Last time, the group met the bard Xandril (our new player) and received a quest from the innkeeper to go check on the winery. We fought some tree demons on the way (one escaped, much to Seesil's dismay...) and then completed our trek. We met Davion Martikov and his sons Adrian and Elvere on the road. They apprised us that the winery was being attacked by little twig monsters and a few druids, and the Martikovs were forced to flee. We approached the winery, noting that the windows were boarded up with varying degrees of success. As we approached, we heard shuffling noises from behind us, and saw a hoard of tiny twig creatures approaching from the forest...
NOTE: Colin's player was absent this session, so the cleric spent the entire time firing a crossbow into the oncoming twig blight horde.
The adventurers turned to face the winery. on the east side of the building was a loading dock, with a cart loaded with wine barrels. To the west sat a veranda, with a double door leading into the winery proper. On the veranda were three tall wooden tubes, with a catch basin set underneath each to catch the grape runoff. Ladders affixed to the side provided access to the grape stompers.
"Should we go in here? Those things are getting closer," Xandril asked, as the party walked onto the veranda.
Eld eyed the roof. "I wonder if I could climb up there," he muttered.
"Shouldn't we stick together?" Xandril wondered.
"Nah, no need for that. Sagira, come up to the roof, we can pick off some of those twig things," Eld declared. "Rek, give us a boost."
"Ok," Rek said, lifting Eld up.
"These doors are barred shut," Sagira said, from the double door.
"Great, good luck you guys!" Eld shouted, from halfway to up the wall to the roof.
"I could Knock the door, magically," Xandril suggested.
"That makess a fair amount of noisse," Seesil pointed out.
"What's going to hear us, the twigs?" Xandril asked.
"Fair point," Seesil admitted.
"I'll try the other door," Rek said. A moment later, she reported "This one is also locked shut."
"There's more twig blights behind the initial group chasing us!" Eld called down from the roof. "You will probably want to get some shelter, there are a lot of them."
"We could set the whole forest on fire," Xandril said.
"Yes, let's do that!" Sagira said, excitedly.
"No," Seesil responded firmly. "No burning the foresst. Anyway, it'ss raining."
"Sagira, I think the roof will be safe from them, want to throw fireballs from up here?" Eld called down.
"Yes!" Sagira shouted back.
Eld let down a rope. "Climb on up!"
"Uh, in the rain?" Sagira said, doubtfully. "I'm not athletic you know."
"Rek will help you!" Eld replied. Rek obligingly lifted Sagira up half the wall, and Sagira managed to climb the rest of the way on her own.
"OPEN!" Xandril shouted from below, and a loud crack sounded as something attempted to give way inside the door. However, the doors remained stubbornly shut by something inside.
"Well, that didn't work. Maybe we can force the door?" Arf suggested.
"Ooh, let me do it!" Rek said, gripping the door and pulling hard on it. The door came out of its slide to the sound of breaking chain. The remains of a padlocked chain hung from the remaining door.
The opened door revealed a large interior room. The far wall was lined with barrels, and four large wooden vats stood evenly spaced throughout. The vats were tall enough to be accessible only from a balcony lining the walls of the second floor of the room. The words "The Wizard of Wines" was burnt into the vats. Thick rafters lined the arched roof, and scores of ravens perched there.
"We're going inside!" Xandril shouted to Eld and Sagira. There was no verbal response, but from the roof, bolts of fire began to rain down on the approaching twig blights, slowing the progress of the horde as they hesitate over the burnets corpses of their comrades.
While Rek took up a guard position on the veranda, Arf cautiously walked into the building. Seesil and Xandril moved to follow the dwarf. Inside, Arf saw a figure hunched over the easternmost fermentation vat, pouring a thick syrup into it. As the figure straightened up, Arf made out the features of a human woman in ragged robes, her hair unkempt and thick with detritus. In front of the dwarf, something small skittered across the floor, that looked like a tiny creature made of twigs.
"We have company!" Arf called to the people outside. As he yelled the warning, the druid looked up from the vat she was hunched over and shouted "Intruders! Come forth my blights and kill them!"
Dozens of twig blights began crawling out from the barrels in the back of the room. As they did so however, the ravens swooped down from the rafters and began attacking the blights. They seemed to Arf to be attempting to buy time for the party to take out the druid, but upon seeing the interference the druid said "Fine, I'll kill you myself," and began chanting a spell. As Arf readied his axe, clouds began gathering among the rafters.
As the roof team heard Alf's cry of alarm, the sky overhead darkened and the rain began to pick up.
"That's it, I need to get out of this rain," Sagira declared.
Xandril walked in behind Arf and looked up at the hostile druid. "You need a hairbrush!" he called out, putting all his viciousness into the insult. "Your hair looks bad!" The druid just laughed at the bard's attempt, and fluffed her hair in response. Xandril and Arf noticed the temperature in the room beginning to drop as the floor beneath them began to ice over.
Arf walked carefully over the rapidly forming ice to the staircase sitting between the two central vats that led to the balcony. Finding the staircase free of ice, the dwarf proceeded to run up towards where the druid perched on the edge of the twelve foot tall vat.
Behind the dwarf, Seesil foresaw a potential calamity and waved his hands, causing the area of ice directly in front of the door to melt, before hiding behind the furthest vat away from the druid. Rek, coming through the door, looked down at her wet feet and saw the ice, and instead of sliding across the floor she was able to carefully make her way towards the staircase. Looking up, Rek realized she had lost sight of Arf, as storm clouds blocked her sight to the balcony.
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Meanwhile, on the roof, while Sagira continued to hurl fire at the oncoming twig horde, Eld began examining the roof. Soon, he found what he was looking for; a window beneath his position, and on the opposite side of the roof an overhanging gable. "Sagira, I need to borrow your rope, mine's not long enough."
"Oh sure! Here you go," Sagira said absently, handing Eld her coil of rope in between firebolts.
"Perfect," Eld said, tying the two ropes together. He proceeded to tie one end to the wooden support under the gable, and played the rope out until he stood over the window. Holding the rope tightly, he let loose a yelp and leapt from the roof, arcing down and kicking through the glass pane of the window below.
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Xandril walked up the stairs and found himself behind Arf on the balcony. He struck a chord on his lute, channeling magical powers into the sound and granting himself and Arf a burst of heroism. "My good dwarf, your beard is looking very impressive today!"
"Why, thank you," Arf said, feeling inspired. He turned to face the druid just as the druid finished another chant, and a cylinder of light shone from the ceiling onto him and Rek. The light burned their flesh where it touched them, and Arf, who had just turned around, found himself blinded. Rek pushed pas the dwarf, bellowing in rage, and swing her battleaxe in a devastation arc. The blows staggered the druid, as a group of ghostly warriors filled the air, taunting her and blocking her view of anyone except Rek.
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Eld found himself in a second floor room with a ten foot square hole in the middle. A large wooden crane sat on one end of the hole, over a half loaded wagon below. Perched on the arm of the crane was a man with wild hair, rotted teeth, and designs painted on his skin in blood. The man said something in a language Eld did not understand at the sudden intrusion. Eld responded by throwing a knife that flew over the man's shoulder. The man said something else, this time sounding rather irate. The druid jumped from the crane, hurling a bolt of lightning at Eld, but Eld rolled away from the attack and stood up. The druid dropped through the hole in the floor and disappeared.
Outside, Sagira was carefully attempting to climb down the rope where Eld had jumped off the roof. "What has that ranger found now?" she wondered, hearing the voices. A bolt of lightning flew out of the window below her. "Oh good fires, this is going to be difficult isn't it?"
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Seesil, unable to see through the clouds, began to cast spells into the twig blights in support of the unexpected raven allies. As he did so, he heard a crash from above, and heard a babble of druid in a male voice. "Something about nature bowing to him, and a vampire staff?" Seesil muttered to himself. "I hope whoever found that druid is on their toes..."
"Rek! I believe in your strength!" Xandril called out, inspiring the half-orc through her rage. As he did so, the druid raised her hands again causing a pillar of flame to burst from the platform Rek was standing on, causing the half-orc to stumble backward with minor burns. Arf, wiping his eyes free of the glare from the beam of light, stepped around Rek and pushed through the pillar of flame, swinging his axe as he did so. Unfortunately, he mis-judged the distance and the strength of his swing. Distracted by the fire, his axe slammed into his own thigh. "Gah!" Arf moaned in pain, staggering back a step.
Seesil looked up as the clouds cleared. He saw his friends fighting the druid, balanced precariously across the balcony and fermentation vat. He waved his hands and the water vapor around the druid's leg cooled quickly, burning the druid with frostbite.
On the balcony, Rek swung her axe in two quick blows, landing a solid hit against the druid's shoulder and carving a nasty wound across her face. The druid hissed what sounded like a curse.
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Sagira finished shimmying her way down the rope and managed to swing into the room. She stood in a pile of broken glass, and looked around. Across the way Eld worked to open the first of two doors leading further into the building.
Giving up on the doors for a moment, Eld peered down the hole in the floor and spied the druid standing on the barrels in the half loaded cart. The ranger fired an arrow, hitting the druid in the shoulder. A cry of pain and what sounded like a druid curse echoed up to Eld as he backed out of the line of fire. He turned to the door he had been examining a moment before and kicked it open, revealing a hallway beyond. "Zounds," Eld cursed, seeing nobody behind the door. "I had hoped to join our friends."
"They're behind this door here," Sagira said. "I can hear all sorts of noise. Sounds like a dwarf cursing in pain, some ravens calling..." the sorcerer pushed the door open carefully, and came face to back with the druid woman.
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"Arf, are you alright?" Xandril asked in concern, walking up behind the dwarf. "Here, let me help with that gash." The bard channeled magical energy and sang a soft healing spell, which stopped Alf's leg from bleeding.
The druid snarled something and waved a hand over her scimitar, causing fire to spring from the blade. She swung the scimitar at Rek, slashing the half-orc across the chest. Rek growled in response, ignoring the blow.
Arf stood and swung his axe, but found his blow blocked by the druid's staff, held in her other hand. With a glare, Arf swung again, cutting under the druid's guard and slamming his axe into her ribcage.
Seesil once again caused the moisture around the druid's legs to condense and freeze, attempting to distract the druid from her immediate threats. As the druid deflected Rek's strikes, a bolt of fire flew out from behind the druid to slam into the far wall. An arrow followed after the fire bolt, Eld managing to find his aim through the chaos to bury his arrow in the druid's thigh. The druid stumbled back from the hit, lost her balance, and fell to the floor near Seesil.
"Maybe if you'd washed your hair you could have prevented that fall!" Xandril calls out. The druid groaned at the bad pun and held her head in pain just from hearing it. Arf pulled his crossbow and sent a bolt into the druid's gut just to add injury to insult, but in spite of the onslaught, the druid rolled out of the way in time to cause Seesil's claw attack to slam into the ground where she had been.
Rek leapt from the vat, axe already in motion as she landed. The blade landed several telling blows, and the druid collapsed to the floor, finally dead. As she breathed her last, the twig blights fighting the ravens nearby collapse into a pile of inanimate sticks.
"There was another druid up here," Eld called down from the second floor room. "And there are more doors up here, I'm going to check them out!" Without waiting for a response, he went down the hallway he had found and examined the door at the end for traps. Finding none, he opened the door upon a small kitchen and pantry area. Two doors lead from the room, and Eld moved to the eastern door. He found a nice bedroom with a large four-poster bed in it. Fine tapestries hung from the walls, and a crib was along one side. Several armoires and chests were located around the room. Eld began opening the chests, finding records of wine shipments to Barovia, Vallaki, Kresk and the Vistani.
In the main room, Xandril and Seesil began working to barricade the sliding door they had come in through, after calling Colin into the relative safety of the vat room. With some work, and scavenging sticks and staves from around the room, they managed to wedge the doors shut again. Sagira walked back to the loading dock room on the second floor and hurled more fire at the twig blights.
Having secured the area, the party began exploring the winery. On the ground floor, near the exit to the veranda, they found a workroom, filled with wooden boards and half-constructed wine barrels. Finding no further threats, the party split up. Arf headed up a narrow staircase, followed by Rek, while Xandril found a storeroom. On the far wall Xandril noted a door to the outside, which hung open. It appeared that the druids had burst through here as it was being barred. Xandril shut the door and used some nearby wood to bar it properly. Near the door was a staircase heading down.
In the vat room, Seesil knelt at the dead druid's body, searching for any sign of her identity. He was unable to find anything of detail, but the magical markings on her skin and several worn and written upon scraps of leather indicated that her sect of druids believed in the perversion of nature to suit their own ends, rather than of preserving it.
Upstairs, Arf and Rek opened a door at the end of a hallway and found themselves in the kitchen as Eld emerged from the bedroom. "Oh good, this does connect," Arf said, relieved. "There are a few rooms along the hallway here though."
The trio began opening doors, finding two smaller rooms, each with a pair of bunk beds, a number of toys scattered on the floors, and footlockers containing items of children's clothing. Looking closer, Rek realized the toys were a little odd. For example, there was a rocking horse, but on inspection it became apparent the horse was actually a nightmare.
Becoming tired of attempting to burn the oncoming blight horde, Sagira returned to the first floor in time to see Seesil open a door on the west side of the room. Joining the lizard folk, Sagira saw a spiral staircase beyond, leading up to the second floor, and continuing down into a basement.
"Ooh, let's go downstairs," Sagira said. "That sounds fun."
"Very well," Seesil said, walking down the stairs. At the bottom, the pair found a large room divided by a wooden wall in the middle, with a walkway to the far side on the south end of the room. A fine, cold mist shrouded the floor. A large empty wine rack lay in the middle of the visible area. Walking cautiously to the dividing portion of the room, Seesil and Sagira heard voices. Peaking around the corner, they observed a pair of druids, talking in low voices. One druid tended to the second, dressing an arrow wound in his shoulder. Seesil quietly crept back to the staircase and headed upstairs to warn the others while Sagira remained behind to keep an eye on the druids.
Meanwhile, Xandril walked down the staircase he had found. Thick moss covered the walls as he descended, and at the bottom he found a thick wooden door barring the way. Pressing his ear to the door, he heard conversation in a strange language issuing from the other side. Deciding caution was the better part of valor, Xandril crept back up the stairs.
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The upstairs trio opened the final door on the second floor. Inside the room they saw a writing desk, and a strange wooden contraption taking up most of the floorspace. Tooting through a cabinet in one corner was a human woman caked in mud, her hair a mess of sticks and dirt. She haphazardly tossed the contents of the cabinet to the door. Near the woman stood two creatures made entirely of vines. Spotting the intruders, the vine creatures began to move.
"AAAACK!" Arf shouted out, attempting to signal the rest of the party. At his shout, the woman turned around and glared at him.
"Time for diplomacy," Rek said, calmly, and hurled a hand axe at one of the vine creatures. The axe slashed through some of the vines making up the creature and embedded itself in the thing's arm.
"Yaarg!" Arf yelled, charging to attack the vine creature Rek had injured. The dwarf's axe rose and fell in quick succession, and the creature he faced collapsed in pieces to the ground. The remaining vine creature reacted to Alf's presence, hurling stiffened vines at the paladin. The vines pierces Arf's legs and arms, and then curled around him. He struggled against his restraints. The druid stood and gestured angrily at Arf, then drew a scimitar from her belt.
Seesil and Sagira, hearing Arf scream echoing down the stairwell, hurry upstairs. Spotting Rek at the end of the hallway, they rush to assist. In front of them, Eld peered around the doorway next to Rek and loosed an arrow each at the druid and the vine monster. Having struck each foe, Eld stepped out of the way for Rek.
Rek, seeing diplomacy was uncalled for, stepped into the room and swung her axe at the druid, striking the woman with several savage blows. The druid responds by unleashing a spell. Rek stands stalwart against the mental attack, but Arf, bound by the vines and thoroughly disoriented already, becomes exceedingly confused by the magical assault. The dwarf begins hyperventilating, and in his vision he sees Rek begin to turn into a vine creature. The vines let Arf go, and he swings his axe at Rek. Fortunately, Rek easily sidesteps the blow. The poor dwarf loses all sense of impetus and begins to feel extremely intoxicated. He stumbles towards one of the room's two windows.
Walking up to the door, Seesil peers inside, blinks in confusion at Arf, then conjures a cloud of frostbite around the remaining vine creature. The vines succumb to the cold, and the monster collapses to the ground and breaks apart. Seesil steps back, making room in the doorway for Eld to dash in and fire another arrow at the druid. The druid grunted as the arrow hit home, but focused in on Rek. Raising her hands again, she caused the handle of Rek's axe to heat rapidly, burning Rek's hands. The half-orc growled in pain, but held on to her weapon.
Arf stops on his way out the window, becoming fascinated by a spot on the wall. A lick of drool fell from his lips.
Rek charged the druid again, slashing with her axe, while Eld ducked in at the druid's side, stabbing with his rapier and dagger. The druid managed to dodge Eld's dagger, only to find the rapier piercing her arm. Rek was able to get an axe hit in on the druid as she attempted to dodge Eld's blows.
Seesil, seeing Rek staggering under the weight of her injuries, summoned the healing spirit of a cobra, which began shedding healing light on the half-orc. Finishing up with another Frostbite strike not he druid, Seesil once again stepped out of the doorway.
Xandril, having finally found the rest of the group, walked into the room. Assessing the situation and deciding that hiding behind Rek was the better part of valor, the bard sang a healing word which mended more of the half-orc's wounds.
Setting her scimitar on fire, the druid stepped forward and swung at Rek, but the chill in her joints from Seesil's frostbite slowed the blow, and Rek dodged. Taken aback, the druid overreached her strike, and burned her own leg from the strike. Eld and Rek took advantage of the druid's lapse to land more dagger and axe strikes, and the druid fell dead to the ground.
The party paused to catch their breath. For the next few minutes, they just sat in silence, while Seesil's healing spirit hovered around the group to restore their vitality.
TO BE CONTINUED
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