GC Dungeons and Dragons Part 4: Escape

In which the party escapes from the Death House and explores their surroundings.

It's the holiday season, and the owner of our store gave us all free holiday dice!

Sadun with her free dice!

When we left our... heroes(?) they had managed to make it through the basement of the Durst's house,  and fought a Shambling Mound in the altar room. However, the Mound had come out victorious...

Balazar is dead.

The cult is pleased, the chant changes back from "One Must Die" to "He is the Ancient" and the Shambling Mound retreats into its alcove, satisfied with the sacrifice. The portcullis leading up the main ramp raises on its own, allowing us to leave. The party is distraught however at Balazar's abrupt death. Talna attempts to revive him but to no avail, and the others stand there, dumbfounded.

Balazar's spirit watches all of this for a moment, then finds itself transported to a dark room, where a deep booming voice speaks. "Such a shame to die so young... perhaps you would like a second chance?"

"Ok, which of my party members do I have to kill for this?" Balazar responds.

The voice pauses, momentarily confused. "You don't have to kill anyone, you merely have to accept my gift, and you will live again."

Balazar is convinced there will be a hidden cost, but sees no alternative, and accepts the voice's offer.

Meanwhile, Talna has picked up Balazar's corpse to bring out of the basement with us. As we start to leave, Balazar suddenly stirs and coughs. Talna immediately drops him and punches him in the face screaming "ZOMBIE!" But while Balazar groans from the punch, he does not start attacking us. Smoke comes out of his mouth when he coughs though, which may not be so strange coming from a red dragonborn who can breath fire, but it is persistent.

Reunited, the party leaves the house. The fog has opened up, leading away from the door and down a road. Talna starts a fire at the base of the house, and the group sets off, unwilling to rest so close to that cursed place. As we walk, we near a large stone gate, several times taller than any of the group. The gate is flanked by statues of guards holding weapons at the ready, but the stonework is chipped and overgrown, and both statues have lost their heads. Gaunt trees and muddy pools surround the road as we head towards the gate, but the fog is ever behind us, and visible through the trees on either side, so we allow ourselves to be guided, too afraid of the fog to risk going off the path. Seeing no good place to rest along the road we proceed to the gates, which open as we approach. No one is around to open them though...

Talna casts dancing lights and sends the lights through. As nothing happens except the fog closing in behind us we decide it best to go through. Once inside, the gates close on their own. The fog does not follow, so we finally break to rest for the night and recover from our travails. We head out again in the morning.

As we walk, Gilligan and Talna begin to notice the smell of recent death. Soon, the rest of us pick up on it as well. The fog seems to have left us for awhile, so we venture off the road a little bit to investigate and find a half buried humanoid corpse in the underbrush. The body was raked with claws, and various sized paw prints surround it. An envelope is clutched in the corpse's hand. Talna takes the envelope, and we read the enclosed letter from the Burgomaster of Barovia. The letter describes that the Burgomaster's daughter Irena has been bitten by a vampire, and entreats others to leave Barovia alone, to trap the evil in their land and give the citizens up for dead.  As we read we start to hear wolves howling.

We investigate the marks around the body, and Sadun notices that some of the paw prints are larger than others. We debate whether to bury the body as the howling gets louder. Suddenly we realize we ignored the howling too long, and large wolves emerge from the trees surrounding us.

Those are all dire wolves.

Gilligan attempts to buy us time with a holy spell to make the wolves fearful of him. Several of the back up a step, but all of them keep staring at us, growling. Sadun, figuring the spirit of this messenger has moved on, hurls the corpse at the wolves, but they ignore it. None of us really want this fight, so we try to back slowly away from the wolves. At this, one wolf howls, and we hear an answering howl from behind us, but still none of the wolves attack. We continue to back away slowly, and the wolves leave us alone as we return to the road and start moving further on. Are we still behind herded, even without the fog?

We approach a village, not follows by wolves so far as we can tell. The village is quiet, and seems pretty empty. We can hear some people shutting windows as we approach though, and we hear a faint sound of someone crying as we enter the village itself. 

Elle knocks on the first door we come to. And knocks again when there is no response. She calls out "I know you're in there!" and knocks again. The party shares a bemused look. Then Elle kicks the door, breaking the lock and swinging the door open to reveal a terrified old man hiding behind a chair. 

"Go away!" the man shouts. Elle says "I just want to know what's going on!" "Just go away!" "I'll tie you down if I have to!" This escalated quickly... Balazar approaches and picks Elle up. "Are you scared of this little thing?" The old man cries in terror at the sight of the dragonborn. Elle struggles in Balazar's grip, still demanding to know what's going on. "I'm hiding from you!" the man responds. Gilligan peeks around the door and asks why the old man is hiding from us. "Just look at you!" The old man has never seen dragonborn, or goblins, or even gnomes. He has gone noticeably pale. 

Sadun and Talna, standing away from the house trying to look nonthreatening while this exchange took place, exchange exasperated looks, and finally Sadun walks up to the house, plucks Elle away from Balazar, and asks the man where there is food in the village. "Blood on the Vine tavern! Now please just leave me alone!" 

"Sounds good. We're going for food people" Sadun says. She drops a gold coin on the man's floor (for the door) and walks off. Elle settles down at the prospect of rumors in the tavern and climbs onto Sadun's shoulder again, rather than running off to kick down another door. Balazar perks up at the prospect of booze from the tavern, and follows. Gilligan and Talna however, having noted the sound of sobbing, decide to investigate that. 

We end this session as we once more split the party...