This time I get to be a player character for once! I’m joining an already running campaign by DM Jason.
Session Notes by Date:
02/22/2025
03/01/2025
03/08/2025
BACKGROUND
Barovia, date unknown. The heroes are travelling south along a road/trail through the Svalich Woods toward Yester Hill, a mound just north of the Luna River. The woods are full of werewolves, so staying on the path is safer. The group is going to retrieve a green gemstone from a group of druids who may have reason to not like the group’s guide, Ezmerelda d’Avenir.
Brother Bob (Stanley): An assimar cleric of life who must hide his feathery wings from the locals of Baravoia to avoid their fearful prejudice and violent harassment, as happened during the group’s visit to the town of Vallaki.
Lady Lacey Meriwether (Melanie): An elderly human warlock investigating the disappearance of her husband. In the course of her investigation, she ended up contacted by Cthulhu and became pact-bound to the entity. Her magic often involves shadows and spectral tentacles. Her right eye is green and left eye is brown. She has a tuxedo cat-turned-sphynx of wonder familiar named Chester.
New to the party…
Oleander (Gus): A wood elf wizard (illusionist) who somehow knows Lady Lacey from 60 years ago. He always wears an all-black Bauta Venetian masquerade mask and cloak, hiding his tangled black curls of hair (picture Kit Harrington in full Jon Snow guise), and brown/black traveller’s clothes. His magic appears to draw nearby shadows around himself like a cloak.
Ridder Joost Vanderbruuk (Stanton): A human paladin of vengeance clad in half-plate armor, scion of a noble family in the Shield Lands of Oerth. He accidentally led many of his realm’s people into slavery by promising them safe passage by ship to Furyondy in the west, only to have the ships turn out to be pirates sailing east to the Bandit Kingdoms. In anger and shame, he renounced the gods and threw himself off a cliff only to reawaken with his brother in the land of Barovia. He has sworn to never raise a hand against his brother Schurk, whom he hates.
Schurk Vanderbruuk (James): A drow elf adopted and raised by a noble family in Oerth’s Shield Lands. Raised to become a fighter, he is something of a trickster renegade amongst the family, but he made a pact with a fiend in order to restore his brother Joost back to life. The pair appeared together in the Svalich Woods and joined the party along the road to Yester Hill.
NPC names and places mentioned in the party’s backstory:
* Strahd von Zarovich: Vampire ruler of Barovia
* Baba Lysaga, the “mother of Strahd”
* Ezmerelda d’Avenir, a vampire hunter with a wooden leg; joined party at town of Krezk
* Dr. Rudolph van Richten, an academic expert who wrote about vampire lore
* The Wizard of Wines: A vineyard/winery the party visited
Also:
* Nicha (sp?) (James’ last character), an adventurer looking for her lost son, believed she had found him among the reanimated cadavers used by The Abbot (a fallen angel) to make flesh golems as potential brides for Strahd. The discovery may have just been a trick of illusions. Nicha was killed (at The Abbey)?
* A druid party member (Jeremy) recently left the group.
Also:
* Strahd is searching the land for his lost love, Tatyana, who reincarnates someplace in the realm every few years. Recently, a girl named Ireena may have been the latest incarnation; her family or village tried to kill her for fear of drawing Strahd’s attention.
* Dusk Elves: A lineage of elves in Barovia now going extinct as revenge from Strahd after the vampire lord killed all females among them. Now, a handful of elderly dusk elf males remain, all indebted to serve the traveling Vistani families.
* While previously traveling on the road to Yester Hill, the party encountered a headless horseman riding a nightmare sent to deliver an invitation to dinner at Strahd’s castle.
SESSION NOTES (2/22/2025)
The party approached a hill ringed with 10-foot-tall stone monoliths surrounding a low wall built around a 50-foot-tall “wicker man” construction resembling Strahd. A druid stood atop the hill performing a ritual as supernatural lightning danced down from the magical storm brewing overhead.
Oleander and Schurk used stealth to flank the site, spotting many hidden druids along the way. (Some hid in the ground, others were fully painted to blend in with the monoliths.) Brother Bob, Lady Lacey, Ridder Joost, and Ezmerelda approached via the main path before being stopped by more hidden druids attempting to wave them off. Upon noticing Ezmerelda, the druids hit her with two Moonbeam spells just as a fiendish warrior figure wearing an elk’s skull erupted from the ground. Combat ensued, with Oleander and Lady Lacey enthralling most druids via Hypnotic Pattern spells, but Ezmerelda was slain. After the fight, the party recovered the following items:
* the green stone (embedded into the wicker man construction)
* +1 rapier (given to Schurk)
* +1 hand axe (kept by Joost)
* a Bloodspear (no plus to hit but radiates abjuration magic, user gains 2d6 temporary hit points when dropping a target to 0 hp; contains the spirit of Kavan, a tribal chieftain who once wielded it)
* silvered shortsword (kept by Joost) (not magical)
* a Vistani-crafted gold necklace (not magical)
* 6 wooden staves
* 6 great axes
* two pages torn from the Journal of Rudolph van Richten, detailing the loss of his son Erasmus to the vampire Baron Metus.
The session ended with the group atop the hill and noticing a battleaxe stuff in a tree behind Yester Hill. It quickly became apparent the axe was surrounded by several plant monsters (twig, tree, needle), but the party was almost entirely exhausted of magical power (spell slots, channel divinity uses).
SESSION NOTES (3/1/2025)
(Bailey sitting in for Stanley with Voidshade Gloomoust, a different cleric character, domain of darkness.)
At Yester Hill, fought a massive Gulthias tree in order to recover a magical battleaxe stuck in its side. Party did not destroy the plant creature but did flee with the axe.
Travelled by road back to the Wizard of Wines vineyard to return one of two magic gems to Davian Martikov, who noted the second was in the possession of the witch/hag Baba Lysaga in the marshlands to the east. Martikov gave the party a nice bottle of wine to present to Strahd if/when the group goes to this castle.
The party next went there (no combat encounters along the way and avoiding the haunted mansion of Argynvostbolt), doing some recon of the flooded ruined village of Berez around the hag’s lair. Apparently the people there once prevented Strahd from getting a young girl named Maria, one of the possible reincarnations of the vampire’s beloved Tatyana. As revenge, Strahd caused the nearby river to flood the village, and now scarecrow guards stand watch over the decaying buildings.
During a long rest within a Tiny Hut spell, a pair of vampires were seen near/passing by the camp – perhaps messengers further reminding the group of their invitation to Strahd’s castle? Warning “the clock is ticking” to visit Strahd in his home.
Oleander and Schurk investigated a goat pen within the ruins which did not seem to lack a gate, as if the goats had been lowered from above into the pen. Lady Lacey Meriwether used her telepathic powers to confirm these creature were indeed ordinary goats (and not people polymorphed into goats).
In one ruin, a ghost appeared but did not attack, instead asking that Maria had been properly lain to rest (or something like that). Upon learning she was, the ghost passed on (and his house was then looted).
Under a small monument on the south side of the river, the party dug up The Sun Sword, a sentient sunblade with a crystal blade. The chaotic good item emotionally compels its wielder to seek out Strahd’s destruction. Joost used a short rest to attune to the Sun Sword.
As the party delayed action to make plans on attacking Baba Lysaga’s hut, the hag came outside, noticed the party, and promptly took flight in her magical flying giant’s skull (that also provides her three-fourths cover, making her AC somewhere higher than AC 22+). Lady Lacey Meriwether cast a Fly spell on Joost, who shot like an arrow to melee attack Lysaga in the air. Meanwhile, her hut (inside which was seen a glow assumed to be the gem and another small figure covered in blood) spouted root-like legs and began crawling toward the party. Also, all the scarecrows animated and rushed like a mob toward the party.
SESSION 3/8/2025
Brother Bob, Lady Lacey Meriwether, Schurk Vanderbruuk, and Ridder Joost Vanderbruuk (retcon start of combat, minus Oleander) charge into combat against Baba Lysaga who boasts something about “giving birth to Strahd’s soul” (versus Queen Ravonia who gave birth to Strahd’s body). The witch blasts the party with Chain Lightning as her hut animates up on tree-root legs. A mob of animated scarecrows joined the melee. Via her Fly spell, Lady Lacey took to the air along with Joost, focusing their attacks on Baba Lysaga, but her familiar Chester proved the most valiant by keeping Lysaga distracted for many rounds. Schurk attempted to steal the gem animating the hut, and Bob fought valiantly against the scarecrows, and eventually the evil doers were worn down into submission. Upon examining her corpse, it appeared Baba Lysaga was human after all yet somehow more than 400 years old.
Among the treasures looted from her hut…
* 1,300 g.p. in coins
* 5 gems (worth 500 g.p. each)
* Oil of Sharpness
* spell scroll of Mass Cure Wounds
*
spell scroll of Revivify
*
10 +1 sling bullets
* Pipes of Haunting
* Stone of Good Luck
* various non-magical junk (rags, a quarterstaff, her necklace)
The group returned without incident to the Wizard of Wines vineyard and presented to Davian Martikov the second stolen gem. Many new workers were seen tending to the vineyard. Davian gave the party two rare bottles of wine – one worth 1,000 g.p. and a second worth 2,000 g.p. – either or both to be presented as gifts when the group visits Strahd’s castle.
Upon the next day, the group decided to investigate Argynvastholt, an abandoned manor house many claimed was now haunted. Its southern wall is collapsed into web-covered rubble. The main door was protected by a lifesize silver dragon statue whose mouth breathed cold frost at the first to approach the top of the house stairs. A petition of mercy to the dragon gods of old appeased the statue, allowing everyone safer entry into the house.
Of the first floor of Argynvastholt, the rooms appeared already ransacked and looted, leaving behind only tattered banners, faded murals, and slashed portraits depicting the metalic dragons of old and a familiar-looking nobleman. (Probably Argynvast himself?) Of a row of busts, three showed human heads but a fourth had been smashed. It appears Argynvast, the former lord of the manor, was in fact a dragon posing as a human noble long before the building fell into ruin.
Within a hidden storage room off the first-floor den, the party encountered Saveed, a male dusk elf who claimed he had entered Argynvostholt after being chased by needle blights while searching for Arabel, a Vistani girl who had gone missing in the woods several days earlier. Saveed refused to act as a guide and fled as quickly as possible (and perhaps got killed by the dragon statue trap at the front door).
Upon discovering Argynvastholt’s chapel, a trio of angry spirits – former knights now driven mad by undeath – attempted to kill the party but were eventually all slain.
The session ends with the heroes still exploring Argynvastholt’s first floor. From the chapel, spiral stairs led up to the level’s overcroft, and a doorway blocked a stairs down into the undercroft (or dungeon level, whatever is below the first level). There are at least two more levels above the first, accessible from the grand stairs in the front entry chamber