Session 3 field notes

The night we finished the house: the crypts, the woman in the wall, the altar we would not feed, and the road out. Vicky was away, so the table ran Drew, and David joined us partway through the first fight.

The clock

We picked up in the basement with an hour and seventeen minutes to midnight, running in real time. The DM stopped it for the ghoul fight and started it again afterwards. Midnight struck at the altar, at the exact moment we refused it.

Down in the dark

A trap, spotted for once. Osric noticed a five-foot square of earth with no footprints on it and deeper prints either side, where people had been jumping over it. Later Lily fetched a femur from the room next door, apologised to its owner, and prodded the square: a ten-foot pit with spikes at the bottom. Osric: "Spikes. Why did someone do that? Honestly, you live here." We hopped it.
The dining hall. A plain table and benches, and dry bones on the floor with tooth marks in them. The baby was still crying, from somewhere west.

The Durst crypts

Four stone crypts, all empty: Thornboldt, Rosavalda, Elisabeth and Gustav Durst. When we opened the mother's, a swarm of biting insects poured out and went straight for Osric. Drew's fire bolt singed it, Lily waded into the crypt with her dagger, Sirius hacked at the bugs on Osric, and a second fire bolt from Drew burned the rest away. Osric caught a nasty bite and got his second wind. Someone observed that it was very symbolic for the wrong'un to be the one with the beetles.

We asked whether Rose and Thorn would like to rest here. A small voice answered: "Not here. This is an evil place. Nothing good happens here. We don't want to stay in the house." Their bones stayed on Drew's belt.

Going on, we heard a new sound over the crying: a ghostly chant from somewhere below. We agreed to clear this level first so nothing could come up behind us.

The hanged man and the woman in the wall

A den with a chandelier, two high-backed chairs and candles long burned away, and a hidden door in its wall, which we left for later.
An underground bedroom. Above the bed hung a man who had hanged himself, a skeleton held together by sinew, in the clothes from the portrait upstairs: the master of the house. A crumpled note was in his hand. We cut him down out of respect and read it (the DM posted it in the chat).
As we finished reading, the wall behind us crumbled open and a dead woman stepped out, ribs open and a black heart showing. "Intruders, what are you doing here?" Sirius hit her before she finished the sentence, with a smite for good measure. Every wound let out a stinking gas. Osric hit her too. Her one threat: "Mistwalkers. You may get me, but my creature will get you." She was the first person to call us that. Then David arrived, and Fëanor's first act of the night was a fire bolt straight through her black heart. She crumbled to dust. The reek caught Fëanor in the nose before it sank away.

Her footlocker held:

four potions of healing (one each for Sirius, Osric, Lily and Fëanor; Drew has her healer's kit),
a chain shirt (Drew now wears it, and Lily took Drew's old leather armour),
a mess kit,
a flask of alchemist's fire (Drew's, for about an hour),
a bullseye lantern,
a set of thieves' tools,
a spellbook with a yellow cover, still unread,
and a fine, sturdy cloak that the years hadn't touched.

As we shared it out, the baby stopped crying. That felt worse, not better.

The pale man's statue

Behind the den's hidden door was a room of mouldy skeletons in rusty shackles and a painted wooden statue of a gaunt, pale man in a great black cloak. His left hand rests on the head of a wolf. His right held a smoky grey crystal orb. He is not the man from the portrait. He is much more imposing, and he has "an aura about him". We thought he looked like a wizard.

The orb was only resting in his hand. An attempt to knock it into the cloak failed, so Fëanor lifted it off with Mage Hand, and it went into the cloak, knotted and slung from a belt. Fëanor also tried to set the statue on fire ("We have to eat the rich"), scorched it, and gave up for lack of time. A second hidden door behind the statue opens on stairs back up into the house.

The ghouls

At a crossing of tunnels the ground rumbled and four ghouls clawed their way up out of it, screeching.

Lily went for one and took a bite for eight on the way, despite Sirius's shield.
Lancelot bit a ghoul on the leg.
The DM reminded Fëanor that he could turn undead ("which does not turn you undead, despite what it's called"). He raised his holy symbol and all four failed. They broke and fled, cowering.
We picked them off. Drew's fire bolts killed two. Fëanor's magic missile, with a natural 20 on one dart, deleted a third in a single turn. Lily finished the last with a knife and was covered in ghoul for her trouble.
Fëanor healed Lily back to full. Sirius: "You said you weren't a man of particular faith. You're the best priest I've ever met." Fëanor: "Channelling the power of our Lord Lathander fills me with joy in my loins."

The reliquary

The chant grew loud and clear as we went down: "He is ancient. He is the land." It sounded like a dozen voices, and it was building, as if the time were almost up.

A room with thirteen alcoves, each holding one relic:

a blood-stained wooden sun
an old deck of cards
a hag's severed finger
a dagger carved from bone
a broken crossbow bolt
a jar of talons floating in liquid
a crown of black vines
a dried frog lashed to a stick
a cracked egg
a large, pure white feather
a small wooden coffer
a chunk of amber resin
a dagger with a bat's skull set in the pommel

Sirius pulled down the sun. It is close to a proper Lathander sun, but not quite. Fëanor's reading (a 23): this was demonic work, summoning something bad and using the forms of religion to do it, and whatever the room was for, it has already been done. The relics have been used up. Fëanor, deadpan, over the chanting: "I think it probably has something to do with the land."

Fëanor put Protection from Evil and Good on Osric, and Sirius put it on himself, golden raven wings flaring for a second. Past a row of prison cells with bones still chained to the walls, Sirius found yet another secret door.

The altar

The chanting stopped as we opened the door. Knee-deep, tepid water; a dais; an altar carved with grasping ghouls; a knife; and on the altar a small cloth bundle. Thirteen robed figures appeared on a gallery high above us, faces empty, holding torches. One torch burned with a black flame that seemed to swallow the light.

"One must die. One must die. Only one."

The altar was made to take the life of a living creature, any living creature, and the knife was there to do it. The bundle held very, very small bones, the same size and shape as the empty swaddling in the nursery. Fëanor's sacred flame at the black-torch figure found nothing to hold on to: they weren't really there.

The verse had asked for a gift, and now we knew what kind. Lancelot was standing right there. Sirius: "We're not murdering a creature here to satiate an evil appetite. We must destroy this." He struck the altar instead.

"Come demon, we awaken thee," the figures screamed together, and the clock ran out. It was midnight.

The thing in the refuse

A portcullis slammed down over the other way out. From a cave of rubbish at the side, a mound of flesh heaved itself up: corpses, heads, limbs, too many moving parts. "The end comes. Death be praised."

It was rubbery and maddening to hit. Drew's alchemist's fire missed and went out in the water.
The figures above pointed at one of us at a time and filled their heads with visions of the cult's sacrifices. Sirius took it, then Osric.
Fëanor, on a natural 20, saw what it was hiding: a glittering crystal heart at its centre. "Look at the crystal heart."
Osric held the front and took the slams. His first natural 20 went into the flesh, because that's what he had declared, and he wasn't going to change it after the roll. It cut the heart half free.
Osric dropped to six hit points, and Lily poured her own potion into his mouth.
Lily was the first to hit the heart: a single point of damage. The room shuddered and the cult screamed.
Then Osric stood up and rolled his second natural 20 and drove his sword into the heart, and it shattered. The mound screamed and fell apart into a pile of bodies. The thirteen screamed and were gone.

Something that had been pressing harder and harder on us all night simply lifted. Osric took a knee. "Well done, sir knight."

Lancelot spent the fight cowering in a corner, which was the correct decision.

Out

On the way we took two of the relics: the bone dagger and the bat-skull dagger. Lily carries them now as throwing knives, which beats a kitchen knife.
We collected the pile by the front door and walked out. The mist in front of the house had parted, and there was a strange wood, a clearing below the steps, and a road.
During a short rest on the steps, Drew identified our finds. The cloak is a Cloak of Protection, which makes its wearer harder to hit and better at saving, and it went to Osric by acclamation: "You're taking the hits." "Yes, you earned it." The orb can be used as a spell focus. It's crystal and might be valuable, but we'd need an appraiser.
We stepped off the grounds. Behind us the mist closed like a wall that ran to the horizon, and the house was gone.

The burial

It was still the middle of the night when we buried Rose, Thorn and the maid in the woods. The three of them appeared as we worked.

"Thank you. You have defeated a great evil, although a greater evil still stays here. May the Morning Lord protect you, and may you stay out of the sight of the devil, Strahd."

And they were gone. Somebody said what we were all thinking: Strahd was the name on the letter. Asked for last words, our priest said: "I don't know about death."

Osric pointed out that none of us had actually told the others our names yet.

Morning

We had no camping gear, so the cloaks from the house did for bedding. Sirius built the fire, then lit it by laying his hands beside it. Morning came grey and sunless, under clouds thicker than any of us had ever seen: proper light, the DM said, but not sunlight. The trees are unfamiliar and there are too few birds. The road has hardly been walked. One way runs into the mist; the other runs into the woods. Osric: "Don't really want to go in them mists." Fëanor, on the last time he tried: "No, it was hell." We took the woods.

We woke stronger, too. The DM's words: "The land pays attention. The land notices you." Level 3. Sirius took the Oath of Devotion ("I'm being the most boring paladin. It's a classic"), and Lily turned down becoming a soul knife, thank you.

Out of character, somebody called it "the Death House, maybe", and the name stuck.

Where we stand

Out of the house, on an untravelled road in unfamiliar woods, and far from home. Level 3.
Kept: Rose, Thorn and the maid are buried and free.
Kit gained: the Cloak of Protection (Osric), the chain shirt (Drew), the crystal orb, the yellow spellbook (unread), the bullseye lantern, the thieves' tools, the mess kit, three potions of healing, and Lily's two relic daggers. The alchemist's fire is gone.
The name of our enemy, we think: Strahd.

Questions on our minds

~~Who is Strahd, "the devil", and what is the greater evil that still stays here?~~ Answered, Session 4: he rules this land and his face is on the coins. In Session 5 he came to call.
~~Where are we?~~ Answered, Session 4: Barovia. The gate says so.
~~Who was the pale man with the wolf and the orb?~~ Answered, Session 4: the same face is on Barovia's coins.
Why did the cult's relics include a white feather and a lump of amber, like the things two of us carry?
What is in the yellow spellbook, and what is the orb really for?
The ritual was already finished. Finished doing what, and to whom?
What was the crystal heart?