While they waited for the rest of the group to trickle into the Vistani camp, Ambrus and Kharn went to talk to the dusk elves. It was clear that they recognized Ambrus although he recognized none of them. Evidently, he’d been missing for a year. Eventually, he was directed to the king who lived in a hobbit hole-like home that was slightly less grubby than the rest. (Brian reminded Jon that Strahd had bragged to Ambrus that Strahd had killed all the female dusk elves in the land as a demonstration of power.) The king gave him some tidbits of information one of which was that he had had a dagger in his procession that he thought could actually kill the vampire. He doesn’t have it now. And that he hung out with a former Vistani (i.e. one that is passing for a non Vistani) by the name of Esmeralda. When asked about his heirloom tattoos, he said it looked like dwarf work, not elf and he should talk to the Vistani potion maker.
And then Zolton asked around about his heirloom pocket watch. He had become convinced that it was not in fact from his grandfather nor the Morning Lord and had evil intent. He was advised to break the connection as soon as possible. One time when Ambrus handled it, he could feel the connection lessen so he decided to try that again. After getting away from the camp for fear of mishap, Ambrus did manage to break the connection. His key tattoo glowed with power. When he touched the key to the lock tattoo on his head, he gained the knowledge on how to destroy it. Take it to holy ground and do an 8-hour ceremony spell. We knew the church was holy ground and knew that spell so it seemed doable. Ambrus cautioned that it must be done carefully and not interrupted. Zolton wanted to know if the Mind Flayer worm was still inside. After more precautions, it was determined that it did not.
Next, we went to the potion maker who lived in the ruins of the city outside of the wall. She had some actual potions for sale and several bought some healing ones. More questions were asked about the watch and the tattoos but no extra information was revealed. Kharn was looking to sell the Yeti skin, worth 2000 gp, and buy the Frostbrand greatsword in one of the shops in town since he had given his Holy Avenger sword to the Paladin. She would not give him the full value in gold, only trade, but he did commission her to act as an intermediary between the two. That way we wouldn’t have to sneak back in and then back out again. That worked although we had to wait until the next day. Her price was for us to free her sister from a hag in a village to the south. It wasn’t really on the way but we could do a monastery, winery, village swing, and return here, hopefully with the sister.
Zolton also commissioned her to pick up his book and armor when it was ready. I believe his words were, “I may not return as the road is dangerous, and I want to make sure the craftsmen are paid for their work.” And Kaladin was finally able to buy his alchemy kit. By the way, Loki noticed he had two new large bones in his bag. When he consumed one, he turned into a medium-sized two head wolf. Much more substantial than the forest creatures he’s had access to so far. However, he also heard a voice in his head saying “Good boy”. Not sure what that meant but it didn’t sound good. No boon in this place comes without a price or at least a risk. It was not the voice of Strahd or the Druid who uplifted him, he thought.
We finally made it on the road. At the first crossroad, we had the option to go by a tower that neither native knew anything about. But we elected to stay on the road to the monastery. Assuming the map was accurate. About dusk we came upon a wrecked Vistani wagon and two bodies on the road. We advanced with caution and eventually noticed to the south, a small body (child) on a sacrifice stone in the middle of a Stonehenge-like circle of stones. There were also two burning urns. When the invisible Ambrus, who took Brian at his word and was ignoring the movement rates, approached the stone, two Fire Elementals appeared from the urns. Unfortunately, since they couldn’t see Ambrus, they attacked the nearest foe, Kaladin. A fight ensued. Once again, we faced a foe that was resistant to non-magical weapons. (Dan: Kaladin found they took normal damage versus cold. Yay, his level 5 ability allows him to reroll 1's with cold damage.) If they hit, the person was lit on fire, taking 1d10 of damage until he spent an action to put himself out. As we saw in the Elemental Evil game, there’s no point in doing that since you’ll likely be lit up again next round. There were a couple of ponds that if you could get to, would reduce it to a bonus action. It was a pretty even match. Ambrus decided to attack the urn, hoping their presence in this dimension was somehow linked to it. The first blow did very little damage but the Elemental certainly noticed. Lord Q put up a Wall of Water in there somewhere. But when Ambrus went again, he scored a good hit and one of the Elementals disappeared. Hurray.
And in its place arose a Balrog (Dan: Balor per D&D. The DM admitted that the elementals weren't giving us the challenge he wanted so at 11:30 PM he pulled a Balor out of his ass.). Boo. That is a greater demon and well above our pay grade. We had faced foes that we were not expected to possibly defeat several times before and I think we assumed this was another one. However, because we were in difficult terrain, it had wings and as it turns out could teleport at will and appeared right in the middle of the current fight, there was really no hope of getting away. So, its to-hit was so high, it could hardly miss. It had a 5d6+8 whip and a 3d8 sword. Anyone that started near it took fire damage. Its saves were high and it had advantage on all of them so spells weren’t going to much use. And it was resistant to lots of stuff including, of course, nonmagical weapons again. (Dan: He was resistant to cold but not acid. Kaladin can't rerol 1's on acid so he was bummed out.) We were in for the fight of our lives. However, once the last fire Elemental was killed, it was all of us against it.
So, there were two things that saved us. One was that we rolled extremely well with lots of crits. This was helped greatly by the fact that now that we were 5th, everyone was getting multiple attacks and therefore multiple chances to crit. And Kharn was giving all the meleers advantage which also boosted the odds. Ezera’s crits were critical. With his Holy Avenger sword and his smites, all of that got doubled on a crit. He did 85 points in one round and was routinely doing 30-40+ on normal hits. Ambrus did a crit backstab and Lord Q had all his hex dice all of which were doubled as well. We were dishing out a ton of damage. The other thing was that Brian misread one of its powers. It was supposed to do 3d6 of fire each time it was hit with a melee attack but Brian played it as each time it hit. Despite the fact that it never missed and did tons of damage, it only got 2 hits a round. But on our side, we were hitting multiple times per character. If we took damage each time, we would have been dead pretty quick. We joked that Kaladin would have been taking more damage than he was doing.
So, after the first round, it attempted to gate in help and thankfully it missed that roll. After the second round, Ezera had been dropped however Zolton poured a cure potion down him and he was up in time for his next holy swing. After 3 rounds, it was dropped. However, as a parting shot, it exploded for 69 points of damage. Everyone but the NPC was within that 30 area. Kharn and Kaladin saved (Dan: Kaladin did not save but takes half damage from fire and cold. After 24 points he had 14 left. I think that the highest in the group) and with their fire resistance, managed to stay up. The rest were knocked out if they saved or killed instantly if they did not. (If you go negative your max hit points in one blow, you are killed instantly.) I think that was Ambrus, Lord Q, Ezera and Zolton. However, upon recalculations... We had to add the Paladin’s save bonuses. Ezera had his shield feat which if he could make a dex roll, took none. We used all our inspirations. (Tragically we had “wasted” a bunch of inspiration dice on skill challenges last time trying to get out of the city.) When the dust settled, only Zolton was left on the dead list. He missed his save reroll and there were no inspirations left. So, Brian said that he had heroically placed himself in front of the NPC and the rescued child. And was disintegrated. The optimistic can hope that he returned to his home plain. (Dan: The DM said that he expected this to be a party wipe and us having to use the time reset. Kind of annoying since it was just spontaneously tossed at us but typical Cthulu/Ravenloft I guess. Zolton was given the option to have us pay to resurrect him or accept permadeath with heroism. I think he was getting frustrated by being hunted by the city, so he will be making a new character, hopefully, one not having to skulk through the city). By then it was after 1AM and we called it a night. I guess we’ll short rest and then long rest since it was sunset. And hope we live until morning.
