The Search for the Sun Sword
Dramatis Personae:
Tilea Aervavil'A'Sum, the Wild Elf Circle of the Moon Druid Barbarian
Scritch, Tilea's Squirrel Animal Companion
Sachi Kno, the Vistani Weremonkey Thief
Belmont Von Richter, the mysterious Human who tends to show up just in the nick of time
Tabitha Marie Lennox, the Human White Witch of Mystra
Nikko, Tabitha's Flying Monkey familiar
Bruenar Shieldwall, the Shield Dwarf Shield Fighter the party hired
Comrades we have lost:
Pineck, Anvil's Horse- turned into soup by a cursed crate
Kithri "Quickshadow" Tealeaf, the Lightfoot Halfling Werebat Order of the Lycan Blood Hunter and Ruin Raider- left to become Archivist
Forgrotken Anvilrocker, the Blugrim Forge Cleric of Moradin- killed by the Talmot Wives
Lythana, the Human Werewolf Order of the Ghost Slayer Blood Hunter- captured by the Talmot Wives
Tilea Aervavil'A'Sum, the Wild Elf Circle of the Moon Druid Barbarian
Scritch, Tilea's Squirrel Animal Companion
Sachi Kno, the Vistani Weremonkey Thief
Belmont Von Richter, the mysterious Human who tends to show up just in the nick of time
Tabitha Marie Lennox, the Human White Witch of Mystra
Nikko, Tabitha's Flying Monkey familiar
Bruenar Shieldwall, the Shield Dwarf Shield Fighter the party hired
Comrades we have lost:
Pineck, Anvil's Horse- turned into soup by a cursed crate
Kithri "Quickshadow" Tealeaf, the Lightfoot Halfling Werebat Order of the Lycan Blood Hunter and Ruin Raider- left to become Archivist
Forgrotken Anvilrocker, the Blugrim Forge Cleric of Moradin- killed by the Talmot Wives
Lythana, the Human Werewolf Order of the Ghost Slayer Blood Hunter- captured by the Talmot Wives
NOTE: Things will be mostly from Tabitha's perspective, anything in italics is from a third party view, since the Witch can't be everywhere at once.
***** Hetedik Honap 11, CY 735, Village of Barovia
Since we were looking for the Sun Blade, we thought the best place to start was at the Church of the Dawn Father in the Village of Barovia. Tilea and Sachi were paranoid that someone would be waiting to ambush us in the church, which didn't make much sense to me, but I was filling in as their babysitter now that Lythana was gone, so I didn't really argue. We flew into the bell tower instead of walking through the doors.
In the tower was a rusty old trap door that Sachi opened instantly with his hand. Sachi jumped in first, doing a little flip to show off for whoever he thought was waiting for us down below. Tilea, who was currently a raven, did a flip in the air and landed on Sachi's shoulder. Nikko and I swirled down behind them... there was no one waiting for us.
The bells began to ring above us, this was the first time I'd ever heard them ring, I'd never even heard someone mention them ringing. Then the chains holding the bells snapped, and they slammed hard into the altar below. I looked around and found scuff marks in the dust, like someone had been in here and ran when the bells collapsed. We needed to look around anyway, so we went to search the rooms.
Sachi found a locked trap door in one of the rooms. I literally found a needle in a haystack.. well, hay mattress, but still. Tilea found a piece of paper with exploding runes on it, blowing the room she was in up. In the final room was a blond haired, green eyed, scruffy looking human man. He grabbed Sachi, threw him across the room, ran out, and parkoured himself out of the hole we'd put in the roof. As Sachi took off after him, I realized the man was Grant, a member of the Resistance and a friend. I had no hope of catching up to them, so Tilea and I waited for Sachi to come back.
When the monkey returned he was drunk and injured. He went to pick the lock on the trap door and passed out instead. I'm beginning to understand why Lythana was getting triple pay for traveling with them. I healed Sachi, removed his drunkenness, and dispelled any magic that may have been active on him. Grant is a bit of a dick, so it wouldn't surprise me if Sachi's stupor was from some magical trap of his. Before waking him up, Tilea created a creepy little statue of Sachi that she hung over him.
Right after we woke Sachi up, the doors to the church were broken down by a dwarf I knew in reputation only: Bruenar Shieldwall. Apparently Sachi had hired him before we came down here. The monkey instantly began negotiating with him over the fee, which ended up being half of Sachi's loot. As he opened the trap door, Sachi not so subtly tried to find out if Bruenar was in the Resistance, and the dwarf responded by throwing him down the stairs.
The basement looked like it was going to collapse at any moment, and it wouldn't have surprised me if it had caved in on our heads. In the corner of the basement, Tilea found a scrap of parchment that had been mildly burned. I had a feeling that it was done with invisible ink, so I took a candle flame to it, and words appeared. Cemetery: Markovian Crypt. Guess that's our starting point for hunting down this sword.
When we walked out of the church, Corvane was waiting for us. She said it took us long enough, and she wondered if we'd figure the rest out; then she vanished into thin air. Chills went down my spine, the presence of that monk always makes my skin crawl.
It took about half an hour to find the crypt, and we discovered we couldn't gain entrance without a few items that needed to be fit into the locks. They were probably in other crypts in the graveyard, so we went to the nearest one to look for it.
I set up a ritual to detect magic, while Sachi picked the lock; instead of waiting for me, he and Bruenar went into the crypt to explore. There were three sarcophagi in the crypt, and Bruenar opened the first two with ease. But on the third one, he strained his back and had to go sit down for a moment. Sachi thought it would be a good idea for him to open the heavy lid on his own... He dropped the lid on his head and fell into the sarcophagus, getting tangled in the body. Bruenar hobbled back over to Sachi and had to rip him out of the chest cavity of the corpse. It wasn't all for nothing though; while I was finishing up the ritual, Bruenar found one of the things we needed in the doorframe.
Sachi then insisted we needed to search every other tomb here to look for the other pieces and ran off. By the time Tilea, Bruenar, and I caught up to him he'd been almost turned to stone by a trap, and was facing off with several ghouls inside the crypt. Bruenar ran in, destroying a ghoul instantly; then he somehow got his shield stuck in the wall. Sachi killed another ghoul; then Bruenar was hit hard by a third ghoul, which he proceeded to destroy. Tilea, Nikko, and I concentrated fire on one ghoul, and Bruenar finished it, then killed the final one on his own. He was definitely worth the monkey Sachi was paying him. I healed Bruenar and he surprised me by giving me a very expensive diamond as payment. With the ghouls gone, we found the last piece we needed easily.
I got in the air to look for the next tomb, and realized they were in a pattern that looked like a crest I'd seen on Strahd; I was certain the other pieces were in the big tombs in the pattern. Apparently telling everyone instantly wasn't the best idea. Sachi took off and began opening them as fast as he could. He got his hands on some very powerful spell gems, that looked to be somewhat volatile, so I warned him to careful.
Once we collected all of the pieces and put them in place, the door opened, and a wave of heated slammed into us. We descended the half mile long staircase down, and found ourselves in a large cavern with pools of lava here and there. As it opened up more, there were multiple lava streams, and at the end of the corridor, on a dais, was a stained glass box. On either side of us were streams of lava, and just across the lava was tons of gold and magic items; there was a little wooden box I felt strangely drawn to; it must be a witch candle box of some sort.
As we looked around, Bruenar told us there was a legend that if we tried to take something we didn't truly need, the place would collapse on top of us. At that point, Bruenar whispered that Corvane had been shadowing us for a while now, and he'd deal with her while we looked for the sword. Sachi went to a dagger on a pedestal that he felt drawn to, and was just reaching for it when Tilea convinced him to wait to take it until we'd found the sword; the last thing we needed was for this place to collapse on us because the monkey wanted a shiny knife.
Sachi hopped over the lava stream that was between us and the stained glass box. My broom was deflected, so I couldn't get over it, I sent Nikko instead, and Tilea turned into a flying monkey to get herself over there. The box was glowing, until Sachi touched it. He vanished for a second, then reappeared, holding a little golden lamp; the lights in the box went out. There was no seam to open it, so the only way in it was to break the glass. Nikko saw a tiny orb of light in the box, and Tilea demanded he open it. He told her no, and apparently that meant that nobody could open the fucking thing.
Sachi and Tilea both decided to just get the items they were drawn to and leave. I don't know why neither of them weren't willing to open the box themselves, but I was quite irked that they expected my familiar to do it. I had Nikko grab the box I was drawn to, and as we went to collect our items, the glass box shattered. Lava instantly began to bubble up out of the streams and the pedestals. Nikko was too close to the pedestal of mine to ge clear quickly enough, so I put him in a bubble that would protect him until he got to me. The lava flung him away from me, but I was able to pull him to safety with a thorn whip. I turned myself into a flying snake and grabbed hold of Sachi, and that monkey took off at a ridiculously high speed.
We passed Bruenar on the way, and I attempted to polymorph him so we could grab on to Sachi, but my spell failed. Sachi tossed a bead of force into the entrance to the larger cavern to try to buy Bruenar some time, but as we cleared the crypt, we couldn't tell if he escaped. Tilea heard something and saw a smoking figure falling through the air; it had to be Bruenar. Sachi tossed a bead of force at him, but it bounced off, and Bruenar instead began riding it. Tilea used a spell that put all of us on the eastern side of the cemetary, away from the fucking lava.
Corvane caught up to us, I guess it was too much to hope that the lava would have caught her too, and demanded the sun sword we'd failed to find. She didn't believe we didn't have it, and tried to grab Sachi and stuff him in a bag of holding.
Tilea glared daggers at Corvane and said, "I wish you would leave us the fuck alone."
"Fuck that, I wish she was banished from this place," Sachi quipped.
Smoke engulfed us, and it tasted terrible. When the smoke cleared, a hulking figure was looming over us, and asked "who did it?" The genie granted Sachi's wish and Corvane vanished. I hoped it was permanent, but I doubted that.
The entire Village was on fire as the lava continued to pour out of the crypt. We rushed to the inn to get Tilea's animals. Once we reached the city gates we opened our bags to look at what we'd grabbed, in hopes something in there would fix this. Tilea and Sachi's bags were completely empty, and the box Nikko had grabbed had lost all magic. Inside it was a note that said "ha ha" in a familiar script, but I couldn't quite place it. A drow appeared in front of us, which turned out to be Grant in disguise. He demanded Guild dues from Sachi, gave us shit about the lava, and tossed us the loot; he'd gathered everything before we'd even noticed, including the sun blade we'd failed to find.
We proceeded too begin evacuating people from the Village, saving about 200 people total. About a quarter mile beyond the gates, I sacrificed a magical pearl and my remaining magical energy to Mystra in exchange for a Temple where I could safely house everyone whose lives were literally burning down around them. Everyone began rushing toward the Temple doors, but then Sachi began talking... Apparently the other Vistani don't like the monkey.
Grant tackled Sachi and told him to play dead, then helped me convince the Vistani to go into the Temple. Tilea flipped out and attacked Grant, and wouldn't listen when I tried to get her to back off; I made it clear to her that I could bring him back after everyone was safely inside. Tilea ignored me and continued trying to attack Grant, which he and I rushed to get everyone inside the Temple without putting them in the rampaging druid's way.
Tilea began trying to hit Grant with lightning, and he just danced around, none of it doing much to him. It was honestly quite amusing to watch. He'd finally had enough and stabbed Tilea just as Sachi popped up. He told Grant he had gotten a feign death dagger from Talmot, which made Grant vanish instantly. Tilea said someone named Syn told her that was how he was tracking them, so Sachi threw the blade into the lava.
A couple hours later there was a knock at the door to my Temple. Outside was a terrified little girl asking for Tilea. Sachi screeched at her for some reason, and she ran off in terror. I got Tilea and she caught up to the child and calmed her down. Apparently the little girl was this Syn person she was talking to earlier.
All maps from the "Curse of Strahd" Adventure Module by Wizards of the Coast
Since we were looking for the Sun Blade, we thought the best place to start was at the Church of the Dawn Father in the Village of Barovia. Tilea and Sachi were paranoid that someone would be waiting to ambush us in the church, which didn't make much sense to me, but I was filling in as their babysitter now that Lythana was gone, so I didn't really argue. We flew into the bell tower instead of walking through the doors.
In the tower was a rusty old trap door that Sachi opened instantly with his hand. Sachi jumped in first, doing a little flip to show off for whoever he thought was waiting for us down below. Tilea, who was currently a raven, did a flip in the air and landed on Sachi's shoulder. Nikko and I swirled down behind them... there was no one waiting for us.
The bells began to ring above us, this was the first time I'd ever heard them ring, I'd never even heard someone mention them ringing. Then the chains holding the bells snapped, and they slammed hard into the altar below. I looked around and found scuff marks in the dust, like someone had been in here and ran when the bells collapsed. We needed to look around anyway, so we went to search the rooms.
Sachi found a locked trap door in one of the rooms. I literally found a needle in a haystack.. well, hay mattress, but still. Tilea found a piece of paper with exploding runes on it, blowing the room she was in up. In the final room was a blond haired, green eyed, scruffy looking human man. He grabbed Sachi, threw him across the room, ran out, and parkoured himself out of the hole we'd put in the roof. As Sachi took off after him, I realized the man was Grant, a member of the Resistance and a friend. I had no hope of catching up to them, so Tilea and I waited for Sachi to come back.
When the monkey returned he was drunk and injured. He went to pick the lock on the trap door and passed out instead. I'm beginning to understand why Lythana was getting triple pay for traveling with them. I healed Sachi, removed his drunkenness, and dispelled any magic that may have been active on him. Grant is a bit of a dick, so it wouldn't surprise me if Sachi's stupor was from some magical trap of his. Before waking him up, Tilea created a creepy little statue of Sachi that she hung over him.
Right after we woke Sachi up, the doors to the church were broken down by a dwarf I knew in reputation only: Bruenar Shieldwall. Apparently Sachi had hired him before we came down here. The monkey instantly began negotiating with him over the fee, which ended up being half of Sachi's loot. As he opened the trap door, Sachi not so subtly tried to find out if Bruenar was in the Resistance, and the dwarf responded by throwing him down the stairs.
The basement looked like it was going to collapse at any moment, and it wouldn't have surprised me if it had caved in on our heads. In the corner of the basement, Tilea found a scrap of parchment that had been mildly burned. I had a feeling that it was done with invisible ink, so I took a candle flame to it, and words appeared. Cemetery: Markovian Crypt. Guess that's our starting point for hunting down this sword.
When we walked out of the church, Corvane was waiting for us. She said it took us long enough, and she wondered if we'd figure the rest out; then she vanished into thin air. Chills went down my spine, the presence of that monk always makes my skin crawl.
It took about half an hour to find the crypt, and we discovered we couldn't gain entrance without a few items that needed to be fit into the locks. They were probably in other crypts in the graveyard, so we went to the nearest one to look for it.
I set up a ritual to detect magic, while Sachi picked the lock; instead of waiting for me, he and Bruenar went into the crypt to explore. There were three sarcophagi in the crypt, and Bruenar opened the first two with ease. But on the third one, he strained his back and had to go sit down for a moment. Sachi thought it would be a good idea for him to open the heavy lid on his own... He dropped the lid on his head and fell into the sarcophagus, getting tangled in the body. Bruenar hobbled back over to Sachi and had to rip him out of the chest cavity of the corpse. It wasn't all for nothing though; while I was finishing up the ritual, Bruenar found one of the things we needed in the doorframe.
Sachi then insisted we needed to search every other tomb here to look for the other pieces and ran off. By the time Tilea, Bruenar, and I caught up to him he'd been almost turned to stone by a trap, and was facing off with several ghouls inside the crypt. Bruenar ran in, destroying a ghoul instantly; then he somehow got his shield stuck in the wall. Sachi killed another ghoul; then Bruenar was hit hard by a third ghoul, which he proceeded to destroy. Tilea, Nikko, and I concentrated fire on one ghoul, and Bruenar finished it, then killed the final one on his own. He was definitely worth the monkey Sachi was paying him. I healed Bruenar and he surprised me by giving me a very expensive diamond as payment. With the ghouls gone, we found the last piece we needed easily.
I got in the air to look for the next tomb, and realized they were in a pattern that looked like a crest I'd seen on Strahd; I was certain the other pieces were in the big tombs in the pattern. Apparently telling everyone instantly wasn't the best idea. Sachi took off and began opening them as fast as he could. He got his hands on some very powerful spell gems, that looked to be somewhat volatile, so I warned him to careful.
Once we collected all of the pieces and put them in place, the door opened, and a wave of heated slammed into us. We descended the half mile long staircase down, and found ourselves in a large cavern with pools of lava here and there. As it opened up more, there were multiple lava streams, and at the end of the corridor, on a dais, was a stained glass box. On either side of us were streams of lava, and just across the lava was tons of gold and magic items; there was a little wooden box I felt strangely drawn to; it must be a witch candle box of some sort.
As we looked around, Bruenar told us there was a legend that if we tried to take something we didn't truly need, the place would collapse on top of us. At that point, Bruenar whispered that Corvane had been shadowing us for a while now, and he'd deal with her while we looked for the sword. Sachi went to a dagger on a pedestal that he felt drawn to, and was just reaching for it when Tilea convinced him to wait to take it until we'd found the sword; the last thing we needed was for this place to collapse on us because the monkey wanted a shiny knife.
Sachi hopped over the lava stream that was between us and the stained glass box. My broom was deflected, so I couldn't get over it, I sent Nikko instead, and Tilea turned into a flying monkey to get herself over there. The box was glowing, until Sachi touched it. He vanished for a second, then reappeared, holding a little golden lamp; the lights in the box went out. There was no seam to open it, so the only way in it was to break the glass. Nikko saw a tiny orb of light in the box, and Tilea demanded he open it. He told her no, and apparently that meant that nobody could open the fucking thing.
Sachi and Tilea both decided to just get the items they were drawn to and leave. I don't know why neither of them weren't willing to open the box themselves, but I was quite irked that they expected my familiar to do it. I had Nikko grab the box I was drawn to, and as we went to collect our items, the glass box shattered. Lava instantly began to bubble up out of the streams and the pedestals. Nikko was too close to the pedestal of mine to ge clear quickly enough, so I put him in a bubble that would protect him until he got to me. The lava flung him away from me, but I was able to pull him to safety with a thorn whip. I turned myself into a flying snake and grabbed hold of Sachi, and that monkey took off at a ridiculously high speed.
We passed Bruenar on the way, and I attempted to polymorph him so we could grab on to Sachi, but my spell failed. Sachi tossed a bead of force into the entrance to the larger cavern to try to buy Bruenar some time, but as we cleared the crypt, we couldn't tell if he escaped. Tilea heard something and saw a smoking figure falling through the air; it had to be Bruenar. Sachi tossed a bead of force at him, but it bounced off, and Bruenar instead began riding it. Tilea used a spell that put all of us on the eastern side of the cemetary, away from the fucking lava.
Corvane caught up to us, I guess it was too much to hope that the lava would have caught her too, and demanded the sun sword we'd failed to find. She didn't believe we didn't have it, and tried to grab Sachi and stuff him in a bag of holding.
Tilea glared daggers at Corvane and said, "I wish you would leave us the fuck alone."
"Fuck that, I wish she was banished from this place," Sachi quipped.
Smoke engulfed us, and it tasted terrible. When the smoke cleared, a hulking figure was looming over us, and asked "who did it?" The genie granted Sachi's wish and Corvane vanished. I hoped it was permanent, but I doubted that.
The entire Village was on fire as the lava continued to pour out of the crypt. We rushed to the inn to get Tilea's animals. Once we reached the city gates we opened our bags to look at what we'd grabbed, in hopes something in there would fix this. Tilea and Sachi's bags were completely empty, and the box Nikko had grabbed had lost all magic. Inside it was a note that said "ha ha" in a familiar script, but I couldn't quite place it. A drow appeared in front of us, which turned out to be Grant in disguise. He demanded Guild dues from Sachi, gave us shit about the lava, and tossed us the loot; he'd gathered everything before we'd even noticed, including the sun blade we'd failed to find.
We proceeded too begin evacuating people from the Village, saving about 200 people total. About a quarter mile beyond the gates, I sacrificed a magical pearl and my remaining magical energy to Mystra in exchange for a Temple where I could safely house everyone whose lives were literally burning down around them. Everyone began rushing toward the Temple doors, but then Sachi began talking... Apparently the other Vistani don't like the monkey.
Grant tackled Sachi and told him to play dead, then helped me convince the Vistani to go into the Temple. Tilea flipped out and attacked Grant, and wouldn't listen when I tried to get her to back off; I made it clear to her that I could bring him back after everyone was safely inside. Tilea ignored me and continued trying to attack Grant, which he and I rushed to get everyone inside the Temple without putting them in the rampaging druid's way.
Tilea began trying to hit Grant with lightning, and he just danced around, none of it doing much to him. It was honestly quite amusing to watch. He'd finally had enough and stabbed Tilea just as Sachi popped up. He told Grant he had gotten a feign death dagger from Talmot, which made Grant vanish instantly. Tilea said someone named Syn told her that was how he was tracking them, so Sachi threw the blade into the lava.
A couple hours later there was a knock at the door to my Temple. Outside was a terrified little girl asking for Tilea. Sachi screeched at her for some reason, and she ran off in terror. I got Tilea and she caught up to the child and calmed her down. Apparently the little girl was this Syn person she was talking to earlier.
All maps from the "Curse of Strahd" Adventure Module by Wizards of the Coast
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