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Step Into My Parlor

Curse of Strahd 

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Session 73 – 2022-10-08

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Archers work on the heart while the rest of us take on the Halberds. Haldar eventually takes out the heart. The rest of us clean up the Halberds. Danika flies up with Ezmerelda during the battle. One of the Halberds actually hits Misty, having rolled a critical, and shockingly, the DM didn’t roll a 1 on his damage roll. She takes a good sized hit. Outside, we hear a loud, Nazgûl like, shriek from something that sounds very large. Danika moves to the opening further up the tower and fly’s off. Rinn continues up the tower to the exit that Danika flew out of, and stepping into the opening, looks around to see what is happening outside. He see’s a large figure, bat like, high up in the sky engaged with two Wereravens. He guesses it’s about 15 feet tall with a wingspan much larger than the two Wereravens attacking it. It’s still a good 60 feet away. From this vantage point, Rinn is standing on the cusp of a bridge leading from this tower to another about 20 feet away. There is another tower to the east of that one. There are no rails on the bridge. He also see’s two or three figures crawling up and down the tower walls. Rinn calls down to Haldar and Kyanna to come up and see about helping Wereravens.

As Haldar moves up to look out of the opening, he see’s Ezmerelda moving further up the stairs to a dimly lighted area just out of sight. Haldar calls up to her to ask were she is going. She’d shushed him and kept stealthily moving up the stairs. Zanfyr and Misty both see this and move up behind her. Haldar, looking out of the opening that Rinn was at, opens up a can of whoop-ass on the giant flying beast. It lets out a horrifying shriek as it appears to be hit. Haldar also see’s the creatures crawling along the walls. Rinn increases the brightness of the daylight from the Sunsword. Ezmerelda enters the room at the top of the stairs. There are manacles on the wall and a wood framed bed fitted with leather restraints in the room. There is a closed Iron chest. The lid is sculpted with some sort of emblem. There is a wooden ladder leading up to a closed trap door in the ceiling. Thin streams of water drip through the trap doors rotting wood, making a little puddle on the floor below it.  Zanfyr and Misty follow her upstairs. Ezmerelda turns to see Zanfyr and says, there appears to be no one here

The vampires keep moving around the outside of the tower staying out of the light of the Sunsword. Haldar takes a step out on the bridge. The wind is very strong up here, making it very dangerous to be out there. He fires on the beast that the Wereravens are fighting, hitting it once. Kyanna steps to the edge of the door and fires and hits as well. They both did more than 50 points of damage. Rinn expanded the sunswords light range to its maximum of 30 feet bright daylight and 30 feet of lessor daylight. The beast lets out a loud shriek again and we hear a like shriek coming from somewhere above and to the west of  the tower, out of sight of rest of us. Ezmerelda asked why Zanfyr and Misty decided to check the chest in the room they were in. Neither can unlock the chest so they’ll get Rinn to check it out in a bit. Meanwhile, we roll for initiatives again.

Haldar fires on the beast once. Rinn remains in the opening of the tower with the bright Sunsword expanded to it’s maximum brightness. He is trying to keep the vampires away. The beast suddenly swoops down on us and attempts a flyby attack on Haldar. He does hit him with the claw portion of the attack and lifts back up and away on the other side of the attack. The two Wereravens gave chase close behind the beast. Kyanna hits the beast again. Misty moves down to the stairs below the rest of the group and watches the stairs below. Snoggly and Zanfyr also take up positions to watch for anyone coming from behind. Haldar fires and hits twice. Rinn moves to a better position to be able to take a swipe at it should to attempt a flyby attack on Haldar again. The beast flew off and out of sight and we hear the main creature shriek and the response from the other beast we haven’t seen yet. 

Haldar hears some clambering above him. As he looks up, he sees a Wereraven engaged with one of the vampire creatures that is about 50 feet above him. He pivots and fires on it. Rinn holds to the edge of the opening and sticks the Sunsword out far enough to light up everything within 60 feet, lighting up the vampire that Haldar fired on. Kyanna holds her action to fire on the creature should it fly by again. Misty is watching down the stairs to make sure nothing is coming up. Snoggly and Zanfyr are doing that as well. The Wereravens that were fighting the giant bat creature chased it around the tower. The vampire above us moves up and around the curvature of the tower, away from the light of the Sunsword. Haldar crosses the bridge to the next tower. As he reaches the next tower, he finds himself on the roof and can see a staircase going down. The tower to the east is yet taller than this one, and he can see no entry point at this level. He stands waiting for a target.

Rinn continues to watch for anything to hit, he continues holding the sword out to keep the light outside hopefully forcing the vampires to stay back. The creature suddenly comes into view and flys directly at Haldar with great speed. Kyanna, who was holding her action, fires at it and misses. Haldar fires his held shots as well and hits twice. It attacks Haldar and scores two hits. It grapples Haldar dragging him close to the edge of the bridge while sucking blood from his body. The creature recoils from the light of the Sunsword, letting go of Haldar and flying off. Zanfyr states out loud, that we need to shift our attention back to finding Strahd. Rinn mentioned that maybe Arabelle can tell us where he is. That prompted a discussion about where Luvash, Arabelle, and the rest are. Ezmerelda reminds us what we already know. “The Dark Lord lurks in the depths of darkness in the one place to which he must return.”. We decide that he is behind the portcullis in the southern wall of the tombs. Everything else is quiet for now so Haldar returns and we make our way back down the stairs and make our way back to the tomb.

As we reach the bottom of the spiral staircase, we run into Luvash. He asked how things fared. We told him about the heart being destroyed. We told him that we stayed for a moment, upstairs, to help Danika and others of her group as they battled a giant bat like creature, but we’ve realized that we can help best by finding and destroying Strahd. We asked Arabelle if he is still where he was. She concentrates and tells us that she can no longer sense where he is. After more discussion, we decided that we should proceed on foot and ignore the brazier, we’re just too uncertain where it would take us. We made our way down to the brazier and then up the other staircase. We avoided the hallway trap making it back to the room of crypts. The door has writing on it that we read over again. It said, “Herein lie the ones that walk the path of pain and torment.”. 

Opening the door, Rinn looks to see what is beyond. It seems as it is the way we left. Rinn askes which one of the crypts Misty and Haldar had come out of after their stent with the Wights. They indicate which one and also indicate where the traps are that sent them there. With the Sunsword at it’s maximum range, we began to make our way through the room, noting that the door to the crypt below was still closed. The bats get a little restless with all the bright light moving through the chamber. We make our way to the southern part of the chamber and stop close to the trap’s location. Rinn carefully searches for the trap and doesn’t find it, well that’s not entirely accurate. He didn’t find it while searching for it, but did find it by triggering it. He suddenly blinks out. We have a good idea where he went. Rinn suddenly finds himself inside a closed box. He realized where he was. He cast Protection from Good and Evil on himself and began trying to break out of the box.

Misty makes her way to the crypt where Rinn will be and begins to open it. The portcullis opens in the southern wall. Strahd’s voice is heard as he makes an ominous threat. Kyanna and the rest see him begin to make his way up the stairs toward them. Kyanna tries to use the “Hold Vampire” spell from the holy symbol of raven kind, Strahd succeeds his save. Zanfyr moves up and holds his breath weapon attack waiting on Strahd to approach. Haldar moves to a new position and fires on Strahd, first a critical hit, 33 points of damage, second attack hits, 24 points of damage. His Zepher Strike adds an additional 3 points of force damage. Ezmerelda moves to a better angle and casts Magic Missile on him doing some damage. Strahd walks up to Kyanna. Zanfyr fires off the breath weapon he was holding for 18 points of damage. Kyanna casts a Warding Flare to make his attacks happen at disadvantage, while she sticks a stake in his heart. Strahd vanishes and is seen coming up the stairs again. 

Start the recording!