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• We get to the winery without incident.
• Old man in dark robes lurking by the woods beckons us toward him. This isn't fishy at all /s
• It's the father of the innkeeper. He wears a lot of silver.
• He insists we go over, so we do. We find a group of people who were forced out of the winery. They were attacked by druids and twigblights and way overswarmed. They fled.
• We debate taking a rest because Belial has 2 hit points.
• Arkan notices a shady dude in the back and lights him up with Dancing Lights. He gets whacked with a staff but maintains concentration. It's a Kenku. He's an ally though I guess.
• We take a short rest.
• We head to a vineyard. The wineyard building half falling apart and half good. We hear rustling all over. We stealth on up and enter through the loading dock.
• Rustling is above us and a spell (Thunderwave) is cast. All of us but Ireena and Lilly take full damage lmao.
• We move further in. Lilly sees a bunch of ravens and trusts them. She moves in and sees a female druid pouring a syrup-like substance into a vat. She also sees some skittering that goes under a vat.
• Lilly fires her crossbow to try and knock the lady off. The lady is not knocked off, but does yell, "They're back!" She thinks we're the winery staff.
  • River does some ol' Aid.
  • Seir sticks his face in a crack and sees twigblights. He tries to stab them with his longsword for some reason and inevitably misses.
  • The twigblights try to get stabby. Mostly miss, but one gets River a lil bit.
  • Arkan just. Unleashes a Fireball in the wooden winery. Goodbye. Murdered the druid and a shitton of twigblights.
  • Lilly walks on over and viciously mocks a twigblight. It dies. She also heals Arkan.
  • Belial tries to throw Alchemist's Fire and just doesn't work.
  • River puts out the fire and heals Arkan. Arkan tries to seduce him in thanks and fails, but just barely.
  • Ireena stabs a twigblight.
  • Twigblights crawl on out and surround Lilly. Only two attack her though. Thw others attack Ireena and do some ok damage.
  • Arkan murders a blight with Chill Touch.
  • Lilly laughs at a twigblight and it dies, and then heals Ireena.
  • Belial Mind Thrust(tm)s a blight.
  • River makes a thotblight begone.
• River drinks from the wine vat the druid fell into. Belial and Lilly try to stop him but he cannot be stopped.
• Arkan joins him. It's goth.
• The two of them take damage and River is poisoned. He eventually shakes it off.
• River prays us a healing. Arkan succeeds at seducing him and makes out with him. Belial gets jealous and pulls him away.
• Lilly dives into the wine, grabs the druid, pulls her out, and is stained purple. She shakes herself dry.
• Arkan notices that the druid was probably trying to poison the wine and was finishing up doing that. River spends some time purifying the wine. The rest of us take a short rest.
• We move on and find a new room, this one with a table. It looks like a dining room or kitchen. Arkan opens another fun door. A druid is inside and smacks Arkan on the head.
  • Lilly fails very, very hard to grab the staff. She gently carresses it.
  • Belial makes the druid fucking pissed and only able to attack or dodge.
  • Arkan grabs the druid's face and electrocutes it to death.
• Lilly raises the staff and yells something in joy. Arkan takes it and sets it on fire, as he does. Ireena suggests he shoves it into the stove, so he does, because the window won't open. The staff seems to scream as it burns and makes our ears ring.
• Seir hears some footsteps and warns us of something coming right as the door opens and a druid appears.
  • Ireena charges and swings.
  • Arkan sets some more stuff on fire. In this case, the druid.
  • River heals himself.
  • The druid does the ol' Thunderwave. River and I fail.
  • Lilly uses Vicious Mockery on the druid and kills it. "Sweet fucking mercy some people are trying to sleep here!"
• Arkan goes down some stairs and finds empty barrels of wine and a woodworking shop. He then goes back upstairs.
• Lilly finds a bedroom back up the stairs. Arkan finds another bedroom.
• We find a printing press room for the wine. It's uninviting.
• Another hallway door goes back to the vat room.
• We go down some spiraly stairs and come to the basement. Lilly and I go down a hall and get Thunderwave'd. What is with these fucking druids and fucking thunderwave my god--
  • Lilly walks up and stabs the fuck out of the druid. She's tired.
  • River cries over the ruined wine and uses Toll the Dead. Druid saves. River also heals Lilly.
  • The druid tries to use Shilleagh and misses Lilly, but breaks more wine.
  • Ireena runs over like "wtf".
  • Arkan sighs deeply and tries a Chaos Bolt, and misses.
  • Belial moves over curiously.
  • Seir runs on up behind the druid.
  • Lilly tries a stab and misses.
  • River begins repairing a wine bottle.
  • The druid misses Lilly AGAIN and hits another bottle. River torture.
  • Ireena stabs the druid.
  • Arkan gets VERY annoyed and sets the guy on fire. He dies.
• River catches a couple wine bottles.
• Arkan shoves 2 bottles in his bag. Lilly follows suit and also grabs 2.
• Arkan goes up some stairs and finds the glassblower's workshop. He goes back down. It's nothing noteworthy.
• We go upstairs and meet up with the wizard guy who ran the wine. We brief him on our clearance of the place. We agree to escort the sons to Krezk as they take the wine there, so we can get entrance.
• We spend the night there, taking a long rest. Over the rest, Arkan notices the fields are oddly healthy for Barovia. He asks the winemaster about it. Winemaster explains the history of the winery.
• Long time ago, a wizard made 3 magic gems as big as a pinecone and planted them. These made big ripe grapes. They were immune even to Strahd's curse, once he'd taken over.
• 10 years ago one of the gems was stolen. He thinks it was his son (the innkeeper in Vallaki). Since then, scarecrows sent by the druids, who serve Strahd, have attacked. A while ago, they managed to get a gem. This emboldened them. Druids are from Yesterhill.
• QUEST GAINED: Retrieve the gem from the druids.
• The family is wereravens and has been stalking them. Also some of the Vistani work for Strahd.
• Lilly asks about a werewolf den (it's to the north by the smaller lake). She asked about the amber castle (it's the amber temple and it's on the big ass fucking mountain).
• Ooc, we look at the map and mark it up with some locations of places.
• We head off to Krezk and gain access. There's a lot of trees. The abbey is up on a hill, surrounded by a big wall.
• Apparently the Abbot (man who rennovated the abbey once it was abandoned) protects the town from Strahd. In turn, he asks for barrels of wine. The people he sends to collect the wine are weird and malformed.
• The burgomaster of Krezk had 4 kids who all fell ill to a sickness. River put together that they were probably inbred. We get sized up for expanding the gene pool and Seir is immensely disgusted.
• We begin heading to the abbey, but Ireena stops and claims she heard tinkling. She starts walking toward it but we grab her and then drag her off. As we go toward the abbey, Ireena feels a pond calling to her. River goes and does the ol Detect Evil and Good. It's good. Ireena wants to go there. We're convinced it's probably all right.
• We all go to the pond. Arkan yeets down the side of the cliff. Dmitri (burgomaster) explains that it's very pure and good water, but it's magic is slowly fading.
• Ireena reaches to the pool and sees Sergei. Her Tatyana memories seem to come back and she takes a hand that rises out of the water. She is pulled in. The two look very happy and start to fade away, when clouds appear with an angry face (presumably Strahd) that yells, "She is mine!"
• Lightning strikes the pool and wrecks everything. All of us but River fail the save and fall unconscious. He does a Mass Healing Word thank fuck.
• We meet up with Dmitri and explain the Tatyana story. We take a rest at Dmitri's since the cloud is gone. Also, the pond and surrounding area is gone, obliterated by the lightning.
• We go up to the abbey. It's walled and has unlocked gates. Arkan opens the gates and does not give a fuck about the noise they make. Two chimera humanoids appear and ask what we want and who we are.
• We get entrance after some back and forth, and are led to another courtyard. There's a weird spider lady chained to a post that we all stare at like fucking tourists.
• Arkan sits down and begins speaking Undercommon. The others join in, all speaking random exotic languages.
• The abbot emerges and explains about the chimeras. They're attempts to cure madness. Donno how that works, but ok.
• Belial telepathically explains they're here to find a vistani. Abbot gives directions on where to go.
• "Wait, what was with that lightning from before?" Arkan rolled a nat20 on deception and said, "Oh, don't worry, that was just my dad." Strahd is now his daddy I guess. Abbot buys it.
• We head inside and see a flesh golem. Arkan waves hi. It starts to lumber over and we all skedaddle.
• Anyway we head up and follow the abbot's directions to the vistani. We find her! Her name is Esmeralda. She's a monster hunter trained by Rudolph van Richten. He hates vistani though so he eventually abandoned her.
  • For more than three decades now, I have undertaken to investigate and expose creatures of darkness to the purifying light of truth and knowledge. "Hero" I am named in some circles; "sage" and "master hunter" I am called in others. That I have survived countless supernatural assaults is seen as a marvel among my peers; my name is spoken with fear and loathing among my foes.
    
    In truth, this "virtuous" calling began as an obsessive effort to destroy a vampire that murdered my child, and it has become for me a tedious and bleak career. Even as my life of hunting monsters began, I felt the weight of time on my weary shoulders. Today I am a man who has simply lived too long. Like a regretful lich, I find myself inexorably bound to an existence I sought out of madness and, seemingly, must now endure for all eternity. Of course I shall die, but whether I shall ever rest in my grave haunts my idle thoughts, and torments me in my dreams.
    
    I expect that those who think me a hero will change their minds when they know the whole truth about my life as a hunter of the unnatural. Nevertheless, I must reveal, here and now, that I have been the indirect yet certain cause of many deaths, and the loss of many good friends. Mistake me not! I do not merely feel sorry for myself. Rather, I come to grips with a devastating realization: I now see that I am the object of a baleful Vistani curse. More tragically, the nature of this hex is such that I have not borne the brunt of it; instead, far worse, those who surround me have fallen victim to it!
    
    I have related the tragic story of how my only child Erasmus was taken by Vistani and sold to a vampire. I explained how Erasmus was made a minion of the night stalker, and how it was my miserable part to free him from that fate at the point of a stake. What I have neglected to illuminate before is how I tracked Erasmus's kidnappers across the land, or how I "extracted" Erasmus's whereabouts from them.
    
    In fact, the Vistani took Erasmus with my own, unwitting permission. They had brought an extremely ill member of their tribe to me one evening and insisted that I treat him, but I was unable to save the young man's life. In fear of their retribution, I begged the Vistani to take anything of mine if only they would withhold their terrifying powers, of which I knew nothing. To my lasting astonishment, they chose to surreptitiously take my son in exchange for their loss! By the time I realized what had occurred, they were already an hour gone.
    
    Incensed beyond reason, I strapped the body of the dead young man to my horse and doggedly followed the Vistani caravan through the woods, naively allowing the sun to set before me without seeking shelter from the night. Shortly after darkness fell, I was beset by undead that would have slain me, had not their master—a lich—intervened and spared my life, for reasons that I do not completely understand. He somehow detected me and, with his powerful magic, took control of a pack of zombies that wandered in the forest. He spoke to me through the mouths of the dead things and placed a magic ward against undead on me, then animated the dead Vistana and bade it tell me where I could find its people. Unfortunately (I say in hindsight), the plan worked. I found the child-stealers, and my unwelcome entourage included a growing horde of voracious undead that could not touch me, thanks to the lich's ward.
    
    When I found the caravan, I threatened to set the zombies on the Vistani unless they returned my dear boy. They replied that he had been sold to the vampire, Baron Metus. Something inside me snapped. I released the zombies, and the entire tribe was eaten alive.
    
    Yet the story has not ended. Before she died, the leader cursed me, saying, "Live you always among monsters, and see everyone you love die beneath their claws!" Even now, so many years later, I can hear her words with painful clarity. A short time later, I found my dear Erasmus made into a vampire. He begged me to end his curse, which I did with a heavy heart. The darkness had torn him from my loving arms forever, and I foolishly believed that the curse had exacted its deadly toll. I wept until an insatiate desire for vengeance filled the bottomless rift in my heart.
• Esmeralda explains that the Abbot wants to present Strahd a flesh golem (different one than the one we met). He calls it his bridge. Ew.
• She tells us why the vistani can come and go: before Strahd came to the land and became a vampire, he was a soldier in one of many warring armies in Barovia. He was badly injured and healed by vistani. The vistani and him have had an alliance ever since.
• We chat some more and share the reading Ava dead. She tells us about the werewolf den. Arkan shows off his silvered shortsword, and she shows off her own. She suggests they touch Sword Tips. Arkan gets uncomfortable and puts the sword away and puts a hand on Belial.
• Lilly accidentally mentions the diary and we all panic. Esmeralda offers to cast Nondetection so Strahd won't overhear. She does that.
• Lilly tells the wasp joke. It summons the chest. We let Esmeralda read over it. She is thoughtful.
• We read her the rest of the cards and discuss plans. Esmeralda wants to go to Vallaki to see Richten. We say we can't and explain how we murdered Watcher. She's very interested in the pentagram, and then reveals that it's fake bullshit, like the emo demon books in the death house.
• We get off topic and talk about arson. Esmeralda goes for the kiss on Belial but Arkan interjects and also protectively holds Belial.
• We agree to meet at the tower.
• truckin and fuckin ends
• We ready to leave and hear a bell. Floor below us goes hogwild. As we make our way out, we meet cloven (another chimera). He's feeding the others. He has 2 heads. Goddamnit demogorgon.
• Cloven asks about the lack of wine. We share about the druids and saving the winery. Cloven tells us the abbot wants to see us. None of us want to see him but Lilly, so she does that.
• Lilly overshares about the winery incident and the fact that Dmitri's kid died. Baron turns this on her and offers to revive the kid if we get him a bridal gown. The only dressmakers are in Vallaki.
• LILLY QUEST GAINED: Get a dress, what the fuck, you goddamned idiot.
• We go to Dmitri's and share about the Abbey. As Lilly shares that the Abbot is planning a visit, the door is knocked on. It's the Abbot, here for his shady scheme.
• He ressurects the son. Cool. I guess. The mother decides she will go to Vallaki herself. This is convenient since we really should not go there at all. Anyway apparently the son gained a level of madness so uhhh that's something to consider.
• Next morning, we head out through the woods to go to the werewolf den.
• We get half-way through when we meet a wereraven. We learn we're not wanted in Vallaki-- in fact, the burgomaster is super stoked and wants to meet the people who killed Watcher. Also, he's pretty sure the Baroness is absolutely fucked.
• We move on and arrive at the werewolf den.