Games Logs

The swamp outside Berez goes quiet as if waiting for something terrible to happen. The hags are gone. Somewhere in the fog, Baba Lysaga's walking hut is still blazing with Soulfire's flames that no water can touch. The stink of burning evil drifts back to the comrades. They hear the hut thrashing in the river mud, roots violently clubbing the ground. Crystal revives face-down in the muck, soaked and filthy, thanks to Soulfire's basic healing skills: they rudimentary but suff

The fuel canister goes skittering across the ice the moment the stone raven is knocked down, which is the ice devils' way of saying nothing happens down here without their permission. These two particular devils wait in the gloom, compound eyes trained on the shadows where the companions crouch. Reklaw gathers himself into a knot of fury and hurls his elemental power at the roof of the cavern, bringing part of it down on the devils' heads. One of the shades lurking behind the

The fire elemental has been guarding the volcano for decades. Nobody told it to stop. Debbie relieves it of some ash, thanks it for its service, and the party begins the long walk back to campus, feeling briefly accomplished. The feeling lasts until the forest path. There are scorch marks. There is a neat pile of ash. Beside it lies a fountain pen engraved with a single elegant V. Dean Valentin has always had excellent taste in stationery.

The visitors in Berez are having a bad night, and the residents, a coven of hags, are having a worse one. The ground around them is soaked with water, glazed with molasses, frosted over, and on fire, all at once. Morgantha and her sister Offalia are both burning. Their mother, the great hag Baba Lysaga, is furious. Her hut is walking off into the fog with Biblo trapped in one of its roots. Zilk is the one who set them off. Only moments ago, he decided to show them the seve

Borark spots the entrance in the side of the ice mountain first. A pool of magical darkness blots out everything inside the mouth of the opening, and from somewhere within it a voice rasps, "Beware! Stay out, lest you join the suffering of those consigned within!" Paws Off/Nine Hells DnD log session The barbarian blinks. "Isn't everyone here suffering? I mean, this is Hell." There is a distinct pause. Then the voice snaps, offended, "Well, this is true suffering!

Krelldutt opens the negotiations by planting a field of invisible thorns around Baba Lysaga. Twisted spikes erupt from the ground and pierce the leather soles of her shoes, and she screeches. Morgantha sprints to her side without seeing what surrounds her mother, and soon she is shrieking too. In her fury she hurls lightning at Komzin. The knight arches his back as it tears through him. The hut crashes closer like something out of a fever dream. One heavy root lashes out and

The scarecrows are mostly dead, the hut is mostly on fire, and Biblo is still being carried off by Baba Lysaga's house, which totters across the ruins of Berez on its chicken legs, waving the barbarian overhead in a fist of roots. Her daughters, Morgantha and Offalia, flank the Great Hag herself, and there is screaming. Morale is fine. Shifty opens by hurling radiant light at the hut. It strikes true, but the structure does not so much as flinch, despite the fire the kobold

The scarecrows arrive from every direction. They are stitched from sacking, stuffed with straw, and armed with long, amber-bladed claws, and there are far more of them than there were only moments ago. Komzin and Vincent Jager crest a rise and find the rest of the party knee-deep in scarecrows. Komzin tosses Vincent a blade from their newly recovered packs. It is not the focus the tiefling needs to cast spells, his actual stock in trade, and he handles it clumsily.

The companions gather their courage and leave the ruined Ulrich Manor behind, its broken windows watching them go like eyes. The swamp swallows them almost at once. Fog curls around their knees, insects whine in the reeds, and every step squelches into black mud that clings and sucks at their boots as if the ground itself warns them about going on. No one says much. Nike hears it first: a dry, brittle rattling, like twigs knocking together in a wind that isn't blowing.

There is a moment, partway down a portal to the eighth layer of Hell, when the question of who drives the truck becomes urgent. Kiki is at the wheel. She then attempts something arcane to guide the truck safely, and the arcane declines. Kiki is relocated without consultation into the back seat, which is at least still inside the truck. The wheel spins wildly, piloted by no one. Reklaw is in the driver's seat before anyone can call a vote about who should be the replacem

The plan, such as it is, involves a lava pit. KFC barrels down the volcanic corridor with Professor Murgaxor slung under one arm, trussed in Debbie's rope and gagged for everyone's safety. Whatever else the professor is, he is a formidable spellcaster. Keeping him from speaking or using his hands is the only thing preventing arcane mischief. The rest of the party follows at a run. Nobody notices the large bat coming down another cavern corridor with powerful downward strok

Morning in Berez arrives dim and damp, and it brings headaches. In Baba Lysaga's goat shed, Komzin and Vincent Yeager wake from a sleep that was not entirely their idea. Their heads are thick and throbbing. Their packs are gone. So are their weapons, and worst of all, so is Vincent's orb. Without it, whatever power he commands stays locked inside him.

Biblo, in a remarkable burst of strength, tears free of the webbing the giant spider has wrapped him in. She approaches; he dives through the door. She retreats upward to wait for the next unwary creature to ambush. He rejoins the group and finds them discussing something that has upset them all. Horatio is gone. This should not be possible. Horatio is magically bound to guard the barn, and a creature bound to a location cannot simply wander off. Nike, especially, feels hi

Thunk finally gets his turn to draw. The Knight. A figure clad head to toe in plate appears, kneeling at Thunk's feet — broad, rune-marked, and fully convinced that fate has bound him to Thunk's service. He does not ask questions. He simply kneels and pledges himself. Thunk draws again and gets something rarer than loyalty: The Fates, one chance to tell the universe that something never happened. Thunk puts it away for later. It is the most sensible thing anyone does all day.

The duergar shrine is dim and smells of cold candle wax and old stone. Youngaxor's handiwork still stands at its center: a dwarven statue with its face crudely recarved into his father's, and at its feet, a prayer for a sign. The Hexmates intend to give him one. They have several ideas about how, and most of them are bad. The worst involves someone dressing up as Oldgaxor and visiting him in person, like Hamlet's father. This is voted down, loudly. "He knew his dad for like

Vincent arrives in the swamps of Berez the way most guests of hags do: dragged face-first through brambles and mud, lighter by one spellcasting focus and a good deal of skin. He is fairly sure the focus was a crystal orb. He is less sure of almost everything else, including how he came to be in Barovia at all. His last clear memory, before a night of too much wine with some travelers' camp, is a tavern in Waterdeep. Again, too much drink, and a strange man offering him passag

The statue in the fountain has a face, and on closer inspection the face belongs to Vampyr, an ancient and evil minor god. Soulfire, still unconscious, had earlier called the room just the place for a vampire cult. It turns out she was not incorrect. Crystal responds to the discovery the way she responds to most things. The stone statue won't burn, so she casts Acid Splash on it. The statue's eyes light up, and it answers her with a lightning bolt. The acid sizzles against t

The lost city of the duergar sits inside an active volcano, a real estate decision that explains most of the neighborhood's problems. The Crown complains loudly about the heat as the party descends. "It is SO HOT! And when was the last time you washed your hair?! It's disgusting!"

In the swamps of Berez, Komzin picks his way through fog that clings like a second skin. He has followed the sound of a cawing raven, and now stands regarding a large, writhing bird pinned through the wing to a plank by a single nail. The nail, Komzin thinks, may have a glamor to it. In any case, the raven is alive, frantic, and making sure the whole marsh knows its woes. Komzin opts to check the perimeter. Circling the area, he finds a rotted rag doll half-sunk in the muc

The fight continues in the subterranean room beneath the ruins of the Burgomaster of Berez's home. In front of the demonic shrine, the enormous, rubbery bulk of the moralith turns, its eye pits fixing on Shifty. The thing begins to speak without a mouth, straight into the kobold's mind. It offers strange gifts of insects and worse. Shifty refuses the offering. The moralith does not take refusal well. Its tentacle lashes out, gripping Shifty like a thick, tightening wet rope.