Post by gavmeister on May 7, 2018 15:20:16 GMT
The adventurers question the Abbott on his intentions. He is here in Barovia to do what he can ‘to help’, and began by assisting the Belview family to become ‘something better’ than themselves; something which he now regrets. He has had to imprison most of them to contain their madness.
He is currently working on a plan to remove the curse of Strahd by providing the vampire count with a bride, Vasilka, who will look ‘just like’ his precious Tatanya. There’s still a way to go, though, – the hands are particularly unsatisfactory – and most of all she needs a wedding dress. The adventurers recall that Baroness Vallakovich (nee Petrovna) has her old wedding dress back in Vallaki. Bran blabs about the treasure lying behind the gold disc on the abbey wall. The Abbott says they can have the tome if they promise to go and get the wedding dress for him. Otherwise, he had been considering asking Anna Krezkova, the Burgomaster’s wife to fetch it for him, and “who knows what misfortune might befall her on the way”. The adventurers agree, and the Abbott unscrews the golden disc. He finds a flask of Superior Healing Potion and the Tome of Strahd wrapped in a sackcloth bag. He gives them the Tome and promises them they can have the Potion if they succeed in bringing back the dress.
He expresses his sorrow at hearing of the death of the burgomaster’s son, Ilya.
They return to their hovel to find van Richten waiting for them. They rest. Theo sits out the next day poring over the unsettling Tome of Strahd.
The rest of the adventurers, accompanied by van Richten, resolve to return to the Abbey to seek the ally spoken of in Madam Eva’s Tarokka reading.
A Ray of Sunshine
Ricken and Bran stroll openly through the front gate to ’pay their respects at the graveyard’. Otto and Zygfrek Belview lazily wave them through. Amongst the graves of long-dead monks and nuns, they find the last resting place of old Tasha Petrovna. The gravestone is carved with roses and has a three inch sun-shaped indentation. An inscription urges them to “Shine forth the Light of Day”. Ricken eventually considers this as a moral imperative and casts Daylight. A ray of golden sunlight bursts through the clouds to the west and shines upon the grave. The fog and gloom shrink from its brilliance as the sunlight causes the gravestone to crack and crumble, revealing a mysterious gold ring within. Ricken pockets it. Bran shakes his head.
Madhouse
Giselle, Pankas and van Richten sneak over the boundary wall and round to the main entrance to the abbey courtyard, under cover of the omnipresent mists. They make their way through the courtyard without scaring Marzena Belview, or the other unfortunate madmen locked in the chicken coops. They enter the east wing and find themselves in the smashed ruins of a foyer. They are assailed by unnatural whispers, mad laughter and bestial odours. A monstrous shape lumbers towards them, a terrifying seven foot tall assemblage of human body parts, an earlier unsuccessful experiment of the Abbott’s.
The golem beats the adventurers up heavily. Giselle’s arrows have no effect so she dances around distracting the creature, whilst Pankas and van Richten apply cold steel. Eventually the monster goes down. Ricken and Pankas arrive and assess the situation.
They conduct a systematic search of the cells on the ground floor. Each contains a group of mutant Belviews wallowing in filth, too terrified of the golem to leave their cells.
• Three Bellviews cower and shriek; one cradles a brass candlestick
• Four Belviews play-fight for dominance while a fifth cowers behind a wooden statue of a saint
• Seven Belviews sit in a circle chanting in the hope the dinner bell will ring
• Nine Belviews stare hungrily at Pankas
• Sixteen emaciated Belviews sit in filth and the bones of dead family members
• Seven Belviews hit each other with sticks, while three others cradle howling babies
• Two Belviews hide in a ‘fort’ of ruined furniture
In the final room, eight Belviews caper around; one of them holds a glittering gold statue of a saint. They chant:
The devil dwells in his dark house, Upon the misty pillar
First he’ll taste her sweet, sweet blood, And then he’ll have to kill her.
Ricken feels that in all conscience this valuable relic cannot be left in the hands and claws of mongrel filth. He taps the Belview holding the statue on the head with his mace. The Belview starts crying but refuses to hand over the statue. Ricken grabs it off him. All the Belviews start crying. Bran shakes his head.
The Hospice
They head upstairs to another ruined office, and on into a spacious ward containing rows of rusting bed frames and rotten mattress fragments. Six Shadows emerge from the shadows and attack. They begin to drain the adventurers’ strength until Ricken has the presence of mind to channel Radiance of the Dawn. This incinerates most of the shadows, and the last one is speared by Pankas. The fighter feels a surge of power from his Blood Spear when the shadow dies. The adventurers take a short rest and van Richten heals up.
They check the small operating room, nursery and morgue. Ghostly screams are heard in the operating room; Giselle catches a reflection of a ghostly nun in the nursery; a raven perched in the window of the morgue flies down and lands on the scarecrows in the garden below.
Barracks
They head out onto the curtain wall manned by scarecrows dressed in corroded mail shirts. They turn back into the barracks and meet - at last! - the swashbuckling Vistana, Ezmerelda D’Avernir. She greets her long-lost mentor, van Richten, and is introduced to the adventurers. Her own Tarkka reading had led her to expect them here.
Ezmerelda is aware of the Abbott’s plan to lure Strahd with the promise of a bride, but she believes the plan is folly and the Abbott mad. She had intended to wait here to ambush Strahd anyway, but is easily persuaded by van Richten to join the adventurers instead. She accompanies them down to the garden.
Garden
In the garden they find the two scarecrows to be just that. Giselle shoots a white bunny for their tea, and fills her pockets with a few turnips uprooted from the soil by the cold. Bran shakes his head. They leave through the garden gatehouse.
“Give us the book….”
As they head back through the graveyard, seven wights dressed in tattered livery of Strahd’s house emerge from the gloom. They demand the return of the Tome of Strahd. The adventurers refuse and battle is joined. Ezmerelda fires Lightnong Bolts before jumping in with blade and axe. The wights attack with vicious long swords, seeking to drain life from their victims. Van Richten protects himself with Dispel Evil and then lashes out with his swordcane. Ricken channels Radiance of the Dawn again. Pankas, Bran and Giselle focus on hitting the wights as hard as possible until they fall over. They do,eventually. Pankas gains a further surge of health from his Blood Spear. The Spear demands living souls next time.
They leg it over the abbey wall and head back to their cottage.
Ricken dreams of St Markovia and attunes to her golden statuette.
He is currently working on a plan to remove the curse of Strahd by providing the vampire count with a bride, Vasilka, who will look ‘just like’ his precious Tatanya. There’s still a way to go, though, – the hands are particularly unsatisfactory – and most of all she needs a wedding dress. The adventurers recall that Baroness Vallakovich (nee Petrovna) has her old wedding dress back in Vallaki. Bran blabs about the treasure lying behind the gold disc on the abbey wall. The Abbott says they can have the tome if they promise to go and get the wedding dress for him. Otherwise, he had been considering asking Anna Krezkova, the Burgomaster’s wife to fetch it for him, and “who knows what misfortune might befall her on the way”. The adventurers agree, and the Abbott unscrews the golden disc. He finds a flask of Superior Healing Potion and the Tome of Strahd wrapped in a sackcloth bag. He gives them the Tome and promises them they can have the Potion if they succeed in bringing back the dress.
He expresses his sorrow at hearing of the death of the burgomaster’s son, Ilya.
They return to their hovel to find van Richten waiting for them. They rest. Theo sits out the next day poring over the unsettling Tome of Strahd.
The rest of the adventurers, accompanied by van Richten, resolve to return to the Abbey to seek the ally spoken of in Madam Eva’s Tarokka reading.
A Ray of Sunshine
Ricken and Bran stroll openly through the front gate to ’pay their respects at the graveyard’. Otto and Zygfrek Belview lazily wave them through. Amongst the graves of long-dead monks and nuns, they find the last resting place of old Tasha Petrovna. The gravestone is carved with roses and has a three inch sun-shaped indentation. An inscription urges them to “Shine forth the Light of Day”. Ricken eventually considers this as a moral imperative and casts Daylight. A ray of golden sunlight bursts through the clouds to the west and shines upon the grave. The fog and gloom shrink from its brilliance as the sunlight causes the gravestone to crack and crumble, revealing a mysterious gold ring within. Ricken pockets it. Bran shakes his head.
Madhouse
Giselle, Pankas and van Richten sneak over the boundary wall and round to the main entrance to the abbey courtyard, under cover of the omnipresent mists. They make their way through the courtyard without scaring Marzena Belview, or the other unfortunate madmen locked in the chicken coops. They enter the east wing and find themselves in the smashed ruins of a foyer. They are assailed by unnatural whispers, mad laughter and bestial odours. A monstrous shape lumbers towards them, a terrifying seven foot tall assemblage of human body parts, an earlier unsuccessful experiment of the Abbott’s.
The golem beats the adventurers up heavily. Giselle’s arrows have no effect so she dances around distracting the creature, whilst Pankas and van Richten apply cold steel. Eventually the monster goes down. Ricken and Pankas arrive and assess the situation.
They conduct a systematic search of the cells on the ground floor. Each contains a group of mutant Belviews wallowing in filth, too terrified of the golem to leave their cells.
• Three Bellviews cower and shriek; one cradles a brass candlestick
• Four Belviews play-fight for dominance while a fifth cowers behind a wooden statue of a saint
• Seven Belviews sit in a circle chanting in the hope the dinner bell will ring
• Nine Belviews stare hungrily at Pankas
• Sixteen emaciated Belviews sit in filth and the bones of dead family members
• Seven Belviews hit each other with sticks, while three others cradle howling babies
• Two Belviews hide in a ‘fort’ of ruined furniture
In the final room, eight Belviews caper around; one of them holds a glittering gold statue of a saint. They chant:
The devil dwells in his dark house, Upon the misty pillar
First he’ll taste her sweet, sweet blood, And then he’ll have to kill her.
Ricken feels that in all conscience this valuable relic cannot be left in the hands and claws of mongrel filth. He taps the Belview holding the statue on the head with his mace. The Belview starts crying but refuses to hand over the statue. Ricken grabs it off him. All the Belviews start crying. Bran shakes his head.
The Hospice
They head upstairs to another ruined office, and on into a spacious ward containing rows of rusting bed frames and rotten mattress fragments. Six Shadows emerge from the shadows and attack. They begin to drain the adventurers’ strength until Ricken has the presence of mind to channel Radiance of the Dawn. This incinerates most of the shadows, and the last one is speared by Pankas. The fighter feels a surge of power from his Blood Spear when the shadow dies. The adventurers take a short rest and van Richten heals up.
They check the small operating room, nursery and morgue. Ghostly screams are heard in the operating room; Giselle catches a reflection of a ghostly nun in the nursery; a raven perched in the window of the morgue flies down and lands on the scarecrows in the garden below.
Barracks
They head out onto the curtain wall manned by scarecrows dressed in corroded mail shirts. They turn back into the barracks and meet - at last! - the swashbuckling Vistana, Ezmerelda D’Avernir. She greets her long-lost mentor, van Richten, and is introduced to the adventurers. Her own Tarkka reading had led her to expect them here.
Ezmerelda is aware of the Abbott’s plan to lure Strahd with the promise of a bride, but she believes the plan is folly and the Abbott mad. She had intended to wait here to ambush Strahd anyway, but is easily persuaded by van Richten to join the adventurers instead. She accompanies them down to the garden.
Garden
In the garden they find the two scarecrows to be just that. Giselle shoots a white bunny for their tea, and fills her pockets with a few turnips uprooted from the soil by the cold. Bran shakes his head. They leave through the garden gatehouse.
“Give us the book….”
As they head back through the graveyard, seven wights dressed in tattered livery of Strahd’s house emerge from the gloom. They demand the return of the Tome of Strahd. The adventurers refuse and battle is joined. Ezmerelda fires Lightnong Bolts before jumping in with blade and axe. The wights attack with vicious long swords, seeking to drain life from their victims. Van Richten protects himself with Dispel Evil and then lashes out with his swordcane. Ricken channels Radiance of the Dawn again. Pankas, Bran and Giselle focus on hitting the wights as hard as possible until they fall over. They do,eventually. Pankas gains a further surge of health from his Blood Spear. The Spear demands living souls next time.
They leg it over the abbey wall and head back to their cottage.
Ricken dreams of St Markovia and attunes to her golden statuette.