When we last left our heroes, they had killed the ancient Baba Lysaga and recovered the Martikov's magic grape growing gems from her "Not Baba Yaga's Hut at All" hut.
This week, Joseph and Blake weren't feeling well. So they were missing a rogue and one of their blasters, but they had a tankish character in the form of Sarra.
While random encounters had been few on some of their more recent journeys, this one proved to be an exception. While taking the gem back to the vineyard and winery, the ran into Kasimir Velikov, the leader of the dusk elves, surrounded by needle blights at the Luna River Crossroads not far from Vallaki. This was really a curb stomp battle. The blights really couldn't provide an adequate threat to a group of 8th level adventurers. Of course, the players ought to enjoy the benefits of being high level. Like steam rolling encounters that might have been challenging at one point.
Velikov told the characters he had learned that Strahd discovered the secrets of Undeath in a place called the Amber Temple high in the Tsolenka Pass on Mount Ghakis. He wanted to visit the place, hoping that there he could learn the secrets of returning his sister, whose soul has been imprisoned in Strahd's castle, to life. Since, naturally, sometimes you gotta do an escort mission, he wanted the PCs to accompany him. The group agreed, and they set off.
First they needed to return the gem to vineyard. Along the way they found another bundle of clothes hidden by a lycanthrope. They also met a group of Vistani at the Raven River crossroads, but the party declined their offer of guides.
They returned the gem to the vineyard and Damian Martikov rejoined the group for the next leg of their journey up Tsolenka Pass. For the most part, the journey was uneventful. They found another hidden bundle of clothes. At Lop's insistence, they had Damien examine it, and he instructed the PCs on markings left by members of the Order of the Feather when they hide their supplies, so the party could distinguish between clothes left by wereravens from ones left by werewolves. Later, thanks to Sarra, they spotted a hunting trap hidden in the road. Lop set it off with a stick, and the journey continued.
Tsolenka pass is everything a mountain pass ought to be: cold, misty, and snowy. It also proved to the home of a giant goat that Kasimir identified for the party as Sangzor, an old terror plaguing the mountain pass. The goat's schtick is to ram a party member and push them off the narrow mountain path and into the ravine. Unfortunately, it rolled last for initiative, so a pelting from the party killed it before it could make its charge. Still, if it had succeeded, a hundred foot drop is 10d6 damage. Still in the realm of debilitating or deadly to 8th level characters.
They reached a gate house and wall in the pass with an old guard tower just beyond. The portcullis in the gate house opened with a screeching of metal as they approached, but the archway beyond was filled with green flame. Not sure how to handle the flame, the party dallied. After a minute, the portcullis closed.
Here's the hint: yes that green flame was going to be damaging, but probably not as troublesome as what ended up happening. Cugel used levitate to reach the top of the wall, then slung a rope for everyone to climb over. Once the party was passed the gatehouse, two stone figures of vulture-like humanoids came to life as vrocks and attacked.
Vrocks, sometimes called vulture demons (since that's what they look like), are demons. These are the first fiends the PCs have met. And in fact, I think these are the first fiends this group of players has squared off with ever--they didn't play through Out of the Abyss. They can fly, have plenty of hit points, and can hit pretty hard. They have two schticks: a stunning screech, which they opened with that proved surprisingly uneffective, stunning only Damian, and a cloud of nasty, icky spores. This managed to poison Lop and Tathora. Of course, being a bad DM, I missed something important in their stat block.
I did note they have magic resistance. In previous editions, this meant they have a chance to ignore a lot of offensive spells just out of hand. No longer. That feature simply gives them advantage on saving throws against spells. It makes them less likely to be fully effected by certain offensive spells, but perfectly susceptible to spell attacks.
But I missed an important bit: Kasimir opened with a fireball, because not all escort subjects are weak and useless. It was a surprisingly effective opener. He rolled decent damage and one of the vrocks actually failed its save. However, they had, in addition to being resistant to non-magical weapon attacks, resistance to fire. I skimmed that on their stat block because those two types of resistances used to be sorted in completely different parts of the stat block. In my own defense, I'm also playing in a 3.5 game and a Pathfinder game, so I read a few too many stat blocks to keep all the formatting straight.
I did catch it. But only to reduce the fire damage on a fire bolt spell on the last vrock. It really only made it so it took one more attack to kill it. That said, aside from turning away good old fashioned fireballs, that resistance was probably also to discourage tactical minded PCs from relying two much on pushing the things through the wall of fire. Actually, I'm surprised no one thought to try that.
When we return, they'll continue their trek up Tsolenka Pass. Who knows, maybe one of them will catch frostbite?
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