10/27/2026: The End of Baba Lysaga

The swamp outside Berez goes quiet as if waiting for something terrible to happen. The hags are gone. Somewhere in the fog, Baba Lysaga's walking hut is still blazing with Soulfire's flames that no water can touch. The stink of burning evil drifts back to the comrades. They hear the hut thrashing in the river mud, roots violently clubbing the ground.

Crystal revives face-down in the muck, soaked and filthy, thanks to Soulfire's basic healing skills: they rudimentary but sufficient. "I know I've said this five times today," she announces, "but I am never doing that again." But within the minute, she is walking toward the sound of the struggling hut.

Nike, still disguised as a scarecrow, is still under attack by the pseudodragon she has named Ankle Biter. She casts a charm upon it. It spits out her foot and backs away, unimpressed. This will prove to be the high point of their relationship.

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Soulfire takes a short detour into quicksand, hauls free muddy to the knees, and resumes the business of hunting Baba’s house. 

To her left, Zilk is out of better ideas. He picks up a stick, holding it like a wand. Veins rise on his forehead. He strains, he shakes, and against all reason he tears a hole into the Ethereal Plane. He steps through the glowing rip.

On the other side, in a swamp identical to the one he has just left, Baba Lysaga stands over Morgantha, chanting her daughter back to life while Offalia looks on. Zilk tries to hide, does it poorly, and opens with a spell that misses. Baba Lysaga wheels, snarling a curse at the bugbear. She raises one massive hand and levels a large, knobby digit at him. From it springs the dread spell Finger of Death. Zilk is engulfed in black and purple light, his back arched in agony. He goes down, gently steaming, and is still.

Back in the swamp, Nike heals the snarling Ankle Biter with a potion. Ankle Biter, restored to full health and free of her charm, thanks her by seizing her throat with his razor sharp fangs.

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Crystal steps through Zilk's rift and spots the dying bugbear. She answers the hags with a Fireball. Morgantha ignites in a fiery pyre and expires again with a shriek. Baba Lysaga, unaccountably, vanishes.

In the distance, Offalia howls promises of murder across the mist.

Soulfire turns a volley of Magic Missiles on the hut, which begins shedding pieces of itself.

 Biblo vaults the quicksand and drives his flaming trident into its timbers until the thing is held together by spite alone. When it swings a massive root at Soulfire and lands a battering blow, she answers with a burst of green hellfire. The hut explodes. Biblo leaps clear of the wickedly sharp fragments as it comes apart.

In the Ethereal Plane, a volley of Magic Missiles from Offalia drops Crystal, dying, into the mud. Shifty steps through the rift to tend the two fallen comrades and sends up a Prayer of Healing that pulls Crystal and Zilk back from the very brink of death.

Then Shifty walks straight into a cloud of mosquitoes. 

A Baba-shaped cloud of mosquitos.

The mosquitoes are Baba Lysaga. This is what she becomes when she is near death. Shifty is swarmed, pierced by hundreds of stinging bites, feeding Baba and strengthening her. The cleric loses more blood than is good for a tiny kobold.

Soulfire reaches into the cloud of mosquitos to plants her flaming blade beside the miserable Shifty and lets hellfire do the rest. The swarm scatters with a shriek, and the hag's vast, translucent outline thrashes and fades, not dead but fled back to the Material Plane. There, Nike is alone, wounded, and wrestling the pseudodragon she now wears as a vicious necklace.

Trying to help Nike on her way to the portal, Soulfire aims a Fire Bolt at Ankle Biter. She hits Nike instead. Burned and astonished, Nike gawps at Soulfire, who shrugs and leaps through Zilk's portal.

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Zilk's tear between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane begins to pulse faster. It is closing.

Shifty slips back through the shrinking rift and creeps up on the battered Baba Lysaga unseen. Biblo jumps the other way, offers Offalia a few calming words, and earns her full and undivided hatred.

Zilk, back on his feet, finds the spot where Baba Lysaga crossed over. The veil is still thin from her passing. Once more he raises his stick, now slick with his own blood, and forces open a rift two inches wide. He pokes the stick through. It meets something soft that grunts. He withdraws the stick and drives his sword in after it.

Then, without ceremony, the rift snaps shut. Half the blade stays on the Material side. So does the larger part of Baba Lysaga. The rest of her falls back into the reeds of the Ethereal Plane, just in front of Zilk. With reverence, he draws the remaining half of his sword from Baba and wipes what is left of the blade on her shawl, cleaning it of the hag’s ichor.

"They can never call me the weakest one again," Zilk declares to no one. "Or complain about my lockpicking."

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Nike, still wrestling a dragon, watches the death of the most feared witch in Barovia, who has been stabbed through a keyhole.

A sudden crash of thunder, close by, makes her start.

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The party picks over what's left of Baba. The hag carried a heartstone and a ring bearing the crest of Castle Ravenloft, which goes into Soulfire’s  pocket beside its twin. Biblo takes the hag’s foot. Each prize is answered by another rumble of thunder rolling over the valley; Strahd, apparently, is taking the passing of Baba Lysaga personally.

Crystal thinks to look for Argynvost's skull. It may be somewhere nearby, but it is not here.

Soulfire moves to touch the flaming blade to Ankle Biter. The pseudodragon looks up with big golden eyes, wags its tail, and settles on Soulfire's shoulder. It growls at Nike.

In the Ethereal Plane, Zilk stands alone with a screaming Offalia and very little blood left to spare. His stick is spent, crumbles to ash in his hand. The original portal begins to shrink before his eyes.

From the other side, Crystal hurls her old wand toward him, end over end over end.

Then the portal snaps closed. Zilk is no longer the weakest one in the room. He is the only one.

The wand lies in the mud just in front of him, and the raging Offalia is moving his way.