07.5 Escape from Ravenloft

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Session Summary: The Escape from Ravenloft and the Monastery of the Mad

PCs present: Renoir (played by Nacho), Daijiro (played by Juan Maldonado), Erdan (played by Marcos). Note: Ceres (played by Paloma) was present listening to the session, but her character did not participate in the scene.
NPCs present: Cyrus Bellevue, Vistani Girl, Shadow Demon (Rahadin’s Pet), Strahd Illusion, Clovin Bellevue, The Abbot, Vasilka.

Main Developments and Loose Ends:

• Main Developments: The group managed to escape Castle Ravenloft using a teleportation brazier. During their escape, they sacrificed (by inaction) the Vistani girl accompanying them, leaving her at the mercy of a shadow demon. They have appeared at St. Markovia Abbey, a madhouse full of human amalgams (mongrels), where they have met the Abbot, a cleric of Lathander who is building a flesh golem (Vasilka) to give to Strahd as a bride and thus lift the curse of Barovia.
• Loose Ends:
  • The final fate of the Vistani girl’s soul (the DM warned that the consciousness of their actions will weigh on them, especially the good-aligned characters).
  • Finding a worthy wedding dress for Vasilka, the flesh golem, at the Abbot’s request.
  • Reuniting with the other half of the group, who are currently heading to Vallaki / the Castle to look for them.
  • Delivering the taunting note that Renoir wrote for Strahd (Renoir still has it in his inventory).

Session Joke:
The “Non-Sacrifice” of the gypsy. Without a doubt the funniest and most cynical moment of the night. When the terrifying Shadow Demon claims the Vistani girl as its toy to torture, the three adventurers (supposedly good and neutral) stand watching without doing anything, close the door, and flee. Afterwards, Juan (Daijiro) tries to justify it by saying his conscience is “relatively calm” because he didn’t wield her or sacrifice her, the demon simply said “she’s mine” and he thought “well, okay.” The DM’s complaints about how they have condemned her to a choir of tortured souls while the players shrug caused everyone to laugh.

Scene 1: Preparations and Magical Doubts

PCs present: Renoir, Daijiro
NPCs present: None.
Location: Meta-game
Loot obtained: None.
Scene Summary: Before resuming the action, the players discuss rules about the functioning of Bard spells. Nacho (Renoir) clarifies how he can change spells when leveling up and discovers with relief that he does not need to prepare his spell list daily like a wizard, but rather he simply knows the spells and spends his spell slots.

Scene 2: The Amalgam Butler

PCs present: Renoir, Daijiro, Erdan
NPCs present:

• Cyrus Bellevue (Mongrel, short and hunched, left side with lizard scales, panther ears, duck webbed foot, dog-furred arms. Archetype: Loyal and grotesque servant).
• Vistani Girl (Scared, armed with a chair leg. Archetype: Helpless victim).
  Location: Castle Ravenloft Corridors (Room K67).
  Loot obtained: None.
  Scene Summary: The group finds themselves in a dark corridor with Cyrus Bellevue, the castle’s butler. Cyrus calls them “treasures” and insists on taking them to their rooms so as not to disturb the master or Rahadin. As the group wants to go to the brazier room to escape, Renoir takes out his ocarina and casts Charm Person on Cyrus. Enchanted by the music, the deformed butler agrees to guide them through the guard dining room, a room horribly decorated with human bones that Cyrus boasts of as his “artwork.”

Scene 3: Rahadin’s Pet

PCs present: Renoir, Daijiro, Erdan
NPCs present:

• Cyrus Bellevue
• Vistani Girl
• Shadow Demon / Rahadin’s Pet (Telepathic voice with no visible origin, monstrous shadow form. Archetype: Sadistic predator).
  Location: Rahadin’s Study.
  Loot obtained: None.
  Scene Summary: Looking for a way out, the group enters Rahadin’s study, an immaculate room with weapons on the walls. Upon closing the door, it locks itself. A telepathic voice resonates in their heads saying they are intruders. The voice belongs to Rahadin’s “pet,” a shadow being that feeds on fear. The demon allows them to live in exchange for keeping the Vistani girl to torture her and add her to his lord’s choir of souls. The girl screams and curses Daijiro, but the adventurers decide not to intervene. As the demon tears apart and plays with the girl, Daijiro quickly locates a secret door and the group flees down the stairs, leaving Cyrus behind engrossed in the macabre spectacle.

Scene 4: The Count’s Illusion and the Brazier

PCs present: Renoir, Daijiro, Erdan
NPCs present:

• Strahd Illusion (Red eyes, menacing attitude. Archetype: False danger).
  Location: Secret stairs and Brazier Room (Castle Ravenloft).
  Loot obtained: None.
  Scene Summary: As they descend a cobweb-filled staircase, mist condenses forming Strahd’s figure, who warns them that their gods will not be able to save them. Daijiro, unfazed, throws four Magic Missiles at him, instantly dispelling the illusion. Upon reaching the bottom, they force a door and enter a room with two large iron statues, a magical brazier, and colored glass marbles. The brazier has a poetic riddle indicating where each color teleports. After a chaotic debate full of confusion (confusing blue with indigo) and using a Tarokka card reading by Renoir (which reveals “The Temptress” and “The Transmuter”), the group decides to throw the blue/indigo marble into the fire. As they touch the flame-changing flames, they are teleported one by one out of the castle.

Scene 5: The Abbey of the Mad

PCs present: Renoir, Daijiro, Erdan
NPCs present:

• Clovin Bellevue (Two-headed mongrel - one goat, one cherub with crocodile skin -, crab claw, bear paw, dressed as a monk and very drunk. Archetype: Deformed jester/guard).
• The Abbot (Extremely handsome young man, perfect skin, blue eyes with white irises, calm voice. Archetype: Religious fanatic/Disturbed creator).
• Vasilka (Woman with alabaster skin, beautiful but expressionless, with stitches. Archetype: Flesh golem/The Bride).
  Location: St. Markovia Abbey (Krezk).
  Loot obtained: None.
  Scene Summary: The group appears frozen from the cold in a strange abbey. In the room, they find Clovin, playing the viola and drunk, who gets scared and runs to call the “Abbot.” Descending some stairs, the adventurers find themselves in a room with a fireplace alongside Vasilka (a woman with a vacant stare) and the Abbot. The Abbot, who is a servant of the god Lathander, explains that they are in Krezk and that the abbey is a madhouse to house the “mongrels.” To the players’ disbelief, the Abbot confesses with complete naturalness that Vasilka is a golem created from corpse parts; his divine mission is to build the perfect bride for Strahd and thus restore love to him and heal Barovia. The Abbot offers them asylum for the night and, at an unsettling moment, tells Renoir that his eyes are beautiful and would look very good on a woman’s face, asking them in passing to get him a worthy wedding dress for his creation. The group, terrified but pretending otherwise, agrees to spend the night there.