Games Logs

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.

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

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 truck rattles through another stretch of Hell's endless carnival midway, and somewhere out the shattered passenger window, a stuffed effigy of the Lord of Blades sits slumped in a game booth, a prize nobody wanted to claim. It's the kind of detail the party can't leave alone. Naturally, they don't. The trouble starts with a rope in Borark's hands. Nearby, the barbarian has spotted a fortune-teller's cart — a table of cards spread out under an awning, unattended, or so

The party descends beneath Mt. Strix, chasing another piece in the ritual Alister and Titania need to separate. What they find first in the duergar ruin isn't a monster. It's a coffin. Twin bridges span lake of lava, depositing the party at the foot of several short, steep flights of stairs that rise into the dark. A balcony juts from above, and atop it is a stone sarcophagus. There, sits a tomb presiding above the grand staircase, elegantly carved and coated in a thick, ash

The two hags close on Vincent, easily a head and a half taller than him, close enough that he can feel the ground tremble faintly with each step. "Where is the child? Why is she not with you?" Vincent has little to offer them — a girl glimpsed once, at a distance, through a haze of bad wine and unfamiliar company. "I really don't know," he tells them. "I didn't even know the people I was traveling with." The hags withdraw, hissing to each other. The larger of the two — Morg

The cliffside radiates heat through Diro’s shoes and he realizes his proximity to the salamander is causing his skin to become pink and scalded. The air between himself and the creature is shimmering with heat haze, just like the air over river of lava, far below. Realizing he is burning, Diro retreats downward, followed by his stand. The salamander watches him with patient contempt and only half-heartedly slashes at Diro and his stand, missing them widely. It slithers int

In the thin, cold light of morning, Vistani and guests mill around the remains of last night’s wine-soaked celebration of Viktor’s life and mourning of his passing. Even the fire seems wan and sickly. A pale Berlioz approaches Dag as the group packs up to head back. “One of your number left in the night. The small one — a gnome? We warned him to wait, but he left going west. I suppose he is able to see at night. May the gods watch over him!” Dag nods, and turns to go, but t

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

Rain comes, a few drips at first and then all at once, hammering the deck of the Bright Lady in gray sheets. The small keelboat groans against the swells. Her captain, a weathered man named Keeler stands fixed at the bow beside a mounted ballista-like device he adjusts with a large wrench. Water sluices from his braided beard onto his waxed cloak. The only other crew member, Jeeter Beeching, is a younger man, tanned and clean-shaven. He directs the party up the gangplank

The big top empties in a hurry to escape the rapidly spreading inferno— even the pit fiend doesn't linger for an encore. At the top of the bleachers, Kiki slits the canvas with her dagger and slips out through the hole rather than fight the panicked bottleneck at the entrance. Inside the burning tent, the barlgura is still eating whatever weaker infernal it can reach. What's left of the crowd spills into the oven-heat of the Maladomini fairgrounds: a gang of horned devils,

Under the big top, the tail-coated ringmaster sweeps into view wearing an outrageous hat, purple shot through with black. Its two bells jingle, throwing off faint silvery sparks with every toss of his head. Gearloose squints at it, thinking the sparks look almost like insects, swarming and settling in the same breath. Vali does the same, tilting his broad orc head, and between the two of them the verdict comes back clear: this is no cheap prop. Whatever the ringmaster is wear

The road to Tser Falls has proven dangerous. From out of the forest emerges a familiar face, its features twisted now with rage and hatred. Sheriff. He was taken by the hags in exchange for passage along the road, back when they carried Ireena toward Ravenloft. Dag ducks, opened by one of Morgantha’s spells and bleeding freely. Sheriff’s blade arcs toward him, and again — whatever the hags have done to him in his time with them, they have granted him no gift for swordplay.

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

On the grounds of Maladomini’s Carnival Eternal, there is tension between the friends and a group of violent clowns. But as quickly as they descended, the clowns are gone — folded back into the crowd like a trick of the light. They leave only chalk dust settling in the churned mud and the faint, retreating jingle of bells. The friends stand a moment, catching their breath, before the Carnival Eternal reasserts itself around them: calliope music, the tang of sulfur-sweet ca

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