How Dare They Live

**"How Dare They Live"** is the twelfth episode of *From Barovia With Love*, airing on November 1, 2022.

The session was DMed by TanisJr93 and hosted on his channel on Twitch.

## Summary

*...continued from session eleven*
Following the vicious battle against Walter Durst, the party rests shortly to recuperate, and Kasimir commends them for their composure before the group continues southward along a dirt road beside a river. A few hours later, they encounter another group of will-o'-wisps which they successfully avoid, and they continue on for another hour before reaching a bend in the river where they set up camp. As the evening progresses, they begin to hear the distant sounds of battle and see the spectral images of soldiers fighting, and Kasimir explains that some areas that experience vast amounts of suffering become scarred by temporal echoes of the destruction.

A spectral dragon emerges from the mist, soaring through the sky before disappearing over a dark mansion overlooking the river from the top of a steep hill. Vive is unable to cast *Leomund's Tiny Hut*, so the party sets watches after Draven uses his *Divine Sense* to determine that there are no hostile creatures in the immediate area: Kasimir and Shayne take the first watch, Lilly and Vive take the second watch, Avi and Rictavio take the third watch, and Draven and Semyaza take the fourth watch. As the rest of the party settles in for the night, Shayne tells Kasimir about the Tarokka Card Reading conducted by Madam Eva, who indicated that the Dusk Elf might possess a weapon of vengeance.

Kasimir explains that Strahd visited the Dusk Elves centuries ago, and became convinced that Kasimir's sister was the reincarnation of a woman he once loved; the Dusk Elves refused to let Strahd take her, and he retaliated by murdering all of their women and cutting the ears off all of their men. Some time later, Madam Eva visited Kasimir and gave him the remains of the Sunsword, a platinum hilt containing a blue gem, explaining that the weapon is fated to be used in the final battle against Strahd; Kasimir does not believe that he will be the one to wield it, however, expressing the hope that a member of Shayne's party will instead. Kasimir asks how much Shayne trusts Draven, and the Changeling admits that he trusts the paladin with Avi's life.

Lilly and Vive take over watch, and Lilly senses someone watching the party from the ruins of the mansion with curiosity but no maliciousness; Avi and Rictavio later take over watch, and see nothing out of the ordinary. Nearing dawn, Draven wakes to take over watch, relieving himself along the treeline before returning to camp and finding only Lilly and Shayne. He wakes them, and both Shayne and Lilly spot a tall, thin figure on the opposite side of the river dragging three tied bodies into the forest; Lilly promptly casts *Water Walk* to allow the three to run across the river and rush into the woods where they pick up the figure's trail.

As they proceed through the trees, Draven uses his *Divine Sense* to discover hundreds of undead spirits in the area, and Lilly notices movement near a small leather bag that feels heavy but looks empty. Shayne attempts to cast *Light* into the bag, which begins to shake, and he reacts by trying to empty the bag. As he overturns it, a thin arm reaches out of the bag and grabs his arm; he breaks its grasp and drops the bag, and a horrific figure pulls itself out of the bag to reveal itself to be the Bagman. Draven activates his Channel Divinity to *Turn the Unholy*, driving away all of the undead spirits in the forest to leave only the amorphous extradimensional creature.

The Bagman strikes with bite and claw attacks, while Draven retaliates with his greatsword, Lilly transforms into the Starry Form of the Archer, and Shayne delivers devastating *Eldritch Blast* attacks. The creature manages to grapple both the paladin and the druid before Draven succeeds in striking the killing blow, biting the Bagman with his fangs and triggering a vision of the creature's past: he was once an adventurer traveling with a party that faced a being too powerful to defeat, and as his companions were slaughtered, he fled into the sanctuary of his group's Bag of Holding. Becoming lost in the transdimensional realm, his body deformed into an aberration, and he eventually found himself in a plane of portals; crawling through them, he emerged from other bags of holding, and discovered other parties of adventurers, and he became so filled with rage at the deaths of his own companions that he spent years abducting people and dragging them into their bags of holding to watch them die.

As Draven recovers from his vision, Lilly and Shayne retrieve the bag of holding and overturn it, causing Avi, Rictavio, Semyaza, Kasimir, and Vive to tumble out, bound and gagged, along with a vial of black liquid, two potions of healing, and a ruby-hilted black dagger. Lilly and Shayne free their fellow party-members, and Kasimir commends Draven for striking down the Bagman and appears to consider offering the Sunsword to the dhampyr before choosing not to just yet. Draven activates his *Divine Sense* to discover the undead spirits returning, and the party recovers the bag and its contents before fleeing back to the river, where Lilly's *Water Walk* spell remains active.

The group crosses with Vive riding on Lilly's back, but she drops him for making an untoward comment; he hits his head on a rock in the riverbed and Lilly casts *Cure Wounds*, after which Vive asks who the party is. Draven delivers additional *Lay on Hands* by slapping Vive, who promptly admits that he was joking, and the party returns to camp for breakfast.

*continued in session thirteen...*
## Notes

* Avi, Semyaza, and Vive were played by DM TanisJr93 for the session due to NimueOfAvalon, GeekGirlLyssa, and Megquins being unable to play.