Sunny Barovia

 5/16/23 Well, the zombies ended up being a little tougher (and more numerous) that we originally thought.   Two of them were easily twice the size of a man, and a couple were downright fast.   When we realized we couldn’t outrun them, we fought.   It was a pitched battle, but not to the level that we had just faced.   Nevertheless, we were all tired and at one point Connall was pulled down.   Wolfram revived him, however, and eventually we prevailed. We made it to Vallaki, and fortunately the guards on duty recognized us.   We were let in without issue. (Hell, we had only been gone for the day…) Nothing new seemed to have happened in our absence, except some sort of minor disturbance at the Blue Water.   The guard didn’t have any more details though. We decided to head straight to the Manse.   Laz thought he saw someone lurking around the building but wasn’t sure.   He took a quick peek around but didn’t find anyone. Ireen...

 5/9/23 While I’m happy (and a little surprised) that we dropped Morgantha, we still had two more hags to deal with.   I ran in closer so I could spear Bella with a witch bolt.   She turned, and I saw fear replace the fury in her eyes.   She made a quick gesture with one hand, then started screaming obscenities in my direction.   Just behind me I heard Muriel chuckling, “Got you know you bitch.”   I suspect that Bella had attempted to go Ethereal, but somehow Muriel prevented it.   Unable to magically escape, Bella turned and started to run.   Wolfram and Oloch both got solid hits in, while Ireena just barely missed with her strike. When she was about 30 feet away, I could feel the Witchbolt spell drop.   Fortunately, Oloch kept pace and laid her out with a might swing from his sword.   I saw him swing again at her now prone form.   He looked at Connell who shrugged and told him “If it were me, I’d want to make sure.   Ju...

  5/2/23 The wolf that Muriel was fighting was the last spirit animal.   Multiple swarms fell upon the wolf stone, trying to tear the totem from the center. To my right, I saw Oloch fall under the bite of that giant spider, and heard Laz swear as a wolf tore into him. I looked up and saw even more creatures coming in from the surrounding woods.   We were going to fall just from the sheer number of attackers. The wolf spirit flashed past me and knocked Muriel fully off her feet. She landed flat on her back and was swarmed by insects. Somehow, Oloch fought his way back upright, breathing hard.   A spectral hand shot across the field, touched the spider and I watched rime frost form before it shattered under a blow from Oloch.    That must have been Laz’s chill touch.   Oloch let out a roar and a look of pure fury crossed his face. Just then, I heard Muriel grunt with effort as she stabbed into the ghost wolf, dissipating it. From Abe: Wit...

 4/4/23 After Muriel gave us that insight on what to expect, she touched the stone.   There was a flash of sickly green light, then the Bear and the Hawk apparitions became slightly more substantial and came at her. At the same time, the spear she had cobbled together transformed into an emerald green weapon that closely resembled the Blood Spear in form.   True to her word, we were unable to interact with these spirit animals, but Muriel certainly was.   Within seconds wolves, rats and bats swarmed into the clearing.   The wolves engaged us, while the swarms of bats and rats tried to pull the tokens out of the megaliths.   Woody did his best to try and cover the openings on one of the stones while the animals tried digging past his hands.   We unleashed into the animals with blades and fire.   Then Walter did something quite unexpected. He stepped back from the skirmish, extended his hands and dark tendrils of …something… shot forward...

  3/28/2023 We returned to the Bonegrinder and the bugs started to come out.   Surprisingly, Connell seemed to be able to communicate with them, after a fashion.   We were allowed to continue, but when we got to the standing stones themselves, we were attacked by hordes and swarms of the little biting bastards.   We manage to hack and smash and burn them all away without too much damage to ourselves, but with the battle at the bridge followed by a near jog to the Vistani camp and now here, we (well, at least I) was starting to feel more than a bit tired. We took a moment to catch our breath and I noticed Muriel having some sort of interaction with one of the ravens there. When she was done, she told us that we needed to match the artifacts we had “liberated” from the Bonegrinder, and place them with each associated stone.   Walter and I started on that chore.   We found each of the monoliths had vague animalistic qualities to them, in addition to a sm...