Beyond Tsolenka Pass
Curse of Strahd = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Session 52 – 2022-03-26
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Session Summary
We finish up our battle with the Wights on the bridge exiting Tsolenka Pass. Haldar kills a Wight right off, Misty, Kyanna, and Kassamir are on the opposite side of the bridge. Wight’s were fleeing from us on both sides. We were targeting them one at a time, breaking their desire to flee and making them come back to attack us. One at a time, they were easy enough to take on. As we are picking them off, we hear a new sound, a horrible, huge sounding, shriek. The Roc flies into view and spots the Dain and Rinn group fighting, and swoops down. As he approaches, Rinn and Dain scatter, diving out of the way. The Wight stood defiantly in its path. The Wight scoops It up in it’s massive talons, crushing it as it does and flies off to a nearby cliff. He brings the wight around to eat at it.
Dain yells, “Get to the gate house!”. Everybody does that, Haldar moved into the gate house, holding a shot, if needed. Kyanna sees what is going on and shouts to get to the gate house. Everyone manages to make it inside before the Roc recognizes that the Wight is not food, it’s rotting meat. It makes a shriek of disgust and a moment later, body parts start raining down onto the ground. We hear the Roc launch into the air again, shrieks again, circles the area but doesn’t come down on our position. Haldar moves into a better position to hear the great bird flying off to the south. Kyanna and Zanfyr agree. Everyone stays quiet within, except Kassamir, who seems to be having a conversation with no one. Dain hears this and asks Ezmerelda if she hears the conversation. She points out that Kassamir is quite mad. He’s talking to his dead sister! We decide to get out of here. Haldar casts Pass Without Trace and we leave out off the bridge and continue up the road. The Roc does come back around, and makes a pass or two in our area but continues off to the northwest. We continue moving on.
We eventually wind up moving on a path that thins and becomes more treacherous. We also start seeing chunks of Amber here and there, frozen into the ice. The path ascends and is uneven. The temperature if in the single digits. Haldar and Kassamir are moving along easily here where the rest of us are having a little more difficult time. Dain keeps himself a little warmer by passing gas. There have been no sightings of the Roc for a bit. As it darkens, the temperature continues to drop. We hear some sounds off in the distance. Zanfyr thinks the sounds aren’t wolfs, but more likely primates. Misty suggests they might be Yeti’s. Zanfyr concurs. We move off the main path a little and Snoggly casts the Tiny Hut spell and are quickly warmer. The wind is blocked, and the cold is gone. Rinn offers to heat food if anyone would like something hot to eat and drink.
We set up watches with Haldar taking the first watch and Kyanna taking the second watch. Haldar recognizes that the dome is building up some snow on it. Haldar starts hearing whispers in his head. Nothing clearly discernable. He does get a sense of contentiousness and malevolence. He does get a few words, “Yes”, “Come”, “Seek”, “Ask”. He looks around to see if there is anyone else up. Zanfyr and Kassamir are both also up. Zanfyr can hear it but it’s still not clear. He picks up the words, “Worthiness” and “Freedom”. Haldar ask Kassamir if he is hearing these voices. He says, he is always hearing the voices. Haldar asked what they are saying. My sister, they are going to free my sister, she is worthy.
Time passes and the second watch begins. Kyanna notices the snow problem and notes they need to be outside the dome before it comes down. She also begins to hear the voices, several voices, in her head. One does seem to come across more clearly, It says, “Kyanna!”. She feels an immediate sense of familiarity. Her first thought is that it is the Morning Lord, Lathander. At the same time, there is something not right about it. Then she feels something sort pass through your body, cold, sort of like a necrotic energy drain sort of feeling. The voice says, “Know all that lies beyond your mortal perspective!”. Other sounds seem to be chattering more at this when the main voice seems to bark back at them. The voice comes back to her and says, “Kyanna!”. Kyana finally asks, “Who is this, speaking to me!”. The voice says, “I am the keeper!”. To which Kyanna replied, “Keeper of what!”. The voice replied, “The Keeper of all things, all secrets!”. “All things, all secrets?“, Kyanna asks. The voice speaks again, “Come to me and learn all there is to know!”. The voice then seems to fade away. Kyanna asks, out loud, “Did anyone else hear that?”. To which Snogglly replied, “Someone tell her to shut the hell up, I’m trying to get some sleep!”. Rinn had heard Kyanna start talking, hearing everything she said, but only wat she said. I grew concerned thinking that I’ve died and been reborn to. Maybe Massamir’s madness is catching!
Kyanna asked if we heard that! Zanfyr and I were both awake. We indicated that we heard nothing but what she said. She told us what she had heard. Rinn recalled that the mountain folk in the chamber behind the falls told us that their young men, who came here to spend the night to complete their right of passage, had heard voices such as these, trying to lure them deeper into the temple. Dain said, “We shouldn’t trust voices speaking to us unless we can see the person doing the speaking. Any voice could be that of an entity trying to lead us astray.”. As we each wake, an hear what other had heard during the night, we realize that we all had similar experiences, at least similar in symptom but still unique to each.
Kyanna mentions that we need to get out of the dome before the spell ends, as there is quite a bit of snow on top of it. We finish our rest and get up, eating warmed food before heading out. We continue on our way. We progress several miles and we get a new map. Zanfyr and Haldar take the lead, Rinn a little off to the side, Dain staying back some so as to not give us away too fast. We move into a pass, and as Haldar reach a turn in the pass, Misty and Dain sense something and manage to avoid a Yeti landing on top of us. With a roar, the battle begins. Misty wasn’t surprised by the attack, shouts “Yeti!”, and rips into it. She gets the sense, as it looks at her, that she had just shrugged off sort of paralyzing affect. Rinn hit it next and took it down. Ezmerelda is attacked by another yeti that leaped into the area. Kyanna hits the newcomer and Kassamir hears something in front of us, preparing for an assault from that direction. Zanfyr suggests that we should use fire or flaming objects to attack them and produces a flame to throw at it. It seemed to really respond negatively to the fire. Misty rips into the newest one. Snoggly throws fire at it again and takes it down.
Ezmerelda pulls out a crossbow and says, there are more coming. Dain places himself to be between any enemy and Kyanna. Everyone else prepares for the next creature. Another one comes out from the pass in front of us. Dain, Haldar, and Kassamir all faire at it and connect as it runs up on us Kassamir freezes. The Yeti attacks it’s stunned prey. To the north, an much larger one appears, about 18ft tall, and about 750 pounds, huge compared to the others, charges forward. He gets close to Dain and Haldar but not able to attack. Rinn moves up and casts burning hands at the larger creature. It’s not happy about the fire. Rinn disengages and moves away. Kyanna casts a wall of fire covering two of the Yeti’s. Kassamir takes a few steps back away from the fire and fires on the big Yeti. Zanfyr reshapes into a Hell Hound and moves in on the big Yeti. He uses his fire breath. The Yeti is definitely feeling all the fire. Misty strikes it several time. Snoggly sets off a fireball, hurting the two of them. Ezmerelda, casts a magic missile. Dain moves in and attacks. Haldar uses his Zepher Strike and moves to a safe distance and take down the last one. It seems that it’s the last one.
Kyanna and Dain check on Kassamir and do a little healing. Kassamir moves northwest and we follow. Weather is still pretty crappy. After a few more hours, the road forks. The main road continues on but another older road forks off to the north and ascends sharply up the mountain. Kassamir breaks takes the fork and we follow. He seems to be more energized, and very sure of his path. Dain casts divine sense specifically intending to check out Kassamir. He doesn’t pick up anything directly from Kassamir but in the whole area around us he senses negative energy. It’s like little tendrils of evil all around us. Dain waits on the others to move away, to see if the tendrils are associated to Kassamir or are the generalized to the area. He senses 6 or 7 of them. He passes this information on to Rinn who passes it on, messaging the others. As we move on, some tendrils seem to fade out and new ones seem to appear in front of us. It seems more like they are associated to the area and not a person.
We continue up the path with Kassamir and Haldar leading the way. In the next area we enter, the snow and wind really seem to pick up. It becomes really difficult to stay within sight of each other. It appears a blizzard is moving in. We begin looking for shelter. Dain suggests that we look for an area up against the cliffs where we can place the hut and if the blizzard isn’t gone by the time it fails, it might have built up enough snow to create us a sort of igloo. Haldar tells us that the next area is very rocky and might better present an area that would work like that. Kyanna suggests we get a rope out and everyone hold onto it so we can all stay together. Haldar back’s up to the group and starts passing back a rope. We aren’t tying off but just holding it. Ezmerelda has a tough time of it but passes the rope back. We eventually all have the rope in hand, following Haldar and Kassamir. We continue moving forward, some of us struggling.
Zanfyr and Misty both see something in the rocks that looks like it might be a cave. It’s about 30 feet up. Haldar and Misty both move up a steep area incline to the opening. When she gets to the top, she throws down another rope. It takes a bit, but we finally make it up the slope and into a cave. From here we are protected from the blizzard. Unfortunate, it stinks pretty bad in here, smelling of decay and death. The room we are in is big and empty. There is a path out of this chamber. Rinn looks down there and hears a low moaning sound. Could be a Wookiee, could be the wind. He sees a thin trail of dark lichen on the path before him, with stains of crimson on the outer edges of that.