Unfortunately, Hillary was ill and could not make it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: going without a tank is a Bad Idea.
The party's journey to Berez was mostly uneventful. The did find a defiled grave along the side of the road. Cugel didn't have anything to do with this particular corpse going missing, at least this time.
Berez is a ruined village partially sunk into a swamp. The group investigated some ruined buildings, then approached the ruins of the burgomaster's mansion on a small hill. Ignoring the nearby goats enclosed by a pen where the fence posts were topped by bleached human skulls, Lop peered over a crumbling stone wall and into the overgrown garden, seeing a few marble statues of nude male and female human forms. Despite the party's initial fears, the figures were in classic poses, not the shrinking away and screaming poses you'd expect from the victims of petrification.
They then moved on to the ruins of the house proper. They entered, Cugel using improved invisibility. Of course, improved invisibility isn't good for scouting, it's a combat spell. It only lasts a minute, but isn't undone by attacking like regular invisibility. Eventually the house's inhabitant, the ghost of the village's last Burgomaster, Lazlo Ulrich, materialized and confronted our fast-talking necromancer. The ghost, of course, wasn't too pleased at interlopers rooting through the remnants of its belongings looking for valuables. Fortunately, the party mentioned their own feud with Strahd.
Lazlo's shade was tied to the village for all eternity because he took the life of a girl named Marina before she could fall to the depredations of Strahd. The vampire lord then flooded the village. When the party asked about Marina, the ghost gave an exact description of Ireena Kolyana. Tathora mentioned that they had removed Marina from Strahd's grasp forever. The ghost only partially believed her, but it was enough for him to point them towards Baba Lysaga's hut built on the stump of a very large tree.
The PCs approached the shack, which had an upside down giants skull in front of the front door. Inside they saw ramshackle furniture bolted to the floor, and a crib bearing a cherubic looking baby not bolted to the floor. An old lady was singing lullabies to the child. Amrus asked who she was. The old lady leered at the party and replied, "I've been expecting you." She then called for her "children," and what was possibly the hardest battle the group has been through (so far) commenced.
High level spell casters are brutal. First off, she has scrying on her list. This is the DM's excuse to have an NPC know exactly how the party will fight and plan accordingly. Second, she casts at 16-th level. So she can open with some seriously deadly spells. Third, her hut, with the mystic gem she stole from the Martikovs in it, is a Creature in and of itself, and a brutal one.
Baba Lysaga opened with power word: stun targeted at the fire wielding Lop. She didn't want him burning her scare crows before they could join the fray. Fortunately for Lop, she rolled very poorly on initiative, so Lop had taken a turn and had his reaction available to cost counterspell. It involves a little bit more than spending two blue mana. He needed to make a caster check with a DC of 10 + the spell's level--in this case 18. The diviner power is very handy for these moments sometimes. He had rolled a 19, so used that roll to guarantee his defense.
In the meantime, while the scarecrows slowly closed in (slowed down by the boggy terrain), the hut wailed on the PCs still outside. This proved a bit disastrous, because Baba Lysaga's next move was to cast finger of death at the already weakened Tathora. Going without tanks is a Bad Idea. Being without a healer is a Worse Idea. But the PCs got in their licks, too. Cugel managed an incredible 53 damage with a lightning bolt and also cast one of his newest spells, blight on Baba Lysaga.
Now we come to question from the title: how do you deal with a Creature that is also a building the characters can enter? Fortunately the hut didn't need to move; it already had its targets conveniently crowded around it. But the party did cram themselves into the hut. Under the theory that nothing would willingly punch itself in the gut or face, I made this a safe area. Other DMs would probably have cooked up a system for the PCs to enter the now mobile hut, but with the challenge (both in the difficulty and number of the monsters) presented to both the party and to me (lots of monsters and spell casters are hard to run) I opted to have them just enter the hut. The last question was one of area spells. Cugel and Ap's lightning bolts hit the hut and scarecrows outside, leaving sizeable holes in the walls. I'm a DM in a more narrative school, and I enjoy cinematic play, so that was how I ran it. Other DMs might have been more simulationist or strict, but I ran it my way.
The team was wise a focused fire on the deadly, deadly spell caster, dropping her before she could unleash some of her other deadly, deadly spells (like the aforementioned blight).
A few other things happened once they were in the hut with the scarecrows approaching. Poor Blake, playing Amrus like a CRPG character, decided to loot the chest in the hut before the fight was over. Also before searching it for traps. Glyph of warding is a heck of a spell. It blasted everyone in the hut with thunder damage and dropped Ap. The team was down their healer and one of their blasters.
However, with the hut squirming around and the party inside, they noticed an important clue: the crib and the baby, whom Baba Lysaga referred to as "Strahd," was an illusion. And a green light was coming up from the floorboards under it. Without any strength-based characters to pry up the floorboards, they used a spell to open it. In this case, Cugel used lightning bolt. The spell probably shouldn't have worked that way, but as I said, I'm sucker for those cinematic moments. And once they took the gem out, the hut stopped moving. Yes. The hut was a puzzle boss.
This gave them some time to revive the party as the scarecrows finally closed in. Lop used potions of healing to revive first Ap then Tathora. She then used her channel divinity followed by mass healing word to bring everyone's hit points back up to respectable. In the meantime, Cugel, Ap, and Lop climbed through one of those holes blasted in the side of the hut to climb to the roof to snipe at the scarecrows.
Scarecrows are among the weaker constructs in the game. One did manage to reach the hut and hit Amrus, inflicting him with an appropriate fear related status effect.
After that long battle with the area's "boss" monsters, the PCs had the gem the Martikovs needed. It was also late enough it was time to call it.
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