Episode 25

This is Episode 25 of Dice, Camera, Action.

The Party
(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander

(Erika) Dee - Human Fighter

(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer

(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue

The heroes are now 7th level. Strix has her first fourth level spell - dimension door.

Recovery
The heroes check out the severed vistani head in Van Richten's chest. Van Richten says he casts speak with dead on it. The head belongs to a vistani named Yan.

Van Richten wants to turn the Strahd doll into a magical receptacle. They are going to need the blood of a vistani to make this happen.

Anna trolls Chris by asking Paultin for a song. Chris evades. The group rests. Diath is on the ball! He asks Dee to keep an eye on Paultin's shadow. The night passes without incident.

The wolf hunter NPCs, Zoldar and Yevgeni, are outside. They've been outside all night! They had been wounded during the witch battle. Yevgeni is dead.

Szoldar demands that Van Richten bring him back to life. Van Richten says that Yevgeni can't be brought back - Yevgeni didn't have a soul. He was a Barovian soul shell.

Evelyn doesn't believe that some Barovians don't have a soul. The group offers to bury Yevgeni.

The adventurers loot the dead witches. The man-witch has a potion of polymorph on him. Strix loots a witch hat. It has three snails on it. She asks Dee to name them and then immediately eats one. The other two snails are named Slooey and Gooey.

Ezmerelda's Wagon
The group decides to check out Ezmerelda's wagon, which is parked just outside of the tower. Diath starts messing with the door. Strix checks for traps. Chris points out she'd need the detect magic spell to really know if there's a trap.

Diath checks the lock. The whole group is right there by the door. He rolled well, but he doesn't detect the real trap inside. He opens the door to the wagon.

Inside the wagon, there is a wire looped around the doorknob. It snaps. A flask drops to the floor and bursts into flames, which ignites 100 more of these flasks lining the wagon walls. The entire wagon blows up and there's a massive explosion!

Looks like the whole group made their saving throws. Strix is a tiefling, so she only takes half damage from fire.

The NPCs fare poorly. Szoldar, the wolf hunter dies in the explosion and Van Richten is down! Evelyn heals Van Richten with lay on hands.

Chris goes into excruciating detail on all of the stuff that was destroyed. The group is quite perturbed about all of the loot they missed out on. There was even a chicken in there. Now it's dead.

Van Richten's Journal
In the flaming wreckage, Strix finds a page of Van Richten's journal. Strix reads it out loud.

The group learns about Van Richten's past: Van Richten says that this will be his last vampire hunt. He's old. Evelyn thinks everyone should hold hands and sing a hymn.
 * Vistani abducted Van Richten's son, Erasmus.
 * They sold Erasmus to a vampire named Baron Metus.
 * His son became a vampire spawn, and Van Richten had to kill him.
 * Metus killed Van Richten's wife in retaliation.
 * Van Richten killed Metus and became a vampire hunter.
 * Van Richten is cursed by a vistani. He brings doom to all that he befriends.

Van Richten insists that they rest. He heals the adventurers to full hit points. The day goes by, and at night the group goes to sleep. Diath is taking watch and notices that there's something outside.

Something slips an envelope through the floorboard beneath them. It's an invitation. Strahd wants them to come to the castle.

Van Richten tells them not to go. Diath is pretty sure that the vampire who delivered the invitation was Ezmerelda.

Paultin's Blood
The group goes back to sleep. Knowing that the group needs vistani blood, Diath almost cuts the slumbering Paultin to get his blood. He takes the hag pin and immediately starts having visions. The hags from the windmill are urging Diath on. He has second thoughts and decides not to do it.

The next day, Van Richten wakes up and says he had a prophetic dream. The group needs to go find Arabelle, the missing Vistani girl. He says that Dee and Paultin need to stay at the tower. Van Richten says that Paultin can not be trusted.

They leave on foot. The horses are staying with Dee, too.

Dee's alone. Paultin's shadow creeps up behind her. She fails her perception check.

The group goes to the lake an they spot a man in a rowboat. Evelyn flies up to him. He has a burlap sack that looks like there is something in it - a little girl. The guy is about to chuck her into the lake.

Strix dimension doors onto the boat and brings Diath with her. That's where the session ends.