Recap: Entering Death House

After having been lost in the mist, sunrise showed the trail beneath the party's feet. The rutted trail was clear and straight, though all were exhausted from the exertions of the night before. Black pools of water stood like dark mirrors in and around the muddy roadway. Giant trees loomed on either side of the road, their branches clawing at the mist. After about a mile the party came over a slight rise. Looking back from the top of the hill, the fog spilt out of the forest to swallow up the road behind them. Ahead, jutting from the impenetrable woods on both sides of the road, were high stone buttresses looming gray in the fog. Huge iron gates hung on the stonework. Dew clung with cold tenacity to the rusted bars. Two headless statues of armed guardians flanked the gate, their heads lie among the weeds at their feet. They greeted you only with silence. Approaching within 30 of the gates caused them to swing open, screeching as the hinges moved. The gates closed behind the party after they passed through. This gave a sense of foreboding to some party members, while others were anxious to continue.

The party members who had the highest passive Wisdom (Perception) scores caught the scent of death on the air. The foul scent led you to a human corpse half-buried in the underbrush about fifteen feet from the road. The young man appeared to be a commoner. His muddy clothes were torn and raked with claw marks. Crows had been at the body, which was surrounded by the paw prints. The man had obviously been dead for several days. He held a crumpled envelope in one hand. Kai examined the paw prints, but had never seen a wolf so big as to make prints like these, though he was sure they were not the werewolf tracks the party had been following all night. The envelope from the hand of the corpse was taken. After a few minutes of everyone examining the contents and discussing what to do, a lone wolf howled far off in the forest. Each round, one more wolf added its voice to the howling, with the sound appearing to be no more than a third of a mile from the party. As these weren't the tracks of the Lycan they were after, the party finally decided to continue their journey west.

Finally exiting from the Forest, an individual was seen coming out of the river that was so clearly heard to the south. After some conversation, the cleric noticed his holy symbol and advised the party to let him come along. As they spoke to this oddly colored individual, they found out much about his interesting history. Feeling that their exhaustion would soon get the better of them, the party walked as fast as they could to the west. About the time that they felt they could go no further, tall shapes loomed out of the dense fog that surrounded everything. The muddy ground underfoot gave way to slick, wet cobblestones. The tall shapes became recognizable as village dwellings. The windows of each house stared out from pools of blackness. No sound cut the silence except for a mournful sobbing that echoed through the streets from a distance.

Wanting to continue toward the center of town and the source of the forlorn sobbing heard upon entering the village, the party was blocked by the mysterious mist that had plagued them since last night. The only path not inundated with this demonic fog was a gravel road leading north, its tall houses dark as tombstones. Not liking the look of this Mist at all, Dukus offered a prayer to his Lord and was blessed with divine sense of the land and all within a certain distance of himself. He was shocked when he realized that this entire land was somehow desecrated. Something was then seen scurrying across the road at the edge of the torchlight to the north. The party walked closer and heard a soft whimpering that drew their eyes toward a pair of children standing in the middle of the otherwise lifeless street. The children were ten-year-old Rosavalda (“Rose”) and her seven-year-old brother, Thornboldt (“Thorn”), not that you found that out from them. Thorn was weeping and clutching a stuffed doll. Rose was trying to hush the boy. As the characters approached the children, everyone saw that after shushing the boy, the girl turned to the party and said in a refined accent, “There’s a monster in our house!” She then pointed to a tall brick row house that had seen better days. Its windows were dark. It had a gated portico on the ground floor, and the rusty gate was slightly ajar. The houses on either side were abandoned, their windows and doors boarded up.

Durst House

While there wasn't a great deal of combat in the Durst house, Gothic Horror being more about suspense, there was an animated suit of plate mail you defeated. Also a Specter and a broom of animated attack. Most of your time in the house wasn't spent fighting, but being scared of what lie beyond the next turn. This is one of the things I love about Curse of Strahd.

After finding the ghost and talking to them, Kai tried to step out of the room after feeling Rose go through him. This only made things worse as she though he was planning on locking her in there agian. She possessed him, though he still retains control of his body. He only gained a new flaw.

*Credit to Andy for the recap.*

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