Session 17 — The Wine Is Poison and the Toys Are Worse

Session 17 — The Wine Is Poison and the Toys Are Worse

The party found themselves in a winery they had cleared of exterior threats, which meant it was time to discover the interior threats. The wine was poisoned. The toys were Blinsky's. Something large with an oddly large head was moving in the tree line. Nobody could identify it with a 21. The DM described this as a very unique creature.

What Happened

The session opened mid-loot, with the party redistributing themselves across two floors and a veranda while the DM confirmed their positions on the patchwork map. The first order of business was the Gulthias Staff — a spongy black staff taken from one of the Session 16 druids, which was clarified to have 10 charges of vampiric strike, heal the wielder for damage dealt, ooze red blood from its pores when charges are spent, and require a DC 12 Wisdom save against short-term madness with each charge. The party also noted that attunement makes blights and evil plant creatures non-hostile, which has obvious uses in a winery run by blights. The staff went into the party inventory.

The second druid's body yielded a goatskin gown, a headdress with goat horns, and a necklace of human teeth. The necklace was admired and set aside. The gown and headdress were taken. The party was briefly joined by scores of ravens perched in the fermentation vat room rafters. Sable Burrowbane rolled a 23 on Insight and confirmed the ravens had no ulterior motives. They were just watching. The ravens have not been given a reason to not watch.

Sable tapped one of the four enormous fermentation vats using her personal cup. The wine looked fine. She drank it. She took seven poison damage and rolled a 17 Constitution save. The DM told her not to drink the wine.

The veranda held three grape-stomping tubs, their insides stained with old juice. When Brother Moro went outside and rolled a 17 Perception, something moved at the edge of the tree line — humanoid, medium-sized, moving fast, gone before he could see it clearly. The party attributed this to David and his companions, who were still presumably waiting in the woods. The DM did not confirm or deny this.

The party located a door barricaded from their side — a sliding wooden door along the north wall with a padlock on the chain. Sable picked the padlock at DC 26. The door opened to a grape-stomping veranda. The party had been five feet from the obvious answer the whole time. They solved the veranda puzzle the hard way, as was noted aloud by Sable.

Moving upstairs through the spiral staircase, the party found themselves in a workers' quarters: two bunk rooms with four identical footlockers each, personal belongings, some toys scattered on the floor. One of those toys was a wooden rocking horse. Its horse was black with wild eyes, painted orange flames where the mane, tail, and hooves should be. Merich rolled a 9 to inspect it and read: Bocephalus. No fun is no Blinsky. Blinsky had gotten here first, as he always does. The child who owned it had probably grown up fine.

The adjacent room contained a printing press. Celeste investigated. The ink was wine. She licked it and confirmed this, which was how she found out. The cabinet in the room held a key on a loop of twine. She took the key.

The room Sable and Brother Moro opened next had a druid in it. The druid had been waiting. She was caked in enough mud and moss that her face was a question mark. She was also in the middle of going through the room's contents and haphazardly throwing things on the floor, which she was not going to stop doing just because adventurers had arrived. Behind her stood two vine blights — creatures entirely made of animated vine, which the DM distinguished from the needle and twig variants through description and by pointing at different tokens.

Brother Moro used Wholeness of Body to recover 7 hit points, ran in, punched the druid in the mouth (19 hit), punched her again (14 hit, DC 15 Strength save, failed), grappled her, dragged her into the hallway, and punched her twice more in the hallway. Total damage: 35 points. She survived. She had experienced a meaningful decrease in her quality of life.

Sable shot two arrows at the druid (19 hit, 11 damage; 28 with sneak attack, 11 damage), finished her, then ran past Moro and put an offhand shot into one of the vine blights (26 hit, 5 damage) before retreating to the hallway. The vine blight responded by casting entangling plants — 15-foot radius, DC 12 Strength save or restrained for non-plants. Everyone in range needed to save. Brother Moro failed. Sable and Celeste did not. The cat (Stanley's familiar, staying downstairs on cat-to-catwalk surveillance duty, not involved) was unaffected. Stanley made his save with the help of Merich's protective aura.

Brother Moro used his action to break free (12 on the Strength check — exactly 12). The vine blight hit him for 9 bludgeoning and attempted to grapple him again; he failed the save and was restrained a second time. Celeste opened with Eldritch Blast on the first vine blight (14 hit, 12 damage — the blight unraveled into slithering vines and stopped animating). Then hit the second with her remaining beam (12 hit, 8 damage). Merich attacked with a green flame blade (19 hit, 13 damage to the druid's position and 8 splash to the nearby blight), second hit missed. Stanley ran 20 feet forward and pounced (23 hit, double ones for damage plus 5 — 7 damage), which was enough to finish the second vine blight. Merich described how Stanley did it. It involved claws through an eye socket and subsequent play behavior with the severed head.

The druid from this encounter had nothing of note. Mud, moss, twigs.

The master bedroom was next. Four-poster bed with a headboard carved as a giant raven. Black rug. Two wardrobes — one women's, one men's. A tapestry of a church. A rocking cradle. A desk holding wine shipment manifests going back a century. A locked chest.

Merich examined the desk records. The manifests recorded shipments to: BV (Blood on the Vine Tavern, village of Barovia), BW K (Blue Water Inn, Vallaki), Vistani, and further back, entries marked S, FR. He also caught something moving at the tree line through the window — humanoid, oddly large head, darted back into the trees before a better look was possible. He rolled a 21 on the History check and learned nothing. The creature was, again, described as very unique.

Sable picked the locked chest (a 24 on the check). Inside: 50 gold, 270 silver, 350 copper — each coin stamped with the profile of Strahd von Zarovich, which was compared to a situation where every dollar bill had a particular face on it. Sable also rolled a 27 on Perception and noticed the lid had a secret compartment. Inside the compartment: a Gold Locket (Winery) worth 25 gold containing a painted portrait of a beautiful woman, and a pouch of five gemstones worth an additional 250 gold. The party was, technically, robbing the household of the people they had come to rescue.

The party regrouped and descended to the cellar via the barrel ramp. The turret ramp bore scratch marks from routine barrel-rolling. Sable cast Speak with Animals and checked in with Stanley. Sable rolled a 22 Active Perception on entering the cellar.

Something moved behind an eastern wine rack. Through the gaps, the party glimpsed half a dozen humanoid figures, one with a full rack of antlers. A gravelly voice began speaking the words of a spell.

Brother Moro went first (initiative 20). He ran up and punched a needle blight in the face (nat 20 grapple, DC 15 Strength save — nat 1, failed; 12 damage). Second attack hit for 6 more. Flurry: 10 did not hit; second flurry connected for 6 — total 24 damage, needle blight killed, exploded in a shower of needles. Moro made the DC 12 save. Two down in one turn.

The needle blight he was standing next to tried to hit him back, and could not. The druid cast Thunderwave: shattered 22 wine bottles as incidental set dressing, then hit Moro for 8 thunder damage, pushed him back 10 feet. The druid spent two Thunderwaves during the fight (see below).

Sable used Hunter's Mark on the druid (bonus action), emerged from hiding, shot twice (22 hit, 6 damage plus 5 Force from Hunter's Mark; second shot, 14 to hit — missed), then hid again (Stealth 23). A needle blight rolled a nat 20 Perception and saw through it regardless — rolled a 21 against Sable's 23, stayed hidden. A second needle blight shot Sable for 14 damage on the hit that connected.

The druid cast Thunderwave again on Merich, Moro, and Stanley. All three got half damage on their saves (Merich 26, Moro 14, Stanley 15 — all halved from 14 thunder to 7 each).

Sable stepped out and fired three shots at the druid (25 hit, 6 piercing; 23 hit, 8 piercing; 26 hit, 7 damage). The druid died with one hit point after the second shot and used the third to confirm this.

Celeste's Eldritch Blast cleared two more needle blights. Merich's green flame blade and Stanley's claw cleared the rest — Stanley finishing his with a flanking claw attack (20 hit, 10 damage), and Celeste scoring a critical hit on the last needle blight with Eldritch Blast (double damage, 12 total plus 4), with Merich making the resulting explosion save (16, passed).

The druid's gear: a headdress sporting giant antlers.

The session ended with the winery interior fully cleared. The DM confirmed the inside of the winery was clean of threats. The party discussed options for a short or long rest, noting the doors were open. The DM confirmed this was a possibility to pursue.

The DM also noted she had a fun weird thing planned that had not occurred yet, and would occur next session. The party found this description perfectly reassuring.

Key Decisions

NPCs Met

Locations Visited

Items Found

Loose Threads