====== Curse of Strahd - Session 10 - 01/30/2021 ======

We are in a wooded area, 300-400 yards away from the winery. The leader introduces himself as Davian Martikov. He runs the winery. Snoggly asks for an explanation as to what has happened while offering a wee bit of the whisky he is carrying. The forest folk from the South attacked the winery about a week or so ago. We fended them off for a couple of days but about 2 days ago, they became too much for us to fend off and we had to flee to the woods here. We’ve been here for a couple of days trying to figure out what we can do. Kyana asks if this is everyone from the winery?  He told her that it was, these are our families as this is a family run operation.
 
Haldar asked if it was the wild men that attacked them which they answered yes. When asked how many, they answered about 10 but they are somehow animating the surrounding grass, brush, sticks, and such to fight for them. There are virtually limitless versions of those, hundreds of them throughout the vineyard and that winery. Snoggly asked how attached they are to their vines, suggesting that a fire might take care of the bulk of the blight beasts. Davian was horrified at the aspect of losing the vines. Even from here, we could tell the vines were withered. Davian points out that the wine is important here and losing it would make a gloomy situation that much more unbearable. Snoggly offered to teach them the fine art of making Whisky.

Davian suggests that we looked like seasoned adventurers and that maybe, we could sneak in and deal with the situation. We observed the buildings and possible paths to get us there. Rinn even sent Boo on a fly by to see what he can see but there was no obvious route that would provide us with cover and no blight creatures were moving around anywhere. With that, we were forced to consider crossing the vineyard proper with some light to medium cover and then going in through the front door. Misty said she had a way to make us exceedingly difficult to see or hear, which would be very handy at this time. Snoggly asked, what do the wild men want from you? While Davian thought for a moment, Snoggly suggested that it seemed they were insane. Davian said he thought there was an element of that here. 

Davian says that the forest folk have coveted this land for a long time. The vineyard has been here for 400 years. The story has it that in ancient days, the Druids came here seeking a place to hide from Strahd von Zarovich. Snoggly raised an eyebrow at this and asked, “Do you mean that Bastard on the Hill?”, as he soo liked to call him? He seemed surprised to hear anyone say his name. We never heard any more of the story. Davian proceeded to tell us about the various entrances. 

We let Misty cast the Pass Without Trace spell. We must all remain within 30 feet of her to gain the benefit of this. We began making our way across the vineyard. We noticed that the vines and grasses were not very green as they were sickly with the blight and appeared to be dying. We never saw any of the blight creatures or wild men moving about. We made it to the front door. With that, the vineyard flew in over our heads, as if it were a flying city, and landed on the table. Also to the west of the building was an outhouse.

We moved up to the door and Rinn listened at it and heard nothing. He picked the lock and opened it. Though the door didn’t appear to be trapped, it was barred from the inside. Rinn and Snoggly used their combined Mage Hands and moved the bar up and out of its arms. They held the bar while Rinn slipped through the door and into the room. He took hold of it then and set it down quietly out of the way. Turning around, he found a bunch of wood and iron parts for building barrels. Rinn moved to the next door and listened at it. He didn’t hear anything else. Everyone else began moving into the room. Meanwhile, Misty checked an open loading area next to the outside door they entered. It had a wagon with some barrels and a wench to lower down barrels through the ceiling into the wagons. Rinn checked the next door for traps. He didn’t see anything and so he opened the door. There are more barrels in this room. He surmised that the previous room is where they build the barrels and this is where they store the new ones.

We closed the outside door and Rinn went to the next door and listened at it. He heard to cry of a raven and a clicking sound. He checked to see if the door was locked and found it wasn’t, so he cracked it slightly and peeked in. He could see that it was a large room with a balcony area in the back and in the rafters were some ravens. The smell was that of fermenting wine. He continued to open the door and saw the ravens in the rafters, stairs in the center of the room going up to a balcony that crossed the whole back of the room. He also saw 4 large copper casks with wooden lids on them and spickets at the base. There was a female figure hunched over the western most cask pouring a flask of thick syrup into it. There were some of the blight creatures running around on the main floor. We rolled for initiative.

Haldar sprinted into the room and up the stairs onto the balcony. He opened up on this wild women, who was  messing with the wine, and scored a hit. Kyana moved into the room and brought out her spiritual weapon. She then, takes a bow shot at the woman and has the spiritual weapon attack one of the blight creatures. Rinn moved in and placed himself in an area where he could get maximum damage from casting a Burning Hands spell. The cone to removed four of the blights and scored a good hit on the larger creature that was behind the door. Misty moves in and whacks a couple of the blights. 

The blights struck back and landed a couple of blows. The person on top of the cask casts a Thunderwave spell which Misty dodges but which knocks Haldar back about 10 feet into the wall, it also moved the cask she was standing on back a more than a few feet. Snoggly followed  everyone in and fired Magic Missiles at the blight creatures and removes a few. Dain charges in and attacks the large creature which he promptly missed. Then, he got into his Tunnel fighting stance. Zanfyr ran into the room, in dire wolf form, circled around the first creature and attacked it and killed it.   

The background music suddenly turns into a disco fantasy battle theme which Haldar, Misty, and Kyana more than winced at. They threatened to leave the battlefield all together. Suddenly the music altered to a more traditional Balders Gate Battle theme. Big improvement. Everyone stayed and fought. Dain, Rinn, Kyana, and Zanfyr attempted to dodge vines being thrown in their direction, to avoid being seized and/or damaged. They managed to not become entangled in the vines but movement around them would be more difficult now. Misty is attacked by the vines but she aptly dodged them.

Haldar, took a bow shot at the wild lady on the cask and hit her but she remained standing. Kyana brought up her holy symbol and used her Channel Divinity to cast Radiance of the Dawn which dealt damage to all of our enemies in the room. It took down 8 or 9 of the blights. She unleashed an attack with her spiritual weapon and whacked something but they never said, out loud, what it was she hit. Rinn sent boo out to do a fly by attack on the creature he is facing off against. While the creature is distracted, Rinn hoped to get the upper hand and maybe deal the death blow. As it turns out, the owl got the death blow and killed the Devine Blight creature. Rinn turned his attention to another of the enemies nearby and struck it!

Suddenly there was forty dollars flying through the universe outside of Ravenloft in hopes of purchasing more walls, doors, and special features for building and construction. Misty, scored a better than average hit against the creature near her and then made a dash to reach the Quasi Druid lady on the wine cask. She dispatched her and stopped to lick her tail, it needed cleaning. From the two openings at the either end of the balcony, we heard movement and noise. One of the entry points opened to the hallway and a spiral set of stairs going down. 

Haldar took up a position to best use his skills to hide and not be seen in darkness and strike. Dain and Rinn moved to the opposite end of the balcony where Dain took a blocking stance near it’s hallway’s end with Rinn took an archery position above one of the casks. Snoggly moved to a positon where he could strike anything moving across the balcony. Kyana moved up to the Balcony and positioned herself near the center so she could move in which ever direction she was needed. The wolf, Zanfyr, moves to a position on Misty’s side of the balcony and prepares to attack.

A couple of the larger vine creatures came around the corner and Haldar fired at one and hit it twice. Kyana turned and fired an arrow at one of them delivering another hit. Misty took on one of them directly and hit it twice. Dain cast Divine Favor on himself and reached out to the creature that was in front of him and delivered a strong blow, killing his opponent and placed himself in his Tunnel stance. Snoggly cast Magic Missile at the creature on Misty’s side and put that one down. Rinn held his action, waiting for someone to present themself as a target. 

A new menace approached Dain. It was some sort of blight creature with sharp quills that, Dain assumed, would shoot out at him. Rinn took a shot at it and managed to make a perfect shot. A Druid moved up towards Misty and attacked. Her two quill throwing creatures fire at her and score a devastating hit which sends her falling from the balcony, unmoving. The creature facing Dain takes a swipe at him which he manages to deflect. Since Zanfyr didn’t have an opening to attack the Druid, and since biting a quilled creature seemed like a very bad idea, he held his attack, waiting for an opening to attack the druid. On Dain’s side, another Druid came up to the opening and looked oddly like he was made of wood. It threw a small fire ball at Dain but missed.

On the other side, the Druid backed up a little to allow a bigger creature to come around the corner. Haldar was about to do something when time stopped, and the game was saved.