Games Logs

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

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 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

In an attempt at leaving, the truck rolls through the carnival lot toward Vali, pursued by what amounts to the business end of the Nine Hells: three spiny devils and two horned devils are now approach at speed, and a barlgura freed from its recent captivity, loping across the cinders on its knuckles with real aggression. Somewhere behind all of it, the pit fiend former captor of the barlgura, watches. He is patient, waiting for the distance between himself and the truck to cl

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