====== Witchiepoo Round 3 ====== ==== Curse of Strahd ==== = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Session 30 – 2021-07-17 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Session Summary = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Session Details Haldar begins this session with multiple strikes against the house. Misty attempts to control the skull of Argynvost as she is hiding in it. She speaks “Rise” in Draconic but it has not effect. Kyana says, “Fireball!” and sends one off to the roof, top and center. The skull, suddenly and without reason, moves off quickly, and Misty jumps out of it before it gets too far. Snoggly sends a fireball into the front door that blows up inside the house. It’s drying out some. Dain makes a run up a tree root and gets into the front door where he finds that the old woman is already gone. He yells out that the witch is not in the house. In a crib in the room, he sees the burning corps of a baby, melting, and moving. Rinn, outside, seeing the skull fly off, yells, “She must be this way!” and points in the direction of the skull. He continues with, “Look to the sky! She may be returning in the skull!”. Boo stays up, flying around and preparing to assist Rinn’s attacks. The house takes a swipe at Kyana and hits her. Snoggly takes a hit and goes down. A root enters the door and hits Dain. Suddenly the flaming baby, not gay, just on fire, climbs out of the crib, and moves to attack Dain. It misses. We continue to attack and damage the house. Kyana casts Spirit Guardians and brings little angry angels out to surround and protect her. Dain casts Protection from Good and Evil on himself and attempts to get out of the house. The Baby does manage to hit him and it’s enough damage to put him down. He does at least fall from the house. Rinn throws a firebolt at the house but misses. Yeah, he missed a house. Kyana is attacked by the roots of the building. They take her down but they suffer a lot of damage from the Spirit Guardians. The tree also reaches in the house and grabs the baby and throws him out into the field. The Baby begins crawling through the mud, very slowly. Haldar still fires at the house and misses. Misty moves forward, using the top of Argynvost’s skull, leaps and comes down on one of the roots with a primal yell. The roots hauling the house, buckle and collapse. That part of the battle is done. The hag flies in and seeing the damage to the house, screams, “My baby!”. She turns her rage to Misty and uses a black ray that causes Misty to whither with Necrotic damage. Rinn manages to get a sneak attack on her but didn’t roll well. Kyana, looking around for wounded to help, notices a burnt, almost charcoal like something, crawling, and sometimes walking, through the mud headed toward them. Then we all hear and see the Raven’s return and they swoop in to attack the hag. They are swarming her and ripping at her. The sound is terrifying, like something out of a book, a book about birds attacking the people of a small town for seemingly no good reason. Haldar fires twice but a shield spell appears to be deflecting his shots. Misty moves to try to reach any of her downed companions. Zanfyr transforms into a giant spider and moves toward Dain. Kyana moves toward the sound of the witch and holds her ground waiting for a strike. The hag moves toward Haldar and as she prepares to casts a spell against him, Kyana lets loose with her own fireball and hits her. She still gets her fireball off and Haldar takes a hit but is still standing. The hag continues across the sky yelling out, “My baby, Strahd!”. As she takes the fireball, the stinking cloud vanishes. Rinn fired again but her shield still deflects it. He hides and waits for his next chance. Haldar fires and hits. Misty moves closer to the object crawling and/or walking across the muddy field. She see’s it as a crispy baby. Zanfyr moves toward Snoggly but it’s slow going. Kyana attacked the baby hitting it and making it susceptible to additional damage from others. It’s definitely some sort of strange baby, mostly burnt. She then moves toward Dain. The hag turns her attention to Haldar again and fires another fireball at him. He takes a lot of damage but he’s still standing. She continues look across the field, apparently searching for the baby. Snoggly fails his last death save. Dain is no longer dying but is not awake. Rinn fires on her again and misses again. Haldar fires at her again, this hit kills her. She and the skull come crashing to the ground. Haldar moves his hunters mark to the baby and fires. The baby gets an arrow sticking out of it but it looks as though it doesn’t really seem to have much impact. Misty attacks the baby. Zanfyr casts Revivify on Snoggly, he is safe and awake now. Kyana gets a little closer to the baby and draws out the Holy Symbol of Raven Kind. She attempts to hold it but it is not a vampire. Snoggly stands back up and magic missiles the baby. The baby finally losses cohesion and collapses. Kyana gets everyone to gather closer and casts a Prayer of Healing. We are all up again. We continue to do a lot of healing. Snoggly and Kyana both feel, not quite right. They both feel very tired from all of the activity. We search the hag, finding a quarter staff. It doesn’t seem to exhibit any magical properties. Snoggly used detect magic to see if anything in the area was useful. Both of the skull parts glow. We gather them together in one place. It will be a long time before the fire will die down and we are able to approach the house. We were finally able to approach the house, and using mage hands, sifted through the rubble. We found globs of melted gold and a small gem stone of good luck and a large green glowing gem. We suspect this to be the gem from the Wizard of Wines Winery. The gem that makes the middle grade wine. They will be happy to get this back. We determine that this may be what made the house come to life. We also found an iron tub and a crib. The tube is dark with stains of blood. We attempted to get the skull to fly but no amount of focus or concentration seems to have any effect on it. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the skull back to Argynvosthold. It’s finally decided that we need to build a raft and float the skull down the river. Dain started cutting the wood but did a poor job. Haldar was able to cut through it well. It’s taking quite a bit of time, getting this raft put together, but it's coming along. Snoggly and Kyana still seem to feel run down and not quite themselves. There is a feeling in the pit of their stomach that makes them feel uneasy. Snoggly is trying to snuff out the feeling with whiskey of course. It’s not really helping though. After some time, we get a raft built that we feel will hold the skull begin working out how to control it. The water, at least, is flowing in the right direction for us. We tried to figure out a way that Zanfyr could pull the raft, but he can only maintain an animal form for around two hours at a time. It’s finally decided that Haldar, Misty, and Rinn can run along the shore while the others are on the raft. We cut a couple of twenty-foot-long poles to use to guide the boat. We pushed off the shore about 10-15 feet and started down the river. As we take off down the river, we notice a woman on the far shore, black hair, dressed in outdoor, ranger like clothing. She sees us ducks back behind a tree. Through the owl, Rinn can see that she is behind a tree, kind of looking out and about, keeping an eye on us. Rinn lets everyone know, in case they didn’t see it. Meanwhile, we continue on our path to Argynvosthold. She’s not dressed like Ezmerelda and she didn’t appear to have dark skin.