Session 23
The Mist
Shalooti pulls as hard as she can, but it's not quite enough. She slows Pelanil down, but he continues moving into the mists. Metarlos bites onto Elora's butt cheeks to help pull, but Elora is caught off guard, and the bite causes her to lose her grip. Pelanil is pulled further, all the way into the mist.
Menigal, The Departed
Finally, Pelanil can see clearly the dark figure in the mist. Menigal asks Pelanil why he has returned to him without completing his side of their bargain. Pelanil doesn't remember ever meeting Menigal.
Menigal, the Departed refreshes Pelanil's memory of their last conversation:
- He is one of the Dark Powers that coalesce in the Domains of Dread
- When the Shadowfell was created, the Demiplane of Dread fragmented
- Each Darklord's realm settled into a spot somewhere within the new plane
- Strahd's realm has settled here
- Vampyr is another dark power; he gave Strahd his immortality
- Each Dark Power likes a specific kind of soul
- Menigal is tired of Vampyr getting all the souls in the valley
- he wants Pelanil's help collecting them
Pelanil tells Menigal that he doesn't remember their pact (Pelanil's NDE). Menigal touches Pelanil's head and bids him to remember.
Meanwhile
While this conversation takes no more than a couple minutes, outside the mist, much more time passes. The party waits, but there is no sign of their friend. Anakir gets a rise out of the mist, and asks it to part. Bardolf sends in Metarlos to retrieve Pelanil. Bardolf also throws in a rope to try to grab Pelanil. Shalooti plays her flute with incredible emotion and conviction.
Pelanil Remembers
Pelanil's memory is restored, though he tells no one else of them. Menigal thanks him for "dispatching to me the soul of that insufferable toymaker", and offers him the Among the Dead Feature.
Blood Spear of Kavan
Shalooti hears the whisper of a man coming from one of the cairns on the southern side of the hill. Hesitantly, she makes her way towards it, and the rest of the party except Anakir follow. At the cairn, she feels a strong beckoning from beneath it. Too famous to do it herself, she has Bardolf topple the cairn, and with all his rock experience, he does so handily. Bardolf smashes the last and biggest rock with his hammer revealing beneath it a bloody spear.
Drawn to it, but still wary, Shalooti uses her mage hand to pick up the spear and inspect it. Reasonably confident it won't hurt her, she dismisses the mage hand and wields it properly. When she touches the spear, it seems to communicate to her, and she learns that this is the +2 Blood Spear of Kavan.
Anakir Lags Behind
Not satisfied by his earlier attempts at seducing the mist, Anakir stays behind to see what else he can learn. Finally giving up, he makes his way towards the rest of the party. He looks up at the top of the hill and sees a twig blight running down the hill towards him. The rest of the party doesn't notice until Anakir absolutely obliterates the litter feller with Magic Missile. At that point, the rest of the party notices both Anakir as well as a group of multiple twig blights, needle blights, and vine blights, just like the ones from The Winery, coming down off of the hill.
A Brotherly Spat
Pelanil takes offence to Anakir's treatment of his little guys. Fuming, Pelanil marches over to Anakir and punches him right in the face, dealing a not-insignificant amount of damage. Triumphant, Pelanil pulls out the Gulthias Staff and uses it to direct the little guys to dance in celebration.
Anakir, indignant, only escalates further. He casts fireball on the dancing little guys coming down off the hill, obliterating nearly half of their numbers.
The rest of the party watches and rolls their eyes at the quarrel. Elora hears something.
Chanting Atop the Hill
Elora listens more closely, and can make out that the chanting is coming from on the top of the hill. She can hear multiple voices chanting "Winter. Splinter.. WINTER splinter.. WINTER SPLINTER". At first there are only 4 voices, and then another joins in, and another, and another.
Elora alerts the others as they watch the brawl. The party makes their way up the hill towards the chanting.
At the top, we can see a wide ring of black boulders and smaller rocks enclosing a field. Lightning strikes the rocks around the edge of the circle, and the group can make out a huge Strahd statue made of tightly woven twigs and packed with black earth.
The group also sees the source of the chanting: a group of muddy Berserkers and Forest Folk. As they look on, even more join the fold, pushing aside rocks and rising from their earthen graves.
The Gulthias Tree
As they top the hill, they also see a copse of dried up and dead shrubs with an enormous, misshapen tree at the center. Pelanil recognizes this tree from his dream and sees that the wood is similar to that of his staff. Bardolf notices that there is a battleaxe embedded in the tree with a humanoid skeleton below it.
Bardolf recalls his memories of trees like this, and recognizes this to be a Gulthias Tree, a plant infused with supernatural evil that originated from the original Gulthias Tree which sprouted from the stake used to slay the vampire Gulthias of Nightfang Spire.
Bardolf pulls the Adventurer's Battleaxe from the tree, intending to add a little pizazz to it later.
Pelanil pushes his hand into the tree, and blood oozes forth. He inspects the tree and notices huge, ancient roots all around the tree. He follows the longest roots and sees that they extend all the way to the statue inside the rock circle. And in the heart of the statue, Pelanil notices the faintest glimmer of green light.
Into Combat
Pelanil sprints towards the statue, the rest of the party not far behind. By the time he makes it there, there are 10 total Berserkers and Forest Folk joined in on the chant, their voices incredibly loud as another bolt of lightning strikes the outer edge of the circle.