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Session Summary

In the beginning, Kyana speculates that the second tarot card, the one of blades, may point to this tower as being where the holy symbol is hidden. After much discussion, and enlightenment from Ezmerelda, we determine that the holy symbol is mostly likely in Argynvosthold, the ruins of the home of the Silver Dragon Argynvost and the Paladins of the Silver Order, which Strahd forces wiped out as they swept over this land. Still, a thorough search is justified, and we begin to do just that. Dain and Misty move back down to the main floor to make sure the doors are locked.

In a search of the armor, a word is found on the back of a boot, “Khazan”. As Rinn spells it out, Kyana says the whole word, out loud, and the armor snaps to attention. We learn that Khazan is the second of Strahd’s wizards that he used when conquering this land. He is also one of the wizards that assisted in building Castle Ravenloft and this tower. He was working with Exethanter who, we believe, is at the Amber Vault either as a Lich or working to become one. Using the name, Khazan, Kyana is now able to command the armor and control it. She puts it through its paces but decides not to take it with us as it is very loud.

As we complete the search and try to determine what to do next, Ezmerelda makes her way outside of the tower and Misty stays with her, badgering her about her wagon. Inside, a Silver Dagger and Cross bow with silver tipped bolts were found. Snoggly took the dagger and Zanfyr took the Crossbow. Back outside, Ezmerelda spots something at the other end of the causeway and begins moving that way. Misty sees something to and decides to get the rest of the party. We all join them after Kyana puts the robot/golem away. The rest of the party catches up to Ezmerelda and Misty. Haldar and Ezmerelda move forward and Haldar takes a shot at one of the wolves. Debbie popped corn, but we didn’t care! He hits the werewolf with two shots. It howls in pain as they run off.

Ezmerelda charges past Haldar. When they get to where the wolves had been spotted, Ezmerelda points out a piece of clothing she spots and they both start examining the tracks. Among the track were wolf footprints and the footprints of a child. They think the wolves have captured a child. Ezmerelda moves off as she tracks the wolvers. The whole party joins in and continues through the woods. There was really no path they were using. It made it hard to track but between Ezmerelda and Haldar, they were able to track them to an outcropping of rock that was a cave in the shape of a great wolf’s maw. Ezmerelda pushed for this chase as she’ hate werewolves and has been trying to find them for a while but has had no luck., Following these and having the assistance of Haldar, made it easier to finally find them. The other reason is that she new if they were hunting, most would be out so the cave would have less protection.

As they examined the cave from a distance, Ezmerelda and Haldar split and moved forward. Rinn and Misty took up spotter positions closer to the main party. They waited back with Dain watching the rear for anything coming at us from that direction. As Haldar and Ezmerelda moved forward, they heard the sound of a flute being played inside the cave. As they got even closer, they heard a chime sound and two people, and old man and a woman, emerged from the cave. They walked towards Haldar and Ezmerelda with their hands up. As they neared, they called out that they knew we were here and wanted to know why. They say they are here living and peace and want to be let alone.

Ezmerelda approaches with her weapon raised and yells, “Werewolf!”. They explain that they are not werewolves but refugees from Vallaki. “We are hiding from the werewolves”, no, we didn’t buy that either. Snoggly explains that it’s strange that hey decided to hide from the wolves in a cave that looks like a great wolf’s gaping maw. The rest of the party begins moving forward. They ask us why we are here. We explain that we tracked wolves here. Ezmerelda explains that it looks like the wolves had taken a child, and we asked if they were missing a child. To that they replied, “No!”.

Dain brings up the test that Kerzk uses to determine if you are or are not a werewolf. If you cut yourself and don’t bleed, you are a werewolf. Rinn moves forward to see about having them do the test. We are in their home so they should be demanding the test from us. Rinn promptly sticks himself and bleeds. Snoggly tosses the silver dagger up to them and ask them to use that. With that, the old man grabs up the silver dagger and tosses it into the caves and they start morphing as they run back to thew cave. Initiatives are rolled and the game is afoot.

Misty begins by moving up to the woman and attacks, hitting her twice. From inside the cave, we hear a chorus of howls. Haldar moves up and casts his hunters mark on the man. He then attacks and hits him. Rinn moves up fires a bow shot at the woman that hits her. He moves up even closer, picking an area behind a rock to keep cover. Ezmerelda moves forward and fires magic missiles into the man. Kyana moves her 35 feet, gets pretty close, and puts a spiritual weapon in front of him. Kyana also fires a bow at him and hits. The spiritual weapon attacks him as well. Dain moves up behind Haldar, bonus actions casts divine favor, and fires a crossbow bolt into the old man’s back and hits him. A dire wolf rounds the corner in the cave, making its way out. Zanfyr moves about 35 feet and fires a long bow and misses. Snoggly moves up and throws a firebolt at the guy. The man goes down.

The woman turns around and with her long fangs and sharp claws, she attacks and misses. The battle continues and as we take down the couple outside, more dire wolves and werewolves emerge to continue the fight. The fight continues for a while. At one point, the battle is looking bleak for Misty and she pulls a pit patch from her robe of useful items and throws it at the ground about halfway between three dire wolves. The center wolf and one of the other wolves falls in as well. Two of the three wolves fall into the pit. She backs up and quaffs a potion. That changed the tide of the battle. We continued through the end of the round. Zanfyr puts down a moonbeam between two of them. The dire wolf dies. Zanfyr is considered as concentrating. Snoggly dumped all but one charge on his wand of magic missiles, firing eight of the objects splitting them between two different enemies.

Reminder, spiritual hammer is out, there is a pit, Zanfyr is concentrating on a moonbeam.

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Session Details

Kyana had a thought about the card reading, the second card, the one of blades, the avenger, the card tells of a powerful force for good and protection. A holy symbol of great hope! The treasure lies in a dragons house in hands, once clean, but now corrupt. She wonders out loud, could he(Rudolph Van Richten) be the corrupt one, and the holy symbol hidden in this house somewhere? She thinks we need to do a thorough search of this tower. We begin a search. Ezmerelda reminds us that the dragon house is most likely the ruins of the home of Argynvost. The ruins of the home of Argynvost on the way to the area where we were to search for the second missing Gem from the winery. It was home to paladins of the silver order and the silver dragon Argynvost. When Strahd swept through here, he wiped them out. The castle is called Argynvosthold.

Dain and Misty moved to the first floor to check the door to make sure we closed it. Kyana, Rinn and Zanfyr start searching the walls and the whole chamber. The re-search the armoire, armor, walls, and desk. Snoggly starts searching the bed. While searching the armor, Rinn sees some writing on the back of a boot. Rinn spells out what is written there and Kyana pronounced it, “Khazan”, and the armor suddenly snapped to attention. Rinn speaks to the creature as he usually does and says, “Good day!”. The armor turns to look in that direction and then turns its head back.

There is speculation that this is some sort of golem. Rinn keeps trying to talk to it but it doesn’t respond. Snoggly suggested that we ty to order it to put its sword away. Rinn tries to tell it to be at easy and nothing happens. Kyana says the same thing and Khazan puts his sword away. We tried to get him to present the holy symbol but that got nowhere. His sword and armor don’t have any symbols or designs on it. The shield has the raven crest on it. The sword has some designs in it but nothing Kyana recognized. Zanfyr estimates the armor to be hundreds of years old. That it was from Strahds time as he marched across this land. It’s in good shape.

Snoggly thinks that Exethanter may have animate the suit of armor for his own protection. Ezmerelda tells us that Khazan is the other wizard that served Strahd during the war. After a brief discussion about the wizards and Van Richten, Kyana told the armor to drop it’s weapon as the puts her hand out to catch it. She examines it more thoroughly. Snoggly ask her to try to get it to follow her. She asks it to follow her and it does. It’s very loud! She has it return to where it was standing. Zanfyr is searching the desk and didn’t find anything. All of us spend quite a biut of time searching the whole room and find nothing. We head back down to the first floor, listening to a jazz rendition of the song “Jump” being played over some sort of invisible audio system. Very creepy!

Everyone makes their way down in multiple trips. Kyana brings Khazan and Misty and Dain are introduced to it. We start discussing what to do next, how do we find Rudolph. Ezmerelda doesn’t know where he might be. We took a silver dagger and a cross bow. Snoggly took the dagger and Zanfyr took the crossbow. Misty tries to chat up the Ezmerelda, asking about seeing her wagon. Ezmerelda didn’t seem interested in showing it to her. She instead repointed Misty’s attention across the water and the causeway. Misty does see a little movement near the end of the causeway. Ezmerelda begins moving forward. She mentions something about hunting and Misty asked her, “What is hunting?”, to which Ezmerelda replies, “Wolves!”.

Misty tries to get her to wait, Ezmerelda clearly needs more healing. Ezmerelda continues moving across the causeway. Misty went back to alert everyone that Ezmerelda was moving off to hunt wolves. We don’t think it’s a good idea but she’s off. There is a discussion about Khazan and it’s decided to leave him here so Kyana takes him back in and send him up the elevator with a command to go back to his post.

Misty starts stealthing her way to catch up to Ezmerelda. The rest of the party starts making its way across the causeway but keeping a little distance back from Ezmerelda and Misty. Ezmerelda has spotted the wolves and Haldar, as he is moving forward also sees the wolves. Rinn messages Haldar and Haldar replies back that he is seeing wolves ahead. He moves up to within range to see them with his dark vision. He spots two but can see there are more. He takes a shot at one with a silver tipped arrow. Debbie popped corn, but we didn’t care. He ends up hitting one of them with two shots. The wolf let out a howl and they all run off.

Haldar stealth’s up a little more and then Ezmerelda comes charging past him. As she reaches the woods, she starts yelling into the woods, “Come out you bastards!”. The rest of the party moves forward to catch up. Dain gets out his Heavy Cross Bow. Ezmerelda turns around, looking almost ferial and tells is they are on the hunt. She calls Haldar over and points out a piece of clothing she’s spotted and footprints.

The footprints are a human child’s. These are mixed in with the wolf tracks and Haldar said they looked really fresh. Looks like the werewolf’s have captured a child. Ezmerelda and Haldar take off tracking them The rest of the party chases to keep up, heading west and north around the lake towards the stony outcroppings we had seen earlier.

It’s around 2:00 in the morning. They were not easy to track. There wasn’t any trail to follow, no game trail. Ezmerelda explains, as we are moving, just how good these guys are at hiding their tracks. She has had trouble tracking them before and that’s why she was so hot to chase them no. She didn’t want to lose track of them. As we come to the tree line, before us is a torch lit cave that looks like the gaping maw of a great wolf. It was about this time that terrain floated in and landed on the table. Haldar and Ezmerelda started moving forward. They split Haldar went right while Ezmerelda went left. She explains that if they are hu8nting, then a bunch of them may not be here which makes it a good time to strike.

We stayed back and Rinn and Misty moved to the side but kept people in sight so he can relay back should there be a need. He is keeping an open connection with Misty. The open cavern forms a 15 foot high canopy of rock over the cave mouth. It’s held up by a natural pillar of rock. The ceiling inside rises to a height of about 20 feet. From inside, they hear the sound of a flute. Some of the notes ate discordant and painfully so. Misty is using her spyglass to see what she can see. She see’s a little movement on the rock to the left of the entrance. She relays it back to Rinn through his messaging spell and he relays it to Haldar. Dain turns around and watches the woods behind us for any sign of something coming at us that way. Haldar blew his stealth roll. Besides hearing the flute in the cave, a closer sound emanated, a small chime sound. Snoggly casts Fireball at 77th level to clear the cave, or not! An old man and a young woman exit the cave, moving around the rocks and making their way towards Haldar and Ezmerelda. Kevin fetched Debbie’s candy that she left on the counter in the kitchen. The couple makes their way out together with their hands up, letting us know that they’ve seen us and are asking who we are. Haldar’s ability to stay hidden in the dark seemed to be ineffective as they were not only looking directly at Ezmerelda but also at him. The old man announces that, “We are here in peace and wish to be left alone.”.

Ezmerelda approaches with her weapon up and says, “Werewolf!”. The couple look at each other and and the lady says, “No! We hide from the werewolves!”. Ezmerelda asks, “Then why would you hide here among the werewolves?”. The explain that they are refugees from Vallaki who came here to be at peace. They do appear to be portraying themselves as that, refugees. The rest of the party begins moving forward. They asks why we are here. Ezmerelda tells her that we tracked wolves here. They acted surprised to hear that and asked if Ezmerelda was sure to which she replied, “Yes!”. As the rest of the party approaches, Snoggly calls, “why are you hiding out in a cave that’s shaped like a wolf?”. The man says, “It’s not shaped like a wolf!”, to which Snoggly replied, “You suer could’ve fooled me, lad!”.

Rinn asks if they are missing a child? They tells us that they aren’t! We tell them about the child’s foot prints we had spotted earlier. They explain that there are no children. Snoggly replies, “That’s not what the tracks say!”. Rinn explains that we followed the tracks of the wolves whose footprints were all over and around the child’s footprints. The woman says, “Then why don’t we find their den and leave us alone?”. Dain suggest we use the Kresk method to prove they aren’t werewolves. He remembers that as, cut yourself and if you don’t bleed, you are a werewolf.

Rinn moves forward, no weapons in his hand, and when he gets up even with Ezmerelda, he explains the test to them. The woman, incensed, says, “You come to our home and want to test us! We should be testing you!.”. Rinn pulls out a dagger, as the woman pulls out a dagger, and cuts his hand. Snoggly approaches and says, here, use this, and tosses the silver dagger up there. The man reaches down and grabs the silver hilt and tosses it back into the cave. He and she begin to morph and change their shape as they move back to the cave.

We rolled initiative and waited. Misty begins by moving up to the woman and attacks, hitting her twice. From inside the cave, we hear a chorus of howls. Haldar moves up and casts his hunters mark on the man. He then attacks and hits him. Rinn moves up fires a bow shot at the woman that hits her. He moves up even closer, picking an area behind a rock to keep cover. Ezmerelda moves forward and fires magic missiles into the man. Kyana moves her 35 feet, gets pretty close, and puts a spiritual weapon in front of him. Kyana also fires a bow at him and hits. The spiritual weapon attacks him as well. Dain moves up behind Haldar, bonus actions casts divine favor, and fires a crossbow bolt into the old man’s back and hits him. A dire wolf rounds the corner in the cave, making its way out. Zanfyr moves about 35 feet and fires a long bow and misses. Snoggly moves up and throws a firebolt at the guy. The man goes down.

The woman turns around and with her long fangs and sharp claws, she attacks and misses. The battle continues and as we take down the couple outside, more dire wolves and werewolves emerge to continue the fight. The fight continues for a while. At one point, the battle is looking bleak for Misty and she pulls a pit patch from her robe of useful items and throws it at the ground about halfway between three dire wolves. The center wolf and one of the other wolves falls in as well. Two of the three wolves fall into the pit. She backs up and quaffs a potion. That changed the tide of the battle. We continued through the end of the round. Zanfyr puts down a moonbeam between two of them. The dire wolf dies. Zanfyr is considered as concentrating. Snoggly dumped all but one charge on his wand of magic missiles, firing eight of the objects splitting them between two different enemies.

Reminder, spiritual hammer is out, there is a pit, Zanfyr is concentrating on a moonbeam.