= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Session 45 – 2022-01-15
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Session Summary
We started this session in the bedroom beyond the workshop/lab, on the second floor of the structure we had entered, in the mountains of northern Barovia. We had just determined that the person, other than Strahd, in the mirror’s story was Kazan. Urik recognized and was able to identify, him. As we were leaving the room, Snoggly used some phrases he’d learned from someone he identified as Snape, to see if these phrases were the key to unlocking the writing in the books we had found, but they had no effect. Rinn moved back down the hallway to the door at the end and checked it and then opened it. The room contained crackling energy from a ball of blue electric energy, arcing around the northern end of the room. Along the southern wall were 8 runes of the familiar schools of magic. On the eastern wall was another door.
Haldar entered the room and moved to the middle of the room and looked around, seeing two more doors beyond the arcing blue energy. It looks like one would be about the proper location as to be the door on the second floor of the library downstairs. Snoggly entered the room and the rest followed slowly. Snoggly tosses a coin into the lightning to see how it handle it. It does strike it. He then tries rolling it across the floor and it doesn’t strike it. He then moves to the runes along the southern wall. They are lit. He studies them for a moment and then reaches out push on the evocation rune. An arc breaks off the lightning and fires at him. He manages to avoid some of the strike but still takes a lite jolt from it. Misty volunteers to press the button as she is much better at avoiding these kinds of things. She pressed the Enchantment rune hearing a clicking sound and then she dodged the incoming lightning strike.
She suggested that Rinn, go downstairs to the library to see what happens down there when she pushes the button. She pushed the Transmutation Rune and dodged another lightning strike. Rinn witnessed nothing happening in the library. Rinn then pressed the Evocation rune, preparing to dodge anything that might come his way. Instead, Rinn blinks away to the second floor in the workshop/lab. He messaged them what had happened. He went back to the library and reach the second-floor door with his mage hand and opened it. All he saw was the blue lightning. Rinn rejoined the rest of the group, and they began studying the other door to the northwest. Rinn used a mage hand to open it and the lightning seemed to ignore it. Inside, we could see a chest in the room. Misty is still the most capable of avoiding damage from the lightning.
Dain and Rinn line up, facing the door, prepared to defend Misty as she studied the lightning and just how far into the room does it went. She launched into the room and avoided the lightning very effectively and as she looked back at the group with a look of triumph. That look turned to one of surprise as the floor beneath her opened and she dropped out of site. Rinn and Haldar, without much concern for their safety, charged into the room. They both reached different spots within the room and stopped just outside the reach of the lightning. Both take a little damage from the lightning and begin trying to figure out how to open the floor. As Rinn was moving along the north side of the trap door, the chest suddenly attacked. This pseudopod sort of appendage reached out and struck Rinn and then grappled him. Haldar fired into it. It tried to chomp down on Rinn and tried to draw him into itself. Rinn struck back and hit it for a good amount of psychic damage.
Snoggly cast magic missiles at it and hit it. Kyana cast Aura of Vitality on herself, using it to heal herself and others within range. Dain moved up to as close to the blue lightning as he could get without being struck, fires on the mimic, and hit it twice killing it. As he does, the box spits out Rinn towards the trap. Rinn manages to grasp at the edge and as the doors to the pit trap, opened, and he managed to catch the edge and began climbing back out of it. Haldar rushed to the edge and used a piton as a wedge to keep the doors open. Misty and Rinn both made it out. Rinn searched the mimic and found nothing. Snoggly studied the origins of the lightning bolts. Rinn moved into the Aura that Kyanna had put up and catches some healing from it. Rinn then searched the room for any possible secret doors or hidden compartments. He found nothing. Snoggly suggested using the mirror to block the lightning. Dain fetched it and set it between the door and the lightning. As he slides it in between the room and the lightning, it starts taking a lot of damage from the lightning. Everyone ran out of the room and as we moved away, the mirror exploded damaging Dain a little.
Rinn moved to the eastern door and checked it and opened it. There was a small chamber on the other side with a door to the north and a door to the south. He flipped a coin and based off that, moved to the northern door, and checked it. Finding no trap, he used his mage hand to open it. It opened to a much bigger and better bedroom chamber with a large canopy bed, a writing desk and chair, a couch, circular rug, and some lit sconces. There was also a big red book on the desk. There was also another door opening to the south next to the entrance to this room. Rinn moved to the other door, suspecting a closet, checked the door and the opened it. He found it to contain many gray robes, some new and some well-worn.
Rinn checked around the room for traps and finding none, turned his attention to the desk and the book. It’s a red leather book with no writing on the outside and a slip of paper sticking out of it. Rinn invited Snoggly to come in and check it out. Rinn slipped a piece of parchment into the book where the note was sticking out, to keep its place marked in the book, and passed the note to Snoggly to examine. The note read as follows.
This “Devil Strahd” is more than a vampire who gained a position of power. He is one with the ancients, a mystery to these people, and a fearsome presence that has led these simple Barovians to believe his power is omniscient. Perhaps in a way, he is. The land has granted its favor to him, and his kind as true sunlight does not shine upon it. The tools to his undoing remain hidden but perhaps I no longer require them. A plan comes to mind that with a bit of assistance from the locals, I can possibly dethrone this usurper.
Snoggly used a dagger to slip open the book, at the point where the note had been placed. He found it to be blank. Haldar noted that the room was being kept up as it’s not dusty. The bed is in good shape and though it’s not officially made, the sheets have been pulled up in a hap hazard way. He pulled the sheets down only to reveal another piece of paper. “What’s this?’ he said out loud. As he looked at it, it read.
The human condition is frail, like the human mind, but it can be protected through mastery of Abjuration. The Necromancer’s Enchanting eyes alter the minds of those around him. There is no escape from his Enchantment. I have done everything to stop the Illusions he has created in this realm, but even the most powerful Evocation was useless against the Necromancer.
Snoggly then suggested that, after reading these two notes, that we might be dealing with two different wizards. He doesn’t think that Kazan is a Necromancer but an Evocator. Rinn speculated that the realm itself might be an illusion. Misty moved to check the couch, Victor said he had already look there but she checked it anyway. Finding nothing, they moved to the rug. They rolled up the rug and found nothing below it. Snoggly, examined the previous notes we had found here, and the new notes we found in this room and determined that they were written at different times and with different inks but appear to have been written by the same hand. Misty and Victor moved the couch to check under it and found nothing.
Snoggly casts an identify spell, as a ritual, on the red book we found here. The spell just detected a very strong presence of illusion. Snoggly attempted to disbelieve that the book contained no writing. It made no difference. He then let everyone else know that the book was either an illusion, or the blankness is the illusion, he’s not sure which. Rinn suggested that the whole realm may be an illusion, or at least this structure. Maybe it’s something akin to a Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion spell. We speculated about the Necromancer and the possibility that he is the all-powerful individual that is keeping Strahd in place, or maybe he keeps the realm in place. Snoggly casts detect magic on the closet/water closet finding that the conjuration magic emanates from everywhere. He lets the rest of us know.
Rinn moved to the door opposite the bedroom door in the little antechamber. He checked it and opened it. The floors of this oddly shaped room were white marble with red veins crawling through them. A brass clawfoot tube was filled with a thick red liquid. Snoggly looked in the room and saw that the same magic engulfs it as well. Rinn moved in and to the tub. As he moved closer to the tub, he is suddenly attacked. Two bloody appendages reach out from the liquid to strike at him. Also, a figure climbed out and moved towards him. It appeared much as a water elemental would appear but having climbed out of the blood, it was based on that instead. Rinn is hit by one tendril.
We did battle the tendrils and creature. Haldar, Snoggly, and Misty each struck them. Another elemental appeared and made its way to Haldar. As he moved across the room, the red veins in the floor, especially around him, pulsed. Haldar took a couple of hits. Dain moved to one of them and destroyed it in one hit. Snoggly yells out to hit the tub. Dain turned to strike the brass tub. Rinn casts shadow blade and struck the other elemental. Kyanna moved into the room, and after hearing Soggly’s call to hit the tub fired a set of scorching rays at it. Another elemental climbed out of the tub and attacked Dain. Zanfyr moved into the room and casts frostbite on the creature on Haldar. The elemental started to feel the effects but then shook it off. Victor threw a firebolt at the newest elemental and hit it. Rinn was smothered or “Whelmed” by the blood elemental. Dain took it out freeing him. A rage came over Dain. Rinn, upon being freed, saw that Dain was raging and that he seemed be a little hairier. Rinn disengaged and backed away. Kyanna poured holy water into the tub and attempted to bless it. The other elemental attempted to “Whelm” Misty and was unable to. Zanfyr casts a new spell called Erupting Earth.
It was at this point, the recorder was destroyed, along with the tub, I believe. The spell was so strong that it reached into our reality and drained the recording device. There is nothing recorded beyond this point. I remember that he did destroy the tub and we ultimately left the room and headed back to the library. Kevin also remembered that we spent the rest of the session attempting to figure out the room, the illusion, the blank books, and where had Kazan gone? That was two weeks ago so I don’t remember any of the finer details of those events.
Addendum: We did run around through the other portal but it just sent us back to the library. Also in our searching, we found a room through a secret door in the library to the north. It was a small room with a desk and a blue book.