10/20/2026: Pocket Sand: The Coven Breaks in Berez

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 severed head of their sister, Bella. He held it up in one hand like a lantern, and the coven lost whatever composure it had left.

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After a lifetime of flawless sneaking, Zilk tries to slip up on Baba Lysaga. Her eyes follow him the whole way.

"Don't think you can hide from me, Bugbear."

Zilk drops into a crouch, shouts "POCKET SAND," and hurls a fistful of shimmering color at her. It goes off like a weak party popper. Then he runs. Baba cackles, completely unaffected.

Nobody else comments.

Out in the fog, Biblo tries to pry himself loose. When that fails, he tries diplomacy. "Hut," he says, "could you please put me down?" The hut thinks about it and throws him ninety feet into a brick wall. Biblo climbs out of the rubble and limps toward Shifty, calling for help.

Meanwhile Ankle Biter, the small and spiteful pseudodragon that Nike's wild magic summoned for the single purpose of hating her, keeps doing what his name says.

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A fireball blooms over the hags. Morgantha takes the edge of it. Baba walks through it untouched. Then Soulfire's enchanted flames finally drop Morgantha, and the coven breaks. Baba screams at Soulfire, who answers by wrapping herself and her wolf, Pinecone, in magical darkness. It doesn't make her feel as safe as she'd hoped.

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Nike desperately wants to befriend the tiny, ferocious pseudodragon, so she casts a charm on the creature she has been calling "Ankle Biter." He lets go of her boot and looks up at her, confused. She hugs him. He allows it, with obvious reservations.

Then Baba Lysaga calls down chain lightning. It goes through Nike, through Crystal, and on to Zilk. Crystal drops. Offalia stops, drops, and rolls, putting herself out in the steaming bed of Zilk's magically conjured flowers. She rolls to her feet and vanishes into the Ethereal Plane.

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Zilk runs to Crystal. He has no idea what to do medically, so he tries everything at once. Nothing works. He hides behind her dying body instead. Crystal is the smallest dragonborn in Barovia and Zilk is a large bugbear, yet somehow the rogue disappears behind her completely.

Baba Lysaga loses track of him, and it enrages her. She screeches, "You can't hide from me, thief!"

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Soulfire drops the darkness and leaves Pinecone in the relative safety of the far side of the Berez cemetery. She manages to get Crystal breathing again.

Ankle Biter remembers that he hates Nike. Nike drags him by one wing toward Pinecone and recasts her charm. It doesn't work, and he keeps chewing on her.

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Shifty, bloodied and chased by the burning hut, stops and calls down a prayer of healing that puts her friends back on their feet. It is the best thing anyone does all night.

The hut keeps coming for Shifty, loudly.

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Meanwhile, Zilk is digging through his pack. His fingers find a bundle of arrows, and he pulls free the shortbow he has carried since before Vallaki and never used. He nocks an arrow and shoots Baba Lysaga. Her face goes from fury to fear with that one arrow. Zilk ducks behind Crystal again. Baba shrieks that he can't hide from her, that she will find him.

Out of her view, Zilk does a small victory dance.

Crystal throws up a dazzling hypnotic pattern and covers her friends' eyes with her claws. Baba shrugs it off, and the hut has no eyes to dazzle. Soulfire hits Baba with a fireball. Baba steps out of the smoke anyway.

Nike sends the great hag a note by way of her invisible servant: Why are you attacking us? Why do you hate us?

Baba reads it and bellows, "Because you want to kill my precious boy!"

"He doesn't even like you," Nike says, and adds a rude gesture.

"You'll pay for that." Then Baba is gone, blinking into the Ethereal after her daughter.

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The hut remains, determined to finish the job. It knocks Crystal flat again, then swings at Shifty, misses badly, and vanishes. A surge of wild magic flings it fifty feet south, through several of the mansion's walls and a copse of trees. Out in the dark there is an enormous splash. The hut has found the river.

It is still on fire. Soulfire's enchanted flames cannot be doused by anything mundane.

Somewhere between this world and the next, two hags hold the heartstones that let them slip between planes. Soulfire seems determined to follow them, and to steal or destroy those stones.

Only then might the party defeat Baba Lysaga.

Nike would like it noted that Ankle Biter is still chewing on her.