The party’s own record of the night we finished the house — the crypts, the cult, the thing on the altar, and the road out. Use it to fill the gaps in whatever you scribbled down yourself.
The clock
We picked up in the basement with roughly an hour and fifteen to midnight, and this time it ran in real time. We spent it exploring, fighting, and refusing to do the one thing the house wanted. The monster rose at the stroke of midnight — and we killed it minutes later.
Down in the dark
- A trap, spotted for once. A five-foot square with no footprints, deeper prints to either side where people had jumped it. We later sprang it on purpose — a ten-foot pit lined with spikes. Easy enough to hop. The people who lived here knew exactly where to step.
- Cult quarters: a plain table and benches, dry bones with tooth-marks scattered across the dirt — nothing left for Lancelot. The baby was still crying, always from the west.
The Durst crypts
Four stone coffins, every one of them empty: Thornboldt, Rosavalda, Elisabeth, and Gustav Durst.
When Sirius opened Elisabeth’s — the mother, the one the children blamed — a swarm of biting insects boiled out. We brought it down fast (Lily waded in and gutted half of it with a dagger, Drew’s fire finished it), though Osric took a nasty mouthful first. Fitting, somehow, that the mistress’s grave was the one crawling with vermin.
We asked the children if they’d rest here. A small voice drifted back: “Not here. This is an evil place. We don’t want to stay in the house.” Fair enough. Their bones stayed with us.
The hanged man and the woman in the wall
Through a twisting set of corridors (Drew found the hidden door herself, for once), we reached an underground bedroom — and a man hanged from the rafters, a note in his withered hand. His clothes were the ones from the portrait upstairs: Gustav Durst. We cut him down and read what he’d left. (See the note Tom shared.)
As we read it, the wall behind us burst open. Out came a dead woman with an open black heart in her chest — “Intruders! What are you doing here?” — and a stench rolling off her. Sirius didn’t wait for the rest of the sentence; he and Osric were on her before she finished, Sirius’s blade lit with holy fire. Fëanor’s firebolt struck her through the heart and she crumbled to dust. Her foul reek hung in the air a moment longer and caught Fëanor in the nose before it sank away.
In her strongbox: four potions of healing, a chain shirt, a mess kit, a flask of alchemist’s fire, a bullseye lantern, a set of thieves’ tools, a spellbook with a yellow cover (still unread), and a fine cloak the years hadn’t touched. And then — the baby’s crying stopped. Which felt worse, not better.
The pale man’s statue
A hidden door opened on a room of skeletons shackled to the walls and a painted wooden statue: a gaunt, pale man in a great black cloak, one hand resting on a wolf’s head, the other holding a smoky-grey crystal orb. We lifted the orb free with a spell hand and wrapped it away in the cloak. A second hidden door behind him led to stairs back up into the house — good to know. We left the statue standing.
Ghouls
The floor erupted and four ghouls dragged themselves up out of the earth — and we have history with ghouls. But Fëanor raised his holy symbol and turned the lot of them: they broke and fled, cowering, and we picked them apart one by one before they could lay a claw on us properly. “The best priest I’ve ever met,” for a man who claims not to pray.
The cult, and what we would not do
Lower still, the chanting grew clear: “He is ancient. He is the land.”
- A room of thirteen alcoves, each holding a strange relic — a bloodied wooden sun, a crown of black vines, a desiccated frog, a cracked egg, a great white feather, a lump of amber resin, daggers of bone and bat-skull, and more. Fëanor read the bloodied sun for what it was: a twisting of Lathander’s own symbol, demonic work — and the ritual here was already finished. Its purpose served.
- Past prison cells of shackled dead, a final chamber: an altar over black water, chains hanging above it, and on it a small bundle of tiny bones — the same size and shape as the empty swaddling we found upstairs. Thirteen faceless, robed apparitions appeared on the gallery above, chanting “One must die. One must die.”
The altar wanted a living sacrifice — any living thing. The house’s verse had asked for a “gift,” and now we understood what kind. Lancelot was standing right there. We said no. We would not buy our way out with a life. Instead, Osric brought his sword down on the altar itself.
The cultists screamed “Come, demon — we awaken thee!” — and midnight struck.
The thing in the refuse
Out of the rubbish-cave heaved a mound of corpse-flesh — heads, limbs, a hundred writhing parts. “The end comes. Death be praised.”
It was rubbery and maddening to hit, and the apparitions above us flung visions of the cult’s horrors into our heads (Osric and Sirius both took it hard). But Fëanor spotted the truth at its core: a glittering crystal heart. We hacked the flesh away to bare it, Lily poured a potion down Osric when he nearly dropped — and Osric drove his blade clean through the heart and shattered it. The mound collapsed. The thirteen screamed and vanished. The weight that had been pressing on us all night simply… lifted.
Out
We took two of the cult’s daggers (bone, and one with a bat’s skull in the hilt), gathered our gear, and walked out the front door — where the mist had finally parted, opening onto a strange wood and a long, untravelled road.
We rested long enough for Drew to name our finds: the cloak is a Cloak of Protection (Osric wears it now, after that), and the orb a spell-focus of some worth. Then we stepped down off the grounds — and behind us the mists rolled shut and the house was simply gone.
We buried Rose, Thorn, and the maid at last. The three appeared one final time: “Thank you. You have defeated a great evil — though a greater evil still stays here. May the Morning Lord protect you, and may you stay out of the sight of the devil, Strahd.” Then they were gone.
We made camp and slept. Morning came grey and sunless under clouds thicker than any of us had seen, the woods too quiet, too few birds. The road runs into mist one way and into the trees the other. We chose the trees.
Where we stand
- Out of the house, and far from home. None of us, it turns out, has even told the others our name yet.
- Gear gained: chain shirt (Drew), Cloak of Protection (Osric), 4 potions of healing (one already spent), alchemist’s fire, bullseye lantern, thieves’ tools (Lily), mess kit, a crystal spell-focus orb, an unread yellow spellbook, and two cult daggers (bone & bat-skull).
- Promise kept: Rose, Thorn, and the maid are buried and free.
- We are stronger for it — the land “pays attention,” and we feel it.
Questions on our minds
- Who is Strahd, “the devil” — the same name from that cruel letter — and what is the “greater evil that still stays here”?
- Where are we? The road is barely walked, the woods are wrong, and the sun never quite rises.
- Why did the cult’s thirteen relics include a white feather and a lump of amber resin — the very sorts of things we each carry?
- What’s written in the yellow spellbook, and what is that grey crystal orb truly for?
- The ritual was “already finished.” Finished doing what — and to whom?