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Legends of the Heroes / Re: Army of PCs Against the Giants
« on: January 31, 2021, 01:02:28 AM »
Interlude XXXVII
Day 213. Approaching the End
While moving through the water Arvin and boots somehow disappear. Niobe and Brak saw Arvin disappear between blinks of the eye.
Brak just shakes his head in frustration.
Derek, concentrating on opening the door, doesn’t notice this. He opens the door and scuttles through on the wall, still trying to stay between the water and the mold.
Tinyra sighs and shakes her head.
Derek sees stairs ascending to a four way intersection. Straight leads to descending stairs. There are halls to the left and right. One hall leads to a large room, the other leads to a spiral stairway.
Derek proceeds on the wall to look into the large room. He is grateful for the larger gap between the water surface and the ceiling.
The Room Derek enters has dark, low shapes thrust up out of the still, brackish water that fills this fifty-foot-square room, the ceiling of which is festooned with hanging chains that look like thick, black web strands. A balcony set into the north wall overlooks the room and has two large thrones atop it, with a red velvet curtain behind them. The dark shapes in the water are racks, iron maidens, stocks, and other instruments of torture. The skeletons of their last victims lie within them, their jaws seemingly frozen open in silent screams.
Brak checks out his surroundings to make sure he knows where the party needs to go, even if they decide to look around first. Brak knows they need to go up the spiral staircase behind them to get to the spire they are looking for.
Niobe sloshes in after Derek.
Derek “There is likely nothing we need in here, unless we want to check the balcony for doors.”
Brak- “That’s not the way we need to go, but if we can find some coffins to destroy before we fight any vampires, I’m all for it.”
Niobe- “It’s worth a look.”
Leroy stands in the back and waits. He is still paranoid about seeing an octopus face dude.
Derek nods and climbs along the wall to the balcony. He pulls the curtain all the way back., and checks the doors like normal. On the balcony he finds two large, wooden thrones resting there. Behind the thrones hangs a red velvet curtain thirty feet long. The ceiling here is ten feet high. Once through the curtain he finds a wall with a door in the center of it. No traps or locks on the door.
Niobe walks far enough into the room to spread her wings, and then takes off out of the water. Once Derek has crossed the room, she swoops over, lands, and holds the curtain open so that no one is out of sight.
Brak has floated over and is in the middle of the room.
Derek opens the door, cautiously, and peeks through.
Leroy slowly has slipped into the torture room.
Derek sees a room that is thirty feet square, rising to a twenty-foot-tall flat ceiling. A stone brazier burns fiercely in the center of the room, but its tall white flame produces no heat. The rim of the brazier is carved with seven cup-shaped indentations spaced evenly around the circumference. Within each indentation is a spherical stone, twice the diameter of a human eyeball and made of a colored crystal. No two stones are the same color. Overhead, a wood-framed hourglass as tall and wide as a dwarf hangs ten feet above the brazier, suspended from the ceiling by thick iron chains. All the sand is stuck in the upper portion of the hourglass, seemingly unable to run down into the bottom. Written in glowing script on the base of the hourglass is a verse in common. Two nine-foot-tall iron statues of knights on horseback, poised to charge with swords drawn, stand in deep alcoves facing each other. The brazier sits between them.
Leroy slowly walks to the torture rack and looks at it. He still has the heebie jeebies about the place.
Derek reports his finding to the rest of the group. “Master Brak, Mistress Niobe, Captain, if you’d be so kind so lend your expertise. Mistress Tinyra, too.”
Leroy walks to his first mate “Aye MAster Derek, what be needed from yer captain?” Leroy asks.
Derek: “Come look at this.”
Brak floats in, and without touching anything, looks at the inscription on the hourglass. Then he casts detect magic, just to see what happens. And wracks his brain for the significance of it all.
Leroy jaunts over and looks at what Derek has found and looks to take everything in that he sees. He looks at the script in common. “Do not read this,” Leroy says to Derek. “Me has a bad feelin that readin it will make the hour glass turn and we sure to die.”
Brak- You think that the sand would start flowing up?”
Leroy nods to Brak “Aye, me thinks the sand will flow and we will be in a bad situation. Me prefers that we be in no bad situation,” then he smirks a bit “Unless it be by me hands.” then flashes a smile.
The flame is magical, as is the hourglass. The letters of the inscription also appear magical. There is no significance that anyone can place with the hourglass, it could possible be a trap or a means of transportation.
Brak- “Perhaps it is the magical device that prevents the passage of time here.”
Leroy shrugs to Brak “Or it may begin our death timers and we die horrible deaths.”
Brak reads all but the last two words silently.
Brak reads the following:
Cast a stone into the fire:
Violet leads to the mountain spire
Orange to the castle’s peak
Red if lore is what you seek
Green to where the coffins hide
Indigo to the master’s bride
Blue to ancient magic’s womb
Yellow to the master’s tomb
Brak- Well. I’m glad we came in here. This divide will transport us to seven different places within the castle.” He tells everyone what the inscription said and what the options are.
“So,” Leroy says, as he looks to the fire, “Me guess we want the yellow stone then to fight our vampire.” he scratches his chin and twirls his beard in his hand
Eli writes, our fortune said that we would find Strahd at the highest portion of the castle. Orange would seem to be where we want to go if that is our aim.
Niobe- “I want to fight the vampires piecemeal, rather than all at once, so not straight to Strahd, is my preference.”
Brak- “And we need to make sure they can’t regenerate themselves, so going to where the coffins are is where I think we should start.”
Derek “Agreed.”
Brak- “But we can see what’s behind these doors first.” He gestures to the doors behind him.
Derek nods and checks each door for traps and locks. He doesn’t find any traps or locks.
“Open the doors as you please.” he says to whoever is nearby. He himself opens the door in the middle. He finds a staircase that leads up and to the right.
Niobe opens the door on the left. She finds a long stairway leading up and then turning right.
Brak takes the door on the right. He finds a spiral staircase.
Brak- “Huh. We can either wander aimlessly or go break some coffins. Who wants me to grab the green gem?”
Leroy shakes his head “Lets not grab any gems, fer we are sure to send us to our deaths master Brak.”
Brak- “Or save us hours of wandering the trapped halls of a vampire lord.”
Leroy “Or we not have any magical adventures with actual magic, and explore like real explorers.” he says
Derek raises an eyebrow at this.
Tinyra, “you can teleport us back here if it goes wrong, well more you can teleport everyone else correct? I can get myself back here.”
Brak- “If we’re within 1000 feet and I have a rough idea where I’m going, yes. Otherwise not really.”
Tinyra nods and shrugs.
Leroy shakes his head up and down “So lets go up some stairs, punch some dead things in the face, and call it day mateys.”
Niobe- “If we have to do some walking first, that will give us an advantage if we have to escape fast later.”
Leroy exclaims “That be the spirit lass!” he walks to the door Niobe is in front of “See mateys? A set of stairs, so lets climb this and me will lead the way.” Leroy then puffs his chest out “See? Me leads the way.” and he begins to climb up the stairs while scanning the staircase. Leroy doesn’t see anything.
Derek shrugs and follows.
Brak grumbles a bit, and makes sure to note where they are in relation to the fastest route. He places himself in the middle of the party. “Although I don’t might not heading straight for Strahd without Arvin and Boots,” he mumbles.
Niobe follows Derek and Leroy.
Leroy gets to the top of stairs and then sprawls out in a prone position, he waives for Derek to lay next to him “Lets scout this here hallway out first mate.” Leroy searches the hallway. He cups his hands into circles and uses them as if they were long range opticals.
Derek peeks around the corner. They see farther up and more stairs.
As soon as they move onto the landing in front of them halfway up the stairs appears Strahd, “You have worn out your welcome. Whatever gods you believe in cannot save you now!”
Leroy freezes in place “DO NOT CALL FOR THE ONE ME HAS LED TO BELIEVE IN!” he freaks out and screams “ME DO NOT WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN!”
Derek: “Retreat!”
Round 1!
Brak flies around the corner far enough to see what the ruckus is, decides Strahd wouldn’t fight them in a rando hallway and disbelieves the illusion. Strahd is still there in front of him.
Brak manifests time hop on Strahd, but it doesn’t work.
Tinyra takes flight and comes around to see what is happening, not able to do more.
Niobe casts Holy Aura on herself, Derek, Brak, Clifford and Tinyra. Eli is too far away. Everyone else gets…+4 deflection to AC, +4 on all saves, SR 25 vs spells and SLA from evil creatures, blocks possession and mental influence, and blinds a melee attacker if they fail a fort save.
Derek fires two arrows at Strahd, missing both. He retreats down the hall and hides.
Leroy grabs himself in the groin “Me is shuttin up, and nuttin up!” He screams and runs up to Strahd and stabs him. The amazing stab passes right through Strahd. After stabbing the illusion Strahd chuckles and melts away like a wax doll in a bonfire.
Leroy shrugs to the group and says “See? Captain Leroy always leads the charge. And ye were all scared for nothin.” and tries to smile.
Derek curses from the shadows “...takes years of my life. I could do with fewer surprises, Captain.”
Brak- “I shouldn’t have let true seeing run out.”
Niobe grumbles a bit. “They’ll just whittle us away with illusions if we’re not careful.”
Derek, still hiding in plain sight, slips back up the stairs, this time clinging to the wall 10 feet above everyone’s heads “Shall we proceed?” His voice is tense and acerbic.
Niobe, a touch grimly. “Yes, lets.”
Leroy continues up the stairs past where the Strahd illusion was.
Clifford - “Brak, do you know if my teeth should be silver for a vampire like Stradh?”
Brak- “Yes, they should be, and they would need to be magical as well, if they weren’t already.” Brak knows that this also leads to the stairwell that leads up to where the tarot cards suggest they would run into the real Strahd.
Clifford - “I’ll just keep them that way from now on then….” he says, harrumphing in the general direction of where the illusion was. He shows his teeth, and they are indeed quite silvery.
Leroy continues up the stairs, hugging the walls as much as he can. Leroy sees the door at the end of the stairway, nothing else.
Niobe will walk up the middle of the staircase, confident in her ability to obliterate a very large percentage of possible opponents. Also, she’s immune to fear.
“I am heading to the door,” Leroy says to the group and scoots up to the door. He puts his hand on the door, “Shall we go through?” he asks the group.
Niobe- “Let’s do it.”
Leroy rocks backward, then rams his shoulder into the door to bust it open! Leroy hits the door hard, and nothing happens. Except his shoulder is starting to hurt.
Leroy hits it again. This time he hits much harder, and still does nothing except cause his shoulder to hurt even more.
Leroy and Derek hear someone moving around on the other side and a low cursing sound.
“Captain… if I may?” Derek climbs down from the ceiling. He motions for everyone behind them to be ready, and checks for locks and traps.
Leroy curses under his breath about his shoulder. “Aye your up Master Derek.” Leroy moves out of the way so Derek can get to the door.
Derek finds no traps, but did find the mechanism to make the door open. He realizes this is probably a secret door meant to be hidden from the other side.
“First mate, Did ye hear that?” Leroy asks.
Derek “I did. Be ready.” He works the mechanism to open the door.
The door opens to a shadowy room in perfect order. A great table stands here with its chair, inkwell, and quill set carefully in place. Lances, swords, and shields that bear the barovian crest are hung neatly on the dark, oak-paneled walls. In front of the party stands a vampire with a sword held ready and teeth barred at them.
Round 1!
Tinyra flys up and attempts to get a little closer.
Derek fires an arrow at the vampire, and then dashes into the room, up the wall and around to the door on the south side.
Niobe takes a step forward and then stabs at this guy four times. Too close for missiles, so switching to guns. She stabs him mightily, and on the fourth hit he collapses and….turns into a gas and floats out of the room.
Derek returns to the floor and checks the door for locks. No traps or locks.
Leroy enters the room and watches the gas float out the window.
Brak- “It will return to it’s coffin post haste, where it will be helpless for approximately one hour, but then it will be able to act again. Perhaps we should go downstairs and use the green gem.”
Eli writes, and probably die just as fast if he comes back.
Leroy nods “Or we not use magic. Period.”
Derek growls “Captain, crippling ourselves by not using magic is suicidal.”
Brak read’s Eli’s note. “But it will distract one of us for a few moments, and that may be enough for its allies.”
Leroy turns to Derek “Aye, but at least our crew wont be sucked into a black hole of despair and hear voices.” He offers to his first mate.
Derek, sarcastically. “No, we’ll just be trapped in this land for the rest of our unnatural lives.”
Eli writes, and born again to do the same.
Leroy “thats better than the locker, first mate, way better than the locker.” says
Brak flips on detect magic to see what there is in this room. Nothing magical to be found in the room. Then he does a normal search of the room. He finds nothing of interest.
Derek stares at Leroy. “I fear the gravestones we read when we arrived here more.” He turns his back and opens the door, peeking carefully out into the probable hall.
Derek see a thirty-foot-square room in shambles. Scattered furniture lies in heaps near the walls. Broken bones lie scattered amid crumpled and crushed plate armor. Shields and swords jut from the walls as if driven into them by some tremendous force. Two doors stand opposite one another in the center of the north wall and the south wall. A dark archway leads out through the east wall.
“Ye fear the gravestone, me fear dark voices and a locker. Potato, Poh ta toe, first mate, but me fears the magic will get us all killed when the sand runs out.”
Derek snorts and moves into the next room, bow at the ready. He heads for the door on the opposite wall, and checks it as normal. No traps or locks
Niobe heads into the next room, and orients herself down the hallway to the east. She sees a dark passage running for twenty feet, connecting an archway to the east with an ascending stone staircase. To the north and south are four ten-foot-square alcoves cluttered with rotting cots and dirty rags. The ceilings hre are covered with yellow lichen.
Leroy hangs his head and follows his first mate into the next room.
Brak follows everyone else after searching the room where the killed the lone vampire. Entering the next room, he says, “I have no memory of this place.” He has the nagging felling that he should remember something but is missing it right now.
Brak- “There’s something I’m forgetting about this room, and maybe this area. We need to take our time looking around.”
Derek opens the door in the south wall. He finds an area with dark stains covering the floor. Large oak tables, scarred and beaten, lay scattered like toys about the room, their wood crushed and splintered. Replacing them are furnishings made entirely of human bones. The walls and the twenty-foot-high faulted ceiling are a sickly yellow color, not because of fade or timeworn plaster but because they are adorned with bones and skulls arranged in a morbidly decorative fashion, giving the room a cathedral-like quality. Four enormous mounds of bones occupy the corners of this ossuary, and garlands of skulls extend from these mounds to a chandelier of bones that hangs from the ceiling above a long table constructed of bones in the center of the room. Ten chairs made of bones are festooned with decorative skulls surround the table, resting atop which is an ornate, bowl-shaped vessel made of yet more bones. The doors to the north and south are sheathed in bone, but the steel-banded double doors in the center of the east wall are not. Above the eastern door is mounted the skull of a dragon.
Niobe points out the yellow lichen to everyone not looking at the Paris underground.
Clifford sniffs the lichen, which looks way more awkward when he’s in wolflord form.
Brak notes the locations of the piles of stuff and says, “Lets not stay in this room too long. And don’t touch anything.”
Niobe nods, and heads into the Room of Bones.
Leroy walks into the rooms of Bones with Derek and Niobe.
Brak heads into the next room and looks around. “Reminds me of home.” As Brak walks past the hall with the stair well he remembers what he forgot. Those stairs lead up to the point the cards talk about.
Brak snaps his fingers. “That hallway leads to the ‘beating heart of the castle’, where we will find the Marionette. We should pass by the yellow mold as fast as we can.”
Derek looks over the Bone Room once more. “Very well. How hazardous is the mold?”
Brak looks back and examines the mold from a distance. “Nevermind, it’s not the heat-absorbing type. Or the yellow musk zombie creating type.”
Brak- “Well, shall we?”
Derek nods, and returns to the armory. He holds his breath as he glides past the mold alcoves, and heads up to the curve in the stairs. He sees the stairs leading up to an area that looks to have a slight red glow to it. He sighs, and hides himself.
Niobe goes with Derek, looking into each alcove as she goes by.
Derek proceeds cautiously around the corner.
As Derek moves up the stairs he can see a room with a mosaic floor that adds a touch of color to the otherwise dark, cold, empty tower that rises above you. A spiral staircase rises slowly into the darkness, hugging the outer wall. In the center of the room, are the stairs that Derek stands on. As you step into the room you can see the reddish light glowing brighter. Pulsing slightly. You can now see the full immensity of this tower. The spiral staircase circles up the tower’s full height. The tower, sixty feet wide at its base, becomes narrower as it climbs. At the pinnacle of the hollow tower, a large crystal heart pulsates with the red light bathing the party. Above the heart, the stairs continue upward.
Niobe, coming into the hallway behind Derek, “I didn’t expect it to be that literal.” She scoots away from everyone else and spreads her wings to take flight, but doesn’t quite yet.
Leroy walks into the room and looks up, “Thats really tall.” he says
“Brak walks into the room. “Well.”
Everyone hears faint voices coming from up the tower. Brak is the only one that can not tell they are arguing over something and they are somewhere above the heart.
Derek murmurs “Be prepared to fight at a moment’s notice.” He starts up the stairs still hidden in the shadows, and as silent as one too.
Niobe flies straight up to the landing above them and looks down the hallway to the northwest. She sees a hallway leading to a circular room with what looks like arrow slits on the walls.
Brak decides to manifest fly again, instead of using his stubby little goblin legs to climb a billion stairs.
Clifford starts climbing the stairs, changing into a Dire Wolf. He shakes himself out and says “Whew, finally on all four paws again.” He starts up the stairs, after checking to see that Brak is finding his own way up.
Leroy begins to climb up the stairs.
Brak floats gently straight up the middle of the tower, keeping in the middle of the whole group.
Niobe flies up to each hallway entrance she can see and checks down it. She waits for Leroy and Derek to pass by, and then heads to the next hallway.
Niobe is able to clear all the way up the tower until they are close to the heart. Once there she can hear the voices more clearly as they continue to argue.
Niobe looks around to see if she can find sources for those voices. Since that fails miserably, she’ll just listen to what they’re arguing about.
From where the party gets too the heart appears to be right below another level. The stairs continue up until they are above floor above the party's current location. While Niobe cannot see anything the party can hear Strahd talking to someone else.
Strahd, “They are somewhere in the castle. I will deal with them soon.”
Voice, “Yes, but they are most likely a distraction. You should have killed them as soon as they arrived here.”
Strahd, “This is my land, I do as I please.”
The party doesn’t recognize the second voice.
Day 213. Approaching the End
(click to show/hide)
While moving through the water Arvin and boots somehow disappear. Niobe and Brak saw Arvin disappear between blinks of the eye.
Brak just shakes his head in frustration.
Derek, concentrating on opening the door, doesn’t notice this. He opens the door and scuttles through on the wall, still trying to stay between the water and the mold.
Tinyra sighs and shakes her head.
Derek sees stairs ascending to a four way intersection. Straight leads to descending stairs. There are halls to the left and right. One hall leads to a large room, the other leads to a spiral stairway.
Derek proceeds on the wall to look into the large room. He is grateful for the larger gap between the water surface and the ceiling.
The Room Derek enters has dark, low shapes thrust up out of the still, brackish water that fills this fifty-foot-square room, the ceiling of which is festooned with hanging chains that look like thick, black web strands. A balcony set into the north wall overlooks the room and has two large thrones atop it, with a red velvet curtain behind them. The dark shapes in the water are racks, iron maidens, stocks, and other instruments of torture. The skeletons of their last victims lie within them, their jaws seemingly frozen open in silent screams.
Brak checks out his surroundings to make sure he knows where the party needs to go, even if they decide to look around first. Brak knows they need to go up the spiral staircase behind them to get to the spire they are looking for.
Niobe sloshes in after Derek.
Derek “There is likely nothing we need in here, unless we want to check the balcony for doors.”
Brak- “That’s not the way we need to go, but if we can find some coffins to destroy before we fight any vampires, I’m all for it.”
Niobe- “It’s worth a look.”
Leroy stands in the back and waits. He is still paranoid about seeing an octopus face dude.
Derek nods and climbs along the wall to the balcony. He pulls the curtain all the way back., and checks the doors like normal. On the balcony he finds two large, wooden thrones resting there. Behind the thrones hangs a red velvet curtain thirty feet long. The ceiling here is ten feet high. Once through the curtain he finds a wall with a door in the center of it. No traps or locks on the door.
Niobe walks far enough into the room to spread her wings, and then takes off out of the water. Once Derek has crossed the room, she swoops over, lands, and holds the curtain open so that no one is out of sight.
Brak has floated over and is in the middle of the room.
Derek opens the door, cautiously, and peeks through.
Leroy slowly has slipped into the torture room.
Derek sees a room that is thirty feet square, rising to a twenty-foot-tall flat ceiling. A stone brazier burns fiercely in the center of the room, but its tall white flame produces no heat. The rim of the brazier is carved with seven cup-shaped indentations spaced evenly around the circumference. Within each indentation is a spherical stone, twice the diameter of a human eyeball and made of a colored crystal. No two stones are the same color. Overhead, a wood-framed hourglass as tall and wide as a dwarf hangs ten feet above the brazier, suspended from the ceiling by thick iron chains. All the sand is stuck in the upper portion of the hourglass, seemingly unable to run down into the bottom. Written in glowing script on the base of the hourglass is a verse in common. Two nine-foot-tall iron statues of knights on horseback, poised to charge with swords drawn, stand in deep alcoves facing each other. The brazier sits between them.
Leroy slowly walks to the torture rack and looks at it. He still has the heebie jeebies about the place.
Derek reports his finding to the rest of the group. “Master Brak, Mistress Niobe, Captain, if you’d be so kind so lend your expertise. Mistress Tinyra, too.”
Leroy walks to his first mate “Aye MAster Derek, what be needed from yer captain?” Leroy asks.
Derek: “Come look at this.”
Brak floats in, and without touching anything, looks at the inscription on the hourglass. Then he casts detect magic, just to see what happens. And wracks his brain for the significance of it all.
Leroy jaunts over and looks at what Derek has found and looks to take everything in that he sees. He looks at the script in common. “Do not read this,” Leroy says to Derek. “Me has a bad feelin that readin it will make the hour glass turn and we sure to die.”
Brak- You think that the sand would start flowing up?”
Leroy nods to Brak “Aye, me thinks the sand will flow and we will be in a bad situation. Me prefers that we be in no bad situation,” then he smirks a bit “Unless it be by me hands.” then flashes a smile.
The flame is magical, as is the hourglass. The letters of the inscription also appear magical. There is no significance that anyone can place with the hourglass, it could possible be a trap or a means of transportation.
Brak- “Perhaps it is the magical device that prevents the passage of time here.”
Leroy shrugs to Brak “Or it may begin our death timers and we die horrible deaths.”
Brak reads all but the last two words silently.
Brak reads the following:
Cast a stone into the fire:
Violet leads to the mountain spire
Orange to the castle’s peak
Red if lore is what you seek
Green to where the coffins hide
Indigo to the master’s bride
Blue to ancient magic’s womb
Yellow to the master’s tomb
Brak- Well. I’m glad we came in here. This divide will transport us to seven different places within the castle.” He tells everyone what the inscription said and what the options are.
“So,” Leroy says, as he looks to the fire, “Me guess we want the yellow stone then to fight our vampire.” he scratches his chin and twirls his beard in his hand
Eli writes, our fortune said that we would find Strahd at the highest portion of the castle. Orange would seem to be where we want to go if that is our aim.
Niobe- “I want to fight the vampires piecemeal, rather than all at once, so not straight to Strahd, is my preference.”
Brak- “And we need to make sure they can’t regenerate themselves, so going to where the coffins are is where I think we should start.”
Derek “Agreed.”
Brak- “But we can see what’s behind these doors first.” He gestures to the doors behind him.
Derek nods and checks each door for traps and locks. He doesn’t find any traps or locks.
“Open the doors as you please.” he says to whoever is nearby. He himself opens the door in the middle. He finds a staircase that leads up and to the right.
Niobe opens the door on the left. She finds a long stairway leading up and then turning right.
Brak takes the door on the right. He finds a spiral staircase.
Brak- “Huh. We can either wander aimlessly or go break some coffins. Who wants me to grab the green gem?”
Leroy shakes his head “Lets not grab any gems, fer we are sure to send us to our deaths master Brak.”
Brak- “Or save us hours of wandering the trapped halls of a vampire lord.”
Leroy “Or we not have any magical adventures with actual magic, and explore like real explorers.” he says
Derek raises an eyebrow at this.
Tinyra, “you can teleport us back here if it goes wrong, well more you can teleport everyone else correct? I can get myself back here.”
Brak- “If we’re within 1000 feet and I have a rough idea where I’m going, yes. Otherwise not really.”
Tinyra nods and shrugs.
Leroy shakes his head up and down “So lets go up some stairs, punch some dead things in the face, and call it day mateys.”
Niobe- “If we have to do some walking first, that will give us an advantage if we have to escape fast later.”
Leroy exclaims “That be the spirit lass!” he walks to the door Niobe is in front of “See mateys? A set of stairs, so lets climb this and me will lead the way.” Leroy then puffs his chest out “See? Me leads the way.” and he begins to climb up the stairs while scanning the staircase. Leroy doesn’t see anything.
Derek shrugs and follows.
Brak grumbles a bit, and makes sure to note where they are in relation to the fastest route. He places himself in the middle of the party. “Although I don’t might not heading straight for Strahd without Arvin and Boots,” he mumbles.
Niobe follows Derek and Leroy.
Leroy gets to the top of stairs and then sprawls out in a prone position, he waives for Derek to lay next to him “Lets scout this here hallway out first mate.” Leroy searches the hallway. He cups his hands into circles and uses them as if they were long range opticals.
Derek peeks around the corner. They see farther up and more stairs.
As soon as they move onto the landing in front of them halfway up the stairs appears Strahd, “You have worn out your welcome. Whatever gods you believe in cannot save you now!”
Leroy freezes in place “DO NOT CALL FOR THE ONE ME HAS LED TO BELIEVE IN!” he freaks out and screams “ME DO NOT WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN!”
Derek: “Retreat!”
Round 1!
Brak flies around the corner far enough to see what the ruckus is, decides Strahd wouldn’t fight them in a rando hallway and disbelieves the illusion. Strahd is still there in front of him.
Brak manifests time hop on Strahd, but it doesn’t work.
Tinyra takes flight and comes around to see what is happening, not able to do more.
Niobe casts Holy Aura on herself, Derek, Brak, Clifford and Tinyra. Eli is too far away. Everyone else gets…+4 deflection to AC, +4 on all saves, SR 25 vs spells and SLA from evil creatures, blocks possession and mental influence, and blinds a melee attacker if they fail a fort save.
Derek fires two arrows at Strahd, missing both. He retreats down the hall and hides.
Leroy grabs himself in the groin “Me is shuttin up, and nuttin up!” He screams and runs up to Strahd and stabs him. The amazing stab passes right through Strahd. After stabbing the illusion Strahd chuckles and melts away like a wax doll in a bonfire.
Leroy shrugs to the group and says “See? Captain Leroy always leads the charge. And ye were all scared for nothin.” and tries to smile.
Derek curses from the shadows “...takes years of my life. I could do with fewer surprises, Captain.”
Brak- “I shouldn’t have let true seeing run out.”
Niobe grumbles a bit. “They’ll just whittle us away with illusions if we’re not careful.”
Derek, still hiding in plain sight, slips back up the stairs, this time clinging to the wall 10 feet above everyone’s heads “Shall we proceed?” His voice is tense and acerbic.
Niobe, a touch grimly. “Yes, lets.”
Leroy continues up the stairs past where the Strahd illusion was.
Clifford - “Brak, do you know if my teeth should be silver for a vampire like Stradh?”
Brak- “Yes, they should be, and they would need to be magical as well, if they weren’t already.” Brak knows that this also leads to the stairwell that leads up to where the tarot cards suggest they would run into the real Strahd.
Clifford - “I’ll just keep them that way from now on then….” he says, harrumphing in the general direction of where the illusion was. He shows his teeth, and they are indeed quite silvery.
Leroy continues up the stairs, hugging the walls as much as he can. Leroy sees the door at the end of the stairway, nothing else.
Niobe will walk up the middle of the staircase, confident in her ability to obliterate a very large percentage of possible opponents. Also, she’s immune to fear.
“I am heading to the door,” Leroy says to the group and scoots up to the door. He puts his hand on the door, “Shall we go through?” he asks the group.
Niobe- “Let’s do it.”
Leroy rocks backward, then rams his shoulder into the door to bust it open! Leroy hits the door hard, and nothing happens. Except his shoulder is starting to hurt.
Leroy hits it again. This time he hits much harder, and still does nothing except cause his shoulder to hurt even more.
Leroy and Derek hear someone moving around on the other side and a low cursing sound.
“Captain… if I may?” Derek climbs down from the ceiling. He motions for everyone behind them to be ready, and checks for locks and traps.
Leroy curses under his breath about his shoulder. “Aye your up Master Derek.” Leroy moves out of the way so Derek can get to the door.
Derek finds no traps, but did find the mechanism to make the door open. He realizes this is probably a secret door meant to be hidden from the other side.
“First mate, Did ye hear that?” Leroy asks.
Derek “I did. Be ready.” He works the mechanism to open the door.
The door opens to a shadowy room in perfect order. A great table stands here with its chair, inkwell, and quill set carefully in place. Lances, swords, and shields that bear the barovian crest are hung neatly on the dark, oak-paneled walls. In front of the party stands a vampire with a sword held ready and teeth barred at them.
Round 1!
Tinyra flys up and attempts to get a little closer.
Derek fires an arrow at the vampire, and then dashes into the room, up the wall and around to the door on the south side.
Niobe takes a step forward and then stabs at this guy four times. Too close for missiles, so switching to guns. She stabs him mightily, and on the fourth hit he collapses and….turns into a gas and floats out of the room.
Derek returns to the floor and checks the door for locks. No traps or locks.
Leroy enters the room and watches the gas float out the window.
Brak- “It will return to it’s coffin post haste, where it will be helpless for approximately one hour, but then it will be able to act again. Perhaps we should go downstairs and use the green gem.”
Eli writes, and probably die just as fast if he comes back.
Leroy nods “Or we not use magic. Period.”
Derek growls “Captain, crippling ourselves by not using magic is suicidal.”
Brak read’s Eli’s note. “But it will distract one of us for a few moments, and that may be enough for its allies.”
Leroy turns to Derek “Aye, but at least our crew wont be sucked into a black hole of despair and hear voices.” He offers to his first mate.
Derek, sarcastically. “No, we’ll just be trapped in this land for the rest of our unnatural lives.”
Eli writes, and born again to do the same.
Leroy “thats better than the locker, first mate, way better than the locker.” says
Brak flips on detect magic to see what there is in this room. Nothing magical to be found in the room. Then he does a normal search of the room. He finds nothing of interest.
Derek stares at Leroy. “I fear the gravestones we read when we arrived here more.” He turns his back and opens the door, peeking carefully out into the probable hall.
Derek see a thirty-foot-square room in shambles. Scattered furniture lies in heaps near the walls. Broken bones lie scattered amid crumpled and crushed plate armor. Shields and swords jut from the walls as if driven into them by some tremendous force. Two doors stand opposite one another in the center of the north wall and the south wall. A dark archway leads out through the east wall.
“Ye fear the gravestone, me fear dark voices and a locker. Potato, Poh ta toe, first mate, but me fears the magic will get us all killed when the sand runs out.”
Derek snorts and moves into the next room, bow at the ready. He heads for the door on the opposite wall, and checks it as normal. No traps or locks
Niobe heads into the next room, and orients herself down the hallway to the east. She sees a dark passage running for twenty feet, connecting an archway to the east with an ascending stone staircase. To the north and south are four ten-foot-square alcoves cluttered with rotting cots and dirty rags. The ceilings hre are covered with yellow lichen.
Leroy hangs his head and follows his first mate into the next room.
Brak follows everyone else after searching the room where the killed the lone vampire. Entering the next room, he says, “I have no memory of this place.” He has the nagging felling that he should remember something but is missing it right now.
Brak- “There’s something I’m forgetting about this room, and maybe this area. We need to take our time looking around.”
Derek opens the door in the south wall. He finds an area with dark stains covering the floor. Large oak tables, scarred and beaten, lay scattered like toys about the room, their wood crushed and splintered. Replacing them are furnishings made entirely of human bones. The walls and the twenty-foot-high faulted ceiling are a sickly yellow color, not because of fade or timeworn plaster but because they are adorned with bones and skulls arranged in a morbidly decorative fashion, giving the room a cathedral-like quality. Four enormous mounds of bones occupy the corners of this ossuary, and garlands of skulls extend from these mounds to a chandelier of bones that hangs from the ceiling above a long table constructed of bones in the center of the room. Ten chairs made of bones are festooned with decorative skulls surround the table, resting atop which is an ornate, bowl-shaped vessel made of yet more bones. The doors to the north and south are sheathed in bone, but the steel-banded double doors in the center of the east wall are not. Above the eastern door is mounted the skull of a dragon.
Niobe points out the yellow lichen to everyone not looking at the Paris underground.
Clifford sniffs the lichen, which looks way more awkward when he’s in wolflord form.
Brak notes the locations of the piles of stuff and says, “Lets not stay in this room too long. And don’t touch anything.”
Niobe nods, and heads into the Room of Bones.
Leroy walks into the rooms of Bones with Derek and Niobe.
Brak heads into the next room and looks around. “Reminds me of home.” As Brak walks past the hall with the stair well he remembers what he forgot. Those stairs lead up to the point the cards talk about.
Brak snaps his fingers. “That hallway leads to the ‘beating heart of the castle’, where we will find the Marionette. We should pass by the yellow mold as fast as we can.”
Derek looks over the Bone Room once more. “Very well. How hazardous is the mold?”
Brak looks back and examines the mold from a distance. “Nevermind, it’s not the heat-absorbing type. Or the yellow musk zombie creating type.”
Brak- “Well, shall we?”
Derek nods, and returns to the armory. He holds his breath as he glides past the mold alcoves, and heads up to the curve in the stairs. He sees the stairs leading up to an area that looks to have a slight red glow to it. He sighs, and hides himself.
Niobe goes with Derek, looking into each alcove as she goes by.
Derek proceeds cautiously around the corner.
As Derek moves up the stairs he can see a room with a mosaic floor that adds a touch of color to the otherwise dark, cold, empty tower that rises above you. A spiral staircase rises slowly into the darkness, hugging the outer wall. In the center of the room, are the stairs that Derek stands on. As you step into the room you can see the reddish light glowing brighter. Pulsing slightly. You can now see the full immensity of this tower. The spiral staircase circles up the tower’s full height. The tower, sixty feet wide at its base, becomes narrower as it climbs. At the pinnacle of the hollow tower, a large crystal heart pulsates with the red light bathing the party. Above the heart, the stairs continue upward.
Niobe, coming into the hallway behind Derek, “I didn’t expect it to be that literal.” She scoots away from everyone else and spreads her wings to take flight, but doesn’t quite yet.
Leroy walks into the room and looks up, “Thats really tall.” he says
“Brak walks into the room. “Well.”
Everyone hears faint voices coming from up the tower. Brak is the only one that can not tell they are arguing over something and they are somewhere above the heart.
Derek murmurs “Be prepared to fight at a moment’s notice.” He starts up the stairs still hidden in the shadows, and as silent as one too.
Niobe flies straight up to the landing above them and looks down the hallway to the northwest. She sees a hallway leading to a circular room with what looks like arrow slits on the walls.
Brak decides to manifest fly again, instead of using his stubby little goblin legs to climb a billion stairs.
Clifford starts climbing the stairs, changing into a Dire Wolf. He shakes himself out and says “Whew, finally on all four paws again.” He starts up the stairs, after checking to see that Brak is finding his own way up.
Leroy begins to climb up the stairs.
Brak floats gently straight up the middle of the tower, keeping in the middle of the whole group.
Niobe flies up to each hallway entrance she can see and checks down it. She waits for Leroy and Derek to pass by, and then heads to the next hallway.
Niobe is able to clear all the way up the tower until they are close to the heart. Once there she can hear the voices more clearly as they continue to argue.
Niobe looks around to see if she can find sources for those voices. Since that fails miserably, she’ll just listen to what they’re arguing about.
From where the party gets too the heart appears to be right below another level. The stairs continue up until they are above floor above the party's current location. While Niobe cannot see anything the party can hear Strahd talking to someone else.
Strahd, “They are somewhere in the castle. I will deal with them soon.”
Voice, “Yes, but they are most likely a distraction. You should have killed them as soon as they arrived here.”
Strahd, “This is my land, I do as I please.”
The party doesn’t recognize the second voice.
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