Ravenloft II

Session 2: Angels and Demons (18^th April 2018)

The Party

Bernard – Human Cleric

Grumbold – Dwarf Paladin

Malfeseus – Elf Rogue

Meegosh – Gnome Wizard

Millie – Half-Orc Barbarian

Wraith - possibly copyrighted, from the internet - owner please contact me if you do not feel my use of it is fair

From the Diary of Meegosh Krackle

The Tower of the Paragons (Day 1 - addendum)

In my haste to record our amazing adventures last time I took out my diary, I missed a few items. Nothing important I should warrant but none-the-less I shall summarise the points here…

It was actually some chappie called Sir Gareth Puresword who put the kibosh on the dark lord; the priests were only brought in to purify the land – they don’t seem to have done a very good job in my opinion. The witches managed to scrape together the entrails of the dark lord and scatter them for burial throughout the land, perhaps in the vain hope they could bring him back from his remains? Bunkum and fairy stories as far as I can tell, no logic to it whatsoever. Still, I guess our intrepid band will become involved in some quest later on to find all these gribbly bits to stop the return of the dark lord. If I found them, I would probably just incinerate them and be done with it. Anyway, back to the tale...

We appeared on another plaque in another room, presumably one floor up from the level we had just left. Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing as the walls, floors and ceilings were all made of stone and there were no windows or arrow slits for us to look out of to gauge our whereabouts. What appeared to be a library was in a sorry state of affairs; tables and chairs overturned, books spilt from the shelves and a sense of damp, mould and decay prevailed. Grumbold and I set about righting a few items but to no avail as that great bear, Gur, proceeded to trash a table or two in his wild perambulations.

I managed to find an eerily intriguing book entitled “Ravenloft: Demi-Plane of Dread” and sat down to discover its contents. Whilst reading said tome, the others continued to stir about in the detritus and throw books at each other. I am not one for such sacrilege, but each to their own I suppose. I was happy to indulge their whims but being bonked on the back of the head with a heavy book is not my idea of fun. It was only then that I realised we were not alone. A strange ghostly apparition seemed to flit around the room for a while before returning to its lair within the walls.

Once we had discovered there was not much else to this room we tried to trip another of those plaques to move onwards but it seemed that only our dwarf companion could do so – was it because he tripped the first one and subsequently only he could do so again or, after a little study of the plaque, was it due to the divine code he followed?

The third level of the tower was a little better kept; dusty and musty yes, but there was still no sign of the tapestry we had been tasked to find. Malfeseus and I managed to espy a casket that would require further study but we were rudely interrupted by the appearance of four gaseous forms. The party sprang in to action but it appeared that most of their blows were either non-effective or only caused a minor irritation to the beings. Even our goodly cleric’s admonitions seemed not to have any effect. Once again it was down to poor little Meegosh to rescue them. A few lightning bolts and a very brave, and might I say insightful, move lured some of them away to split the apparitions between levels. My bouncing between the two levels of the tower was just enough to give the others a chance to finish off what I had started. It also gave Malfeseus and me the opportunity to investigate the casket (nothing of interest in it unfortunately) and get to know each other better.

After all that action, many of us had taken a few injuries. Where these corporeal beings touched us, our flesh turned necrotic; not nice. I decided to keep us all safe and conjured up my little magical safe place (a small magical hut) so that we could rest and recover from our ordeals. We all managed to grab a bit of sleep and heal up but our dreams were troubled. Grumbold seemed more affected than the rest of us; he no longer took to grumbling about our shortcomings and seemed a little more introverted. This was by no means a bad thing from my point of view. He can be such a sanctimonious grump sometimes: but I am beginning to like him all the more for it nevertheless.

Tower of Paragons (Day 2)

After our rest we pushed on to the next level. Again, the plate required Grumbold to activate it. We appeared in what seemed to be a man’s bedroom. The place was dusty and musty smelling and as there was no other plaque on the floor to another level assumed this was our final destination. We all set about looking for clues to the missing tapestry and the tower’s guardian angel (I forgot to mention that this place was supposed to be guarded by an angelic being but from what I had seen so far that is a most absurd notion – what angel would suffer a wraith to live?). Malfeseus called to our attention that the tapestry was most likely the one hung above the great four-poster bed that dominated the room; the four-poster bed that had an angelic occupant who, when we looked at him, began to rise.

Well, I for one was not taken in by the ruse. As we looked at this so-called angelic being, all the goodness dripped away from it to reveal some kind of fallen angel. Grumbold and Millie charged straight in to deal with the demon, and I fired off a lightning bolt to see what that would do. The demon soon recognised its mortal foe and proceeded to hunt me down. It slashed me with its great sword and followed me to the Ethereal plane just to get at its true enemy. Now, I am not embarrassed to say I was rather scared and the sight of all that blood (my own) made me completely faint away.

Bernard, our cleric, managed to conjure up some magic that brought me out of my daze so I could get up and finish off the diabolic being. The final straw was Bernard throwing a book at it - the being whimpered and collapsed in upon itself, leaving just a cloak and an amulet behind.

We gathered up what treasures we could find and returned to Carlian’s abode. We recounted our tale over some rather tasty roasted rodents (at least I hope they were) and I used my powers of divination to work out that the amulet would be a most welcome asset for our resident priest as it would improve his healing abilities. Carlian also did some divination of his own and mentioned two persons who had arrived on this plane just before we did; a certain Hammerstein and his accomplice lord Frack.

We still had most of what passes for a day on this plane ahead of us, so we headed on towards the next location of our quest; the town of Pureforge, located on the moorlands to the north. We managed to cover a great distance before we set up camp for the night in my little magical hut. Again, our dreams were fraught with impure deeds but we all managed to get fully rested except for our trusty paladin Grumbold.

Onto Pureforge (Day 3)

After another fitful night, Grumbold was reduced to a stumble. He just could not keep up with the rest of the party; so much for the stamina of dwarfs eh? Every now and then Millie plonked him onto Gur to rest whilst we trudged onwards. Unfortunately we could only cover half the distance of the previous day before I needed to set up camp again.

It was during Grumbold’s watch that things began to happen again…