Games Logs

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.

The Ulrich Mansion settles with creaks and sighs, the buzzing of insects stifled by its thick walls. The party rests on musty straw mattresses in the abandoned guards' quarters, trying to recover strength and arcane energy. Four in the afternoon becomes six becomes dusk. Pinecone, who took the worst of the ghast's attention at the churchyard burial of Maartin, is finally resting comfortably but still very weak. He noses at Soulfire's hand and settles onto the bed besi

Moving past the pole where the watcher-eye hung, the group finds a rotted plank leaning against a moss-covered rock. Something tattered and black hangs from it. As they draw closer, the shape resolves — the dead body of a large raven, nailed to the wood, wings pinned wide. Soulfire casts Detect Magic and feels strong transmutation magic radiating from the bird, and something darker still — a heavy pulse of subjugation magic from the nail itself, which she realizes now is g

The road to Berez has turned out to be far more treacherous than anyone bargained for. Mist clings low over the evergreens, and the stench arrives before the creatures do — a thick, rotting sweetness that coats the back of the throat. Two ghasts, gravecallers both, have cornered the party mid-track, their green-grey flesh peeling in strips, their claws black with old blood. In the middle of the chaos, a figure steps quietly from the tree line, unnoticed by all but the trees

The last of the wolves goes down in a wash of fire, Crystal and Abi's spells silencing the pack's howls. Smoke curls off scorched fur and drifts low across the frost-stiffened grass near the windmill, and for a moment nobody speaks — just the tick of embers cooling and the distant creak of the mill's broken sails turning in the wind. They take stock. Packs are checked, blades wiped clean, potions counted against what's left of the road ahead. They set out on a curiously un

The knock comes first — polite, almost apologetic, from below. Then another, sharper, from above. Neither is trusted for an instant. Crystal’s fingers curl around the shape of a spell not yet spoken. Shifty, flattened against the wall beside the upstairs door, meets Zilk’s eyes across the room and gives the barest nod. Then he wrenches the door open. What comes through is not one creature but a hundred small furies — a tide of fiendish things, snarling and scrabbling, all t

Morning light struggles through the shutters of the Blue Water Inn, catching the dust motes above tables still scarred from the werewolf assault. The companions gather in the main room, battle-worn but resolute, and lay out their plan to Urwin Martikov: back to the old windmill, to hunt down the last of the night hags. Urwin listens, wiping the same tankard he’s been wiping for the better part of ten minutes. “You’re going back there,” he says. It isn’t quite a question. “We

The Blue Water Inn is in disarray — overturned tables, shattered glass glittering in the lamplight, the copper stink of blood soaking into good Vallaki floorboards. The last of the werewolves know the fight is lost. Two of them — Lawrence and Curlew, if the pack keeps names at all — bolt through the kitchen, scattering pots and pride in equal measure. Mohsen takes the more theatrical exit, hurling himself through the front window in a spray of glass, and is gone into the nigh

Urwin and his family leave the companions in the taproom, bidding them a good night. Late at night, the Blue Water Inn has settled into its particular quiet — the kind that feels less like peace and more like held breath before bed. Candles gutter in their sconces. The fire in the cavernous room has burned low, casting everything into amber and shadow. The party lingers rather than retreating to their rooms, drawn together by some unspoken instinct that tonight is not a night

The tree blight lies broken across the road, branches still twitching faintly as if some sap-thick memory of life refuses to let go. The air reeks of crushed pine and the metallic tang of ichor, and steel rasps against wood as the party and a handful of borrowed guards hack their way down toward the two buried beneath it. Sawdust and splinters settle in their hair like snow. It’s in the middle of all this that Etuttelong makes its appearance — a small, curious creature tha

The Abbey of Saint Markovia clings to the hillside above Kresk, its bells casting a long, resonant toll across the valley. As the sound resonates, the creatures within the abbey yard answer with yipping, howls, growls and screams. Nikolai Wachter sits in the relative warmth of the abbey’s receiving room and tries, very hard, to understand what he is being told. A year. He lost a year. He had closed his eyes — he is almost certain he had merely closed his eyes — and the worl

The wagon smells of old wine and worry. And it is making Shifty feel terribly unwell. The next chapter of their adventure has started unpleasantly for him. It is early morning when the party pulls away from the vineyard and the Barovian mist sits low and cold across the road. Shifty is in a deeply pitiable state. He sits hunched against the wagon's side rail, scales the grey-green of pitted copper, looking every inch like something a cat dragged in. The fresh air does not

The smoldering ruins of the tree-blight are still sending thin threads of smoke into the grey Barovian sky as the party descends Yester Hill. The ground is soft underfoot, churned by the night's violence, and the air smells of char and wet earth. Somewhere on the slope, Biblo whistles to himself. Nike spots them first — hoof prints pressed into the mud at the path's edge, the ground around each one singed dark. Four-legged, large, and burning. Crystal's eyes narrow. She know

The party wastes no time. With Exethanter’s library still humming at their backs, they turn their attention to the matter of reward — and reward, in Barovia, rarely arrives without complication. Neferon regards them with his unsettling golden eyes. “I do not know the stores contained within the Great Library as Exethanter does. And I may only gift you with items we have many of.” Soulfire selects a Feywild Shard from the pile — a resonant crystal that, when metamagic is app

Wizards of the Coast. The Dark Gifts. Digital illustration. Curse of Strahd, WotC, 2016. Hall of the Amber Sarcophagi The East Hall of the Amber Sarcophagi smells of damp stone and something older, sharper underneath — caused, possibly by the divine things that have been imprisoned within for a very long time. Behind one of the chamber doors, the sounds are extraordinary: crashing, roaring, the shriek of something that might be female or might be the sound stone makes when it

Soulfire, Nike, and Crystal face the newly hostile nothic together. It glares at them with its single enormous eye, the air between them gone suddenly sharp. Soulfire casts Dragon’s Breath on Nike, wreathing them in crackling potential — a lightning cone ready to be exhaled should the situation demand it. Crystal doesn’t wait. She unleashes Scorching Ray, bolt after bolt connecting with searing precision. The nothic crumbles, smoldering, and moves no more. The group regard

In the blink of an eye, Fekre is gone. One moment she stands before them — tattered gown, closed eyes, the wire crown pressed into pale

The shelves of the Great Library climb upward into darkness, tier after tier of arcane curiosities vanishing into the vaulted ceiling high a

When Exethanter finally retires, retreating into the silence of his quarters with the slow, shuffling certainty of a man who has lived too l

The air in the library sits thick and cold, carrying the faint smell of ancient stone and something older beneath it — dust, old parchment,