dain took a few feet of his rope and tied the door handles together. Dain checked the table and found that it was real.  

Rinn opened the door to the balcony and looked to the chamber below and seeing it empty of critters, made his way to the other door on the balcony. He checked it and carefully opened it. He glanced in the room and saw no lighting. While glancing behind him, a green light appeared to be getting brighter from the archway below. Haldar moved to a position to cover him. Rinn opened the door more and peered in but still couldn’t see much. There was a wall blocking his view of the rest of the room. Rinn moved in far enough to finally get a good look at the room. This room appears to house a shrine to the west. Candle sticks covered in cobwebs stand in each corner. In the shrine area, a faceless obsidian statue stands in a raised alcove. There are two desiccated corpses in tattered garments lying on the floor in front of it.  That should have been Rinn’s first clue that something was wrong. There are also alcoves to the north and south in the shrine area.

Rinn became enamored by the statue and began moving towards it. Outside the room, Haldar saw the green glow from the archway get brighter as a Flameskull came into view. Haldar ambushed it for 72 points of damage and it expired immediately. Haldar checked on Rinn. He saw Rinn was standing in front of the shrine and that he was not responding to his queries. As he moved up, he saw the statue and fortunately, for the whole party, Haldar saved against it. He averted his eyes and pulled Rinn back to the other half of the room. He is turned from the statue as Haldar tried to get him to snap out of it. He was still dazed. Dain was at the door listening and watching, not hearing anything, he decided to make his way to the room. Esmerelda decided to move then as well. The weight of the two of them caused the balcony to collapse and they dropped into the chamber below. After he got up and looked around, he saw the Flameskull that Haldar had slain recently. He looked for green glowing light and didn’t see any. Haldar, hearing all the noise, grabbed Rinn and began moving out of the room.

Esmerelda began making her way back to the stairs to go back up to rejoin the others. Haldar managed to get Rinn away from the statue and Rinn finally snapped out of it. There was another door in that room we didn’t check. Haldar started to fall, as more of the balcony started to crumble away. He and Rinn both reacted by catching each other and managed to not fall. Rinn moved back into the room with the statue, not looking at it, started checking the other door in the room. He opened the door and found a narrow room with a seat and an arrow slit in the south wall. He checked the room for secret doors and didn’t find any. He suddenly felt compelled to return to the statue again. Haldar fires at it with his bow but doesn’t hurt it.  Haldar calls to the others to get some help for Rinn. Zanfyr and Misty responded and quickly became enamored by the statue as well. Haldar tried to get Rinn to snap out of it but didn’t succeed. Then, Haldar covered the statue with his cloak. That was enough to break them out of being compelled to look at this statue. We all left the room and Haldar retrieved his cloak. The two bodies appeared to have been wizards and two scorch marks on the floor nearby appeared to be books that were blasted. He guessed that they were their spell books. He retrieved his cloak and as he did, Misty and Rinn suddenly felt compelled to return to the statue again. This time Haldar used a blanket instead of the cloak to cover it.  

Rinn searched the dining room for secret doors, finding none, they went back downstairs to the door on the southern wall. Kyanna gave Dain 5 flasks of holy water for future Flameskull destruction. Back on the main floor now, we check the door on the southern wall in the side room. We were unable to open it. We did find out that Esmerelda has a knock spell. We moved back into the main floor to the southern door. Sprinkled holy water on the Flameskull lying there, destroying it. Rinn checked the door and determining there were no traps, moved to one side to open the door with his mage hand. Dain moved in front of the door. Should anything come out, he’ll be the first person they see. The door opened and we are struck by the stench of death. Stone niches along the walls hold human shaped amber husks, bones, and tattered shrouds. It’s dark and as Dain enters, the candles in the alcoves around the center of the room, ignite. Rinn searches one of the niches and finds nothing of note, no writing or markings associated with the Niches. The bodies appear to be very old and so fragile that if you touched them, they would likely collapse into dust. We check for footprints and find none. We inspect the two smaller chambers to the West and East of this room. There are eleven unfilled niches in one of the chambers.  The candles are lit by something that looks like flame but isn’t hot, so it’s not really a flame. Snoggly moved one of the candlestands and nothing happened. He removed a single candle, and nothing happened. As he inspected the bodies, they were all dressed pretty much the same way. We check some of the alcoves for secret openings and the outer walls for secret doors. Nothing! 

We left that chamber and headed across the main chamber to the treasure room and to the room with the six crates. Dain, Rinn, Snoggly and Zanfyr cast Protection from Good and Evil on themselves before entering the room. Snoggly announced our presence with an opening Fireball. It encompassed all of the crates. The boxes erupt with vampires jumping out of them. Haldar cast Zepher Strike and moved to the middle of the room on his way to the stairs. From there he fired at one of the vampires. Kyanna moved into the room and brandished the Holy Symbol of Raven Kind, it flared and several of the vampires were paralyzed. Misty moved rapidly behind one of the vampires and opened up a can of whoop-ass on it. Snoggly sent another fireball into the room damaging all of them, killing one of them. The one on Misty attacked her and hit her once but wasn’t too severe. Kassamir attacked, Dain followed up on the same one. Zanfyr turned into a hell hound and used his fire breath on the Vampire on Misty. Rinn moved to the vampire on Dain and finished it off. He moves to the Vampire nearest Kyanna and attacked it.

We stop here and pre-gain experience.