SESSION 4: DAY 2: Barovia: 16 Days Until Full Moon, Waning Crescent
The Catacombs of Cultists
(Note: Lee was missing from this game)
After picking up the body of the nursemaid in the upstairs attic and laying her to rest in the empty, unlabeled tomb; Song did a eulogy for the children in the name of the Moon Maiden. Vladamir offered his own words in the name of the Morninglord. Kragg offered up a few words to the nursemaid and a lovely poem he had memorized. ("Fear no more the heat o' the sun" BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE) Karl offered a moment of silence.
After sealing the tombs of the recently laid dead, the party carefully checked the remaining tombs of Gustav Durst and Elisabeth Durst. Gustav Durst's coffin was empty. Elisabeth Durst's coffin on the other hand was full of centipedes, frightening Kragg. After destroying the bugs together, Kragg was able to overcome his fear (and stopped rolling nat 1's on his sneak attack damage). He also mentioned having needed to be shaved to help remove lice, but only sports a mustache now out of personal preference. Karl questioned if Kragg's mustache helped him balance on a tightrope. Kragg did not respond. Song couldn't help but chuckle and apologized for doing so.
They returned to the chamber with a dining table covered in humanoid bones. Kragg determined that everyone should stay back while he scouted ahead so he could lure monsters into "a killing funnel". Karl briefly followed Kragg before being encouraged to stay back. Continuing to scout, the dwarf found a room with a statue and several skeletons shackled to the wall. He also saw a long hallway. Instead of further investigating the statue room, he went down the hallway and found some stairs going down. Then, he suddenly felt drool dripping on his shoulder before he was surrounded and paralyzed by ghouls with a shriek of "Sacré Bleu!"
Meanwhile, the party sensed an indeterminable shadow and dismissed it as nothing. Song spoke with Karl, asking what his last name was. He told her it was Shrekt. Karl also commented it was a good question and that Song was too trusting for not asking earlier. She countered that not asking one's last name can be out of politeness, since not everyone that comes to her for healing is open, especially when they're hurt. Around that time was when the party heard Kragg yell. They quickly rushed to his aid.
Song blessed the party as they rushed in to help Kragg. She attempted to Channel her divinity but it didn't work. Instead, she heard a woman cackle. Kragg was able to bounce back from his paralyzed state quite quickly and helped the others take down most of the ghouls. The last ghoul immediately fled into the room with the statue and shackled, moldy skeletons. Everyone pursued it to finish it off but the monster disappeared out of sight down another hallway. Kragg commented that the Durst's should fire their interior decorator as he looked at the skeletons shackled to the walls. Then, the party studied the statue briefly before the ghoul came back with a screech, running past the party as if running away from something else. Everyone tried to kill it, but Kragg managed to get the final strike while sitting on it and slamming the ghoul's head into the wall.
They all took a moment to investigate the room and study the statue further. The black marble statue was of a six-foot-tall, stoic man with long hair and a long cloak. It also held up a smoky gray orb in its marble fingers and had the statue of a wolf at its side. The quartet determined that this man was definitely not Gustav Durst. Song suggested he might be Strahd von Zarovich, since the cult seemed to worship him to a certain extent according to the letter they found in the library.
Karl attempted to pick up the orb and five shadows suddenly sprung out to attack him. After one of the shadows sapped away some of Karl's strength, the party quickly jumped in to attack the shadows. Vladamir and Karl tore into the shadows with their swords. Kragg doused a shadow in holy water. Song overkilled her first monster in the campaign with a guiding bolt. Afterward Kragg thanked Song for the holy water and she mentioned that she could make more with 25 gp worth of powdered silver if she has Ceremony prepared for that day. The dwarf took note of that.
Resuming his scouting position, Kragg continued onward and investigated the door down the hall that the ghoul ran away from. As soon as the dwarf touched the door, Kragg became stuck and was startled to see eyes and teeth appear on the door as a mimic revealed itself. Everyone struggled to fight the monster in the tight hallway. Kragg declared that he would make cheese out of the door as he stabbed it dead.
Furious with the experience of the mimic, Kragg and Karl moved on to the next room that had a table, chairs, candelabras, and a chandelier. They poked all the objects with their weapons out of paranoia before moving on to the next room. It was a surprisingly lavish bedroom with a locked footlocker. Song determined the bed was torn up from long-clawed humanoid hands, stronger than ghouls. The party gathered around as Kragg lock picked the footlocker. As soon as he opened it and found a lovely cache of items that included health potions, two undead figures burst out two weak spots in the walls of the room. The figures were the ghastly forms of Gustav and Elisabeth Durst in tattered black robes, angrily attacking the party. Song was able to channel her divinity to turn Undead and keep Mrs. Durst in her alcove for a bit. She even heard her goddess' voice for a moment say, "Oh, there you are."
After a rough fight with the Durst's undead corpses that involved ball bearings and struggling to overcome their stench, the party took stock of the cache and then had a short rest in the adjacent room with the table and chandelier. Song kept watch and was able to sense that some sort of large, wormlike creature was lurking somewhere in the catacombs. They decided to not pursue it and headed down the stairs Kragg had found earlier before being attacked by ghouls.
Reaching the lowermost level of the house, they began to finally understand the voices of the chanting. Over and over again, voices were saying "He is the ancient. He is the land." The first chamber was a museum of miscellaneous, gruesome objects. There was a mummified hand, a knife made from a bone, a rat skull collection, eyeball, cloak made of skin, dead frog tied to a stick, a bag of bat guano, a hag finger, a 6 inch mummy, an iron pendant of a devil, a shrunken halfling head, and a cuff made from a direwolf's tongue. There were two directions to go between a ramp with a portcullis leading to a flooded chamber with an altar or the hallway. Karl smelled dried blood on top of the smell of fetid, murky water. Song could not smell what he was describing. The party went the drier, hallway route and found more walls with shackles. Only one skeleton remained attached to a wall with a gold ring on its finger. Kragg took the finger bone with the gold ring and bagged the rest of the skeleton for burial. Seeing no way further, they headed back to the portcullis.
Stepping into the water, Vladamir felt a shiver as the essence of it unsettled him. He attempted to open the portcullis several times, but for the life of him he could not lift it, even with advantage and guidance. Reassessing the situation, the party managed to find another way into the flooded chamber by returning to where the gold-ringed skeleton had been. Passing through the hidden door, they found themselves on one of the raised walkways around the chamber, five feet above the murky waters that were two feet deep. The chamber had a very high ceiling. In the center of the room was a raised, bloodstained altar carved like a monster with ominous chains hanging above it. As soon as the party entered had the room, the chanting stopped. They could only hear the clinking of the chains above the altar and subtle movements to the water. Kragg and Karl studied the wheel that controlled the portcullis while Song and Vladamir briefly studied a pile of refuse in an alcove. Then, Song decided to approach the altar just a moment before Karl did.
As soon as Song stepped on the altar, the ghostly apparitions of thirteen cultists appeared with torches of black flame on the walkways. All of them began to chant "One must die!" over and over again. Song told them, "absolutely not", but they did not listen to her. Frustrated, Song attempted to knock over the altar but was nowhere strong enough to do so. Then, she cast sacred flame on it several times, making the cultists go silent. It was then, a cultist spoke and said, "very well, I see you've made your choice."
With that, the pile of refuse near Vladamir began to rise and form into a large, golem-like creature of flesh and bone. The cultists began to proclaim "The end comes. Dead be praised. Rise, Lorgoth the Decayer!" Vladamir nobly unleashed his radiant consumption and a vow of enmity before he began to battle the monster head-on. The others fired from a safe distance. Song attempted to use her last spell to cast Faerie Fire but the Decayer succeeded. As Vladamir attempted to chip away at the monster, the monster viciously slammed down onto him, managing to engulf him and horrifying Karl and Kragg in the process. Karl and Kragg were overwhelmed by paranoia and OCD. Song attempted to channel her divinity to offer up temporary hp, but she was stopped again. A female voice told her, "you're in my realm now," leaving the moon cleric confused and frustrated.
The masked paladin managed to break free from being engulfed and struggled to stay up as Song and Kragg poured potions of healing into his mouth. Then, with one nasty hit from Lorgoth, Vladamir fell unconscious in the water.
Not long after that, Karl quickly stepped up, absolutely energized as his bones began to crack, making him scream in agony beside Song. His clawed fingers tore open his own flesh, revealing dark, black fur beneath it as his mouth formed into the snout of a wolf. Karl's blue eyes now blazed yellow as his werewolf form was revealed with a roar. Kragg said, "what the fuck?" in shock, but Song did not seem too surprised. All the cultists seemed excited about this. The wolf rushed forward to tear into the mass of Lorgoth. Song quickly rushed in to pull Vladamir away from the fight and stabilized him with a healer's kit.
Lorgoth the Decayer suddenly consumed the werewolf after several nasty blows. Then, it stomped towards Song who stood protectively over Vladamir's unconscious body with her shield up. It bashed into her hard, but she managed to keep standing as Kragg offered cover fire. The werewolf, though restrained, viciously tore open the Decayer from within before breaking its jaws open with a loud snap and crawling out.
Song warned Kragg to back up as quickly and far as he could as she pulled the unconscious paladin through the water with her. She then attempted to talk down Karl who was in a feral state, hungering for more fresh prey. Gently, Song told him to take a few deep breaths. Karl managed to find it in himself to do so. Calmed, the werewolf changed himself back to his human form and the house screeched with displeasure before falling dead silent.
Tired and bloodied from battle, the party gathered up on the raised platform with the altar to take a moment to rest on a dry spot. A healing potion was finally used on Vladamir to bring him back from unconsciousness.