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====== Eyeballs, Spiders and Figures, Oh My! ======

==== Curse of Strahd - Session 25 - 05/22/2021 ====

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**Session Summary**

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**Session Details**

Session 25 – 2021-05-22

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Session Summary




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Session Details

Dain starts the session by blaming Snoggly for this situation, knowing deep down inside that his own utterance of the word “Coward” is actually to blame, but blaming the drunk did have provide a cathartic release! Haldar moves to a position where he can make use of his bow and proceeds to smack Vladimir for a good deal of damage. Snoggly casts Mirror Image on himself. (brief explanation of how that spell works now) Rinn is still down. Misty casts a Darkness spell and moves to encompass two of the enemy. Vladimir makes his saving throw against Zanfyr’s Moonbeam and still takes a little damage. Vlad then takes a swipe at Snoggly. He manages to find the real Snoggly and swipes at him and misses twice.

The undead being near Rinn reaches down and stabilizes Rinn, why? Kyana does some radiant damage against Vlad. She gets attacked by the undead creature next to her, she is hit twice. Zanfyr Moves to a position to fire a bow at Vlad and misses. One of the undead makes his way out of the darkness and stumbled onto Haldar. He attacks and hits him twice. Dain touches himself for some healing and then stands up and casts a sanctuary on Kyana. 

Haldar moves out of the enemy’s range and fires at Vlad missing one and hitting with a critical on the second shot. Makes up for the miss. Sticks him for quite a bit of damage. Snoggly fires a host of magic missiles at Vlad. Rinn is still down. Misty hits several times. Zanfyr fires and hits for a bunch of radiant damage. Snoggly is attacked twice and hit one of those. Misty is attacked by one of the undead creatures and missed. Kyana attacks Vlad and hits him with a lot of radiant damage and puts him down. 

With the demise of Vlad, the rest of the undead fell quickly. Dain picks up the great sword dropped by Vlad. It is a very nice sword. Kyana casts a heal on everyone. Mist dismisses the darkness. Snoggly identifies the sword as a +2, great sword. We search the room. We find an amulet that Vlad dropped. We discussed destroying the chair he had been sitting in.  We went back to the room with Sir Godfrey Gwilym. It took a moment, but we finally managed to get Gwilym’s attention. He still refuses to go after Strahd absent the order to do so coming from Commander Hornguard. Standing there with Hornguards sword, Gwilym says that he doesn’t have the power to destroy Hornguard. That Hornguard will likely hunt him to regain his sword.

After some more discussion, it is decided that we need to find the witches and find the skull of Argynvost and return his bones to the light house room. We discuss going to Tsolenka Pass and look at our maps to determine where that is. Before we leave, Dain returns the sword and the amulet to the Vladimir’s chair. As he does so, a feeling comes over him that maybe, though they intended to search the chair, had they actually done so? It is searched and a metal box is found. Rinn uses Mage Hand to pull the box out. He checks it and opens it. Within, we find an amulet. 
It is the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. The amulet has 10 charges and can be recharged. Using 1 charge, you can cast Hold Vampire. Expending 3 charges, you can give disadvantage on the saving throw roll, against your “turn undead” or unholy. For 5 charges, you can use an action to cast Sunlight. It casts a bright light in a 30 foot sphere and dim light for an additional 30 feet. The light is sunlight and lasts for 10 minutes or until you end the effect. This is the holy symbol we were seeking. It is for use by Cleric’s or Paladins that are good. It is decided that it is best carried by Kyana. We put the box back and set everything to look as if we never found it, leaving the sword and amulet on the chair.

We leave the mansion and head south towards the cemetery area to find the missing second Gem. As we make our way south, the temperature warms. We journey for about 5-6 miles. The road slowly gives way to the grass as we get to less travelled areas. Kyana moves away from the party a little, searching for herbs and plants to use with her herbalism kit. The group slows to give her time to look for them. As it gets dark, we travel for another couple of miles and picked a spot for Snoggly to cast the Tiny Hut spell. We all go enter and have a long rest. 

In back thinking back and counting the number of days since we were told that Strahd was coming to the Abby, Dain realizes that it has been 5 days. We are out of time to make it back for that. He brings it up to the party and after some discussion, we agree that we don’t have what we need to challenge Strahd. We’ve decided that it would be best for us to return the beacon of light to the Silver Dragon’s home. Then we’ll need the Sun Sword.

The land changes to a swampy marshy plain. Haldar notices that in the trees in this area, there are tombstones. Haldar alerts everyone else and once it’s pointed out, it’s very obvious to everyone. He climbs up a tree to look at some. Any writing on them is so worn that it can’t be made out. There is something red smeared on them. They are just perched there. He decides to knock one out of the tree. It breaks on the way down. 

After examining it, it’s determined that it’s not magical, but ritual. Zanfyr recognizes it as something used to ward away evil spirits. We aren’t able to determine if it’s blood or a paste made from berries in the area. It could be either. Haldar tries to sense the undead to see if he can determine what might be around here. The whole area has a taint to it but at 3-4 miles away, he does sense an undead presence. Also, around us, in all directions, especially where we are headed, he sensed them. 

Haldar then tries to see if he can find a pattern to the placement of the stones. The fog is dense and getting more so. Across the river, it’s clear and we don’t see anything. On this side of the river, the stones are perched in trees for about 50 feet. Past that, southward, we don’t see any more. To the west, are steep mountain sides. It would be difficult to climb. Zanfyr questions the scene, does this look like the work of druids? He determines that it does. Haldar believes this is exactly what we are looking for. Snoggly’s concern seemed to be centered on the winery using the gem to make whiskey.

We still move southward, the trail hugs the river for several miles, and we come upon a swampy area with peasant cottages that are basically more ruins than cottages. Black clouds of flies dart about, hungry for blood. The fog is much lighter on the other side of the river. The mud will slow our movement as our feet sink into the marshy soil crating a suction as you try to pull your feet out. We also start to see red scarves in the trees. Zanfyr tries to examine the ribbons. They are too far to see any finer details

Misty climbs the tree and as she nears the ribbon, she sees a large bird’s nest. She sees little round shiny things in it. She starts making her way to it. After it is pointed out, the rest of them can see it and are waiting on Misty to check it out. As she gets closer, she can see shiny eye balls, 10 or 15 of them, in the nest. She also starts hearing these whispers in her head, voices telling her to “beware” and “go back”. She starts backing away from the nest while Dain, see her sudden retreat, moves beneath he in case she needs to be caught. The party below asks her what she sees and she describes it. 

Trying to knock it from the tree, Haldar sends an arrow through it. When that doesn’t work, Snoggly and Rinn use their mage hands and pull the nest from the tree, and then Rinn uses his skills with the mage hand to untie and bring down the ribbon from the tree. We work together to bring it down without damaging it. The ribbon is about 10-15 feet long with no writing on it. We search the nest and try to determine what the eyeballs belonged to. They are a mixture of eyes from different creatures, including but not limited to Humans, Cats, Dogs, and other animals.    

We speculate on why the eyes might be there, we wondered if the eyes might be used as a portal to see who it here but they weren’t really facing down to see us. We didn’t hear the whispers that Misty heard. Snoggly uses his mage hand to pick up one of the eyeballs and examines it. Outside of the piler, it has a transparent quality to it. He finally determines that it’s glass. He tr5ies the ritual detect magic but doesn’t detect anything. Again, after some debate, the consensus is that it is something ritualistic, or maybe birds are finding these and placing the shiny things in their nest. Rinn decides to take them, if for no other reason than to irritate someone.  

As we finish this up, we start seeing giant spiders moving across the ground. We also spot about 5 or 6 figures coming down out of the marsh. They are upright but it’s unclear what they are.

Then, the great wait occurs.