Last time, the adventurers had traveled to the Wizard of Wines winery, and discovered a group of druids had attacked the vineyards and were poisoning the wine. As she investigated in the middle of the night, Elle was seen by a particularly perceptive druid, and chased into hiding by a horde of twig blights. Meanwhile, the rest of the group was attacked by another horde of the blights, and while overall managed to fend them off, Talna and Jaro were left in sorry state when sheer force of numbers (and Balazar being in a tree) prevented the front line fighters from protecting the casters.
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Maximiliano De Forza II, Goblin Pirate Extraordinaire, climbed out from beneath the wagon. It was dark, and he had had an unpleasant journey and subsequent nap strapped to the bottom of the cart he had seen the eccentric adventurers purchase, but at least he was recovered from the scuffle with that uncontrollable gnome the day before. Looking around, he saw the adventurers crouched around their campfire, discussing something. After a moment, the gnome departed, heading down into a clearing. Curious, Maximiliano followed her. Where there were adventurers, there was often treasure. And if what he had overheard was correct, there may be wine as well.
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Maximiliano followed quietly behind Elle, but stopped when she disappeared inside the winery. He watched for several minutes, deciding on a course of action, when she came running outside again. He observed the strange twig-like creatures that chased her up the rope, but when no sounds of combat came from the room she climbed into, the goblin decided to follow. He carefully climbed up the half-loaded wagon, and managed to leap high enough to catch hold of the open trap door above. Hauling himself into the room, he saw the twig blights staring up into the air, seemingly at nothing, while a wild-haired human man gibbered in the corner. Maximiliano looked very closely at the spot the blights were staring at. Slowly, a dagger emerged from thin air. A very particular dagger Maximiliano remembered being driving into his flesh the day before. "Some sort of magic then?" he thought to himself. With a shrug, he hopped back down to the cart. He tapped one of the barrels loaded there and then popped the barrel open, filling his wineskin with the newly made wine within. Satisfied, he sauntered into the night back towards the campfire. There was safety in numbers after all.
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Sadun wiped Briarblade clean of the twig blight sap as best she could. The whole group was breathing hard, and each were bleeding from numerous cuts, though Talna and Jaro looked the worst off. The last batch of blights had started flinging thorns everywhere as they ran, scratching even Balazar's tough scaled hide in his tree.
"Do you think we have a few minutes? I can cast a healing spell for all of us but it will take a while," Talna asked Sadun.
"If there are more of these things, I will keep you safe as best I am able," Sadun replied.
Balazar kept a watch from the comfort of his tree while Talna began praying. Gilligan rode up on Poptart and Jaro stumbled over to join them as well.
"Where's your angry gnome?" a voice called out from the darkness. Looking towards the voice, Sadun saw a familiar goblin smirking at the group as he walked towards them. "Looks like you've been busy," Maximiliano added, taking a swig from his wine flask.
Sadun opened her mouth to respond, but stopped. The sound of approaching footsteps suddenly high in her mind. The dragonborn stepped in front of Talna, still focusing on her Prayer of Healing, and raised Briarblade. Gilligan, nodded to Sadun, and lay his hands on Jaro, bestowing all of his healing power to bring the satyr back to full consciousness, before riding into the darkness on his warg companion. Jaro climbed unsteadily to his feet, just as another group of fifteen twig blights burst into the clearing, running at the group on their clicking stick legs.
Gilligan was immediately amongst the enemy, his lance stabbing out several times killing three of the creatures before Poptart dashes away to safety again. Jaro waved his hands and a stick lifted near another group of the blights before flying harmlessly over their heads. Obviously the beating he had taken in the previous battle was affecting his aim.
Maximiliano sighed and put away his wine. He drew a long rapier in its place and dashed into the fray, stabbing and slicing another three blights into pieces. Sadun followed this by charging forward enough to hurl one of her handaxes into the blights, the blade smashing one apart and bowling another into the bole of a tree. From his perch, Balazar fired his crossbow into the last blight near Sadun.
"Can you make another hit with your axe?" he called out. Sadun threw her second handaxe, but this time the blade went over their heads. In response, three of the blights charged into Sadun herself, clawing and scraping her exposed scales and peeling several off, leaving bloody welts behind.
Gilligan again rode into the attack, relieving the pressure on Sadun by killing the remaining three blights with repeated stabs of his lance.
"My thanks friend," Sadun said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a humanoid figure running towards the winery and away from the group. Gilligan and Jaro saw it too, and without a word of warning, Jaro leapt onto Poptart behind Gilligan and the pair dashed off in pursuit.
"Wait, you'll be out of range of the prayer!" Talna shouted after them, but it was too late. She stopped her prayers in exasperation and stood up. "Should we go after them?" She asked Sadun, who nodded.
"I'll go around the front!" Balazar called down, already hopping out of his tree and moving away from the fire.
"Shouldn't wee stick together?" Talna called, but the red dragonborn either ignored her or didn't hear.
With a sigh, Talna turned back to Sadun, dropped her heavier equipment and climbed on Sadun's back. "You move faster than I do," she explained. Sadun nodded again, and began running after the warg and its riders.
"Well, I'm not sticking my neck out unnecessarily," Maximiliano said to himself in the empty clearing, "but this might be interesting to watch." And with that he began sauntering back towards the winery.
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"I'm not convinced we thought this through!" Jaro shouted from his seat behind Gilligan.
"It will be fine, Poptart won't drop you!" Gilligan replied.
Suddenly, the warg leapt up and over a spot on the ground neither rider had seen, as vines erupted from the earth and attempted to wrap around Poptart's body.
"Just hold on tight!" Gilligan added, "I don't think that guy wants us following him!"
Though the man, presumably one of the druids, had a significant head start, he stopped running when he reached the loading dock at the winery and turned to face the adventurers.
"Halt!" Gilligan shouted as they approached, "You're under arrest!"
At the sound of his voice, twig blights began dropping out of the ceiling above the half-loaded wagon behind the druid. The man smiled at Gilligan and ran back towards the blights that were rushing towards the warg, earning a stab from Gilligan's lance in his shoulder as he did so. Poptart began backing up, and Gilligan and Jaro whispered a plan of action as the blights approached.
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Meanwhile, in her hidey-hole hanging in the air, Elle watched as the blights poured out of the hole in the floor at the sound of Gilligan's voice outside. The wild-haired man was also distracted from whatever spell he had been considering and was moving towards a door in the back of the room. Deciding her time was right, Elle hopped out of the hole and into the nearly empty room. She crept up behind the shouting man, and follows him out of the room. The man keeps yelling in a language Elle cannot understand, and soon gets a response from a woman elsewhere in the area.
Elle found herself on a balcony overlooking the main room, and sees more twig blights moving towards the exit below her. Elle ducks into a nearby doorway, and walks unnoticed down a dark hallway. The hallway ends at a circular ramp, sloping down into a cellar. Elle continues to follow the path as quietly as she can, hoping for something interesting.
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The twig blights swarmed around Poptart, attempting to climb the warg and pin him down, but the warg numbly leapt away and shook off the blights clinging to his fur. Jaro unleashes a gout of dragon's breath on the blights, burning several to death, but more kept coming. Gilligan urged Poptart back towards the mob, stabbing with his lance, but his attacks went over the heads of the twig creatures. Jaro releases another gout of dragon's breath, leaving additional piles of ash as Poptart dances away again, a stray blight claw managed to score a wound on Gilligan's shin as they run.
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"When are we going to reach them?" Talna asked, as Sadun ran.
"Soon, I would say," Sadun replied, seeing the bursts of fire ahead. A moment later, Poptart came flying over a patch of grasping vines to land near the pair.
"I thought we might need a new strategy," Gilligan said as they regrouped. Behind them, the blights stopped chasing about thirty feet from the winery and stood still, waiting.
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Elle found herself in a tall ceilinged cellar. The air was ice cold against her skin. A thin mist covered the floor, and before her a brick wall partitioned the room in two, each side of the wall covered in shelving. One side of the wall was empty, but the other was full of wine bottles. Entering the cellar proper, Elle felt a burst of cold air on the back of her neck, but when she turned there was nobody behind her. The cellar appeared empty.
Elle wandered around the room slowly, looking for anything out of place. The first thing she noticed was that the air seemed colder in the north of the cellar, where she also found several broken barrels labeled 'Purple Grape Mash #3'. In the east of the cellar she found a few bottles, these labeled 'Red Dragon Crush'. Behind the bottles there was a poorly hidden secret door. Elle knocked.
There was no response.
Elle slowly pushed the door open, exerting herself in the process. A blast of cold air greeted her as the door opened, revealing a shallow hallway ending in a cave. The cave seemed to be covered in mold. Closing the door gently behind her, Elle walked into the cave and looked around, but did not see anything of interest. As she prowled the area, she realized she was having a reaction to the mold. Her eyes began to itch and burn. Deciding to limit her exposure, Elle left the room. As her cheeks began to swell, she started running back up the hallway. As she runs, she hears a familiar clicking noise.
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Meanwhile, Balazar had circled around the building to the west, and found an entrance. He cracked the door open, and found a small entryway lined with large-soled shoes. Two more doors led from the entryway to the rest of the building, both of which were open. Balazar sidled up to one of the doors and peered into the building. Inside, he saw a number of twig blights, swaying and clicking as they moved. Across the room he saw Elle dash from a room, and move quickly away. The twig blights turned to face the running gnome and followed her quickly. The room was now empty. He smelled the rich scent of fermenting wines, and turned to look at the fermentation vats.
Balazar walked into the middle of the room. He looked towards where Elle disappeared, then looked at the vats. He looked back and forth a few more times, considering his options. Elle had run off in approximately the direction of the trees where the group was... so Balazar grabbed a mug and walked up to one of the vats. He filled the mug with wine and sniffed it carefully, trying to decide if it had been tampered with. It smells like wine. Balazar gingerly tasted the wine. He took a sip, and realized the wine was the same 'Red Dragon Crush' he had stolen back in Vallaki. The taste is slightly off, but Balazar couldn't decide if it was tampered with or simply not fully fermented, since it was in a fermentation vat. The dragonborn shrugged, and looked around the room.
In the north was a still unopened door, so Balazar walked up to it and kicked it open, as per the party code of conduct. The room inside held nothing of interest, so he moved on to another closed door. Bursting inside, he found a room lined with wooden barrels and a staircase leading to the second floor. Following where the building design led, Balazar wandered upstairs, and began opening more doors. He found sleeping quarters, a dining room, a printing press with a Red Dragon Crush label on it. The dragonborn searched through each room for anything to steal, carrying away any coins in sight.
Returning to the first floor, Balazar noticed a room near where he had entered that he hadn't seen yet. Inside, he found a room set up for glassblowing, with a half-made wine bottle on the table and several bottles sitting around the room. At the far end was a barred door. Undeterred, Balazar looked for a key. During his search, Balazar found a dark red gem. Moving some items from the table to get to the gem he realized it was set in a brilliant silver amulet. The design looked like a red sun with silver rays flowing out from it. The sight sparked a memory of Madame Eva's prophecy, something about a treasure in the sand. Balazar pocketed the amulet, and left the room.
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Outside the winery, Maximiliano caught up with the others just as they made a decision. Jaro mounted back up behind Gilligan on Poptart, and Sadun and Talna prepared to run to the winery.
Before anyone could move further however, Elle burst from the back door, her eyes puffy and red, with another group of twig blights chasing behind her.
"What did you touch?!" Talna shouted at the gnome.
Sadun, seeing her friend in trouble, charged the twig blights between the outdoor group and Elle, crashing into them and laying about with Briarblade. Talna backed the barbarian up with Chill Touch, freezing several more blights as they turned between the two targets.
"Oh no, the gnome is in trouble, whatever shall we do?" Maximiliano said dryly, sipping wine and watching events unfold.
Elle pulled out her longbow and pierced a twig blight in her path, then continued her dash to Talna's side.
"Seriously Elle, what did you touch?" Talna asked again.
Gilligan urged Poptart close enough that Jaro could once again scorch the blights with his dragon's breath, although Gilligan's own lance strikes failed to catch anything. Poptart quickly moved away again.
The twigs managed to decide on their targets, and several of them converged on Sadun, clawing and scraping at her tough scales, and leaving bloody smears in their wake. Others charged at Talna, finding an easier time getting past the cleric's defenses and leaving her bloody again.
Three druids emerged from the winery, chanting in an unknown language. The wild haired man, the woman who poisoned the vats and the robed man who had fled from the campsite, all accounted for. Jaro looked around, hearing a loud noise coming from nearby that seemed to respond to the druids' chanting.
"Does anyone else hear that?" he asked.
"You mean the sort of 'scr scr, thud' noise?" Elle replied.
"It sounds big, whatever it is," Talna said.
Sadun, enraged by the threat to her friends, ignored the exchange, and continued to bash blights apart with Briarblade.
Talna cast Chill Touch again, targeting the druids this time, though the druids kept chanting. She followed that with a Healing Word, restoring Sadun's flagging endurance.
Maximiliano decided to be useful, and artfully disassembled one of the twigs that had already been injured with his rapier. The blight fell in a pile of sticks to the floor. The goblin took another swig of his wine.
Elle chanted a spell, enchanting her longbow, and fired an arrow. The arrow struck a circle of blights, exploding into a Hail of Thorns that tore several of the blights to pieces.
Poptart dashed back so that Jaro could use his last ounce of dragon's breath on the druids, burning them badly. Gilligan cast Spiritual Weapon, and a spectral Gauntlet appeared nearby. The gauntlet failed to hit anything, but allowed Gilligan to stab his lance deep into the robed druid's chest, killing the man. As Poptart retreated again, the remaining druids stopped chanting, and a loud crash could be heard in the distance, followed by the cessation of the thuds of a large creature approaching.
The female druid stepped forward and clapped her hands, causing a loud Thunderwave to buffet Poptart and his riders. Gilligan took the brunt of the force, but as the wave pushed Poptart back Jaro lost his grip and fell into the grass.
The wild haired man smacked Sadun in the back with his quarterstaff, but the enraged barbarian barely noticed his presence. Five blights climbed onto Sadun as well, clawing and biting at her with more effect than the druid's staff.
In response, Sadun swung Briarblade in two large sweeps, cleaving all but a single blight in two. Talna casts Vampiric Touch and pulls the wild-haired druid off of Sadun, sapping his life as she strangled him. Maximiliano finished the man off with a quick jab of his rapier.
Elle's vision began to clear up again, and she saw Balazar walk out of the winery. Distracted by this, she failed to hit the remaining druid. Gilligan rode up on Poptart, his spiritual gauntlet distracting the woman until his lance found her stomach. The final druid fell to the ground, holding her lance-wound, until Balazar stepped up and cut her head off with his ghostly sword-arm. Talna and Elle turn and grab the last twig blight, tearing it apart simultaneously.
And with that, the battle was over. We had won. We leveled up to 6 because Balazar found the amulet, and then we had to bid our DM farewell.
Dwayne has been an amazing DM, he has facilitated a very fun and exciting campaign despite all our attempts to derail everything terribly, and most of the adventurers being terrible people in the game world. Dwayne is moving out of state though, so he will not be able to continue our adventure. Jaro is going to take over, though he probably will not be running Curse of Strahd, so we shall see how our characters handle the transition to another new world...
Goodbye Dwayne! I'm really happy we were able to have this adventure together.
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| We commissioned this piece from @ArtsicFox as our going away present for Dwayne. It has been a blast! |
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