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====== Curse of Strahd - Session 21 - 04/24/2021 ======

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**Session Summary**

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**Session Details**

We slept the whole day after attacking a werewolf lair, rescuing captives from there, and returning to the tower on Lake Baratok. We expect to be attacked the following evening so rest is the order of the day. Rest for all but three. Dain and Kyana share a dream involving Strahd and his army attacking Argynvosthold and the Paladins of the Silver Order. Though they had a dream, it was not the constant terrorizing that Misty had to endure. As a result, she didn’t get a long rest.

We have a couple of quest that have presented themselves to us. Zuleika wants us to help find her husband Emil. Also Laslo was pleading his case for us to help him find Arabelle. He seeks out help from Ezmerelda, hoping she can use her Vistani skills to do a reading and hopefully locate Arabelle that way. Ezmerelda says she can do a reading, but she is not as good at it as Maddam Eva. Her interpretations may be wrong as readings are usually vague and not specific. It is left to the person doing the reading to try and determine the actual meanings. 

We began discussing strategies for the coming battle and ways we could try and use this tower for the fight that we think is coming. It is finally decided that we will meet our enemy just outside the tower and fight them there. Archers would remain in the tower on the forth floor and fight from a position of safety. If we should when the battle, then we would head to Argynvosthold. 

When trying to determine what to do with the others, Ezmerelda offers to take Laslo and help him find information on what happened to Arabelle. She doesn’t really want much to do with the werewolves. She said the Vistani might be willing to help then as they have a way of determining someone’s true nature. Of course, if we kill the pack, then these werewolves can take over the den. 

As the night gets later, we can hear the wolves howling as they stir. Some of us took up hiding spaces outside. For the time being, since Dain is going to be at the front of the melee combat, Kyana gave Khazan orders to follow Dain’s commands. Dain placed him outside the front door of the tower. As we are waiting, expecting the wolves to come to us following the path, from the east, that we took to get here, we were surprised to see movement from the west instead. We see a man slowly walking through the woods. 

Misty peaks over the side of the scaffolding she is standing on and calls down, in a loud whisper, “Haldar!”. Haldar responds and she tells him of the person that she sees walking from the west to the east near the end of the causeway. Haldar moves to investigate. Misty lets Rinn know by virtue of the message spell he is keeping open with her. Haldar tries to move to a position where the person will walk by near to him while he is hidden. As Haldar gets settled, he hears the sound of wolves coming from the east. He spots them about 90 feet away tracking their prey. When he can finally gets a better look at the person, he sees a soldier in tattered clothing. Suspecting that he might be undead, Haldar gives him a second look. Though he doesn’t have the walk or bearing of an undead, Haldar gets the since that he is, in fact, an undead. 

Seeing that the man is not a potential ally, Haldar begins moving back to the tower, being hyper aware of the action going on behind him. Misty can also see now, two large werewolves making their way to the tree line and they stop the wolves advance, drawing them back to the woods. They stand watching the tower. Misty lets Rinn know they are there. Rinn moves to all sides of the fourth floor to see if he can see anyone else advancing from the other three sides. He sees no unusual movement in the water. 

The werewolf group is getting larger and three of the wolves move towards the undead person. As the wolves get within sight of the person, he pulls his sword and charges the wolves. Haldar can only barely make out some action back there. Misty, with the spy glass, is able to see better. The first wolf that gets near the man, pays with his live as the man decapitates him. A werewolf takes a couple of swipes at him, hitting him and pushing him back a little. The man fights back and when he hits, the wolf howls in pain. The werewolves begin running in retreat howling something. 

Zuleika moves out to the causeway, listening. The man starts charging at the retreating wolves but puts his sword away at slows to a very deliberate, double time, pace. Haldar reports back to Misty that the man was undead. She tells him what happened on the field. Zuleika comes over to find out what went on as she states, the call we heard from the werewolves was a desperate call of retreat. They tell her about the man and the short battle. Zuleika tells the group that Kiril is basically a coward and will not stand up to a fight like that. Even though there is only one of the man, his opening salvo seems to have scared away the werewolves. There was a brief speculation that the man might have been Rudolph but Ezmerelda says the sword means it is not likely that it is Rudolph.  

Haldar suggest that we track it. Her and Ezmerelda start doing just that. Misty joins them. Zanfyr morphs into a Gaint Spider and also joins them. They make their way to the end of the causeway. The man is in the wood line and stops to look at the group as they approach. His sword is put away and he doesn’t charge. He walks up to within 30 feet of the group. He pulls the sword and points it at the group and says, “Whom do you serve?”. Haldar responds, “I serve no one!”. Ezmerelda pulls her weapons and while brandishing them says, “I server all who oppose evil!”. The man finally puts his sword away.

Haldar starts asking question, who are you to which he replys, I do not remember. Haldar asks, why do you hunt the wolves to which the man replies, “I hunt all servants of Strahd von Zarovich, as do my order!”. When asked about his order, he replies that he is of the Order of the Silver Dragon. Already sensing that the man was undead, Ezmerelda reminded everyone that the Order of the Silver Dragon was wiped out 400 years ago. The man says, “Indeed, and yet, here I am!”. Haldar does tell him that we do not server Strahd. He basically tells the group that the wolves were tracking something and he wanted to see what they were tracking. Haldar tells him, “They were tracking us!”. 

He tells us that he is awaiting orders from his commander, Commander Vladimir Hornguard, to attack the castle. He said we must seek him out at Argynvosthold, convince him that now is the time to2 strike. Haldar asks where this force if his. The man replies, “Many reside at the stronghold but others like me, wonder the land, doing what we can!”. Haldar tells him that we need to destroy the wolves. He tells us that he will destroy the wolves. No, the need at the stronghold is more urgent. Perhaps we can convince Commander Hornguard that now is the time to attack. Hearing the wolves howling in the distance, he turns to the group and tells him the wolves are calling to him and that they will not survive the evening. 
  
He moves off to the east toward the wolves den at that very deliberate pace. The group returns to inform the others. We all come down from the tower. Piddlewick seems dejected when he hears there will not be a battle today. We tell him that there is a bigger battle to fight and that if he stays with us, he can fight in that one. Ezmerelda is going to take those that are not in the fight with he to the Vistani camp with some continuing on to Vallaki. She’s a little disheartened, leaving the group. She’s never really had companions before except Rudolph. We tell her to catch up to us as we’ll be heading to Argynvosthold. Dain and Kyana hear the name and recognize the name of Vladimir Hornguard as the leader of the Order of the Silver Dragon. It’s a good days travel to Argynvosthold. We decided to head off, Dain puts the suit of armor, Khazan, away in the tower and off we go. 

As the theme from Shock Theater plays in the background, we approach the citadel around 10:30 the following morning. High above the river valley juts a quiet promontory, upon which looms a sepulchral mansion. It’s turrets are capped with fairytale cones. Its towers collapsed. Another third of the structure has collapsed. The rest appears intact. A dark octagonal tower rises above the surrounding architecture. Out of the fog comes a distant peal of thunder quickly accompanied by the howling of wolves in the woods. The house stands silent, seeming like to fossilized remains of some long dead thing smote upon the mountain side. (Shew, who really wrote that).

As we approach, we see, perched upon a 10 foot wide 10 foot high cube of granite is a moss covered statue of a dragon, it’s wings tucked close to it’s body. The statue faces east, toward the mansion. There is a tall set of flagstone stairs leading up to the tall wooden doors with rusted iron bands and knockers shaped like dragons. Above the entrance are the words, Agrynvosthold. We discussed why we were coming here in the first place. Kyana reminded us it was to retrieve the holy symbol in the hands of someone who wasn’t corrupt but now is. We start heading to the steps, Dain going first. But then Snoggly and Misty turn to take a closer look at the dragon statue. It looks like worn stone. Guessing that it is likely a silver dragon modeling Argynvost. Snoggly searches for any writing and finds none. He taps on it with his staff as he walks around it. Heraring nothing but solid stone, they give up and head towards the door with the rest.

Dain finishes going up the stairs and as he reaches the top landing, a cone of frosty breath comes out of the dragon statue. Fortunately, it’s a only a cold breeze and doesn’t cause any damage. Dain reaches out uses the knocks with the knockers and the door opens from the impact. Dain starts calling out to see if he gets an answer as he makes his way in. The room is large with steps in the back leading up to two landing, one on either side. Dain calls out again and still receives no response. There are six sets of doors, and two large chandeliers hanging in there.

They all enter the room as Dain begins moving across the room, looking all about. As we are standing there, there is a sweeping dragon shadow that moves across the room, quickly, as if a dragon flew by overhead. The ceiling is covered though. Dain calls out again, “Vladimir Hornguard! We have come to join you in your quest to destroy Strahd von Zarovich! Are you here?”. With no response, he moves deeper into the mansion and calls out again. Still no response. Haldar opens one of the doors and sees a lot of rubble strewn across the area, from the floor above which have collapsed, and giant spiders, in spider webs. He backs up and closes the door.

Misty moves to another door and listens. Rinn also moves to back up Misty, Dain moves over there to. Misty backs up and lets Rinn steps up and checks the door for traps. He uses his mage hand to open the door. Looking into the room, Rinn sees a wood paneled den. It has been ransacked already. Standing upright, leaning against the north wall is a sarcophagus, made of black wood with the queens effigy carved into it. Rinn doesn’t see anything else of interest in the room.

He moves to the sarcophagus and checks it, Piddlewick comes up behind him and searches as well, almost mimicking Rinn. Rinn doesn’t see a trap but gathers that it is used a lot. He speculates that this could be a secret door but Snoggly suggest that it may be the liquor cabinet. Rinn uses the mage hand to pull it open. Now we see that Snoggly was correct, it was a wine cabinet. He does find a not so well concealed, secret compartment. We find barrels of wine. It’s the good stuff from the Wizard of Wines Whinery. We’ll leave it for now and come back for it later. There is another secret door in the room. Rinn checks it and opens it. 

The room is a kitchen that has also been ransacked. Looking through the utensils Rinn finds tarnished silver which we gather for use to make more weapons later if necessary. Rinn finds a hot ember in the fireplace. We try to determine if it’s recent or has it been here for a long time. Misty uses her staff to move it a little and it sinks into the ashes. She stirs up the ashes to see it again and it appears to be making it’s way back to the top. We play around with it a bit to see what we can make of it. Eventually, Misty takes a twig and pokes the ember. That is when it changed into a smokey, translucent dragon. It flew out of the door and back into the main room. We rushed to follow it, but it moved up to the balcony and behind the curtain at the end of the hallway. 

Kyana moves up on to the other balcony. As we moved to where it disappeared behind the curtain, we find a spiral staircase, that goes higher. We end up checking the door that leads to the floor about the spider area. There doesn’t appear to be anything in the room intact. We close the door and move further around the balcony. Kyana looks at the curtain on the other balcony and find another set of spiral stairs. We get to another door heading into a back hallway. Rinn moves up to a door there. Kyana finds a hallway that is broken off part way down., She moves to look out of the door to find the hill, or at least what looks like the hill, from the dream where they assaulted the castle.

Snoggly and Haldar moved to the second floor on Kyana’s side. Rinn listens at a door and doesn’t hear anything. Misty follows suit and also doesn’t hear anything. Rinn asked if Piddlewick would like to listen an in his excitement, he moved up and basically pushed everyone out of the way for he could listen. You could see he was taking this job very seriously. Whenh asked if he heard anything, he nodded his head with enthusiasm as if to indicate that he had, but then turn that into a sad looking head shake indicating he hadn’t. The room appears to be a bathroom with a big iron tub. There is another room that we speculate might be another bathroom, One for him and one for her.

Rinn moves to another door and checks it and opens it. It opens onto a balcony with a large room below. There is a spiral staircase. As he looks down, he sees that on the east end, there is a stone alter flanked by candelabras. On the alter is carved the rising run relief. Tall stained-glass windows decorate the wall behind the alter. One of the windows is shattered covering the floor with shards of colored glass. A thick fog comes into the room through that opening and fills the room. Everything looks solid so Rinn steps into the room a little way and looks to the staircase. It looks okay. On the main floor though, he can now see three armored figures kneeling before the alter.