Games Logs

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 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.

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

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 cellar, Soulfire hisses, “What ARE they doing up there?” The hammering on the organ far above them has resumed. Crystal merely shakes her head. Suddenly, there is an enormous crash from somewhere ahead of them. It is so large, so powerful, that the ground beneath their feet shakes and dust trickles down from overhead.

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 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 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

On the floor of the Great Hall, Biblo is confronted by the arcanaloth, Neferon. “Exethanter, the lich, wants to see me?” The dragonborn gulps and regards the creature who stands before him. Some sort of infernal, Biblo guesses, looks jackal-like. With tawny fur, a bushy tail and a foxy face, Neferon’s odd, coppery eyes have horizontal slits for pupils. They are jagged, like a lightning bolt. He regards Biblo with an inscrutable expression. ”What does the lich want of me?”