Gertruda, Werewolf, and Rhadin’s Deal
Curse of Strahd
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Session 70 – 2022-09-03
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Gertruda, perhaps 17 years old, in a now stained wedding dress, and a distant, disconnected look in her eyes, tries to straighten out her gown, While doing so she looks up at you seemingly oblivious to the carnage around her. “Strahd? Rahadin? ..she calls.. her eyes come to rest on Ismark and her delighted expression changes to one of disdain. “Ismark Kolyanovich? Why are you here.. is my mother with you? Stay away from me.. All of you.. “ She tries to get out of the bed but is clumsy like a drunken sot. As she rolls over, it is now she sees the blood and bodies.. her hand flies up to her mouth as she screams loudly and shrilly… “Murderers!! Murderers!! Why?… Leave me alone!!”…. She panics and screams in terror
Piddlewick tugs at the womans gown.. In terror she glances down and she sobs.. “Oh PiddlePiddle..” He hugs her leg tightly.. “You must get Strahd.. Rahadin.. do you understand?”
Trying to silence the screaming, Rinn grappled her and covered her mouth. After waiting for her to calm down some, Rinn explained that we are here lookin for people to help and that he needs to talk to her. He asked if she would stop screaming. She nodded her head. There were a lot of questions and Rinn tried to answer them vaguely enough to not out and out lie to her but at the same time, seeing that she is obviously enamored with Strahd and Rahadin, decided not to expose that we are the people battling him. He let her know that the wedding, that she didn’t seem to know about, was interrupted with a great battle and many were hurt. We were looking for people that needed help. She is in a confused state as if drugged. Kyanna moves over and picks up her glass of wine and tries to determine if there is anything funny in it. As she calms more, we back away further, Rinn begins using Prestidigitaion to start cleaning the blood from our clothes so we don’t appear so frightening. He starts with Piddlewick.
Piddlewick is asked if Gertruda was the reason he brought us here. He hugged her legs tightly, he obviously cares a great deal for her. In talking to Gertruda, Rinn tries to convince her to stay up here while we continue moving through the castle helping to make things safe again. She returns to her bed. Rinn uses Prestidigitaion to clean up the blood while we move the bodies back into the secret room. When she wakes up again, she may just think this was all bad dream. Piddlewick stays with her, stroking her hair. There was speculation that she was to be married to Rahadin but Piddlewick indicated no to that. We finally determine that we think Gertruda is dress in a wedding dress just like Ireena’s, it doesn’t quite fit Gertruda which leads to speculation that it is Ireena’s dress. That leads to speculation that she is a decoy to keep us distracted.
Rinn asks Piddlewick, where we should go next to find Ireena, he points at Rinn’s head. It was never clear what he intended to convey with that. Zanfyr suggested that we just start a thorough search. Rinn moves to the southern door in this room and listens. He doesn’t hear anything. Kyanna suggests that we start at the secret door. We move back there and Rinn opens it and looks inside. It’s a small hallway that goes nowhere. Rinn found a secret door on the other end. He opened the door to reveal a stairway to the west and a hallway going east. This is apparently a hidden door behind a statue and there is another statue across the hallway. There are dark alcoves lining the hall, the ceiling has seen better days as they’re is rubble on the floor. Overhead some of the beams of the roof are exposed and we can see some flashes of lightening through it. The statues are life sized human statues with some of them in military gear and some of them regal clothes. No writing on any of the statues. Rinn moves to the eastern end of the hallway and looks south. The hallway continues a short way and ends at a door. Rinn checks the door next to him. He doesn’t hear anything. Rinn messages back that he doesn’t hear anything. Snoggly suggests that he check behind the other statues on the way back. He does and doesn’t find anything. Snoggly suggests that we don’t go down the steps but stay up here looking for her.
Before we open the door at the end of the hallway, Rinn moved back into the main room and checked a door we hadn’t looked into yet and found another set of stairs going down. Kyanna suggests we check the door in Gertruda’s room and Rinn checks it and opens it. It appears to be a room with a large claw foot tub in the middle of it. There are red satin curtains covering arch’s leading further south on either side of the room. Rinn moves into the room and searches behind the tub and see’s a countertop with some lotions and soaps and perfumes and such on it. He goes to one of the archways and looks to see where it leads. There are hooks and black capes and formal wear hanging on some of the hooks. Rinn searches behind all of the clothes hanging here and searches all of the pockets. He doesn’t find anything special.
We have a discussion about getting a short rest in. We begin a short rest in the bath tub room. We hear a voice from outside, very loud, it is Strahd’s voice. He says, “You are fools! Know that I am the sun. I am the stars. I am the ancient, and I am the land. I control the tides of the moon. Behold!”. With that, we see moonlight start to come through the windows as the clouds part. With that, Dain transforms into a werewolf. The battle begins. Haldar grapples him. Kyanna attempts to knock him out but fails. Misty attacks with her staff and stuns him. Then she wraps him up in a rope. Ismark stabs at him but his weapon can’t hurt him. Zanfyr casts Moonbeam which temporarily ends the transformation returning Dain back into his Dwarven form. Snoggly takes a drink. Rinn uses a Mage Hand to pull the great sword away from Dain’s body. Haldar carry’s Dain to the secret room on the other side of Gertruda’s bedroom. We put him in that room and close the door leaving him inside. The hope is that in werewolf form, he can’t open the secret doors and will be trapped in a stone room, unable to escape. Once the doors were closed, we began wedging things against the doors to prevent them from opening.
Rinn goes to the other side with Misty watching the northern door of that secret room while the others remain in the bedroom watching the door that opens into it. Not long after we started waiting, Misty hears someone coming up the stairs. Rinn moves across the hall to behind the opposite statue. He messages Haldar to let him know that someone approaches up the stairs. Haldar begins making a quick dash around the the hallways and rooms to get to the other end of that hallway and wait. Strahd steps from the stairs into the hallway and stops, turns and looks at Misty. Initiative is rolled. Strahd says, “Amusing!”. Haldar fires at him and does a great deal of damage. Strahd steps into the wall and disappears from site. Rinn steps out and searches the wall for a secret door that Strahd may have used to pull off this trick. He can’t find anything. The howling from Dain stops and growling begins. Zanfyr tries to determine what the new sounds coming from Dain mean. He determines only that something has changed in his agitative state. Kyanna is suddenly surprised by the door of the secret room blasting open as Strahd smashes through it. Kyanna screams, “HALDAR!”. Strahd says, “I believe you forgot someone!”.
Strahd then disappears into the wall again, leaving us faced with a big, unbound, werewolf. Haldar dashes back toward Kyanna’s side of the secret room. Kyanna casts a guiding bolt at Dain and backs away. Misty heard the screaming of Kyanna and bolts down the hallway to go around the long route. She makes it back to Kyanna’s side. Dain the werewolf attacks Zanfyr and Misty, hitting Zanfyr and missing Misty. Zanfyr took a big hit. Ismark attempts to hit him again but still can’t hit him. Zanfyr transforms into a winter wolf, attacks and misses. Snoggly casts Magic Missile at Dain and hits him. Rinn makes the long run around and gets all the way to Haldar’s side. Ezmerelda steps up and takes the final whack at Dain and puts him down. Kyanna casts ”Spare the Dying” on Dain making him dead but not getting worse. As she casts the spell, everyone hears the familiar howling screams of thousands of men and women in our heads. We can feel the agony of their senses. Piddlewick reacts to it and begins moving back.
The door to the north opens and Rahadin sticks his head through it. He enters and draws two swords. He gives an arrogant elvish smirk and says, “You will get no rest in the master’s castle.“. Kyanna says to Rinn, “I told you so!”. Rahadin continues, “But I believe I can make a deal on your behalf, if you will hear me out.”. We agree to listen to his proposal. He says, “Despite your efforts, the master has taken on his new bride. Father Lucian was more than compliant to perform the ceremony. It has been a joyous occasion. He would rather not spend the evening fussing with you. My offer, you are free to leave the castle leave the grounds, and go about your business in Barovia. One of you must stay. You select who that person is, and you leave. If you are unable to do so, then you die.”. Snoggly tells him that we need to speak amongst ourselves. He agrees and steps back out, shutting the door. Ismark will not leave without his sister. He doesn’t count in the decision of who gets left behind, should we decide to take Rahadin up on his offer. The discussion begins in earnest. After much discussion, it is a unanimous decision to stay and fight. After a little more discussion, Rinn loans Dain’s sword to Ismark so he can at least hit something, since Dain can’t do anything with it. Ismark looks at all of us and tells us that this is not our fight, but his. It is his sister. Rinn replies that we are stuck here until he is ended, so it is our fight as well. It was briefly thought that we might negotiate a better deal that includes leaving Barovia and returning home, but Ismark reminded us that a promise from Strahd is no good.
We figured that it’s somewhere between 11:00 and 12:00. It was decided to leave Dain untreated and cast a mass heal on many others. We attempt to find some armor in our piles of stuff that might help Ismark but we didn’t find anything. Snoggly recast Magic Weapon on Haldar’s bow at 3rd level, making it a plus 2 weapon. Ezmerelda goes back to Piddlewick and tries to rouse him, getting him to tell us where Strahd may be. We determine that since the marriage was complete that he is probably in the bed chamber. When asked, Piddlewick indicated that it is down from here. After a few more questions, he indicates that the tomb stair case that Kassamir went up would be the right place to go. Kyanna touches Rinn and heals him a little more. Piddlewick leads us to the staircase and back down to the brazier room. We moved Dain, before we left, to the secret chamber. We removed the potion of hill giant strength though. We’ll reserve it for Ismark. We go down the stairs to the brazier room and run into a lot of people. Danika Dorakova, Luvash, Anna Krezkova, two Krezk Nobles, and Arabella.
We stopped here.
Chris, turn on the recorder!