Session 3

Fortune teller reading History - the knowledge of the agent better understand - master of coins - nest of ravens - there is where we Force for good and protection - Master of glyphs - find what you seek in the castle. amid the ruins of a place of supplication Power and strength - sword of sunlight - 5 of coins - dark room full of bottles. Tomb of guild member. Sheds light on one who will help greatly - don jon - search for a troubled young man, surrounded by wealth and madness. His home is his prison. Your enemy is a creature of darkness - lead you to him - the Innocent - He dwells with the one whose blood sealed his doom. A brother of light snuffed out too soon. All right. Yes. Okay, ready? All right. So as you guys regain consciousness after leaving this death house and falling asleep, you would wake up to very interesting sounds, sounds of laughter, of music playing, that everyone would feel like oddly... We're looking for comfortable as you guys are all going to wake up in your cots in a camp. Surrounded by people who look like Italians. For lack of a better word, fantasy Italians. Can we like hear their mustaches or something? How do we know they're Italian? They're talking like a beast. Like hello. They notice you guys are up. Oh, oh. Where are you? You are in Barovia! Barovia! Do we know anything about Barovia? History check. With this bandage, just you. If anyone else wants to make it, they'll make it normally. What was the... History. Figure out where we are? Yep. Well, he just said the words Barovia, and we'll see if y'all can read that. Negative? Well, nine isn't a number. That's... Thirteen. Thirteen? With the edge? Yeah, I rolled twice. Seven. Seven. So... Iridel is the only one who is going to remember, and this confirms your fears after coming face to face with that statue and seeing and hearing the name Strahd Banzarovich while in that death house. This confirms that this is the place that you heard about as a kid. It's like a legendary land that was lost in the mists of time, trapped. by an evil vampire lord. It's kind of like the story of the buggy man, especially amongst your dampier and or vampire kin. But you know, in the stories that you would have heard, it's a land that was lost to another dimension 600 years ago. How would I best communicate that with the team? You could be like, guys, guys, how's it going? Because this Vasanti is still sitting there fighting. He's like, yes, yes, you're in the bottom of the room. So, yeah, I lean over to Gray and Jubals. Like, hey, guys, we really need to talk about that. We really need to talk about that. That was a lot of it. And I kind of whisper to Gray because Jubals can be kind of loud and give him the quick synopsis of the history that I know and then just kind of look at Jubals and kind of nod my head as I turn back to the person that we're talking to and try to distract them. Let the Jubal slide this time, but I'm not from Israel. Jabal's. I'm going to slide this time. You know, that's a great way to remind me because now I won't forget. Not that kind of paladin. This man is going to introduce himself. He's like, "Where are my manners?" I can't hear the fucking accent now. I got two-spilled. "Where are my manners? My name is Yzik." Yzik, pleasure to meet you. I'm Iridel. Yes, yes. You are free to do as you please. We do not want to leave you in the streets. I really appreciate that. We just want to get our bearings. Is there somewhere that we can find you in like 15 minutes? We'll be here for at least the next day. Okay. Thanks. Because they're all camping as well. They have a full camp set up, tents, carts. But he's in our tent right now, right? So that's what I was asking. Well, you're not actually in a tent. You're just in your cots on the ground. Okay. So they kind of just put you guys in the corner. Okay. Okay. This would be roughly where you are. You would find yourself on the outskirts of a very dismal looking village. But you guys with this-- We use that as your party marker. What was that dude's name again? You said Izek? Is it just like I-Z-E-K? I-S-E-K. I-S-E-K. I ask you, Sik, if there's anything that we need to know about the area or places that we shouldn't go. I kind of bat my eyelashes a little bit to see if, you know. Oh, persuasion check. Eleven. Slightly above average. Slightly low. Listen, you know, I'm half vampire. Makes up for all the lack of talent. I'm trying. Just for reference, this is what these Italians look like right now. Oh, this is my other left. Can you give me the quick summary of that? I heard something about 600 years or something. My brain was like-- So actually, he wasn't referring to the town as much as the land at large. He referred to it as Barovia. OK. A-R-O-V-I-A. This, as you can see up there, not really spoilers, just the village of Barovia. Yeah. So-- And it was the area of Barovia, Iridel remembered, was rumored to have been lost 600 years ago at the time in the mists of time. It's kind of, she explains that there's an understanding that it exists outside of the realm and time doesn't flow normally there, that kind of thing. Okay, that's kind of what I thought I heard with the lost 600 years ago, but I wanted to make sure that I wrote it down right so I could remember it properly. And if you, upon you asking him about where not to go, he's going to say, we travel? Thank you, that's great to know. Yes, yes. And he's gonna go back to drinking. You've seen their old drinking wine. Of course they have. All right. So obviously, Erindel then turns back to the group. And asks Gray if he told Jables yet what she told him. I'm sure Gray would have the opportunity to kind of relay this general information. You know, do you have a moment? Yeah. Yeah, I'll just say I've gone in and talked to him and caught him up on the situation, so we're all caught up. Just for a visual reference, this is... Ooh, what did I like that? Oh, you got it up on the screen. It did. It really didn't work. That's fucking cracking me up. Hey. Let's try that one more time. This is what these guys look like. Okay. They're gypsies. Yes! In fact, that's the better word, not a town. Gypsies. That would also explain the camp outside of the main village, too. CFP flashback. So what are y'all... I have a question outside of the campaign but related to it. Yes. So part of my back story, I'm not sure if it should be canonical, but what I had kind of come up with was that there are periods of Iridel's existence where she spent time in realms outside of time. Would that be canonical and could I share information about those experiences with the team? Outside of time? Yes. Drifted, found the Wanderer, brought back to the real world. Okay. Okay. I'll roll with it. However you want to roleplay that, I'll allow it. Okay. As long as it doesn't give you some really OP in-game features, that's fine. No, it's... That's really all what it comes down to. It would just be kind of how... Generally, her understanding is of spaces outside of time typically functioning. Definitely flavor that now. I forget again. This is what I was going to keep telling you. Thank you. You only sell someone so much money for D&D. I disagree. As a dungeon master, there is no limit. Your imagination is the limit. But yeah, Yeah, so then I guess what do we want to do, guys? How do we want to approach this situation? Because we're basically, from my understanding, stuck here until we can find a specific method or person who is able to reconnect us with standard time, if this is the Barovia that I'm thinking of. My thought is, first thing is maybe we should, I know we've spoke to this one guy just for a little bit. We've woken up in this camp kind of outside the town. Should try to talk to a few more people in this area before we get into town to see if we can find out more about how specifically we ended up. If there's anything that can maybe give us a little bit more clue of where to start. Because how we were found in this area could be a clue of where we could start looking. Yeah, like if someone brought us here, it would just appear. Yeah, that kind of thing. That's my thought. Yeah, I'm open to that. Based on my experience with gypsies, we want to make sure that we have goods and gold to barter for information if they ask. So let's get that prepared just in case in advance. Maybe the first thing we should do is kind of take stock of all of the loot and things that we still have on us from whatever we just went through and... See what we have, see what's worth money that we can get, see how much money we have. And what we want to keep, what we want to make sure we don't get rid of. Exactly, all that kind of stuff. So this is half. And I'll put the call in, so we'll see if he comes before you leave or if you want me to owe it to you. She comes over sometimes, right? Yes, so I can deliver it to you whenever. That would work perfectly. Thank you. Thank you. As long as he goes to more drugs. My neighbor Totoro's got the... Totoro's holding... Just between you guys and me. So you guys are going to try to talk to more of his son? Or these gypsies? Yeah, I think so. I'll let them take the lead on that. I think first things first is that we're going to... Oh, you guys are going to look at your stuff. Yeah, we're going to look... That's right. You know, somewhat look at all of our inventory and make sure we know what we have. As you guys start looking at your stuff, you would notice that pretty much all of those jewelry bits and anything valuable that wasn't those scrolls, potions. I don't know if you acquired any magical items. Well, I have the cloak of protection that we got from him. That would be fine. But I've been wearing it. There was... The deed would be fine, although notably aged. All of that property stuff that you guys found would be still existing, but really aged. That empty leather-bound book worth 25 gold pieces would have sustained, but would be heavily aged. Was that the spell book? There was a spell book and then there was a blank book. Both of those would be in the same general community. Like all those necklaces, rings that wasn't funnily enough, that 25 gold ring that you guys did pick up. You'll never know that anyway though. So like all of the just random books that we got from like the library in the place? Those would all have turned to ash. Okay. What about the, so like the moss agate turned to ash? Yep. Um... Wait, where did you get that moss agate? From the chests from... That would be fine. A room. Because there were the three moss agates, the black leather eye patch, the ivory hairbrush with silver bristles, and the silver short sword. Consider all that stuff that you got in that dungeon fine, but any items that you took from the house proper would have turned to ash. Does your party inventory match mine? I'm just curious. Yeah, I was wondering that too. It does. I think so, yeah. I'm pretty sure because I haven't been keeping that up to date. You... I just would notice that your loop now has this pattern of a rose with thorns on it. Sick. You know what? I think I actually already put this stuff in my inventory that had been disintegrated. So I think I'm good. Because I don't see any of it. Also, give me an arcana check. Me? Yes. OK. We-- Leveled up at the end of the last one. Yeah, we should be level three. I did not do any of my level up stuff. Definitely level. We can keep role playing here in a moment as you level. We'll be talking and just messing around. Eleven. Eleven. With an eleven, as you see that your loot is now different, when you go to further inspect it, it occurs to you that it is also now a holy symbol. All I have to do is just It's a holy symbol. Hell yeah. I actually get to choose my subclass now, so I'll have to do all of that stuff. It's a mess. It's a mess. Go ahead. Ignore me for a second. Make sure I'm not ignoring you as well. So what are you good gents doing? I'm just looking at both of them like they're idiots. Kind of takes stock of what I see around the campsite. How many people I see, anything that stands out, number of children, women, and How their dispersion is as they are kind of going around and compare that to the number of tents that are in the area as well. So you see seven people in total, an even mix of men and women. They're all gathered around a large fire right now, talking and drinking and actually being very boisterous. There are overall only three carts and about four tents. So you'd be- Probably one big family. Exactly. Are they, it seems like they're partying, having a festive sort of situation? Yes. I want to go up to them and ask them if they want to hear a song on my new freshly ornated loop. My plan is to sing a ballad about our trials in the house and in the dungeon, and then at the end, kind of end it on a, how the fuck did we get here? You know what I'm saying? And see if any of them... They would be delighted to hear you play. In fact, several of them will actually join in with you because they all whip out instruments. That's what I'm talking about. So give me a performance check with advantage. That 20. Wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee. Very nice. It was a 3 in the 20. Gotta love that advantage. You ended up playing the best song in the world. Yes, it was the best song in the world. Or was it just a tribute? It was definitely a tribute to our dungeon crawl. It was. It was excellent. Uh. You absolutely regale these Vistani as well with your masterful loot playing. It almost seems like at this moment, like the loot itself like envelopes in like this holy light. As you almost like start channeling whatever energy through your god. But yes, yes, you also get inspiration for that. You didn't already have it. I think I did, but. Sorry, I'm trying to learn all the new bits of my subclass that I just got. You'll get quite a bit as well, yeah. Some new stuff here. What do you do after just... It almost brings a tear to your fucking eye. Did they answer our question at all when we ended it? Like, how the fuck did we get here? Is there anybody who seemed to react at all? Well... Because I'll stop after the play on deck. No, really, guys. How did we get here? Did you sneak in a verse in your song asking the people to tell us how the fuck did we get here? That was how I said I wanted to end it. Like, ending it on the how the fuck did we get here? Seriously, though. As you go to ask them that seriously, they're going to, or are you going to? Are you addressing the dude that had already talked to you? I'm addressing all of the rock stars that we just, you know. Give me a persuasion check with advantage. As you now go to ask them seriously, I would be here. It's an Antoine. Again? It was on the other dice this time, though. Wee, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee. I'll take those. I'll be rolling some horns of combat later. It's okay. I don't want to be mercy. I don't want to happen to them. You're going to see Isaac walk up to you. He's like wiping tears off after listening. He was playing the flute while you guys, or while you were playing your lute. And he's going to kind of pull you guys to the side, make your fire, and say, man, I can't tell you how to get here. It's very easy to get there from here. You must simply walk through the mist. Only the most unfortunate moves are themselves here. It is leaving. I'm sure you've seen it. It is very persuasive. There is but one way to leave Byronia. I'm going to tell you this, because I like you. Thank you. Only one person can give you salvation, believe Barovia, because it's master, Strahd. Strahd. Strahd. Thank you for that information. So, Strahd is here in Borogin? Where would we find him? He is going to point up. Up. Yes, let me actually pull this up real quick. This is a perfect rendition. So as he points up towards the sky... You are going to see now plainly even through the mists, you guys are down here, you are going to see this large, extremely imposing castle atop this huge mountainous cliff. Castle Ravenloft. Castle what? Ravenloft.

• And that's Strahd's house, basically.
• I get a very strong, like, nervous feeling in my stomach and excuse myself from the conversation. You know, kind of go a little bit of a ways away and then direct my familiar to take a flight around as close to the castle as it can comfortably get.

So you can only control your familiar from up to 100 feet away. You can give a command. And how far is the... Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I probably get to go do that. As comfortable as I can and come back and report. Is that acceptable? It can't necessarily communicate with you like that because it is an animal. So it's not like a sentient animal that can speak. Okay, so I'd have to have the telepathic connection at the time to get the information. Is that a five and a half E thing? The familiars? For druids? They... Like, in what way? They had it for a while. Find familiar is just a really good fucking spell. Like warlocks. And a few other classes get two. It's very, very broken. Like, if you were to give it specific commands to fly around, it could execute those commands. It just can't exactly. Yeah, relay that information. So if I had, like, an action that I wanted it to take more than 100 meters away, that would be fine because I could pre-program it to do that. Yes. But because I'm looking for data, that's where the gap is, which makes sense. Because otherwise it would be pretty bright. Like, hey, go fly, like, six cities away and tell us what's going on there. It would make it so extremely powerful, right? Like, the sentience would be the thing. Mm-hmm. You're not going to be a super tech. To be fair though, ravens are pretty smart. Yeah. They can't speak. Well, if you can speak to animals, they can. Well, some ravens can speak any language. Which both Gray and I can. Speak to animals. But I think even when it comes to speaking to creatures that aren't very intelligent, you can speak and communicate, but their way of communication would be more like emotions and raw emotions. feelings of like a wild animal though. Right. But I mean that could be very valuable information to still get. You know. Like what are the vibes that you're getting? I mean obviously with the castle that's irrelevant because we already have the vibes. But like in other situations you know is it is there significant danger in that area is a very easy question to answer. Yeah. Yeah. If you parse it down that way and use it synergistically like that I could see that working. I could see that working. In fact, I've probably done shenanigans like that. In another campaign, Travis is telepathically linked with a space manta ray that can communicate thoughts, emotions, and images. That ray is like an uber-pimp creature. It's crazy. Yeah, I don't know why they gave the space man the ability to manipulate time to teleport. All I know is that Brian's character is insanely jealous that mine is the one linked to it. Brian's character has been in a coma, so he can't say shit. That's what he gets for leaving the country. We all have heroic inspiration right now, right? You should. You should. I'm pretty sure you guys do. Because I give it to you all during rests when I play my instrument. Yes, yes. Definitely make sure to use that as often as you feel. Yeah, I figured we just got it from the... I want to make sure I'm understanding this. When I give it to myself at long rests. So when I get Arcane Trickster, it says I know three cantrips may change into others. Does that mean I get three more in addition to whatever I already have? Yes. Okay, that's what I just wanted to make sure. So I need to choose two of those and then also I didn't. It says spells, right? Yeah, it says three spell slots. So how does that work? Do I just pick three different spells that I can use? So yes, you can see that little learn button right there. Yeah, yeah. Can't trip zero out of two and prepare to zero. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that this was... I was reading this correctly, so I do get to pick two cantrips that have three spells. Yes. That's a lot of... And that's not spell slots, that's your prepared spells. I think you might only have one or two spell slots, which means you'll be able to do those. Yeah, there you go, two. Perfect. So you'll have two spell slots. And we can take a short break, since I've been driving to smoking a cigarette. Yeah. You can finish up. Sorry, I need to... No, you're good, you're good. I should have reminded you guys of your homework. Yeah, I did not think about that. I got here and was like, oh man, at least I decided what oath I wanted. That's what you were doing? I already knew what I wanted for my subclass, but I did not look through all the spells and cantrips, and I have no idea what I should actually be thinking about. So I can help you parse through some of that. So what kind of questions do you have? Let's look at your cantrips. I've got it filtered out. Let me show you what I have right now. Mage Hand is the one that I get automatically for being this. I already have many... Excellent. You have no damaging, so let's pick you some damaging ones. That's what I was thinking. I wanted some damaging ones. Where's the... Yeah, here it is. So I've already got it filtered for the cantrips. Acid Splash is good. Cone, AoE, Acid Damage. Blade Ward is going to give you, I think... Because that's protection, right? Yes. Mine is a D4. Shield touch is good. That's actually, I think, necrotic damage. Touch spell. Dancing lights, elements. Yeah, I was wondering about which damaging ones would be good to take. I kind of like the idea of blade ward just to have something that will... I think you should do with that. Scantrips are good. I'm just going to add that one. This one's probably really good too. Super long range, 120 feet. And I'm liking really long range. Like how much range is this one? It's actually... Yeah, actually no, that's not a cone, that's a circle. Sorry, I was... It's still pretty good. I must have changed it. A 60 feet is good. Chilt touch will be touch, of course. Scroll down just a smidge. Poison spray, that might be the one I was thinking of, a cone from yourself. Mind slipper is also good. I was thinking, because I want to do... I still want to get some damaging stuff, but I also want to try to keep to what I'm thinking, like, with my theme is the character being... The whole idea of being gray was to blend in and do things without being noticed. So I kind of like the idea of doing the psychic damage thing. Psychic damage is excellent. This one you might like too at the bottom, Toll of the Dead. I remember looking at that one at some point. It's good. It's a D10, and then if they've taken damage, it's a D12. Very few other cantrips will do a D12 at any. Excellent 60-foot necrotic. Chill touch is also something you might like because if you're successful with it, you get to subtract, I think, 10 movement from the target as you chill them. As a spellcaster, I usually like to check an array of things that are attack rolls and then one or two things that impose saving throws because you'll encounter enemies that are better at one than the other. Alright, so I already took the blade ward, so I can only choose one of these. You have three, right? Blade Ward, Mind Sliver, and then one more you're saying? Well, one more is the Mage Hand that I get automatically. So it's Mage Hand, then plus two, and then three spells, which I was going to look at, filter for the level one, separate. Oh, yeah, that's smart. That's smart. Oh, that's smart. You've got some good options, though. You've got some good options. So, Toll of the Dead or Mind Sliver. The dead's good, but then the firebolt is I feel a little bit more Fireball is my bread and butter 120 goddamn feet they don't even see Bible firebolt Fireball is still 120 feet Right now I've got One more slot to pick. I already picked Blade Ward to give me a little bit of protection because I'm squishy. But I'm between Firebolt and Toll the Dead for my other choice right now. I personally really like Fire Spells, but that's just my own pyro instincts. I'm trying to also stick with... I like the ranged stuff, but I'm trying to also stick with my... Not be seen and fire is a little bit I mean If you're a hundred and twenty-three way, yeah, yeah, that's true. They'll see me don't worry about that. Yeah, I see me I Think I'm gonna go ahead and go with that at least for now just because we need long distance long distance good We'll do that okay now I've got I I wish I got three cleric cantrips instead of two. Just two cleric cantrips, eh? The Blessed World. If I had a third one, life would be good. I kind of like that. That's interesting. I love Chromatic Word. That's funny, but that's like opposite. Yeah, it's very obvious of being hidden, but... Chromatic Orb is one of my favorite spells. It is excellent. Just having that chance to do extra shit on any spell is... God, I love living it up to the clicky-clacky number gods, you know? Yeah, because it says you can choose the type for the orb you create. So, for whatever situation, if you know... - - Ooh, also disguise self could be good, 'cause I'm trying to, like I said, disappear. I'm actually just gonna add that one on reflex because, yeah, because I'm gray, I wanna disguise and disappear. So adding that one for sure. I like chromatic or-- - By the whole, if you roll the same number on two or more of the d8s, it leaps to another target. So, as you guys are all hanging out still, I'll say that we took a short pause after having that conversation with the Vistani dude. But he would still be kind of hanging out with you guys. You would ask, so, so, I see you. Are you a vampire? It's a difficult question to answer. No. Is it a yes or no? I'm half. Oh, so, yes. - You have found yourself in an interesting place.

• I know. Is there anything that I specifically need to be wary of, given my lineage?
• Well, as you go and look around, you see like, yes, it's day, but like the typical feelings you get from making direct sunlight, you can feel like this is not direct sunlight. - Okay. - There's like a-- - Does it feel artificial? No, it just feels like a gloom is cast over everything. Like, sure, it's bright, but you don't really see the sun.

Okay. Spread your hand to this side. Um. Nobody else was tripped up by the fact that he just acknowledged like made me acknowledge that I was half vampire Like cool, you know Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say that I don't think it's that odd to ask someone if they're a full vampire if they look kind of vampire, you know just just to be just a on the side of things. Okay. But I think he had a very... As Iredell, I'm very confused that this group is completely fine with that information because usually people freak out when they find out that I'm a vampire. He did just tell you that a vampire lord is the only way to get out of here too, so you know. You found yourself in a very interesting spot. Yes. He's going to continue drinking. You all sit there. So we're here literally just because we walked through the mist. Literally, yes. Yeah. We're stuck until we can convince Strahd to let us leave in some way. I realize that that is going to be a very difficult uphill battle because of my understanding of the history of the place the person Vampire lords? What? Yeah. Terrifying people. Oh, really? Look. Devotion. Is there any coffee left in that? There's about, the answer's yes. Smidge-malidge? Sorry, I'm super sucked into it. Does Issac have any information about the town for us? Like, if I ask him, like, hey, like, what can you tell us about the town itself? that we see over the horizon. How does it, you know, what is its relation to Strahd? What should we know about it? You know what? I'm going to do it this way. My second roll. Nine. It was a double nine, actually. I don't know that I picked it up and sent it down to you. I don't know. I rolled it in here. You hate to see it, right? It was still called a nine either way. It was just funny that it went like that. So, nine. Here it is, here it is, here it is. So if you're going to ask about the town, with a nine he's going to tell you the people in this town are miserable. Or destitute. Not much more I can do. So I pressed him a little bit more on his use of the word people. What kind of people? Human pets. If we run into any trouble, I can actually use Disguise Self to make myself look like a human. Thank you. Sorry, what else? I was going to say, I just got myself Disguise Self as a spell. So knowing that information, I could potentially use that if we need to make me look less different. I can tell you there's nothing that will keep those people from shunning me. or potentially running from me but if you want to go check out the stocks we can do that you can go check out the stables you don't think they're gonna talk to me yeah they'll talk to me I'm confident I could get information out of them if there's information we had out of them. Is that right? Is that right? Yep. There you go. What do you guys do now? Where are we now? Are we still in the same spot? So we're at Green Dot, right? Yeah, okay. We've been hanging out in this cave. Where's Castle Ravenloft from where we are? Because I know in the picture we saw it. Yeah, it was up. Which way would it... From here, it would almost be like... Northeast or something? A bit northeast, yes. Like on the other side of the village? Like past the village? Yes, you guys would have to go all the way around a sheer mountain cliff. So it's actually not accessible from the-- I can put it back up. It's fully off map. We're just trying to figure out the location of it on the-- OK, I see. So yeah. OK, so-- I see. And we're like-- You guys are right here. OK, so it's kind of towards-- OK, on the left of the-- Because I think this is that Northeast Church thing on the map. Right. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. Okay, so that makes sense. I'll leave this up until you guys decide to go into the town. Or is that on the other side? That looks like the church with the little... Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's the thing in the top left of the map that has the little thing around it. So it's like northwest of us. Yeah. So the town is not between us and it. It's basically just grasslands and that road. And then, you know, it looks like 500 feet of cliff. So we could be sitting there. Well, it looks like the way, like she said, we'd have to go around somehow. This is 300 feet, 325 feet. So I'll let that be up to you. What, just that tower? That means my estimate was pretty close. Yes. Well, three to five. Roughly, yeah. It's probably closer to 700 feet of cliff. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What's an extra 200, though? Right, I mean, when you're just eyeballing it, that's pretty good. I think. Go see if anyone at the church knows anything that could be useful. I'm confused by the fact that there is a church in a place. Is that what it is up there in the top left? It kind of looks like a church. I don't know what's going on. It looks like a cemetery church type situation. Are you guys going to venture over there? Is that not what it is? Does it not look like a chapel? You would be able to see on the map, but you guys, I mean, in the distance... I mean, I'm down to venture that way. In the distance, you do see something that looks like a chapel, actually. It would stick out amongst the silhouettes of some of these lower-grade houses. If y'all are not opposed, at least, that's what's got my eye. Yeah, I mean, it seems like a big building. Well, I mean, it's usually a good central point for anything in... Any village, usually the church is a focal point. I would express my caution that religion here definitely doesn't look like it does back home. Copy that. All right. So is there a point to this church? I worry only about my oath, you know. Atop a slight rise against the roofs of the pillar of stone that supports Castle Ravenloft stands a gray, sagging edifice of wood or stone and wood. This church has obviously weathered the assaults of evil for centuries on end and it is worn and weary. A bell tower rises towards the back and flickering light shines through holes in the shingled roof. The rafters strain feebly against their load. We bought the map of the church. Now what? This virtual tabletop fucking hates moving over my monitors. But it has no choice. We're at the front of the building right now. But outside of it. You are still on Sunday. What general vibe am I getting? I know you described how it works and everything, but like... You're getting a bad vibe. I'm getting a bad vibe? You're getting a bad vibe. Can you tell me anything about life? You see that the heavy wooden doors of this church are covered with claw marks and scarred by fire. - You guys are about right here. You've gotten like 10, 20 feet away.

• I didn't think about this. Is there any indication of what kind of church? In order to say it looks like a church or chapel, but like there's lots of different religions and gods and stuff like that that we know of. And plus, as far as we know, we're in some sort of alternate time, as Iredella told us before. Is there any kind of indication of that on the outside?

Currently, no. This church, while being recognizable architecturally as a church, is devoid of any kind of like-- Denomination? Yes. And/or decoration. Very plain, very dilapidated almost. Do we see any lights on? Any candles? Dim lights you do see. So it's not unoccupied just by looking like it's been fought by monsters and burnt down. Do you guys have an endless motherfucker? Do we want to go in? Do we want to try to go around and see if there's an alternate entrance? See if we can find out more? Um, you said we're about like 20 feet from the door? You are. You are. You are. I can get him back with short rest, so I'll do one. I'm going to do Chain of Divinity for Divine Sense. So, yeah, for 10 minutes, for 60 feet around me, I can sense any or detect undeads, fiends, oh, I guess celestial is the other one. 60 feet? Yeah. I know the location of any creatures of those types within 60 feet of myself, and I know its creature type. And then within the same radius, I can detect the presence of any place or object that has been consecrated or desecrated. Nice. Does it go through stone? Does it specify? As long as it doesn't specify, it does. It does not specify. God, I'm having a hard time using my brain power here. 60 feet is kind of a lot. I know. I know. It's amazing. You do sense the presence of a single undead. Where? I know the location of any creature of those types within 60 feet of myself. It seems like it's underground. Okay. Not super deep underground, but almost as though it's not on ground level with you. It's almost like this place has a basement. I will relay that. Guys, there's an undead underground somewhere here. Just a single one. It's not hollow. But just a single one so far, being able to sense it while outside, that's not a good sign. It does go 60 feet. It basically encompasses this entire journey. Are vampires considered undead in this universe? Well, I sense you because you're also part ASMR. No, but you're not. Like blades. Right, right. I was, yeah. I meant like the ones in the. Yes. What do y'all do? Y'all heading in this church? I'm following the Paladin's lead in this instance. Is Jables ending in this church? Well, do you all want to find out more about it, or do you want to go right in? I'd like to find out as much as we can before. We could go ask someone about it, since it doesn't seem like a normal church. Yeah, it doesn't seem like a normal church. My first thought was to at least maybe take a walk around a little bit and see if we can see more in from another angle, see if you, since you've got your thing active now, see if we start sensing more and more undead as we walk around. Right, and like see what we can see on their side of it. Yeah, this as well, right. Yeah, that was my thought. So as you guys start walking the perimeter, you're gonna notice, of course, there is a fence for the graveyard. Are you guys gonna jump this fence back here? It's not very high. I wasn't sure about doing about inside the fence. I was even thinking about just like around the whole outside of the fence. That was my thought, but it's up to... You're not gonna see too much outside of the fence as it wraps around. That was my thought, but I mean, it's up to... There is a window right here, y'all. Let's see. I'm gonna hop the fence. I say I'm okay with it. Y'all hop on the fence. You want to sneak up and look through the window, stealthy like? Yeah, and I'm short so I could walk up to him. How tall is the window? Like, if we're looking over the fence, can we look at this window and decide how we're going to look through it? How high up is the window sill? Would it be something I could sneak up under and like, or do I need to hold him up? You would be able to see through the window sill if you stand on your tippy toes. Okay, which is perfect because I would want to stand there and like tippy toes up and sneak. So yeah, I'm gonna do that myself. I'll walk over there. So I'll let him look through it and I'll just kind of be like on the wall, back to the wall. Still just sensing stuff for him. Me perception check? Yep, perception check. All right, let's see what happens here. 19. 19, that's excellent. As you look inside of this room... We are going to have to use the old minis because your minis didn't want to print for me. This chapel is in shambles with overturned and broken pews littering the dusty floor. Dozens of candles mounted in candlesticks and candelabras light every dusty corner in a fervent attempt to rid the chapel of shadows. At the far end of the church sits a cloth-scarred altar, behind which kneels a priest in soiled vestments. Next to him hangs a long rope that stretches up into the bell tower. He's kneeling and praying. And I don't sense that it's an undead or anything. Him? No. Him? No. It's still underneath you guys. No. No more undead since we started walking around. Still just that one. I would be sensing them. And you want to keep doing the rounds just to See what might be behind the church. There are other windows we can kind of look through as we walk around, see if we catch anything else. It's just a lone priest. There's three of us. We could probably go talk to him. We could. You guys, as you go around, you don't see too much. How long did it take to run the building? Maybe ten minutes. Okay. Ten minutes would be the length of my thing. You guys might as well go back in the room. I mean, that's all we saw in the one undead that we're feeling is underground. I wouldn't be against going in, but I also wouldn't be against either heading back to that same camp or even going through the town and just asking anybody, the first person we come across, about, hey, what's up with this church? Before you walk in there. Because my first thought was that the church might be a good source of information, but it might not be a friendly source of information. I think it's the closest thing to...

• That was partly why I was hoping we could get some info. You know what I mean? - Mm-hmm. - If we do want to ask someone about it, we could take like a powwow to ask you about it. 'Cause if I take a short rest, I can get my channels of energy back. So if you wanna take 30 minutes to figure out what we want to... - I'm with that. And then we can also get some food.
• Yes. Yes, let's do that. Let's do that.

Because I have a feeling something's going to happen as soon as we go through the doors. Yeah. I was talking to us. Our ball game was really slack. I've been in here even without you. I don't want to make any decisions. You decide. Take a little food break as well. Whether we want to do, get information back at the town camp. The popcorn is so good, it's insane. Oh, it's good. Good pizza, too. The focaccia you picked out there. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Flavor's on. It's a new one. It's called Death Island. It's got some kind of tropical something in it. It says tropical flavored tea. I don't know what it's actually supposed to be like. I haven't seen that one yet. It has both black and green tea. Oh, yeah. But it definitely tastes like it might have like a deep, punchy type of something mixed in or something like that. It's pretty good. So you guys were going to go back, rest for 30 minutes, and then go into town and ask questions, yes?

• Mm-hmm. - All right. - We can like strategize at the campfire where we're gonna go in town, you know? It's not strenuous activity.
• You guys could easily double back to that pistani camp, hang out, they are still all there drinking.

See if we can ask for some more detailed. Maybe almost even everybody's got like a map we can bother for town or at least ask for specific landmarks within the town that would be good to visit. Something like that give us somewhere to go. The Bastani. Yes. I mean, if we see him right around the campfire and stuff, it might be worth asking him while he's there. You do. You do. I'm gonna tell him, be like, "So, I could feel that there was an undead underneath that church up there, and just like one lone priest in there. What the hell's going on up there?" And I'm going, "Didn't exactly feel like a normal warm welcome situation where we should knock and say hello." I really know my short part of the people of this village. Okay. Respect. I am not surprised you would stand in the presence of a man like that. Why are you not surprised? I'm just saying. Is it a graveyard? There he is. My experience usually is that things in the graveyards, you know, they're not really moving around. Usually is. This place defies... Delicious, thank you. Yes, yes. You're welcome, thank you.

• Not much since he doesn't know.
• Yeah, he doesn't know much about the evidence. So say maybe if he knows if there are any shops for supplies or I don't know, any place that we can-- - Sell our junk. - Yeah, sell our junk.
• I know he said the town is poor and destitute, but is there anywhere that, you know, in town that would be a market?
• That he's won. Head down the main road and you will see it.

You want to go to the market? Yeah, figure why not. Head to the market, see what's available there, see if we can offload some of our stuff or something more useful. Maybe once we're in the market, we can see some more people, ask some more specific questions about that church, maybe. All right, so as you guys head in, I'm assuming you're heading over here and going to the square. Everyone make me a perception check. Oh. 14. It was threatening to be in there. 21. 21. 4. The streets of this town are empty. There's almost an uncomfortable silence that blankets this town. As you walk to the town square, you are going to see a building marked "Bildraths Mercantile." Sparse light from this building spills out from behind drawn heavy curtains. A sign over the door, creaking on its hinges, reads "Bildraths Mercantile." Nice seeing you guys today. Yeah. You are going to see a man Roughly in his 40s, he's in worn clothes, attending to a variety of goods. Well, not really a variety of goods, some goods. Smattering. Yeah, exactly. That's a much better word, smattering. So what did we have in our inventory that we were going to try to sell? We do have that leather book that has nothing in it. Yeah, the leather book. We got that book. We got the Masa Gates. We got... Did that hairbrush, is that still... It's still with us, yeah. Okay, cool. So yeah, we can try to get rid of that. I'll try to see if I can tell how good this guy would be at appraising stuff. Insight. Sure. 11. He seems good enough from what you can tell. Is that something I can also check? Sure. What was that roll again? Inside. It was inside? Okay, because I've got pretty decent inside. Oh, my roll was a nat 1. A nat 1? He also seems pretty capable in your eyes. I don't know. Like, great shop. I walk in as he's got three things on a shelf. It looks like the shelves in Zelda. It must be a good shop. Like, is there anything about how he's acting? Because now three people have just walked into his shop and he didn't say hello, right? He did not address you guys. He's not even acknowledging you guys right now. Is he looking at us? Can he see us? Or is he, like, doing something? He's, like, hunched over behind his crown. I want to look at the wares. He has. A few vials of what you guys would recognize as like acid. What kind of acid? He's got like a backpack or two, some ball bearings, a basket, some bedrolls, some blankets, a few books, old books. A bunch of mundane stuff like buckets, he's got some caltrops, candles, some chain, he's got one climbers kit, travelers clothes, a crowbar, So, off the rip, the climbing gear looks relatively interesting and the chain. What was the last thing you said? Before or after Empty Class? Crowbar? Empty Class. Crowbar. Crowbar. Before Empty Class. The old books, do I recognize any of the titles? Any of them look particularly interesting? No. They don't. Very mundane books. Very boring books. So perfect with the sound of climbing gear considering the council. As I see them eyeballing the climbing gear together, I'm going to go and put my hand on the counter and be like, hey man, you might need some help over here. He's going to turn around and address you kind of scruffling. Oh man, what do you want? I want to ask him how much for the climbing goods and the chain and the crowbar. The climber's kit will be 250 gold. The chain will be The chain will be 50 gold. What else? At this rate, I'm going to need, do you have any Vaseline? No, I got talcum powder, though. That's not going to do it. That's not going to do it. What the, you know? A chain worth 50 gold. How much does that crowbar worth? What the hell? Like, just try to shit him out of himself or something? Like what? Yeah, sure. Whatever you want to do. I'm not going to try and hide my voice at all. And as I turn and be like, I don't know how useful this guy's going to be for stuff. I was like, I mean, I got a crowbar in my backpack. Maybe we sell it to him and see if he'll give us one quarter portion. And, you know, I'm going to look back at him and be like, can you do you have information? But like, do you know things or do you just rip people off? I don't know anything. I don't know anything. After hearing those surprises, I've also just kind of like said everything down and just started walking towards the door at this point. My other thought was maybe try to grab something on the way out just to spite him, but that's not my character. I'm supposed to be just neutral. Just to spite him. What are y'all gonna do? He did give you the ultimatum, why is he looking at you? Let's go. I might need to find someone else more useful in this game. Now we know the shop is useless. This guy is a wellspring of information. You better not need us for customer service. If he does, our price just went up. What's that conversion ratio, like 20x? Do we see, the streets are just empty, aren't they? Yes. Any houses nearby with lights on or people moving inside them or anything? So, we're setting. Any other businesses? This would also be an opportunity where I could connect with my familiar and look at a hundred foot radius around this, right? Yeah, you could. I'd do that. You would see a bunch of houses. It wouldn't see any people out of the streets. You got a net 20 in your perception chart? Building across the street that looks like a tavern. I've heard you say. You would see the smokestacks rising out of a bunch of these different houses, but it is eerily quiet and very lifeless. Even around the tavern? Yeah, even around the tavern. No movement, no animals, no... I will point out the tavern and things. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's how we met, right? Might as well go in and... Have a seat. The next 20 would also allow you to hear a moaning sob floating through the still gray streets, coloring your thoughts with sadness. The sound flows from a dark two-story house, so you are going to Jables hear from down here that moaning and crying. That does intrigue me. But it will be there after it drinks. Will it? Will it? That's fair. Y'all doing this goddamn pound square? I want to at least see the building that that morning came out of. You know what I mean? Yeah. We've seen the tavern. Tavern hopefully not just disappearing. Let's see what this unexpected... So you are going to go closer to this two-story house. You're going to notice it's boarded up and barricaded. You are going to hear the crying of a female coming from inside of the house. Are there any lights on in the house? There are lights on in the house. What kind of crying? Despondent weeping. And the house is all boarded up? The windows are. Oh, the windows, okay. Why would you just go in there? Do we do y'all want to knock to y'all? I mean if we could hear the wailing from outside the tavern, maybe we'd go in the tavern and be like, hey, you guys ever hear that girl wailing over there? Is that like a common thing? I'm down. I'm down. I'm always down for a drink. Alright. Yeah, let's go in and see if we can get any kind of info. Specifically, just mention the whaling and see if anybody's... If anybody's even at the fucking town. Right, if anyone's there, yeah. That's what I was thinking. It's a little quiet for... That's why I wanted to at least walk over there. It was like the whole fucking town's been dead except for the dickhead at the fucking general store. So... That's Greece that we saw praying. You didn't love that? I'm sure it's great on your side. You guys make it to this tavern. A single shaft of light thrusts illumination into the main square, its brightness looking like a solid pillar in the main hall. Above the gaping doorway, a sign hangs precariously askew. Proclaiming this to be blood on the vine tavern. And you're going to notice that it was at one point, you can see an N scratched over with the F. So instead of blood of the vine, it's now blood on it. Enter this tavern. Give me perception checks. This one's better. Oh, I should not have even said that. Mine was a seven. I got a 20. I've just gotten no perception right now. I got a four. Collectively, what'd y'all get again? Mine was seven. 31 collectively. 20 for me. I got a four. He got a seven. Wow. Okay. Uh, That was pretty good on average, so let me set up some midis just so you can see. You're going to see a person behind the bar. You're going to notice three of what you now know as Vestanti sitting in this table over here. I'll stand those up in a moment. And then you're going to see a single dude. Thank you, thank you. Sitting over here. The Vestanti are the gypsies, right? Yes. Good. Learning that name didn't trigger anything new, right? For like things I would remember. Mistani? Yeah, because if they're able to come and go from this place, I would imagine that there is boogeyman stories about them. There's actually not, or not that you can remember. Maybe they're more like the machine elves. Yeah. Mistani? Perfectly. Oh, thank you. Or the hat man. What are those? Mochi. Green tea mochi. Matcha. I'm alright, thank you. Try one. You guys are doing this fine. This is the barkeep. Yep. This is just a random patron. And then these are Vistanti. Yep. Oh, I guess it's a bar. Right. Yeah. They are drinking. Everyone is drinking except the barkeep. We're going to start with the barkeep probably. Gotta order a drink. Gotta be normal. They say confidently. I meant, oh, I see. I got a hacking hormone. Oh! Oh! Okay, that makes more sense. Yep, come in. We order a round. Everybody gets a drink. So, as you walk up to him, he is cleaning a glass with kind of a glazed look on his eye. What exactly do you say to him? I ask him how much for a round. Small glass costs one copper piece. A pitcher of wine costs one sub-piece. Give me a picture in three glasses. He does so. He goes back to cleaning glasses. I'm going to give him an extra silver for his tip. Where are we going to sit? Are we going to stay sitting at the bar? Are we going to move to the other side further away from all these people currently? Does the bartender look chatty? I mean, you say he has it glazed over. He doesn't look like a very welcoming individual? Maybe. Maybe. Are you gonna try to speak to him, Naveen? He didn't really say more than those words to you when you spoke to him. As you guys are kind of looking at this bar, he goes to put down a glass. It's funny because as you stand there looking at him, he like cleaned the glass, put it down, picked up another one, cleaned it, put it down, picked up the same one again. It's like a robot NPC. I'm considering just being the blunt, gray character that I am and just straight up saying to his face, hey, we're new in this area. Can you tell us anything about that weird church with one priest and nothing else going on? He looks at you, cleans glasses, and says nothing. He says nothing. Okay. Do I notice anybody else react to his questioning? Well, you do actually. So the young man sitting by himself on the other side of the bar will hail you guys over like, hey, hey, he's not very chatty. You want to go sit with me? I know you guys are new here. I've never seen you before. Will you go sit with him? You think, well, I'm the one who just blurted it out, so. Just in the corner, yeah, and we'll bring the pitcher and the glasses, you know. Yeah, if he's got his own glass, maybe offer him a pour. Yes, yes. In fact, he's going to say, Eric, one more pitcher, please, now that we have several people. And he'll pay for an additional pitcher. As you guys all are drinking this wine. It's not the best wine you've ever had, but it gets the job done. Typical random tavern in random town. Say yes. My name is Ismark. I-S-M-A-R-K. Ismark? Ismark. His name is Ismark. I won't ask you what brings you here, because typically that answer is not very good. Have you been in Borovia? One really long afternoon.

• Because you've long rested several times in that house. It's been at least two weeks.
• True, true.

You were asking the bar key. What business do you have with the church? Nothing in particular. We just happened to walk by and we're a little creeped out by it. So. Wonder what was going on. Trying to keep it on the script, but... coughing Did you ask him again? What was up with that church? That's right, that's right. Yeah, like if it was just general, it was a general what's up with that church, that's all. You know... Mentioned that we were creeped out by it. I haven't been to that church in a very long time. I hear that, uh... The priest, though, keeps to himself. I haven't seen his son in a very long time either, which is... strange, but... You know, I, I... Typically we keep to ourselves in this land. But can I ask for y'all's help? Never hurts to ask. You know, you seem to be adventurers from a far land. You might be capable warriors, able to... Request. I'm still not sure. But yes, would you hear me out? We still got wine. Yeah, we still got wine, I'd say, sure. So... For some reason, my brother... being targeted by Strong. He's already at multiple times come to our residence, managed to worm his way in. And we fear that he might try to turn him soon into one of his vampires. So we want to take him to a much more secure location. There's a village far from here, still in Borovia, called Crest. Rumor is that it's more fortified and they're much more ready to defend against Strahd. I need help though because he will be vulnerable while he travels. As you know, Strahd needs to be invited into a residence in order to enter. Road. What do you say? Can you help me out with this and I'll be indebted to you? And we'll try to aid you in whatever way I can? Before I agree to anything, I need to know more about what's going on with this town and the surrounding area. Anything that Ismark can tell us? Yeah. Also, what is Ismark's brother's name? Yeah. Ivan. Ivan. Ivan. Did we get any specific info about the castle that was up on the top? Just that Strahd's place is really all we... Um... I'll give you information if you agree to help. Do what? I'll give you the information you want if you agree to help. The other thing is, do we want to do church stuff before escorting this guy? Or do we want to... I'm cool with either. Yeah. This sounds like it could be something that's not. Yeah, I think if we agree, it's when we're ready to leave town. Yeah. Well, we, you know, we can, we can potentially do that when we're ready to, to kind of. Right. I'm down for that. Yeah, I'm down for that. Because I definitely am interested in doing that because it seems like it's a good chance to, would be like me traveling. Yeah. More across this area, which sounds like it would be nice. I mean, if that other city is more fortified to fight against Strahd than this one, they might have more information on him. More information, more people. It's more fortified. But the paladin and then kind of wants to put that undead to rest underneath that church. I sensed him. It was his grave mistake. More chances to level up potentially finally. Good chance for me to learn how to use my powers a little bit more. I could be down for that, especially maybe if there's anything else, because that's the only place, only other place we've checked out in this town we have. We've only... Kind of scratches the surface. Maybe there's something else at the top we didn't... Yeah, we also have that crime. Yeah. But... Which we could ask this guy about as well. Yeah. See if he can say anything about that. Yeah. I'd say let's... Because we could agree to help him. Yeah, agree to help him. But tell him that there's stuff we want to do around town. Yeah. Mention the lady and then say that we definitely... We want to help, but we got stuff to do at the church. Yeah. Okay. What do you think? As you guys have this little powwow right in front of him. Oh yeah. He's drinking his wine, he doesn't give a fuck. I mean, we're all drunk, you know. It's a big favor. You better be patient about it. Yeah, I mean, sounds... Yeah, I'd say we just tell him. Tell him that we would agree. Okay. But we have other stuff around town we want to do before we like venture out to Kresk. Yeah, I'll be here. I'll be here. What questions did you want to ask me? About the church? Or just about that time now? I mean, you know, you know, if... If there's more you know about the church than sick. Okay, so no, you didn't ask. Because you asked him a question. Because we had already asked him about the church. In response to your question, and yeah, he told you that. But I forgot what you exactly asked him. Aradela had said that just that we couldn't agree really until we knew more about the surrounding area. But he said that he wouldn't even tell us that. I remember, yeah, that first question that I had asked about the church was just kind of like, what's up with that? Yeah. I remember that he just said he just knows the priest and the kid. Yeah, because he said he hasn't been there in forever. Yeah, so... But that doesn't... So I will ask him about... Did you know about this crying girl? Like, you know, a block down. Persuasion. In a two-story. With advantage, because you've already agreed to help him. 17, 19. 19, excellent. That's Mad Mary's town. She's been like that now for at least three weeks. No one cares enough to go in there and look. Why is she called Mad Mary? She got that name after whaling for three weeks. Okay, so this is a new nickname. Okay. She used to just be right for everyone. Now she's a mess. There you go, good faces, right? Includes just to why she's like this. So you just said she's been like this for three weeks. It's no one knows why no one checked. No one's bothered to go. Keep to themselves. Yeah, that's what he said about the priest too. I probe a little bit more about the church, specifically asking if there's a basement that he knows about. None that I'm aware of. Probably is one. At this point, let's just ask him if there are any other places worth visiting around town. And then maybe as we say that mention, like we stopped at that shop across the street and that dude was a jerk. Yeah. Yeah, he can be like that because he has no competition. He's lucky he doesn't have anything worth, really. Yeah. Or else someone might set him straight. So you've been to Bilgarath Mercantile and you've been to the church. Other than the Burgomaster's Mansion, which is actually my residence, there's only really people's houses in Barovia, or in the village of Barovia. I guess we'll check out the mansion when we come get you and your brother. Yes. Yes. Yeah, so. I'll be able to show you that person. Did he tell us anything about the surrounding area from that original question? Talking surrounding area, like around outside the village. Yeah, because he's asking us to leave the village with the brothers, so that was part of the information scan today. Yeah, what kind of stuff can you assess? So, we Go to my mansion. I'll be able to show you a map of the lands. We'll be able to plot our journey. I strongly suggest we stay to the road the entire time without exception. But traveling, even on the road, sometimes is dangerous. We're likely to be attacked by wolves. Regular wolves? - Some.

• There's unfortunately also a problem with werewolves. There's... It would be dangerous. Sticking to the road does our best, but no fires at night.

Okay. No fires at night. Is it the light or the heat? Oh, the light. That's good. Yeah. If you want to do whatever you have... Drinking is really all Baroagians have. So we drink. I'll drink to that. I'll drink to that. We've been drinking this all time. Cool. So you say is there, maybe we want to ask if there's a place to stay in town that we could use periodically throughout our time here. That'd be good to have a good base camp to go back to to rest. Or are we just going to go back to that outside what's the people's name again i just assumed that you put us up in his mansion if he's if we need to yeah we need to sleep for a night because we're taking a lot of risks and plus we could protect the brother and him yeah so while we're there ask him that or at least mention that that way we have some options in between church and lady depending which When we choose to go to first if we need to. We can, but Irodo will assume that that's the case and expect it. We can put you up in the main campus. That was my only real concern before we do anything else. I would be down to just continue drinking until we run out of drink and then maybe wait until we're not drunk and then do some Okay, okay, everyone give me a constitution saving throw. I rolled a 3, but it's a 1 plus 2. I got a 19. You rolled a 1, a 2, anyone else? I got a 19. 19. 13. 13. So Jables and Gray hold their liquor. Iridel is actually fucking plastered at this moment. I don't know what it is, the wine has just hit you. If you haven't been drinking wine like this in a while, I guess, you're going to be effectively poisoned for the next Rome 2D4. 2 plus 2, 4. You're going to be drunk like this and considered poisoned for the next hour, or four hours. OK. And I am not poisoned. Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. How long is a short rest? 30 minutes. 30 minutes. You said I'm supposed to until a short rest? Four hours. For four hours. Okay. That's a long time to be that drunk. Is it any way different? Do we want to call it a side effect from you having to have so many potions and being nearly dead? Okay, that makes sense. Weird reaction. Just came back to life. It's been like a day. I haven't really eaten much and first thing you do is drink a shit ton of wine. This is true. I don't know when the last time y'all had a meal was. That's true. Is there any food here? Does that matter? Is there food here? Let's see. You guys asked that? Is Mark is gonna say there is not actually food here, but I could feed you at my residence whenever y'all are ready. I mean, could be a good way to spend some of the four hours that he's poisoned making our way up to the mansion. We could get a chance to see that map before we go any further and do things. Maybe he's got some equipment there that we could potentially borrow. Yeah, I mean, it's up to... I mean, if Iridella doesn't want to be sloshed going into the church, then yeah. I can still fight. I can still fight. I can still fight. I ain't here no bell. The church? Erdo leans heavily on Jables, putting her entire weight on his shoulders. No reaction? Well, I'm not carrying this thing to the church, you know? The mansion's probably pretty far, too. How far is the mansion from here, yeah? Ask a man. How far is your mansion? I mean, it's not too far. Five-minute walk? Something like that? Ten-minute walk? It's not like a three-hour walk? No, no, no, no, no. Heavens. It's maybe five minutes. The mansion's right there. Oh, it's the one down... Okay, down that road. I wasn't sure which one would be the mansion. Oh, it's the really big one. Yeah, so it's pretty close and we would pass by the Mad Mary's house. Yeah, we do pass by Mad Mary's house. There you go. So is that a yes on that? Yeah, that's my thought is yeah, we just go down to the mansion for now to sober up and get some food. As we pass Mary's house, we hear the wailing. I just shout, "Mary!" Alright. I'm gonna stand outside their window for a moment and pull out the lute and say, "Mary, are you okay? Are you okay, Mary?" Oh my god. As we go by. I mean, we're not poisoned, but we're still pretty drunk. Alright, fucking meters. And she just cries through the whole thing? She does. She does. She didn't even answer the call of the rock. Unyielding. So as you guys get closer to the mansion, a weary-looking mansion squats behind a rusted iron fence. The iron gates are twisted and torn. The right gate lies cast aside while the left swings lazily in the wind. The stuttering squeal and clang of the gate repeats with mindless precision. Weeds choke the grounds and press with menace upon the house itself. Yet, against the walls, the grove has been trampled down to create a path all around the domain. Heavy claw markings have stripped this once beautiful finish of the walls. Great black marks tell of the fires that have assailed the mansion. Not a plane, or not a pane, nor shard of glass stands in any window. All of the windows are barred with planks, each one marked with stains of evil omen. I'm trying to get it closer so that when I go, I can see it more. So, this mansion looks like it's been fucking assaulted. Yeah, it's fine. In short, yes. Everyone? Everyone? Give me a perception check as you guys walk up on this mark. 19. 19, very good. 11. 11. I'm pretty drunk and short. And once again, roll the 1, which is plus 5. Holy shit. You're a harsh member. Yeah. You don't see too much here, though. You're like... You're wanting Jables to hear you, so you're kind of like just walking, do it wrong, leaning up against him. Gray and Jables are going to notice the ground is trampled with what seems to be scores of wolf paw prints and human footprints. I was going to say, like, am I... - Usual frankness, I probably would have just bald-faced asked like, "Hey, what's up with the claw marks and the burn marks?" I probably would have said that regardless, but also being drunk, I'm definitely going to just no filter ask this dude, "Hey, what's up with the claw marks and the burn marks?" I'm gonna give you a straight answer.

• I'll be able to tell you more once we get inside and talk about this, but we can give you the full summation.
• That's just definitely something that I would be saying as well. I would be asking that straight up. Seeing those again after seeing them on the church.

Yes. So he'll walk up and knock on the door, and you'll hear a voice from within. Who is there? Oh, it's Mark. It's Mark. And the door will open, and you will see... this Yeah, do we, yes. And you will see this man open the door. you I'll leave this up here so I can look at that. Say hello, hello! That's essentially Erindel's drunken reaction as well. But, um... Let's say, Ivan, Ivan, you brought friends with you. What have you, everyone. Come in, come in quickly, I must close this door. And as you guys head in, I'll close the door behind you, you will notice... The interior of this mansion is well furnished, yet the fixtures show signs of great wear. Noticeable oddities are bordered up windows and the presence of holy symbols in every room. The Burgomaster is in a side drawing room of the floor lying in a simple wooden coffin surrounded by wilting flowers in the faint odor of decay. So as you guys walk in, you are going to be able to see the mansion, all these holy symbols. And then in the next room, you're able to see someone lying in a coffin. But Ivan is going to issue you guys into a room and sit you all down. So please, please. I assume my brother has told you someone of our clients. If you're here, I also assume you agreed to help us. I was going to say, yeah, yeah, but for now we're here just to sober up a little bit. We had a little bit much to drink at the bar. Is that what I'm saying? I have a question. You said he sat us down. Did he seat us down in specific places? Like what's the seating arrangement like? Or is it just like he just invited you to have a seat? Yes. And then he sat down? Yes. So while he's explaining that, Iridel sits on his lap. All right. Quiet says, yes, of course we'll help you. He lets it happen. Works perfectly because I'm just claiming that we're trying to sober up because we had a little too much to drink. You said, I see. That's what I'm seeing as sitting down on you. I see. As she's sitting down on you. I see. That's what I'm seeing. He is awesome. And you will notice that they do actually have a few people attending them. Like, please, can we make these guests a meal? And in the next few minutes, they will bring you essentially a simple meal of meats, cheeses, and more alcohol as well. But a good, like, meats, cheeses, bread meal, like typical, you know. Perfect. That's good because I'm not sure the last time we had food. It might not be much, but you're welcome to help yourselves. And you will be able to be well fed or gain the well fed life. Cool. Is that something we can add in? Can we add it in defense? I don't know if you can add it into your character sheet, but you can just take note that for the remainder of this day you will be well fed. I am going to use the restroom for a quick moment. I'll be right back. Momentum. Momentum. Rick hit me with last night. We're drinking for George's birthday. We're standing out front of George's house. I've seen Rick holding someone and they just like clobbered him, unaccidentally. It's like several hundred pounds. - into the street while I fall over laughing. It's at the Duck Books too, so. You said no, Derek and I? No, as far as I know, they are still going. So that's... Me and them at least. I was going to drive down to their place and then drive them over and back. I wasn't planning on drinking, but I was going to bring the DMT bin. Oh, yeah. Maybe have one drink once I get there since I'm lightweight anyway. I didn't see one. I wasn't specifically looking out for it, but I didn't notice one. But I know they also, I'm pretty sure they don't sell posters for those shows either, which is kind of disappointing. Six of the posters now so far. Got a couple of frames the other day. I'm going to pick a couple to put in frames and then use those to figure out where in my apartment and how I'm going to stage out the rest of them. I'm also considering going to It'll Do on Saturday night. Because there's this one guy that actually I just started watching his podcasts and I did listen to his music for a while. But he's got some really good podcast interviews with all kinds of DJs and producers and stuff like that. So I've been watching those for a while. But he plays a kind of a, it's a little bit more of a techno-y tech house. Which is pretty fun. It's more of like the rumble kicks and that kind of deal in some ways, at least from what I've heard from his producing. But I figured that'd be really fun. Plus he's, in all of his, Will Clark, with an E at the end, he's bald with a big long beard. Oh yeah. But yeah, he talks a lot of shit in his podcasts about the commercialization of stuff and how the smaller club culture is disappearing. So it's good to see him come to town and play in It'll Do instead of Sunlow or something like that. So I'm really heavily considering to go see him. It'll be a fun one to go to. Yeah, I love It'll Do. I've only been there that once and I really loved it. I kind of wish I decided to go for Simon Doty and give a couple other people a reason to go, but it would have been four weeks in a row and I was too tired already, so... But I could do two back-to-back with one day with no work in between. I can do that. Because that's actually, it's more like two full days in between because late night. I'm heavily considering it. The tickets are only like $20. That's the other thing that it'll do. Yeah. Because it's always cheap. So, I don't know. So now the message is if anybody else wants to join, I would want to do that one by myself. I'm not comfortable enough to go to Ittle Dew by myself just yet. Maybe a couple more times before I do that, but. Pretty happy to go to SILO by myself because the crowd's really big and it's much easier to manage as one person. Because I also, unlike a lot of everybody else, I want to be there the whole night. So I'm showing up at like 9.30 or 9 o'clock. Like I went for my birthday, I showed up, I think I showed up after 9.30-ish. So it's a little late. Yeah, what kind of thing you're starting? Like AI consulting for small to medium businesses, building out solutions for them, helping to elevate their business in a way that's accessible and obtainable because a lot of the market doesn't really know anything. Her old boss, the one that moved out to Phoenix, when he left there, he went to subscribe or sell AI to individual businesses and that was before or around the time People under her were using AI and she had to kind of bring that to account and they bought it for them. They bought it for us. It's on our apps. They bought it. Brian bought it. So everybody buys it now. Every company is. So that's a real, we're really on the way there. Everybody wants their own AI and knows how to use it. I wish I knew how to use it. And that's the hard part. There's so much and it's always changing. You don't know what to do. track of what to do and so offering that service to people like hey we have that knowledge we can help build this out for you so you don't have to think about it. So it's useful. The only system that's going to be... A lot of people also only know it for like just going to chatbg.com or gpt.com just like just to ask the question they don't know how to use it for actual workflow stuff. And we can because of our laws and her laws and Brian's FAA laws these lockdown companies so it has to be a closed system because I can't be Given that your children's date of birth, you know, and potentially their social security number. The reason my team does it is a lot of time and effort. My job specifically is we're taking literal Excel CSV spreadsheets of people's customer data and all of their equipment history, and we're having to transform it and edit it so it fits into the content that we can import into our system. We can't, like there is some stuff you can do that's like, on the site that will work for that. But a lot of security reasons, it's better to just... So last year... But then also it's like, are we going to trust AI to not hallucinate when we ask it to do something? And then you have to check through it. And right now that's just, we don't have... the approved tools for us to use.

• Right, that's a lot of infrastructure and giving it guardrails, making sure that it follows-- - They bought Google Gemini. They told us just use Google Gemini because as a subscriber, they're paying for my G.R.I.S.D. And something about that locked-- - It's her turn.
• It's her turn. Yeah, companies do that too. Google does that and Anthropic does that, where if you're on certain tiers of subscription, your data doesn't go to their regular servers. It goes to dedicated encrypted servers. It gets deleted faster. It's never used for training data.

The school AI was like for a teacher. Not that I didn't use it too, but most of them say, I like the errors in this paper because that's what I use for my papers. I have a little Johnny's name and James paper or something because I have Frankenstein and But anyway, there's people who use it to write emails and use it all day long. So that sounds great. Good luck on it. It'll take a minute, but it's... We're almost finishing it at Indiana Jones, so if we time it right, we might be playing it last to make sure when you show up or something. Did you see that they just released a trailer? Kena of Bridge of Spirits, they're doing a sequel. Really? I'm excited for that. That was a great game. It looks... You thought that last one was good looking? This one's gonna blow your fucking mind. She's also a little bit older. I remember that one game being so fucking good. Dude, I actually, it's one of the few games I never beat. Oh, you didn't actually beat it? I did actually end up finishing it. I played it on the second hardest difficulty. If you get to the last box... That's probably why, yeah. I played it on, I usually play games on the straight middle difficulty level. And sometimes if I do that and I'm playing a boss or two, I'm just like, "Okay, I'm done with this shit. I just want to actually play the game. I'll take it down with me for the night." I don't mind playing on lower difficulties. It's one of those games where it's deceptive. Especially if I'm trying to be a real stone while I'm playing it because it's a really pretty game. In that case, I'm more than happy to lower the difficulty a little bit so my stone bass can actually complete the game. Exactly. Dude, I should have known because the first time playing it on the second hardest difficulty and the second to last boss took me days. Like, how am I going to do this? Oh, Callum. But, you know what? No, it's still here. Yay, thank you, thank you. So... What could I have said? Are you guys long resting at this spot? Just hanging at this spot until Iridel's no longer trashed? I mean, I wonder how much time would you say is probably the time that we've come in and done what we've done so far and actually eaten whatever food? Um, I'll say however long. It didn't take them very long to bring you guys the food, so you can chill for however long you'd like to. We'll probably just wait a few hours and head to the church, right? Yeah, just wait until you're It was early morning because you guys did get the opportunity to sleep during the night after passing out. So it would be, you would have time and it would be probably. So we did some early morning heavy drinking. Early morning reconnaissance. Yeah. Everyone you've encountered has been drinking. That's the only thing they do. That's right. It's just like Dallas. We're just winning Rome. Perfect. We're supposed to assimilate. So you guys hang, wait four hours. Is there anything else you wanted to ask Ivan or Bismarck? During the four hour... They mentioned letting us see a map of the lands at some point. Do we want to look at that before we head out? Yeah, we can look at it while we're chilling. Yeah, might as well. So if we can see that while we're here. Ivan is also going to address you guys. I think it's good that I remember this. He's going to say, before we go anywhere, I'm sure you've noticed the dead man in the other room. Oh, yeah. So about that. About that. I'm sure you noticed the outside. We were attacked for several weeks on end. And unfortunately, he died as a result of the stress. We made that coffin ourselves in order to lay him to rest. But the villagers are all very weary of the fact that I'm sure you know, you've been told that I'm being targeted by Shroud. So we need someone to help us take his body to the church and have him buried. I can't leave the village knowing that he hasn't been laid to rest. I mean, we're going to the church anyway. You did say that, so I figured I would go ahead and just throw that in there as well. I'm sure Ismark can also help you out. Yeah. That just gives us more reason to go to the church first. And then maybe do... What am I supposed to do with the cash? You know. And then maybe do Mad Mary. Mad Mary, huh? No, it's got to be that kind of game. I mean... She's into dance. She's into the little guys, Joe. Jesus Christ. So, they would also show you this map of Barovia. Cool. Alright, so we're in the village. We're in the village. They wouldn't go all the way to Crest? Castle Ravenloft is the castle that we were seeing in the other picture. Yep, yep, yep. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. We passed the castle on the way. Not really if we take the main road. Yeah, we would have to double back after... Because, yeah, if we... They said follow the road, so we're not going to, like, go down the river or anything. We're not going to try to go down the falls. The road's pretty windy. It goes down, and then it curves around like a roller coaster. Yeah, I'm just saying, you know, the cat's going all the way down the road. It's true. I don't think we should go there. But... No, yeah. Maybe after we do this big favor for Ismark, maybe... Maybe he'll join us in the castle. Because this dude wants to go from here. Yeah, all the way over there. All the way here. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, so across the whole shit. So yeah, we have to go through... That's how we will end up getting that way. We have to go through the mill. Where the fuck is that old Spalitz road? It's all, yeah. The road that you came in on is called the old Spalitz road as well. Okay, so that's just the road then. Yeah. Durst Mill. Wait, is that the one that we have the deed for? Durst Mill? So we can go check out our property on the way. Yeah, we could visit our property. You know, hippity hoppity. Our property. Tell them to get off our property. That could give us a good central point for branching back out to Castle Ravenloft. We might go back that way before... Yeah, I think we definitely need to understand the land and everything. That was mainly joking at the castle. Yeah, but... So Crest is the closest town, it looks like. There's just checkpoints on the way. There's also Vallaki. Oh yeah, okay, I see that. Right next to the Lake Zarevich. We estimate how many days it would take if we just traveled, no stops. To get to Crest? Yeah. Yeah, I guess, I mean, we're standing here talking to Ismark and Ivan, so I guess we can ask them all to look at the map. Like, hey, so what were you talking about for travel time? So this right here is a dam. Huh? Your little mini-moving is a day. That's a day? So we're talking like two months. Oh yeah, we're talking a lot. It'll take some time. Not quite two months. But it'll take several weeks. Okay, so we gotta maybe bank on not coming all the way back to this village for sure. It's probably not going to be a good day. That's why we're going to do the church. Yeah, do that shit first. Maybe blow up Moaning Myrtle or whatever her name is. And then... They went from doing to blowing up. That's an escalation. That was her name, Matt Mary. I like that you went through morning. Same shit. I don't really mean blowing up, but maybe. Blowing out, maybe. I thought you were sober now. I'm just not poisoned anymore. That kind of drunk where $12 later you're still a little... Yeah, I know that feel. Okay, let's help these guys get their dad over to the grave and check out the church. You don't have to. That sounds like peer pressure. I got like most of the way there. We're going to, you know, with Ivan, or not Ivan, Islark, one person's going to have to hold one side, or he's going to hold the front of this coffin, as y'all have to ask for. You're going to carry the whole coffin? Yeah, in fact, several people might have to help me carry the coffin. I stand underneath the center of it. Yeah, I mean, I'll carry one side of it, you know, if he's underneath it, you know what I mean? What are y'all's? 14. 12. 8. You can watch. That actually works out perfectly. It's funny that for being a small individual, you're not the weakest individual. Tiny but mighty. Funny and numb. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Everyone make me an athletics check. Just to see how well you did.

• Uh, 10 for me. - I got a five.
• 10, five, well you wouldn't have to because you're not carrying anything.
• Right. - 23.
• 23, so.
• Nice, I mean you being at the end, that makes more sense. You're just kinda, maybe you guys are holding up a little too high for me to be really doing anything.
• Well let's see how well Whismarck does. Collectively I'll do more than well enough to carry this coffin. Are y'all gonna stop at Mad Mary's town now?

No, we gotta cough in our hands. We still hear her yelling? Yeah. We do. So y'all are gonna go straight to this church? Yeah, we gotta cough in, you know? Gotta get rid of this dead weight. Very pallid of me, have you? What do you mean? I don't know. I thought it was good. Was it not good for you? It was good for me. Excuse me, I'm going into the stream. Is Mark, he doesn't seem any sort of nervous about just walking up into the church. I assume we were letting him lead the way since we... Yeah, if he seems like it's normal, we'll just go. Take it in stride. Take it in stride? All right. Be right back. I feel somewhat responsible. I saw the opportunity and took it. So we all... The doors open to reveal a 10 foot wide, 20 foot tall, long hall leading to a brightly lit chapel. The hall is unlit and reeks of mildew. Four doors, two on each side of the hall, lead to adjacent shades. You see that the chapel is strewn with debris and you hear a soft voice. From within, reciting a prayer. Suddenly, the prayer is blotted out by an inhuman scream that rises up from beneath the wooden floor. I won't scream, but use your imaginations. That's beyond dad. Yeah. You said blood-curdling scream? Yes, an inhuman scream. An inhuman scream. Like a banshee? Yeah, yeah. But you're going to see that produce still... Right there praying. He was the source of that soft prayer. And Ismark doesn't interact with this priest at all, even though we're carrying his dead dad into the church. Ismark, upon hearing that scream, is going to say... I make a comment about him saying there wasn't a basement. That he was somewhere. Just kind of snarky. Maybe this is why. But he is going to say, let's leave the coffin outside. I'll stay here. Y'all ask the priest what's going on here. His name is Donovich. I do know that. Do we have to talk to him to bury the father? Yes. Okay. Only because we need to get his approval to use the grounds. I think he's done with some of these. But just go talk to Don, which it didn't look like he was the source of the screaming, at least. He was going to be looking around. Please, please. Will you all oblige it? We're talking to Donny boy. Yeah, I guess so. Might as well. All right. We're going to set the coffin down somewhere. Yeah, he's standing with the coffin outside. Ismark is. Yeah, y'all are just going to start making me dead things. Ismark bitched out and was like, you guys handle this. I'll be outside. Ismark said. Basically happened. Right. So, you were going to walk up and the priest is going to be just kind of reciting prayers meticulously over and over and over again. You're going to actually notice his voice is a bit worse. Moments after and before you get completely to him, you will hear from beneath the chapel floor A young man's voice cry out, Father, I am starving. Oh, cool. Just before we actually interact with him, is there anything that we can tell about the religion or teachings or followings of this particular church? Yes. So as you enter this church, you notice that inside of the chapel, you start seeing symbols of the sun and sun rays. Make me a religion check. Anyone who wants to try to see if they know anything about baptism? I rolled a one. It was a plus three, but I rolled a one. Your bill's not on it today. Five for me, which is surprising. Another one. Considering that we come from a religious background. Well, give your paladin two, so that's appropriate. What's your religion? I'm 19 with my minus one. Oh, you have a minus one? Still a nat 20. I have a plus three. I don't. I didn't get kicked out of my priest order, so I guess that was very good. No surprise I wouldn't be staying back. Notice this as holy symbols and different symbols of a god that you would refer to as the Morning Lord, also known as Lathamru, which is like a god of good sunlight. He is symbolized by the rising sun.

• What was the thing you called him before that?
• The morning lord.

Kind of like morning more. God of dawn represents the potential of a new day. The God of open beginnings. We'll relay that to the others. You're like, oh, the morning war. I guess I just casually point up at the rising sun holding symbols. I'll remark that it's interesting that the outside had no symbols. I'll just say that out loud because we checked outside. It could have been destroyed or something. This whole place has been attacked. It's true. It makes sense. He might even... Be stuck chanting whatever streaking down there, you know, it's also probably not a good idea to advertise that you worship the God of the Sun in Strahd's land. Yeah, probably. There might be why they've been getting attacked. Are you guys talking to this priest? Well, we're kind of talking right next to him. You are. He does not notice you. He is reciting prayer the entire time. All right. Given the religious alignment, I probably should not be the one to talk to him. Yeah, I can walk up to him. You're the one who recognized the religion. Yeah, I can be like, hey, Donny boy. I'll be like, it looks like you might need some help over there. We kind of need your help as well. And that's just kind of how all. And yeah, exactly like that, Donny boy. Donny boy. He, gosh. He is going to stop praying and turn around and look at you guys. Sorry, I did not notice you there. I was in the midst of prayer. You said you needed help? What do you need? I'll describe that we have Ivan and Ismark's father's coffin out there that we need help with. And then on top of that, I would like to, you know, be made, you know, at least make him aware that I would like to know or handle, make sure the situation's handled on the undead that I know is here. Because it's here. He's going to like, the moment you mention undead, you see him like become extremely flustered. He's looking side to side, he's like, no, no. Yes. If you want, we can freak out about the undead dude after the coffin. It's fine by me. We can freak out about it before. I assume he's freaking out as I autistically shout these things out. Yeah. So he does have a moment where he loses his composure, but he gets it back. And he says, I apologize, son. I'm sure you heard the screaming as well. That is my son. He foolishly joined the insurrection against Strahd. What a powerful wizard. Make sure I'm saying this right. Yes, he joined a powerful wizard that ended up being trapped in Barovia against an insurgents, against Strath. He unfortunately was never seen again, but my son returned a vampire spawn. I've been praying day and night. Praying to the morning Lord. for a way to save myself. I have not heard any prayer. It troubles me very much so. If you need help laying the burgomaster to rest, I can help you very much. What's your long-term plan with that down there, though? He's not going to be able to answer that. I do not know. I've been praying for a whole year now. And you're going to hear the Inhumane screaming again. So... We can bury the dead first. Yeah, let's just handle that first and then we'll deal with everything else. We have to wait until dawn. We have to wait until dawn? Leave him here and then we bury him at dawn. Oh, I guess for religious reasons because... You say he's a vampire spawn so he's not he's not a vampire he's like a Well do we want to go ahead and Get the coffin inside and bring his mark in since now that we know that priest is not totally cuckoo nuts Yeah, I mean we can go and bring it in. Fill in Ismark. Yeah, that was my thought before we start doing anything else. Okay, you know, it's whatever you can come up with. Yeah, since now we're known, we have to wait for Don. Okay. As you guys double back and kind of give him, what exactly do you say to Ismark after having these conversations with Don? I just kind of explain the general situation. So, like, hey, so... There's some going on here, but Priest seems kind of still competent enough to handle the burial, but we also have to wait until dawn. Do you want to bring it inside? Are you still cool? Do you still want to stay out here? I'll basically ask him this, but with more gray. With your money, you know what I mean? He's going to say, ah, ah. I guess no one in this land is safe. I guess let's bring it around the back of the church. No need to bring his body in. He should be fine as we wait the day. And as you guys go to carry it and you set it around back, he's going to say, I will leave you two to do whatever you need to do since there's plenty of day left. We will meet back here at dawn, yes? Dawn, yeah. You'll now be able to hear the scream again from like outside the back of the church now that you know what's happening. Did we see any sort of... Yeah, is there anything, now that we're kind of out in the back of the church. Yeah, is there anything that would look like a way to go under the church or like a storm cellar? There were four rooms that you had not investigated in the main hallway. And that's it, nothing outdoors that looks like. Yeah, nothing you guys would have been able to see, especially since you've now gone around the perimeter once and not back again. We're not, you know, did... Is Mark didn't say why he didn't want to bring it inside the coffin. It's kind of weird to not bring it inside when the priest said bring it inside. Did you ask him before he left? I would have, yeah. Because that's just weird. Yeah, that's true. Like, we could do that, but why? Let's just say that. Okay. Maybe I'm a little biased. He's gonna take on the long, hard look. No, I'm just kidding. But yes. Yes. Are you guys gonna go back into the church and search any of these rooms? Do we wanna do that or do you still wanna go do Mary? You're gonna do Mary? Wow. We could go check on Mary if you wanted. Yeah, no, we don't. 'Cause I mean, like, I feel bad murdering this guy's son if he's trying to find a way to bring him back. You know what I mean? Even though, in my opinion, there's probably not a way to come back. My question was, I mean, yeah, we felt the undead, but would the vampire spawn still be able to, like, form words in sentences? Like, have that level of intelligence? You heard him say, Father, I'm starving. Yeah. In fact, Iridel, roll me a history check with the village. I just don't know. I personally just don't know about how any of them work. Anemone? No, 19. What kind of trick was it again? It was a history, but it was for Iridel because Iridel is a half-vampire. That's true. So as you guys are sitting here pondering upon this, Iridel, of course, is going to know that there is no cure or a way to reverse vampirism short of things like a wish belt. Yeah, like divine intervention. Precisely. Short of the power of the gods. But, you know, he is praying to a god. So he's working on his best chance. Yeah, yeah. Maybe the morning Lord will answer. He can only pray. Yeah. But I guess that doesn't... That doesn't mark it as solved to me, just because I... Yeah. I haven't seen the dude down there. Yeah, I guess my question specifically was, like, can the vampires spawn, like, still... Are they still, like, fully intelligent? Because you said it was vampire spawn, or is that different from just a vampire, or is that a different thing? I don't know. Would I know? Would Airedale know? Well, Airedale would know that there are tiers... of vampires, so it's not kind of like all one thing. So Strahd would be considered like a greater vampire. He would be able to create lesser versions that he would have controls over, similar to like thralls. So yes, he's still sentient and intelligent. Okay, so it would still be able to actually say, my thought was that maybe the sun is not the thing that we were feeling as the undead. That was just my... Would be considered an undead. Vampires are considered undead. My thought was that maybe they were separate things though. Maybe there was the vampire spawn or an undead and then he's just got his son held captive for some other unexplained reason. That was my thought I was trying to clarify. Okay, so we are confirming that they are the same. Yes. So my understanding is the vampire spawns would just be new baby vampires basically. Okay, so interesting. So we all searching these rooms while you're still in the church Yeah, as they have the priest does not protest. The moment y'all walked away, he turned around at his altar and began bringing up. So yeah, let's see what we got. See if there's anything useful or anything. Where do you want to start? My thought was top left. Let's go for it. Top left, yeah.

• Let's enter this room. The dirty room contains a wooden bed with a straw-filled mattress, next to which rests a small table with an oil-filled lamp burning brightly on it. Mounted above the bed's headboard is a wooden sun-shaped holy symbol.
• It's real simple, empty. - Nice, okay. - Yep. - Nothing special. So, next. - This one? - Yep. Thought. Looks like the same thing, but no table, no lamp.
• Yes, so this dirty, lightless room contains a wooden bed with a straw-filled mattress mounted above the bed's headboard is a wooden holy symbol, but it seems like it has not been used in a very long time.

Across the hall. So, time and neglect have punched holes in the ceiling of this molding room, which contains a few broken wolf shingles amid a puddle of water. In one quarter, set in a floor, is a heavy wooden trapdoor held shut with a chain and a padlock. A young man's screams of anguish can be heard through the door. That's where he is. Yep. All right. That's the entrance there. Might as well check one more room. Yep. Go ahead and see what's in the other room. Definitely not ready to go down there yet. If at all. An old desk and chair stand against the south wall. A wooden holy symbol mounted above them. A sunburst. A ten foot long iron rod attached to the north wall stands bare, suggesting a tapestry once hung there. Against the far wall stands a wooden cabinet with four tall doors. I'm gonna, probably gonna snoop.

• Going up to the cabinet?
• Yeah, let's snoop in the cabinet.
• So, for its size, the wooden cabinet contains very little. It will have a tinderbox, a few boxes of candles, two well-used books, Hymns to the Dawn A volume of chants to the morning Lord and the blade of truth. The uses of logic in the war against diabolist heresies. A strange book in addition to a book of hymns. So, the blade of truth, the uses of logic in the war against diabolist heresies as fought by the Ulmest Inquisition.

Okay, interesting. The title of that fucking book. Thank you. Sounds like he was using that to fight back against the philosophy of Strahd or attempt to... Are y'all taking any of these items? I don't see any reason to. I don't wanna steal 'em. Nah, I was just curious. One time you guys don't wanna steal. It's not really... It belongs to a living person. I guess you're right, I guess you're right. You don't necessarily steal on this campaign. Do we confront him talking about how the, you know... The padlocked celebrant. You see it is locked. Do we want to... We know that now that we've kind of all chatted about it, we know that there's not really a way to... Save his son except for potential miracle. I know we were thinking about maybe leaving him alone for that. Do we want to... Do we want to talk to him more and see if... He's willing to... Let us do something about or... Or talk to him? Like, you know, you're half vampires or anything... Anything we can do? I don't know. Trying to see if there's other options besides just leave him alone or... down there and fight him anyway. Yeah, pretty much given my stance on it, there's nothing we can do for him. And, you know, he probably sees me as problematic because of, you know, the specific deity that he worships. So anything that I would say would come across as disingenuine and potentially rude. My worry is that it becomes a problem later. You know what I mean? Like, we don't deal with it, and it gets stronger down there, breaks out, and is now a problem. Well, it sounds like he's not feeding him, so the chance of it getting stronger is not very high. For me, it's that that soul is in torturous pain just through existing right now. If we want to do anything about it, I think that should be our motivation. That's also fair. But it is his son, so it's his call if he wants to, you know, let him ride the pain. hoping that his God saves him. Alright, well then let's ask him. Let's ask him. Let's ask him. That's fine, it's fine. It's fine. But I guess it's gonna be probably me talking to him. Persuade him with a song about it. Yeah, because I don't think, I don't know that they said that they're not too fond of any kind of outsider, non-human here, so I don't, even coming from a Oh man, I could do it in a song for him. Even coming back from a past priest order, I don't think there's anything that I could do to really appeal to him about that. Plus, I'm also extremely blind. Trapped under the church, waiting for a miracle or a sweet release. That's my plan. I'm going to ask him if I can play him a song. And yeah, I'm going to sing him a ballad about the tortured soul underneath the church whose father was waiting for a miracle that may or may never come and about how they wish the pain would go away somehow. I'm going to do your performance check with advantage. I'll do that. See how well you do with that. 22. 22. Nice. God, it was with advantage. You do see he's somewhat moved by your tale. He definitely puts the pieces together in his work. He'll look at you guys and say, what would you have me do? I can do a lot of radiant damage, bro. I cannot bring myself to kill my only son. He's too important to me. He's already gone. Why do you say that? You can tell he's not ready to go to church with that statement himself. He does not acknowledge that. He's like, I must continue to pray. Well, we are coming back at dawn. We could revisit the conversation then and let him sit on the information for a little bit. Especially maybe after burying somebody who's very obviously dead. Maybe we can try to do something with that. Maybe you can sing another song then. Oh yeah, I'll sing it. I'll sing it for their dad. 100%. Okay, so with that, you're gonna leave? Might as well. We don't have to press him on it yet, because we're gonna be back. And that bitch is still yelling at the windows, you know? Go check on her. All right, so you head out. And I'm hearing you're doubling back to Mad Mary's townhouse? Yes. Mm-hmm, yeah, go. Sorry. So, in fact, you're right. Y'all make it to Madame Mary's townhouse. Is she doing the usual? Yeah, she's still crying. It's very consistent. Is that all we hear is crying? We don't hear her, like, saying any words or anything about the... An intelligible cry. So as you head inside, uh, the front door's not locked. We just went in. I didn't say that. Okay, sorry. Sorry. Do y'all go inside? We knock. We knock. I would knock. You hear the crying continue. Mary? You okay? Anything we can do for you? Mary? The crying continues. Being my size, is there a way I can, I guess they're actually not even just being my size, is there a way we can do a perimeter walk on this one? I know we said, didn't we say like the windows were boarded up? Yep, every single one. But let's, uh. There's no, as you guys like do a little perimeter walk, there's no way inside of the house, other than the front door. Okay. Unless you wanted to unbar a window. I can't just walk in. Can you not? I mean, not, you know, morally. Oh. Not sure if there's a real reason that that moral is a very strong guidance for me, but it is something that I feel strongly about. Yeah. I get that. I get that. Are we able to hear, as we do a perimeter check, like where in the house... Specifically, like if it's louder near a certain window, crying or anything. Anyone who wants to also try to see if they can glean this information, as you all do a perimeter search. 22. 22, excellent. Perception rate, 23. 23, 22. Nine. Nine? Yeah. So, Eridel and Gray can tell... From the crying, the pretty consistent crying, she seems to be on the second story in like a bedroom in the back of the house. Rocks at her window. I mean, it's boards. Yeah. It's like a basically a drum, you know. Little pebbles. Yeah. Trying to get her attention. Just continues. Yep. Unyielding. Please. There's still no animals around? How tightly boarded up are these windows? Quite. Like no air gaps? No, you know what I mean? Not really, in fact it's layered. Okay. Kind of an ad-havid way that it is, but... Can't even like peek through them. Yeah, that's what I was hoping was that like, you know, he could use his familiar to peek through it or something at least. I was also curious if I can use my familiar to like, to be the creature that I use guidance on. Because it says it has to be a willing creature, so I don't know if that relationship... The familiar is considered a willing, like if I ask it something, if it's willing to do it or if it's compelled to do it. You could use guidance on it. I've never thought about the implications of using guidance, but you can use guidance on other summon creatures. So it ends up being a summon creature by the end of the day. Now the implications of the second question you asked, which was-- willingness versus compulsion.

• The willingness, now that I don't know, that's a moral debate right there where their willingness are propelled. I think it all comes down to being willing as well. Your allies are usually willing.
• You mentioned that, I wasn't thinking about this, but if there's a fireplace in a chimney, is there smell coming out of it? Could we send the familiar down to take a peek in and then report or something? Or... Because I know you've got... Yeah, with your familiar, you've got some pretty good recon power.

You're out here playing D&D in 3026, dude. Oh, my God. There's a chimney, there's not smoke coming out of it. So, you know, it's not lit. It could be a way to at least get some insight of the situation inside before we decide if we even want to bother with it. Would you be interested in sending your familiar on such a... I will, yeah. I can send... I could even absolve you morally of anything happening right now. You ready for this? I'd be like, Mary, Mary, keep crying if you want us to come in. Well, the familiar is just a bird. It's not really, you know, putting an ender in space. There's no moral concerns there for me. Well, animals enter spaces all the time that aren't. They don't have the same sense of boundaries. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Think about a cat, right? You open up a door with a cat nearby, the cat's just going to go inside. It doesn't have any reason not to. It's like, ooh, this thing's open now. What's on the other side? Go in right. You know? Yeah, right. But I do feel weird about looking myself at what the familiar is looking at, but I'll do it for the party. Yo, Unibirt, who? Bear that burden for the party? Bear that burden for the party. And for Mary, because she's crying so hard. Yes. So as you send your crow down this chimney, it finds itself in a pretty... But it seems like it hasn't been well kept for a while. The furnishings are pretty sparse. As it flies around, it will notice, of course, that Mary is on the second floor in her bedroom. - On the floor of her upstairs bedroom, in the fetal position, touching a metaphor doll, lost in her sorrow and despondency. Touching a doll is always nice. What was the name of that little girl at the house when we first got? I'll find out. All right, so familiar as not seeing any other threats aside from whatever might be going on with Yeah. Are we talking about the girl's name? It's in here? No, it is. You're not worried about that. We're here to have a little conversation. Have a little conversation about the history of things we've done. People's names. So, what are y'all doing? You did keep crying, so I said if you want to keep, you know, you know, you're not able to speak till you're familiar, are you? Nope. You can't cast up spells. Okay, so it's only the windows that are boarded up. The door is not boarded up. It's not? It's not. Do we want to just... Board on in? Yeah, just see if we can open the door. If not, I'll try to pick it. Door is not locked. Alright, we walking in. I think he's seeing if there's any spells he wants to cast via touch. Yeah, nothing at the moment. Yeah, I mean, might as well let ourselves in. I kind of hesitate at the doorway, but go ahead and follow you guys. You can wait at the doorway if you want. We can always cry out for help if we need it. It's always good to have one person a little bit out of the action than I had been doing in the past. Yeah, I want you to hang back in the doorway while we- My familiar's in there to help them anyway, so I can see what's going on if they need me, I can run- You've got eyes on the situation. Okay. Yeah, I don't care about it. So as you guys head in this house and head up, you see exactly what Irinel was describing. As this woman is on the ground crying, So we've just gone in and there's nothing, I guess we're going in on the first floor, there's nothing on the first floor, we're just skipping right up to it. Well, it's a pretty modest abode. They don't really have a lot of furniture or possessions. I figured it was basically just like one big room and then second floor, one big room, that was my guess. More or less, yes. How are you addressing her? I feel like you're kind of standing right next to her as she's crying. a little bit wary of approaching being as her slumped over on the floor is probably as tall as me oh my gosh they're probably high level what would jake was he doing you see she's like holding a are we able to see the doll that she's holding um i know you had said when the With the doll of a little girl wearing a strange sackcloth dress. So many strange little dolls here. Yeah, I'm trying to think what the gray character would do, because it's supposed to be a full neutral character. Yeah, I guess. You're on the first floor. Can you even see what's actually going on? Well, the familiar, right? Oh, yeah. The familiar's in the room. That's true, yeah. So can I have my familiar, like, perch on Mary's head? Yeah. Yeah.

• Look at this. Does that. That's how it tries to get her attention.
• She seems to not respond to it. Yes.

Oh yeah, it's in the fridge. I was going to wait for a little bit later, but feel free to open it. Is your crow doing anything else or just hanging out? So no response. Is there anything else I can do? She's crying. Is there anything else in this room? I know she's pretty much the only... There's no like other there's not like chests or drawers or cabinets or anything like that that we can She is in a single it seems like a bedroom. There will be like a dresser But other than that, there's not a lot of furniture in here Pretty modest bedroom It does seem like a child's bedroom I just want to, you know, it's technically a raven. Good distinction. I do understand that the functionality is probably very similar. There is like... Raven will be quite a bit... Connotations that they change. And also... Yeah, size. Good size raven. Big as hell. So it kind of calls out, well, because like... These guys are trying to figure out what the heck they're doing. It makes bird sounds. She's just not reacting. Maybe like, you said there was a desk next to her? Yeah, I might just... So it moves from her head to the desk and kind of walks around on the desk. I might move around just so that I'm like kind of in front of her a little bit. So I'm like looking at face to face. Is there anything I can see like expression wise on her face and her eyes, anything like that? Or is she like... She's like fetal position against the wall. Against the wall. You can see her face twisted in like a face of pain, but she's trying. She's been waiting this whole time pretty much. And as your raven walks around, there's toys and stuff. Anything like shiny or like important or like have like a special aura that catches its eyes? No. What kind of toys? Like child's toys? Yep. There's no child. You guys have seen... Yeah, how old is Mary? She... How old does she look? She's in her mid-30s, 40s. She's not... She's holding a doll. And there's a bunch of child's toys around the room. That's so sad. If I... If I... waste one of my channel divinities for divine sense do i sense any undead uh celestials aside from my mind my buddy or fiends i'm saying i've got i know desecrated or consecrated objects or nothing of the life At least there's no undead. At least there's no undead in this episode. But I can't, like, detect magic. I can. I was wondering if I needed to use that. I'm not sure. I'm glad you used that first. If there's nothing like that going on, maybe there's something magical going on. I think I should go use it. Might as well, if you want. I mean... What will probably end up happening is whenever we're done with this fiasco, we'll... Rest before waiting for the dawn Because mine is a sir that's right, yeah, I guess it's might as well blow stuff now to China might as well Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and use detect magic as well Because detect magic It's for the duration. I sense the presence of magical effects within 30 feet. If I sense any effects, I can take the magic action to see an aura around an invisible creature or object in the area that bears the magic. And if the magic, or if the effect was created by a spell, I learn the spell's school of magic. Blocked by, put a stone, dirt, wood, inch of metal, sheet of lead. But yeah, it's within 30 feet of myself and the duration is up to 10 minutes. Is anyone speaking to her? While I got up into her face, I may have said hello. Just being kind of like, hello. Hello. It seems like that hasn't been doing anything anyway as we've been saying things. Getting close. As you go to say hello to her, she'll stop. Crazy. And she'll go look at you. You can definitely see that she's not in a good state, to say the least. Yes. But she will address you and say yes. Could you keep it down? It's past the curtain. It's quiet out. I guess, I don't know what to regard your attention. I'm just going to be the gray that I am, and I'm just going to straight up ask, why are you crying? Because I got her attention just saying hello, being in her face. I'll be like, why are you crying? That's it. My beloved daughter, Gertruda, she's run away. I feel the worst. Missing daughter. He says like little kids toys. Maybe just simple, what's her name? She said her name, but I forgot her name. Intruda? Intruda, yeah. Maybe, what's your name? Because we don't get it without her name. My name is Mary. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, I'm dumb. I'm a little high, maybe. Oh no, no. No. Is Jiggles over there saying anything? Yeah, I was watching the interaction go down. I was entertained. But I would ask her. It's me just being like that. It's like, hello? Hey, why are you crying? I would ask her, like, you have no idea where she may have gone? No. None whatsoever, no? Your straw got his hands on him, though. Oh. You should lock your doors. It's kind of a crazy town. I don't know if you know that. I welcome death at this point without my millennial dear true. Christ, I mean, you got any money? I'm going to be, still being the way I am, I'm going to say, like, did you ask anybody for help? Because... As far as we know, it's been three weeks and nobody's come to ask for help, but she also maybe has just been sitting in here screaming and crying. The people in the town keep to themselves. They're all... That's true. That's annoying, but... You've got all these people that's been hearing you scream for three weeks. Anyone who's interesting gets targeted by Straw, and at this point she doesn't care if she gets targeted, so... You know, you know, that's a good observation there. Anyone who's interested gets targeted by a straw man. She's going to start kind of tearing up as you guys are talking to her. What makes you think she was targeted by Strong? He plays on young girls. Oh, what up? Yeah, no thanks. Simple enough. Okay. I've heard enough. Get him in the seat. Shit, she said no clue where she went so she's not gonna be helpful to us anyway No, she's gonna be on the lookout for a Gertruda now and that's a hate her mom's doing freaking nuts in the town go home So people can sleep Yeah, we could tell her that we'll be on the lookout for yeah, we're about to be traveling Thank you Can you describe her more than just her name so we maybe know what to look for? She has brown hair. So she's got brown hair, blue eyes, and she's about 15 years old. Put on an Uber Alert. Every contact stung within the next 50 miles is going to go crazy. Uber Alert? Oh my God, that's oddly appropriate. And y'all don't even know why. So, with that, you say that you're going to try to find her, Trudy. You know, you can kind of see her... Sober up is not the right word. She's going to pull herself together a little bit. That little bit, I hope, can straighten people up real quick. This is true. This is true. I guess we know a little bit about her. Maybe I'm just thinking too much. My thought is maybe if it's not too much to carry, there's something of hers we can bring as proof that, yes, your mom sent us. Maybe something to help convince her to come back. A little trinket, something. If you ask her that, she's going to give you the doll she's clutching. She's like, it was once mine, and I gave it to your Truda. Considering how ugly it is, it's very recognizable and unique. I assume this will do the trick. It is ugly. And that's something that we could just easily just carry in our inventory and it wouldn't really take up space or be too comfortable. For sure. As you go to take this doll, you will notice it's stitched into the hem of its dress. It's a frayed tag, varying the words. It is no fun, it is no blitzky. No fun is no what? Blinsky. B-L-I-N-S-K-Y. Is no fun is no Blinsky. Interesting. Formed on a strange year and where's a set cloth dress? What was it? Say what you just said again. I was typing in my brain. I couldn't hear you and also some of the words I was typing. I gave you a brief description. So the malformed doll has a strange leer and wears a sackcloth dress. Are you guys going to try to ask for anything else? It's going to be a funeral by morning if you're interested. Who's past? The Barry and the Old Burger Man. Oh, no. Not the Burger Master. That's right. Burger Master. My fucking word. I feel like that's exactly how Jables would have said it. Oh, my God. We were trying to pump her, I thought. I thought that was wrong. While they're doing that, does Airedale see anything out on the street? Anything weird going on? Any movement people? Anything? It seems dead quiet. Still as... Still as things that are still. We're just like racking up things to do later. Right, well, I mean, no, I guess we've got something to help us recognize Gertrude and also her to recognize us and maybe potentially help convince her or also just make her angry. Maybe. If she ran away on purpose. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Well, Yeah, I guess there's nothing else we can do. Now she's calmed down a little bit. I don't know. Maybe she won't be screaming as much. Even if she is, it's like really as no. Yeah. I'm going to laugh. I'm going to laugh. We walk out the door, we close the door, and as soon as we close the door.

• Yeah, I've got nothing else.
• Yeah, I don't know what else. I'll look at Eridel's familiar and just kind of be like, you got anything? Just to make sure that they're, you know. They could have at least gestured to me with the crow if there's something, you know. But if you're good, we'll leave them.

Alright, you guys leave. I don't know what else to ask. Huh? I just don't know what else she would know. That the other people... Well... This is true. You never know unless you ask, right? Yeah, I mean, I guess that would be the question. Do you know anything else that we should know in this campaign? But I can't really tell you that. Well, yeah, I mean... Rip. That's like a metagame question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we asked her the best question possible. Oh my god, alright, you fuckers. So I assume no questions. Unless you just want to ask her a general question. But I assume no. No, I mean, at this point, we told her about the funeral. I guess we asked her... We just got their reaction about the Burgermeister. Is there any other info about that that we could ask her? Were you a friend of old Burgerman? Yeah, I guess let's continue down that line of questioning. Since we got a reaction sheet, at least we knew the guy. Right, it'd be nice to get some information about that family from outside the family. Yes, good call. Let's do that. The Burgomaster was a kind man. He was almost like the mayor of the city, you could say, looking after people. Yes. I know that Ismark is his son by birth, but Ivan is not. Okay. So... Is Ivan, like, his, like, stepson? Adopted. So, not related to Ismark by blood. And notable that Ivan's the only one being target question. So, he wasn't long for this world. How long has Ivan been here? He showed up mysteriously as a child. Okay, this is good See an interesting family dynamic over there. As far as we know, there's nothing else notable in this town to even bother with. Yeah, maybe maybe she would know. Is there who is there anyone in town? Like, the most outgoing individual or someone who actually... Who would you go to for the best gossip in town? Right, yeah, basically, yeah. Like, is there a social butterfly of the town? For the best gossip. Yeah, is there that one lady who knows everybody and everybody's secrets? person? It seems like everyone in the town just keeps to themselves, so that would be like, you know... That would be the coal mine. So, that dice flung itself into Olivia, and that's a problem for later. Um... Um, with that question, she's going to look and say, uh... You know, the Burgomaster's sons would probably be the most knowledgeable with the

• That's what I'm gonna do.
• Okay. - I have heard rumors though, that there is a Bastani, You can see people's futures and tell your fortune.

Interesting. Interesting. Maybe we go pay the Togastanis a visit before we... Because we have to round about some stuff, but that's maybe something a little bit more specific you've got to talk to the right people about. Is there anything more? I'm going to go a little bit more terminated. Is there anything more you know about this rumor? Just that there's somebody? It's a It's an elder. An elder woman. I will also warn you, though, that many suspect the Vistani also served the Devil Strahd. Yeah, they've got something to do with them. They alone are allowed to leave for England. I also noticed there's a raven in this room. You just now noticed? I did just now notice that. You should lock your doors. No, I still think it's alright if death takes me away. But I will say, I know that that raven is real. Never harm a raven, lest go foolish and befall you in Barovia. I will tell you that as well. Good choice of familiar that could be very useful in the future after hearing that. The raven gets a little prideful and like, fluffs itself. I can just imagine it. Puffs up its chest a little bit, looks important for a second. Absolutely. That's funny. Let's go find the Gypsy fortune teller. I'm down for that, yeah. We've got time until, I guess my question is how much time is it now? Because that's important for us. We definitely... It'll probably be only a little after midday because you guys hung out for that four hours. Did not take you very long. We got until sundown, I think. Once it starts getting closer to sundown, I think we should make our way back to the mansion for the night. Because I'm afraid of being outdoors at night around here with all the claw marks and fire marks. Yeah, there's no point in risking. All right, so y'all heading back to the Fergie's mansion? I think we're going to head to... We're going to find the... - The Gypsy portion town. - Yeah, we're gonna head over to the Gypsy camp. We're gonna, the Vistani camp. We're gonna hang out over there again. The place where we woke up, we're gonna be, say hello to again.

• So, as you guys head back to that Vistani camp, they are all still there, hanging out. As y'all go to ask them about the seer, Izzik, the person who's been kind of talking to you guys this whole time, is gonna say, "Yes, yes." Oh, yes, yes. Madam Ava. He is going to show you guys where she is on that.

Madam Ava? Madam Ava. What's that? A-V-A or? E-V-A? That's what I thought at first. Oh, she's not in the village. Nope. Oh, God. And I actually double checked, a day is more like two of these. Okay. So it would be a couple days travel. So that's a maybe we're going to stop by that seer on our way to actually. Well, I mean, yeah, that is two days of trekking off of the main road, though. Well, it depends. It is. It's technically a shortcut also. Right, but it's dotted. I know, it's not the main road and we're told to stay on the main road. And I'm fine with it. I just want to make sure that we're aware that that's two days of side road, potentially. Yeah. Could be, I was just saying, could be really worth it for such a long travel and with these people that we don't know, we might get some insight from one of their futures that could, I don't know. Yeah, and there may be some level of protection if she's out there anyway, like for that area. It could be at least a little safer than just going straight into the woods. Yeah, what's cool is we can tell when we're there, too. Well, we leave the bar of boning going straight there, actually. Sorry, I dropped the accent. We leave for Madagascar. It's about three days' travel to get there. Actually, no, it's probably closer to four days' travel. Yeah, so we'll get there in about four or five days. Travel with us, travel with us. We need them all. We will have a guest with us, is that okay? That should be fine, as long as they can handle drinking. Yeah, they should be fine. All right, well, again, more things due later. We keep stacking these up. This is okay, huh? We're just getting set up for the bigger area. And what time are you leaving? Because we do have a burial in the morning. We have a burial at dawn. We won't be leaving at dawn. We drink too much. Okay, fair enough. Awesome. Fair enough. Cool. It sounds like we've got a pretty good plan for the next day. Pretty good itinerary. It's getting dark in my lungs. That didn't take too long. Are we just going to... Hang out with these guys a little bit more since we're going to be traveling with them. Maybe. What are they doing? Are they chilling? We should probably go tell the burger guys. Burger guys. Yeah, that's a good point. Is that Bolo? Hey, Ruby. These are not going to let down. - It's already rush time. - Yo, there's fuckin' Harry still. Some of our other groups don't quite, uh... A lot of action, not a lot of game planning. It works in our favor, sometimes. And sometimes it doesn't. We're the opposite. We're gonna, like, now we're gonna clear out everything, and we're gonna be like, okay, do we really want to go in this house, or are we gonna go around it three times, look in all the windows, and then send in a familiar through the freaking... For a single man? Single and safe? Free? He's in his fucking undead son. Ugh. Yeah, that pretty little dead sun is still a problem. That's a very palatable thing of you to say. I came up with a terrible idea. I'm going to explain it to you guys in a little bit. Is it more killing that son? Mm-hmm. Sound and minor illusion. We need somebody to get into my car. That means our stuff's here. We see him in there. We're going to open and close it afterwards. Kill him as quietly as we can. I make this fake. We leave. His son magically, we stage some sort of illusion to make him think that the miracle happened to save his son while actually killing him. That's the end. Because you've got magical illusion capabilities. They may be pretty limited, but if it's just for the instant that we need to make it look like his son had the miracle and disappeared, especially if he's just up there praying and it happens while he's down there and they're just doing it with sound. I don't know. I'm just trying to be crafty. You could try. Hell yeah, we can. I'm just trying to be crafty. Maybe if you like... Use your loot to play some sort of like, heavy sounding song where it gets magically saved. That's just the general, I'm at the early stages of maybe. I mean, he's always deep in fire. He didn't even notice us until we got quite a while ago. I'm just saying, like, I can't really break that lock. I can try to pick it. I can try to pick it. I do have that skill. I just, the big question is how effective the illusion stuff I could do would actually be. Which is something, that's where we can like get into the details and discuss and think about. Because none of it looks like it lasts very long, so it would be like a, it'd have to be technically a pretty quick thing. Like all in one, maybe we kill him and do the illusion at the same time. if we can figure out a way to make it auditorial. Thank you. Let me see here, because I've got... Because what's cool is we would actually have time to scheme this up in the mansion. So, yeah, minor illusion, sound, create a sound, its volume can range from whisper to a scream, can be my voice, someone else's voice, beating of drums, any other sound, continues unabated through the discretion where I can make a bunch of different sounds before the sound ends. So I could stage... I could stage a whole one-minute illusion of some sort of crazy, like, auditory thing happening, basically, with the minor illusion. Using Thaumaturgy, I could maybe do phantom sound or booming voice to aid in that a little bit. Tremors, harmless tremors in the ground, we could add that into it to make it seem like there's some sort of crazy miracle happening. I think it's either we go the route of him trying to make him think the miracle has happened, or... We go the route of murdering this guy and using your illusion so that he thinks that he's still just hunky-dory or whatever until we leave. And then it just disappears. And then if he goes down there and checks him, he's obliterated, but we're gone. It's not our problem. I think those are two solid options. Because either one is totally doable with That's not what I'm talking about. We're gonna kill this kid. Oh. Okay, I'll help. You know, the vampire kid. So, here's my thought, because I have minor illusion and thaumaturgy. Priest is just up there praying. All he can hear is the continued screams. With both of those... I can do things where I could... One, we could either stage the miracle that he's wanting to happen and then kill the kid and just make it seem like the miracle actually happened and his kid's been saved. Or we can kill the kid, make an illusion that sounds like the kid's still there and we're sneaking in, sneaking out, doing this and then we're gone and he still thinks his kid's down there and then we're out by the time...

• If the illusion disappears and he doesn't know.
• Okay, I have no moral objection to applying capers.
• Either of those two options.
• In my world view, they enjoy being locked in.
• So we can either feed into his illusion or we can just do the selfish thing that we wanna do and kill the kid and then just make it not our fault.
• One of the two.

I'm also going to get on it. Close the pot. I have an issue with that. Thank you. Yes. That is what was happening. It's probably better if I don't know. I'll find out. Just a little bit of premeditated tomato. Oh, my God. Hmm. I love it. It's so funny. It's a kitty cat story. They call me Mr. Mischief. I'm writing about what it is. After all the things he's done to us, the cruise and everything else, they say write what you know. He's a fucker. I've got lots of material. I have been internally laughing about how much of that has lined up. There's no way he knew what was going to happen in this campaign, but it's like... Yeah, it's like his character's deeply entwined in this story on accident. On accident, dude. There are no accidents. This part's good. But hey, we're hanging out. Key on Pi is fucking... I haven't had some in a minute. There have been multiple years in a row where instead of cake, I have asked my mom to make me quail egg pie for my birthday. I got a Mother's Day cake from an Asian bakery. It was probably one of the best cakes I've ever had in like 10 years because it was like a lemon swirl. A jelly roll. Yes. It was a roll on its side, and it had this really delicious lemon cream. - It was swirls, but on the inside it had lemon jam. So it was like-- - So swirl lemon cake was lemon custard lemon jam. It wasn't overdone, it was all-- - The Asian cakes aren't very sweet, so the tart and the lemon-ness was just-- - Lemon desserts are also really easy to, you know, they're almost always really easy to eat way too much of. I don't feel them in my stomach as much. It was good that we didn't have too much of it, so only one slice. But I still think about that cake at night. In moments of weakness. So the person with Pedro's HIV phase. We all did decide to go back to the Burger Master's mansion and just hang out. Yeah, we've got to fill them in on the fact that we're going to be traveling with those gypsies for a few days. It's Dante. That's the name. We also got to discuss while we're there. Probably not use the derogatory term. We also got to decide. We decided that I think we are going to try to do, like, definitely kill that kid in that instance. Oh, yes. And then somehow we're going to trick the priest. I'm not sure which way we're going to go. But we got to decide which way we're going to go. And also, when are we going to do that? Because we've still got to go through. Yeah, we've got to go through the burial. So we just do the burial, and then as soon as that's over, once he goes back in and starts praying again, we just immediately do that before we skip town? I think so. I'm down with that. Are you going to discuss that in front of Ivan and Ismar? That's a good question. How do they feel about vampires? Because they did, that was the whole reason that His mark was kind of hesitant about going in and everything, right? What's what, the screaming? Yeah, the screaming and everything. He didn't want to go inside once he filled in on the situation. I don't know what y'all think. Do you think we speak about our premeditated murder in Hush Hush? Maybe we talk about it on the way back. We should talk about it in Hush Hush first at least. Yeah, let's talk about it on the way back to the mansion before we get there, and then we walk in and we... Ivan does need to know that there is going to be a period of time where we will not be available between the burial and when we're supposed to meet the party that we're moving with the next day. I imagine that they'll probably want to do the burial and then come back and gather things to prepare for that night. So maybe what we can say is, okay, we'll do the burial, and then you guys go back and prep and meet at the... We'll meet at the gypsy camp. We'll tell them that that should be the plan. So we'll meet at the, um, the Stani camp after you guys get an hour. Yeah, like an hour or two hours or something like that. It won't take very long to do the stuff. All right. We can just keep them out of that. I can take your lady. Thank you, sir. Take it, please. You're awesome, you're awesome. Yes, yes. Travelling together with your own self. Yeah, we're out there. Might as well clear shit. Out there with your right grass roots. Yes. So you guys head back to the mansion. You're going to drink, hang out, eat. Ask Ivan and Ismark any questions. But the day passes. Let me know specifically what you guys want to do over this long rest that you guys are able to take before the next one. Here, they'll try flirting with Ivan again. Yes, he's very handsome. We're going to be together for a while, so why not have some fun? Christ almighty. Alright, sorry, what did I miss? I'm hearing something. No. You'll get it. You didn't miss anything. I guess I've been spaced out looking at the architecture of the rooms, I guess. They're rich. This is a mansion. I'm sure they've got lots of portraits and shit on the wall. Maybe I've just been staring into these. They do have some pretty good-looking furnishings compared to any of the houses that you've been in, especially Mad Mary. She didn't really have... Anything by way of like decoration. Is this my head even? I think it's cash. It's almost cash. I'm going to kill it. But let me actually pull this up real quick. Yeah, that's going to be good. It's about to scream. Thank you. find most things, fineries in here, that you would be accustomed to. Anything particularly of note? Is there like a big family portrait that maybe contains more than just the men of the family that we're seeing? Uh, yes. There is a portrait of all four of them. Is there anything I can maybe glean from that? If I do any kind of like perception check or something or whatever? Since I'm obviously not paying attention to whatever happened over here, I could be absorbed in something. Give me an insight check. Insight check. I wasn't sure which one to do. Insight, okay. And it's in that 20. Oh, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee. As you go to look at this portrait of what you know is the man and woman of the house, plus what you would recognize as Ivan Ismark. But Ivan looks nothing like the rest of the family. Of course, not to y'all's surprise at this moment. But, uh, There's nothing really else to glean from his portrait. Okay. So that would have just been a clue that he wasn't family, but we figured that out already. Oh, okay. Well, I guess after that I'll turn around and then realize that I've obviously missed something. Oh my gosh. But, uh... Dog of shame, dog of shame. The night would pass without incident. Are you guys all sleeping at once? Are you guys staying up and taking a watch? What would y'all do? I think that depends on how things went with Ivan, you know? What would be the performance check? What's the advantage? Performance? That's crazy. 18. 18. 18. That's not bad. That's not bad. How does he do? Did he underperform? You know, sometimes it happens. It happens. He rolled a what? They did say this town was prejudiced against non-human, so... Maybe he was a little bit... He's got performance anxiety for his debut show. He's already been preyed upon by one vampire. He's like, oh god, this is a similar feeling coming over me now. But no, you can definitely tell he's a flirt. As well as being an extremely attractive man. Of course, I'm going to pull his fingers back up. What's that actor's name? I should know this. What? The actor that this is based off of. I'm nervous because I used the prompt to AI generate him. I had to Google it. But, yes. You guys would flirt. You guys aren't going to do it. Do anything other than that, of course. Is it the guy that plays Ross? Yeah, it's Kerry Elwes. Ross or Elwes? Kerry Elwes. No, it's Robin from Robin Hood Men in Tights. Okay. I forget what else he does. He's been in a lot of stuff. He has been in a lot of stuff. That's based on more of like a late 80s, early 90s version of him or maybe mid-90s version of him or something. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Are you staying up? Things did go well. Better for you than for him. I'm going to sleep half the night, you know? Okay. Okay. Sleep half the night? Well, you know, he wasn't that into it, so it's not like we're going to do it multiple times, you know? All right, so Iridel.

• For the first half of the night and then sleeping for the second half. What's everyone else doing?
• I see no reason not to sleep the whole night because it wasn't the whole deal that they were safe here in the house, but they needed protection during travel. So there's no reason to not feel safe here, I feel like. - Yes. - So yeah, I see no reason not to just sleep the whole night.
• Okay, so great sleep of the whole night. What about James?
• I'm doing my best to sleep based on what I'm hearing. I'm trying. I'm trying to sleep, you know?

Oh, roll... Roll a constitution saving throw. If I use a luck point for advantage, do I still get my luck point back after the rest? Sure. I didn't use any during the day. Yeah, I'm glad I used that one point. You said a concert? Thirteen. Thirteen. Way better than a three. You know, you do manage to stuff enough cotton in your ears where you don't hear anything. You try to block out all the thoughts. And you do sleep successfully. Jesus Christ. Iridell, as you are up for the first part of the night, roll me Perceptual Jump. Seven, which makes sense, you know? I'm a little distracted for that half the night. You are. As it gets closer to the stroke of midnight, you're about to turn in and go to bed yourself. You are going to see a green glow illuminate your window. Creepy. That's not good. I go look at the window to see what caused the glow. You open the window? No, no, no. I look through the window. It's a window. I don't have to open it to see what's on the floor. All right. All right. The best kind. You open the window and say, come on in? All right. You are going to notice, because you can see a decent amount through the town through this window, an eerie green light suffuses the graveyard. From this light emerges a ghostly procession, wavering images of dowdy women toting greatswords, woodwise men with slender bows, dwarves with glittering axes, and in our Archaically dressed mages with beards and strange pointed hats. All these and much more... Yeah, all these and more march forth from the graveyard, their numbers growing by the second. So you're gonna notice from your window there is like this line of dead people. Like ethereal people or like... Yes, ethereal, yes. Like ghosts. They're just silently marching down the road. Away from you. Yes, so you would know them to be marching this way. The way that we're about to go. Yeah, I mean, we were told at night, no fires, no light. Yeah, that's true. I think the fact that they're heading away from us, I kind of watch for a minute to make sure that that stays the case and take note to talk to somebody about it in the morning because What else you got to do? Okay. So, you know, as you watch them for a few moments, they're not interacting with anyone, saying anything, showing any signs of, like, emotion. But they march forward nonetheless. Does it look like a religious ritual? Is it something that I would recognize as that? Or, like, is there anything that kind of stirs? It does not seem religious in any way. Okay. It does not seem religious. Yes. Are you able to sleep after seeing something like that? Would you be shaken by that? Half vampire, half celestial. Yeah, not really, yeah. It didn't seem dangerous, it just seemed a little odd. It's something I want to tell people about and ask about. Yeah, it's probably something you can easily suss out whether it's dangerous or not. I'm like, oh, finally, something I recognize. Spirits. Spirits. And they're not hostile, so we're good. At least not right now with us where we are. Which is also why I did not open the window. That would have been so much more fun. For you. Like, um... I don't know. Being a honey for the flies. I think... Okay. Oh, yeah. It's going this way. I changed it up. That one was on me. That's why I was trying to keep... I was like, hold on. I was thinking about it. I was like, wait a second. Yeah. As you see that, take note of what you see. You're able to go to bed and sleep ...for the rest of the night, so everyone gets the benefits of a long rest. I guess I played my instrument for them, but they probably still have the heroic inspiration. I think they used it. Yeah, I haven't used mine at all yet. I've got mine for being a human. Everyone make sure you use your inspiration. Y'all have been rolling pretty well though so far so, you know. Inspiration is just advantage on one roll, right? Like any D20 roll. Yeah. Any roll you choose. I haven't been in a dire enough situation where I felt like I needed it. The good news is you can use it once a day no matter what. So I'll give it to you when you're long rest and stuff. It's just always good if you roll shit, you know, if you roll that shit. Because all I got to do as part of our log rest is play my instrument for us. I might just start using it as like a... Especially in any battles, once anybody starts getting bloodied, I might start using it a little bit more first off. Yeah, if you don't have like a sneak attack advantage, it's a nice way to get another chance for a crit. I do usually have sneak attack advantage though, being what I've been doing. Oh, and I'm going to keep trying to be in their face, so you will hopefully keep getting that chance. Alright. I hopefully get more and more in there. Well, what was my decision to try to be sneaky and long-range? So, as dawn breaks, both Ivan and Ismar are going to accompany you guys to the church to bury the Burgomaster. We're going to see Donovich do prayers and make some offerings to the morning Lord. The overall ritual does not take very long at all. You know, be plucking along, darn it. Very somber me. Make me a performance check of a bitch. Nat 20. Nice. Nat fucking 20. Nice. Yeah. Dude, you're... I'm gonna drop my greatsword in front of this fucking vampire kid, though. So... Shit. Break the hilt or something. You are absolutely... You sing a quite, well, you're not singing, sorry. It's all good. I couldn't be singing. You'd just be singing some, oh, it's in the background while the priest was saying his prayers. So you don't interfere with the prayers, but still give them a go. Thank you. As you know, the dawn breaks and you're burying this dude. And he's got his holy symbol out of the morning lard. And you're praying along with him in this song. The lute is going to light up again and shed like a dim glow. I would give you guys all inspiration, but you already have inspiration. That's what I'm talking about. But yes, Donovich is absolutely moved by your performance and your aim in this burial. He's going to turn to you and he's going to say, that was very beautiful. You wiped away tears. You are free to do what you will now. Ivan and Ismar are going to take their leave. You are going to notice that it does not look like Ivan got a very good sleep last night. Yes, they're going to say, come meet us. We're going to pack and then we'll be on our leave with the study. Before they go, I asked them about the green glowing light procession of... Ghosts. Let's ask if that's something that happens near their house frequently. That makes sense. Okay, we'll see you at the camp. I did it this point. Jables is just like writing down song that you're in. Unable to listen. That was great. The mist. ...for just a moment, seeming to kind of be taking in the morning rays on this kid. Alright, so what are the specifics of how we're going to go down there and kill this thing? Because I almost feel like with his reaction this morning, the inspiration that we gave, maybe I should go talk to him and just be completely real about, like... what my recommendation is. We'll do that first. If he likes it, then we can do it, no problems. If not, we can still do it, and I'll just do the illusion that makes it seem like he's still there, just screaming, and then we can leave, and then he can just... Maybe I can set the illusion to, at the end, make it sound like some divine miracle happened or whatever. Because I've got a full minute that I can do using both of those, so... Alright, so I go over to the priest and have an earnest conversation, acknowledge my half-vampirism and explain that all I want is for his son to experience peace and he should want that as well. Even in not being able to leave the realm in the afterlife, it would be better than starving as a vampire locked in a cellar. with no chance for survival. And we want to help him to release his son to be in the presence of their God, where right now he can never see the son that they worship. So I'm going to roll for how he reacts when you tell him you're a half-vampire. I'm hoping the song can help. He actually tastes it. He tastes that in stride. Nice. Fake the sun. Now, roll me a persuasion check. Can I give him guidance? Oh, you can. Which is a d6? d4. d4. 20. 20? Dirty 20? Dirty 20. Let's see. You will seriously consider... I'm not charismatic at all. My precision's considered. You're not, yeah. Because wisdom is my skilling factor. I've got a minus one. He's going to ask you, half vampire, do you not deal with the thirst, with the madness? Fortunately, that's not one of my common side effects. Is there no way for him to live that kind of life? I have not found one. Now you know. He is going to think very, very hard. And as he hears his son yell one more time on him, he heard from the graveyard, which y'all are standing in. He will agree. He's like, maybe it is his time. We're going to go return to the morning morning. He will consent. That makes it a lot easier. Yeah, I don't have to try. It would have been cool to try my illusion stuff, but we don't have to. Am I aware of any particularly humane ways to, like, off a vampire? Is there something maybe we could coordinate? Like, if they're willing, it's, like, not as bad for them. We don't have to just, like, smack damage at them. Uh, you would think that a willing creature would let you, like, do... - A lethal hit, there's not really anything rules is written on that. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

• Okay. - My thought was gonna be, otherwise we could try to make it as quick as possible and-- - I could try to make it pretty quick. - Yeah, we have a lot of, we have a lot of range. - I actually have some decent, I actually have some decent range stuff that I could do. That would be useful too, so we could like, my thought was just coordinate as much attack and just try to do it so that we all attack at the same time and reduce the time that we suffer.

I mean, anything that we do is better than an eternity starving in a basement cellar. I would like to think we have the capability to make it be over in a flash. So... We might feel kind of bad if we find a way that we could have saved him at the end of the day. But the priest didn't consent. And I was honest. I didn't say that there wasn't one. I said, well, not that I have found. He is going to give you the key to that lock. And he is also going to say, I cannot bring myself to take part in it, but... Make his suffering as little as possible. You have our word. I assume you guys are pretty much going to go straight to that basement. Yeah. We got things to do. Don't look at all of those names. Look at the many, many names. Okay. All right. So, I assume you guys are going to go straight down and straight in. I don't see any reason to hesitate at this point. We need to be quick about it. Yeah, I mean, not that quick. I probably won't wake up until like 11 or 12. True. The church's undercroft has rough-hewn walls and a floor made of damp clay and earth. Rotting wooden pillars strain under the weight of the wooden ceilings. Candlelight from the chapel above slips through the cracks allowing you to glimpse a gaunt shape in the far corner. So, I'm gonna go ahead and put y'all's minis where they would be at the top of this staircase. If you guys want to go ahead and specify your marching order or who is actually going down and down. I'll go first. Yeah, I'll be right behind. This Is it gonna be dark down there as we like open the door? It's pitch black. So do you want to cast light on my shield again as we have done? Yeah. In the oven. Yes, I will. Because y'all can see, I think. Y'all both have dark vision. Yeah, neither of us has a problem. If I stay... If I stay at the top of the stairs does that give me a little bit better for like a vantage point to see from my ranged attacks? Or would like the railing be in the way? Is that something I would need to consider? Uh, you would be fine railing wise. It's a- I mean, because I'm also 3'6", so I would probably be like head high to the top of the railing at best. My thought is that maybe as you guys go in I might stay kind of towards the top of the stairs just so I have Good. As clear as I can vision of the whole room for my ranged attacks. Okay. If need be. One thing you would also notice is that the screaming would stop the moment you guys slipped into the basement. Yeah, I just thought about this, but maybe the food source shouldn't be in front going into this. What, me? Yeah, because you're a human. Why would it be? And it's a hungry vampire. Okay. What is it? Is it cash? Yeah, it's cash. It's toast. Hopefully it's some sort of... Okay, so do we see him? You do. He's behind your tablet. He's over here in this corner. Oh, okay. Yeah, I was about to ask if it's chained up or anything, or would you see it? He is not chained up. He's just down here loose. I'm so glad we did this. Oh, shit. He is so loose. Yeah, I just kind of assumed maybe chained up. I did not think to ask a priest before we did anything. I like try to talk to him. I call out his name. Yeah, from where we are right now, I just call out his name and start explaining. Should we ask what his name was? I thought he told us. His name is Donovich, but I don't know if you asked his son's name. Yeah, I don't know that we actually asked it specifically. I call out that Donovich sent us. and ask him his name.

• Say your father's name.
• What's your name, boy?

What is disadvantage again? You roll two dice and take the lower. Didn't think about asking the kid's name. Probably because we decided pretty early we were going to kill. Hilarious right around the same time. Five. Five. You are going to hear... I don't cast Shield of Faith on myself. to bless us. There's a note I've got my bow up and drawn. Well, maybe not fully drawn, but like up and ready to draw at any moment. Just as a thing for what I'm doing and being cautious back there. He's gonna start walking up a little bit and find a pillar. I try calling out again like, hey, we're here to help you. I'm going to touch my familiar and use guidance. Is that cool? It's cantrip at will. On yourself? Yeah. Yeah, you can. Sorry. You said my familiar. That's what... Yeah, you touch a willing creature and choose a skill. So I'm using my familiar to touch a creature. Okay. Okay. And that's plus a d4. - I feel like I've tried but I can't. Did you move into the room? Yeah, I moved down to just the bottom of the stairs and kept my back to the wall. What else are we looking at? So that's Jables, this is Gray, and this is Iridar, right? Yeah. How far can I move? So each of these is five, and you should probably have like a thirty, so... Thirty, yeah. Can you move fewer? I'll kind of move to this, like near this pillar right here, right up against it. there. Yeah, I think that's fine, because Gray's got my back from there. You can plainly see that this dude is like wrapped in really soiled garments, tattered, hair unkempt. Your typical greasy looking starved and ragged kind of deal? Precisely. Precisely. One more chance to like, I mean, I guess, unless you guys would address him again, he would continue to kind of go behind this pillar right here. Oh, yeah, there's that. I've got a blind spot of gold over into that corner. But that doesn't matter so much. Because to get to anybody, he has to get into my line of sight. To get to anybody, he has to get into my line of sight. So I think it's still good if I stay where I am. Yeah, that's amazing. I would try one more time something along the lines of don't lose yourself to the hunger. Okay, can I do the guidance thing again? Yes, but you can just touch yourself and give yourself guidance. Oh, because I'm a creature. Yes. That's what confused me the most about what you said. Word. I got it. To give guidance. Yep, that tracks. Okay, cool. That makes sense. Probably not going to be lower. Yeah. Three. Three? I watched it happen. Yeah. Could have been a two. As I ready my shield and hold my sword, I look at him and say, my sword says the same thing. I'm going to remark out loud that like, hey, I'm just playing back up here. Let me know what to let loose. And I don't know if you guys want to keep continuing to try and persuade. I'm ready to... Do we have anything on us? Start letting fly at any point. So I also... I'm basically just ready to hit him whenever he gets close enough as my own. If he, unless he keeps his distance until initiative starts. It's funny that you say that because he is going to say, I can't take it anymore. And he's going to rush and attack. But we're going to roll initiative. Initiative. Very nice, very nice. Hold those numbers in your head real quick while I push this up. Decide what's going to be the most useful thing to do with my first move. So this is number and this is type of dice? So four d6s. Okay, so. Yeah, guiding both the hits. I'm considering trying out Chromatic Void for the first time as my first attack here. How do I, 'cause I know that it was, if I'm not correct, I get to choose what effect I'm wondering how do I choose that? I think you just declare it. Yeah, you just declare it, I believe. Yeah, because, I mean, on here there's a way, like, it seems like it's defaulting to acid. Ultimately, Grace is tracking it. That's true. I was just thinking, like, from my experience. Yeah, I think if you click it on that list, it probably switches. It would be my guess. But I haven't had to do that yet. And then the... Oh, yeah. Mine... You got an Eclosive. Seven. Seven? Yeah. Damn. Six. Zew! Oh, jeez. That's cool. So, you know. At least he gets to go first. Not surprisingly, it's great to double up. Yeah. Alright, so what were the options here? And this is a vampire, so what would be the best thing to do that? Probably Radiant or... Which doesn't exist for that one, sadly. No, I don't know. I've got fire, acid, I've got lightning, poison, thunder. Thunder is different from lightning? Yeah. It's more like concussive force. Okay, that makes more sense. I was thinking, is it talking about actually the sound of thunder, like the concussive force? - Kind of thing, 'cause it's a shockwave.

• Yeah, I don't know if any of that has any extra effect other than the extra effect that it would have.
• I may just go with fire on the off chance that he catches fire, 'cause that would be fun. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. Yeah, that's my first attack. I'm just gonna try out this since I've just learned this attack. I have been standing back there with my bow poised, but oh wait, no, I've got silver arrows. Does that do more against vampires? How much more does that do against vampires?

It does an additional, what, d6 against the undead? Okay, so that would be 2d6 plus 2 versus... The Quranic word is 3d8s, though. I'm still just gonna try Chromatic Warp because I want to try it, so... Alright. And it's with advantage, so I roll twice to take the highest? Is that correct? Yes. I just want to make sure I have some added advantage. If it's... Nice. 20. 15, and I chose fire. All right, 15 fire. Nice. That's all I'm gonna do at this point. I'm just gonna say. - I'll wait for you guys to . I don't think there's anything else I should do. I'm gonna stick where I am. 15 solid. - Yeah, no doubt. - I'd be bloody.

• Yeah, no doubt.
• Is that your turn?
• Yeah, I'm just gonna stick there for my turn.
• Okay. If that takes it to him, who rolled better than a six and a seven. We'll skip him.

You can hit it next. He takes two attacks? He does. He takes one of them with disadvantage, and then he's a what type? - Go something, actually.

• Is it advantage? - 'Cause we have less, we have less, right? Just a reminder that we are still blessed.

I don't think you got the hit. You sat down and you had your mouth full. It was just there, you know, I couldn't not. Second one is 24. 44. I'm going to deal some slashing damage to you. you He's going to deal 9 slashing damage, and you are now grappled. Grappled? Okay. Fuck that, I don't even matter. He's then going to use Fight. It's actually, it's a constitution saving throw. Yep, constitution saving throw. You just have to grab it. You should grab it. So a con save? Yes. Yes, purple board. DC 14 con saving throw. Let me use my inspiration for some advantage. Do you do your d4? Oh. Do what? I said do you do your d4? Just to make sure I understand what you're talking about. So for spell slots, that's like any time I use one of my first spell slots? You can only use them for slots that have just long rest or whatever it says on the spell? Precisely so. Just wanted to make sure. That's what I thought. Do you want to pass me some tricks? There's a moment coming. Am I you? What was your, uh, say? I think it's gonna be just below. I think it's 12. Damn. So... A real horrible wow. Take five additional piercing damage. And you're also going to take ten to chronic damage. The 10 necrotic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm bloody, but I'm up. Your hit point maximum is also unfortunately going to decrease by the 10th. Okay. When that happens, is that just until a long rest? Yeah. Okay. Because I know that's happened a few times. That is going to be his turn, which is going to take it to Iridel. You see Jables get the best. So I'm going to use... I'm gonna go ahead and use the level 2 guiding bolt. That's... Oh, sorry. 16 for... That's just enough to hit. Word. So then it's 5d6. Yeah. That's hilarious. Yeah. I walked by and I was like, wait a second. Yeah. It's AI Wednesday from the Netflix show. Did you? Yeah. Which is perfect. 13 radiant. Nice. That's he, woman. He's definitely still kicking. Oh yeah. Um, and then I use Healing Word as my bonus action. I'm a boy over here. Okay. Is Healing Word a leveled spell? Yes. But I only have level one. Well, I like his Guiding Bolt. It's awesome. Oh, I can't do two level spells at the same time. As much as I'd love healing. Uh, hold on. Am I within? Hold on, where is that? The only bonus action I have is produce flame. Okay. James. Decisions decisions You are in the grips of this uh... individual. I do get advantage on my attack from the gunning port though. You do. This one is. I gotta hit him just as hard as I can. That's what I think. That's probably a solid option. I want to kill him. You don't have disadvantage hitting him on the back, which is interesting. I know, which is great. I actually have advantage. During my attack action, I'll go ahead and get it started. I'm going to use Channel Divinity to do Sacred Weapon. So... Because it's on attack action, do one of my channel divinities to imbue my weapon for 10 minutes. I get to add my charisma modifier to my attack rolls. And you can choose to deal normal or radiant damage with the weapon. It also emits light. 20, 20. I can do it early if I want. Interesting. Would you like to hit this alien limit? Man. It actually tastes pretty decent. It's going to end up being like... 21, 24, 26 to hit. No, I had a feeling. Yeah. I had a feeling. Now I gotta think about if I want to smite it or heal myself. I am pretty low on health. Yeah, it's uh... I'm not going to lie. It's not stopping as well. I didn't think it would. you Oh, dark shit. I suppose I guess it's... Three radiant damage and all bonus action heal myself to my current maximum I will try Unfortunate wording there. Yeah Is that your turn? I spit Great. Directly in its mouth So. I'm gonna try a fire bolt. I'm gonna do that once. Just for the sake of doing more fires since I threw a fire chromatic orb. Okay. You can do it in my role. Actually, before I do that, I do want to mention that as my bonus action, I'm gonna use Steady Aim to give myself advantage. Just in case I didn't already have it. I'm not sure if I did it or not. Does that apply to magic spell attacks? Actually, no, that's a good question. I don't know. It just says advantage on the next turn. It doesn't say anything about... But also, now that I say that, do I even need it? Yes, yeah, because I don't get sneak attack or anything like that. - Want to be made a damage. I think yes, actually. It doesn't have to say it's not a magic attack roll. Yeah. I never even found any indication of that. Specifically, yeah, it says as long as it uses an attack roll. Wow! At least what I saw from Quick Goodle and whatever that AI says. Cool. I don't need that. So I'm going to do that. So that means I get two rolls wise for my fire. You may not even need it. It's just 22. Yeah, 22. Definitely hits. Definitely hits for a minute. I didn't even include the blast, but yeah, that doesn't matter. At least 23. Only ended up doing five. Okay. Is that your turn? Let me take a look. Nobody's really moved at this point, have they? No. No. No. All right. I think I'm done playing with magic, but yeah. I'm going to stop doing that at this point, and I'll just stick with my... I don't know what's going on. I'll wait. Take two, you boy. Who is going to... He's only got one thing he's gonna do. He's gonna try to continue his onslaught against Jables. He is going to try to hit you with both claw attacks. There's one. Low. It's not going to hit. Second one. What's your AC? 21. Oh, both of them are not going to hit. Both of them are very low. So he is unsuccessful there. He is going to try to bite you again. So DC 14 con saving throw once again. I'm going to use A luck point? Good time to use a luck point. - Were those both low?

• Yeah. That one rolled off again.
• You can re-roll that one since it rolled.

I'm rolling a tray, yeah. - Oh well, actually that's gonna be 14 exactly.

• Okay, so that does make it. That does make it.
• It would have been another 13.
• Man, oh man.
• I'd still have a little bit of max though.

Yeah, shhh. I'd have a little bit. So, you don't take any on the pass, so you managed to completely avoid the onslaught this round. Thank you. That takes us back to Ghirardot. Um... I think I'm gonna switch back to my bow and... Are you still bloody? I am technically at full health. Okay. And then the leveled spells, that's just one per round, right? Right, right, right. But I can use all of my slots until a long rest. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the spell slots replenish on long rest. That they do? Yeah, that's why I'm not... Some classes can replenish some during short rest. That's why I'm not willing to do another chromatic war. No, he's not. No. I don't know that we'll be able to long rest necessarily on the road, although I guess once we finish the first day's travel. Yeah, but I get a fair number of slots. Yeah, you've got one right now. I guess for my action, I'll just go ahead and hurl this flame that's in my hand because it's just sitting there, you know, I've got to get rid of it. Okay. 9 To hit. I'll go ahead and pass. What'd you hit him with? Nothing. Nothing? Attempted to hurl a flame, but unsuccessful. He was gonna let some fire on this guy. Fire is... Can you have more than your max health in health? You can. So you can give yourself both temporary hit points and increase your hit point maximum with the aid of certain magic. Okay. And how do you know if that applies? So, like, any time that there's healing, you can overheal? No, it has to stop. Okay. But if it's regains, then it can't be over here. Yeah, I probably am. I'm just seeing if I can do anything to give myself. You want to use your action to escape his grapple. Okay, as well. Superb, man. Thank you. on that stupid first attack and all the goddamn 24 I fucking hate this guy um those last three though were not good too sorry Yeah, I guess I'll try and break his grapple for now. Is that something I can choose to help with? Or would I have to have like said that I was gonna try to help? You would also have to be a little bit closer. Okay. Yes, you might have been able to specify something like that. Okay, yeah. My thought was like to jump in and help and after helping disengage, but I don't think I can do the move since it's not my job. 14. I would have had to be there. DC 13. So you escape his grapple. Son of a bitch. Oh. If only I had cool bonus actions. That is the thing, right? I don't right now. That is the thing. I think I have to just use like a bonus action spit in his face. That's a real big one. Yeah, like I'm... Alright, alright. Cool. I... I am going to shoot my bow here, my short bow, and I should already have advantage for... Is sneak attack advantage? Or... No, I need advantage to use sneak attack, right? But he's attacking... I should have had advantage, right? I'm so confused. Yes. Yes. His attention is fully on James. Oh, I don't need advantage if now I'm in five feet. Okay. So, yeah, I'm going to do my bow and have that be sneak attack. He's trying to get rid of the psyche-sexy dick. He's going to have to latch back on. You know, he's going to fucking try. But he's going to get real gray. That's a 10. Dang it. Dang it. Oh, no, I did not include it. It's less than a D for it. That adds two. What was that? So 13. 13. Also known. Valiant attempt. - What'd you do? Yeah, I don't see any reason to go any closer now that Jables has broken free. Alright. So, yeah, I guess that's it. I'm just gonna miss with my belt. So, upon it becoming its turn, it's gonna take both of its claw attacks against Jables once again. You said 21 is your AC? Mm-hmm. You're lucky bastard. His first one's an unnatural 20. The next one is at 18, so both of his claw attacks will miss. Praise be to the sun. Praise the mighty God, here we go. I'm gonna use a level one guiding bolt. My man, my man. - That's 10. Inspiration. Oh yeah. I got my inspiration, I could use that.

• It's a good time to use it.
• So I can use it right now?
• Yeah. The lucky feat you have to declare beforehand, but inspiration you can choose at any moment, you just have to decide before damage dice are rolled. Or any kind of end result is decided.
• So that would be a 17.
• Yes, that does hit. - Yes.
• Man. My man. I've seen one hell of a song later. 21. Radiant.

Wow, nice. All right, he's bloody from that. No one else is bloodied right now, right? I'm not. Nope. I have nothing. So, Jables doesn't look bloodied. He looks like, yes, his very vitality has been slightly set. So he... He's a different kind of not alright. However... Wait, that's his turn. It's your turn, Erica. Can I have my familiar just try to distract him? The, uh... Enemy? Help action? Absolutely. I will give the next person to attack an advantage. Oh, wow. The guiding bolt already gives me advantage. Yeah. That's really the only use of the familiar, although it's an excellent use. Okay. So that would be good next time, or... Yeah. Because it's just the next person that goes, right? And the familiar always goes when I go. You would think, because, like... Would it apply to like both of the advantages would be used at once or like one advantage would be used and then the other advantage would be used afterwards? Like two different instances of having something have an advantage. We'll discuss that later. But it applies now, right? Are you having your familiar use of health action even though Guiding Bolt happens? If so, who will cross that bridge now? If not, we won't. I mean, I can do the help action every turn, right? So, I might as well, to figure out what happens in that situation, you know? There's only one way to know, is to do it eventually. Is it going to be like a double advantage, you just add one dice or something? I would say it's double advantage. That just makes it easier to think about. It does. So, like, what, three? Because then you could stack it. No, so... So, you just add one extra dice, so you would... Roll three total. I was thinking that the next two attacks would add a Q. So yeah, just Qs it. It adds it to the Q. Yes, instead of both of them being consumed. See, that I can 100% get behind. I'm fine. But, your turn, your turn. Yes. Jace. Spraggan. Captain. Son of a bitch. Son. dog shit rolls mount daedalus i rolled all the 20s already i told you i told you when it comes to playing the lute you would be getting oh my god yeah but uh right now that's how we should have persuaded him i thought about that Again, it's not the end of the game. I could stare at my spell this long during the battle. Is that your turn? I guess so. Great. All right. He probably spits at the end of his turn. Yes. Sadly. It's a sad spit. He does it because he has to. That's what they all say. So, just to make sure, I do not currently have the advantage. You technically do. Do you have one more advantage? Oh, okay. Well, you have advantage anyway because Jables is standing right next to him. Yeah, he's attacking me. Okay, so that actually automatically just gives me advantage. I know it automatically gives me the sneak attack, but that's just extra damage. Anytime you get advantage, you have sneak attack. Okay, so I just wanted to make sure. So I'm not going to bother. Sneak attack's like an augment to advantage with rogue. Pretty much. Yeah. Way too much. Because I also have steady aim and all that does is give me advantage. It just means that I can't move. But that could be good if I'm actively fighting somebody. I was trying to think about how I needed to use that, so I'm not going to bother with that. You've got a lot of fun ways of using it. Yeah, exactly. I'm just going to go ahead and roll twice for the short bow. And 21. Yes! Yes! All right, so let's do that. And this is sneak attack so I can actually get two of these. So five plus two is seven. How many rounds of the spider are we? This is going to be like round four. Yeah, I'm just going to turn that for now. I have nothing else that I can do that would be useful. Actually, I might. If we're going to stick with the. I might take a cue from Jables disrespect and for my bonus action. I'm actually going to. conjure an invisible mage hand and backhand. Excellent move. Excellent move. I like that. I like that. It's funny that your main hand is invisible yet. I can't even see it. Yeah, that's the best part of the disrespect. Me just being him, just like invisible disrespect. Excellent. I'm glad to see Jables being a bad influence. That was the whole point is that I was going to try to take influence from you. Kind of lean away from my pure neutral to maybe a little bit more. Chaotic neutral or something is what I've been heading for. Because I'm true. Because I started out true neutral. I'm trying to maybe go chaotic neutral or something like that. Just a little bit more towards the chaotic direction. Well, in good fashion, this vampire spawn is going to take its two attacks against you, James. Prepare yourself. Oh, wow. They're both bad. Good. I need that. I need that one. - Drop his fingernails or something?

• I was thinking about that. He's gonna go prone and he's just gonna use half of his move that's being the stand back and go again. He's woefully unsuccessful. Irredo.

I guess, you know, guiding bolt, right? Does that have advantage or did the queue get cleared? Including his allies being right next to us. 19. That hits. That hits. Looks like everyone's able to hit except the vampire and Jables right now. Jables is... We're like at point-blank range. Just missing. 10 radiant. Getting hit from other sides. That's... And radiance. Swing it with this advantage from the fucking guiding bolt. I don't got anything else to give myself that so I'm appreciative. I will be taking it for myself. That's gonna be a lot. Okay, 22. Yes, yes, you landed the check. That's more than 24. Yep. He's getting smithed. You smitten him? I have to. I can't go this long and not smitten him. So it's going to be a Divine Smit. A Divine Smit. I'm going to assume he takes that extra 1d8 for being undead. Yes, he certainly does. So my sword will do 5 radiant, and then... The dungeon obviously still in question. No, it's actually a basement. You're having a dirty dunk out in a basement. I'm good, but thank you. That looks really good. And then 16 radiant. 16? That is literally one point enough to murder this guy. He was smitten. You do. You smite him down with Divine radiance as he crumbles to the ground. Good job. I wonder if I'm not even going to feel bad if we find a way to play. So if he gets his claws in you, things can go south like real quick. But You never know, right? He could just roll single digits. Four turns in a row. That's what I'm saying. Her voice is way too sweet. I don't know. I don't believe you. Mine? Mine. Me? Nah. - Your pure at all times. Pure as a mountain stream. - Good job guys. - That easy is mine. - I did just get spit actually.

• It's full on spit.
• My thought is We did get permission from the priest, and he was all like, yeah, maybe it's good to lay him to rest. Do we want to leave it to the priest to have to deal with his body now? Well, what happened to the body? Yeah, we got time. Yeah, what happened to the body?

Is it still there? Is it still there? Are those divine smile, like, does it reduce you to death? It doesn't say. Okay. Well, then he's still there. Okay. Do we want to help a little bit with that? Do we want to at least bring it up? Do we want to... Is there like something identifying on the body that we can take and be like, okay, and at least be, I don't know, if we want to talk to him again or do you just want to? Yeah, I mean, do we want to ask him? Yeah. Then we could offer to help. We could ask him. I mean, we probably still got a little bit of time before we got to. Yeah. They're not going to leave without us. I don't imagine that battle. We'll see him on the road if they do, you know. Yeah. Okay. I assume you guys are going to go back upstairs and then we talk to Donovich. Yeah, we'll go back up there and be like, hey. - You wanna, okay. - We've laid him to rest in one way, do you want us to help fully lay him to rest? You guys. I'm going to say thank you. I laid his soul to rest and now I'll tell him to lay his body to rest. Don't worry about the rest of the preparations. I will make sure he's very done. Alright, so we're good to head out. You guys would be good. You guys would be good. I thought I was going to kill Jables right there. Well, I didn't even worry. Yeah, that's something I'll say. Well, I didn't even worry. He would have seen my greatsword glowing when he came up as well. It glows for the ten minutes unless I don't want it to. Very nice, very nice. Lady Gracie has a longsword. The greatsword is too keen. If you failed the con one more time, I'd give you an 8x help. If you failed it again, I was going to roll. I've been taking averages. So... That's such a fucked encounter, because that vampire spawned at 90 health. That's crazy. It's a lot of health. And then reduced your max health. He would have also healed his health. It was a chronic damage. He reduced your max health. Are you fucking kidding me? Because I played this campaign briefly way early on, and Jacob straight up was the morally good character in our group. He volunteered to go down there himself, alone. I don't know why we let him go down there alone. It's because the dad really didn't want us to play. The DM was a bit more of an asshole at the time as well. So Jacob straight up died to that dude down there while we were all watching. To this day, I'm like, oh my god, it was a very traumatic moment. That could easily be like, yeah, okay, I'm going to eat your bread. I'm going to make you watch. But don't worry. There will be no more encounters like that. Oh, yeah. That's the only one. No more. The only one. Take my word for it. Don't be offended when I don't. I sit here with my new max out. Welcome back, welcome back. The conversation with the priest was brief. He volunteered to handle all of the arrangements and bid you all farewell in your journey. Anything else in particular before you leave? Is Mark and Ivan? Is there anything else that interests us in the city? Anything that we want to go check out before we're on our way? What time is it? It would still be kind of in the early morning. Battles are very, very quick. And you guys bury him at dawn. Or bury the dude at dawn. So it's like if that fight was less than a minute. Bet they're not awake yet, based on what they said last night. Oh yeah, at the camp, yeah, they're probably, they'll be awake until the, the sun has been up for quite a while. Plus they've also got to, as they're being in camp, they've got to pack up their camp before, yeah, so. You're probably going to wait for them pretty safely. Yeah. That's a, We said we were going to meet at the camp, right? Yeah. Yes. We can go over there and just kind of hang out and maybe help them out packing up and then just wait until the meeting. Nothing else to do. Just head over there and wait. You can do just that. Yeah, town's kind of... It's picked through.

• They seem like lovely people. - Yeah. - Like that merchant.
• I think we've seen what we needed to see. If I go back into the merchant's place, I'm gonna get in trouble.
• But you're easily able to join the Vistani in their camp as they pack up, get ready, and all of you guys hit the road.
• Is our boy Ismark?
• Yeah, Ismark and Ivan. So, as you guys travel, with the Bastani in your company, you travel without incident the entire way. It does take one day, two days. You can go ahead and restore your man's health. Anything you guys want to do, stay during this time? I'm just going to run a long rest. It would take like five days pretty much to get here.

I mean, we have casual conversations with everybody and the thing, right? Yeah. Are we going to mention to Ismark and Ivan that we know that Ivan's adopted, that we found that out? Or are we just going to kind of let that be mentioned by them at their pleasure? Because we do, we learned quite a lot from... I mean, I feel like that's a personal decision, you know? Do you want to ask about it or not? No, so we'll just leave it to them to bring it up. I'm not going to say anything. Unless there's some situation where it makes sense to mention it and Gray would just blindly say it. you Like 7.45 we got a call so I can head home to feed my cat. Sounds good. Sounds good. We've got just enough time to do this. This is a good little encounter right here. Not how bad. No, I shouldn't have said that. - You guys, after traveling in the night, would find yourselves at this camp. With Vestandi all around, tents, I believe, you would find a camp kind of at the side of the river that y'all have been traveling right next to. They are, of course, gathered around, not surprisingly, drinking, sharing stories,

• For some reason having a fire at night, even though we were told not to do that. Not on the road.

You would be joined in the company of twelve Vesandis, standing and sitting around the fire, telling stories and good, like wine. If no one wants to tell a tale, there would be one Vista in particular who would tell one. Would you all allow it? Yeah. I just want to make sure Jael did one of our galas as well. I'll listen. Use this as fuel for a new song. A mighty wizard came to this land over a year ago. I remember him like it was yesterday. He stood exactly where you're standing. A very charismatic man he was. He thought he would rally the people of Barovia against the devil Strahd. He stirred them with thoughts of revolt and bore them to the castle in mass. When the vampire appeared, The wizard's peasant army fled in terror. A few stood their ground and were never seen again. The wizard and the vampire cast spells at each other. Their battle flew from the courtyards of Ravenloft to a precipice overlooking the falls. I saw the battle with my own eyes. Thunder shook the mountainside and great rocks tumbled down upon the wizard. Yet, by his magic, he survived. Lightning from the heavens struck the wizard, and again he stood his ground. But when the devil's straw fell upon him, the wizard's magic couldn't save him. I saw him thrown a thousand feet to his death. I climbed down to the river to search for the wizard's body to see if, you know, he had anything of value, but the river had already spirited him away. Nice. Epic DBZ battle, basically, is what it sounds like. True story. It was there. It was there. Anyone have anything else they want to add? Any stories they want to regale these with? You gonna sing a song? You gonna sing a song in this campfire? Yeah, I'll play. I'll play them a song. I'll play them a song, you poo. I'm gonna sing them a song about a priest who lost his son to vampirism, who was then smited down by the handsomest paladin you've ever seen. Oh my god. Maybe a performance check with advantage. That's a 21. 21. Nice. Always getting high rolls on these performances. My God, I know, right? You absolutely brawl the pistana around the fire as they hear this tale. You know, Ivan and Ismark are also like, Is that what you were performing like? But they're not going to be offended by that at all. That's what happened. You'll gain inspiration. You already have it. I will inspire my fellows by playing my instrument as is tradition. I felt very inspired. After telling that tale, the Vistana that told the tale before you guys said it was actually the hero's tent. Madame Ava is waiting for you in her tent. And it is the large tent right here that he gestures towards. You guys gonna go see our futures? Let's do it. Is this including, is Mark and Ivan? No, just you four. Or you three, sorry. Okay. Just you three. You might have thought it would be interesting to have them included in the gates of incisor. So, magic flames cast a reddish glow over the interior of this tent, revealing a low table covered in black velvet tassels. Glints of light seem to flash from a crystal ball on the table as a hunched figure peers into the depth. As the crone speaks, her voice cackles like dry weeds. At last, you have arrived! Cackling laughter bursts like mad lightning from her wicked lips. She ushers you in. Hi! Come sit, sit, sit, sit, please. I've been expecting you for a while now. Expecting us? Yes, yes, yes. Ever since you entered this domain. I'd like to know your futures. What's the cost? Oh, for free, for free. Nothing's free. Oh, no, the knowledge will wait and take its own toll, but the cost of my reading is free. I like that that's your very first, very quick question. There is no hesitation. I was like, okay. So... I guess I could be interested in my future. Are you seeing me off in set yet? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, don't. Oh, wait, we're not doing it. So, let me read this real quick to make sure I do this right. Cool. So... Go ahead and draw me some cards. Do what? This is a card reading she's about to do for you guys. To the sacred future. Have fun. Yes, it actually will be very fun. I love this. - The first person on the deck, y'all will draw me three cards. of us or one card each? That's up to y'all. Okay, so. Don't look at them, you just, yeah, just hand me three cards from right there. I don't know the best way to hand it to you guys over this large table, but I'm going to fan it out. Are we going to do one each or does one of us feel lucky and have to pull all three? Pick a card. That's up to you all. I'm definitely pulling a card. I'll do, yeah. I think it would be best for everyone to pull one. Excellent. Hold on to that real quick. You said don't look at him yet? Don't look at it yet. I'll place it in the middle and there's a whole thing we're going to do. Do you guys hand me that card without looking at it? Or hand me that card? Then you're going to draw me two cards from this portion of the deck. Feels lucky for a second time. Only two people this time. Yeah, go for it. Your watch, Dayton. The universe is talking to you right now. All right. So each of you guys hand me that card without looking at it as well. Thank you. Thank you. So So she's going to flip over a single one of these cards. This card tells of history, the knowledge of the ancient will, or the knowledge of the ancient will help you better understand your enemy. Master of coins. Let me look that up real quick. She lays this card down and names the Master of Coins. She says, "I see a nest of ravens. There you will find the prize." Let me know if I need to repeat anything. What was it that you said before you flipped it over and said that it was Master of Coin? There was the history slot. History slot, okay. I knew I was missing something important. The history of the ancient. I will read it all again. We actually pull it up right here so it will be on two. This card tells a history. The knowledge of the ancient will help you better understand your enemy. She's going to flip over the second one and read. This card tells of a powerful force for good and protection, a holy symbol of great hope. Master of Glyphs. You will find what you seek in the castle, amid the ruins of a place of supplication. Amid the ruins of what? Amid the ruins of a place of supplication. What was the slot about again? I heard holy symbol of great hope and something about power. This card tells of a powerful force for good and protection. A holy symbol of great hope. Master of Glyphs, Master of Coins. So she's going to turn over the third card. Five of coins. Anything about this one? Yes, sorry. I should have read this one first. This card tells of power and strength. It tells of a weapon of vengeance, a sword of sunlight. The Five of Coins. She says, I see a dark room full of bottles. It is the tomb of a guild member. What was the name of the card again? Five of coins? Five of coins. You also have the transcription that'll get it all perfectly. Thank fucking God. That's actually going to be really useful, referencing this specifically. So with this card, she's going to pick it up and read. So I'm just trying to chicken scratch on it. I'm just taking notes on them so it knows these are important. This card sheds light on one who will help you greatly in the battle against darkness. And you did get the Don John. And she will say, search for a troubled young man surrounded by wealth and badness. His home is his prison. Trouble young man, something wealth and madness, what was that? Search for a trouble young man surrounded by wealth and madness. His home is his prison. What was the name of that card? You said Don John? Is that like Don as in? D-O-N-J-O-N. Don John. Okay, D-O-N. And the fifth and final card, she will read... Your enemy is a creature of darkness whose powers are beyond mortality. This card will lead you to him. And for this one, you've got the innocent. Let's see what all that means. with the one whose blood sealed his doom, a brother of light snuffed out too soon. He dwells with the one whose blood sealed his doom. A brother of light snuffed out too soon. That was sealed as doom. Sealed as doom. With this information, you should have some insight on where to go as you travel Borogia. See you later. See you. I assume we're all just kind of like stupefied and trying to take it all in at this point because that's a lot. It's a lot of information. Yep. Let me know if you got any questions in or out of game. Call it after this as well because it is 7:35. Good spot. You just got a lot of information. A lot of information. Yeah, I'm not sure what else we would do after this. We would probably just continue partying and then go to sleep. So-- Then we got to-- because I guess we're parting ways with the here. Yeah, finishing the track, too, then. I mean, yeah, is that, can we get more info on this? She's not just, I assume a lot of cases of the fortune tellers are like, well, these are the cards, and that's it. That's all I can tell you, so. That's my history. That's my history with it. Can you guys think of any more specific questions you would have for this year? Well, the nest of ravens one sticks out to me because, I mean, that could mean several things. Are we literally looking for, like, a nest of raven, like, in trees or in a house or something like that? I don't know. That one seemed... Worth getting more information on if we could. Exactly how are you asking? I asked her, what does it mean by a nest of ravens? Ravens take many forms, nest in many places, see many things. Ravens may not be literal ravens. There may be a kind of person or something that are referred to as ravens or could be thought of as ravens based on... Well, I'm just thinking, right? Churning... Ravens doesn't refer to the Vestanti, does it? Like I asked her that. Because you could make that connection potentially. You guys collectively got... measure flips Really interested in a couple of these things, but I think it's more just for discussion and not questions to ask the person. We can discuss anything I want to before we call it. I don't know. Something about... To me, something that jumped out was just something about The Don John and then the Innocent. It's making me wonder if when we learn a bit more about these two brothers, if one or both of them might be these people. Especially the Innocent. Dwells with one whose blood seals his doom. Brother of light snuffed out too soon. There's something about that makes me think it might be one of the brothers. I don't know. That card reading, though, was for... Me just being suspicious. This is the... Yeah, I know. But for... Yeah? I was just laughing. Definitely going for the knowledge for the Ravens. Seems like. Looking forward to doing this card reading. No one yells fate. I could hear... It could have been way worse. I heard... Just know. I heard sword of sunlight, and I immediately just thought of you taking a sword of sunlight, thinking of that literally... I wonder if that is literal. Not that this year would know. Find this sword of sunlight and find out, and I won't check. The tomb of a guild member. Seems like a good one to flag for if we came across something like that. Yeah, what was the full description for that one again? It was five of coins. A dark room full of bottles. The tomb of a guild member. Okay, so that's all it was. Okay. Okay. I can't think of any specific questions that would be helpful, so... You're good. I'm gonna go ahead and spoil the fact that she's gonna give you a bunch of really cryptic answers anyway. Yeah, sounds about right. You should be ready to... That's why I was like, there's nothing I could ask that would get a good answer because it's a seer and they're gonna give some wishy-washy bullshit kind of thing that's not specific enough to help. Good job, guys. I thought I was gonna kill one of you at least with that. Very surprising. Vampire. Sweat?