Pizazz's Ravenloft and Beyond

Meepo pops away from the battle.  Everyone hears a 'wooaaah' and a wet thud as Meepo lands in the wet and muddy ground beneath the tree.  1 falling damage.   Cursing, he pulls out his crossbow and shoots one of the wolves, mud dripping off of him. 

Mordekai grabs Olin and the two vanish and appear just over twenty feet to the west of the battle.  A thunderous boom rips through the wolves and Ismark. 

W CON:  20. W CON:  11.   W CON:  11.   W CON:  20.   W CON:  14.  W CON:  6.   W CON:  13.   W CON:  6. 

Ismark CON: 6. 

The thunderous boom rips through the wolves, leaving ears ringing, as Ismark is blown forward into the mud, shaking himself and clearing his ears. Every wolf is dead except for one that Lionel quickly hacks down before it can flee. 

With ears still ringing, Lionel helps Ismark to his feet.  People shaking their heads from the blast.  The wolf bodies, burst apart by the thunder, lay scattered about.

(1050xp each for the past couple of battles / scenarios) 

(Let me know if you spend some healing energy on Ismark.)  He appears to have a nasty bite on his calf, the flesh on his cheek. is cracked open and weeping blood, and his nose and ears are bleeding.  He spends a bit of time cleaning the wounds with his own kit in his backpack if sufficient healing can't be applied, before continuing on.  (22 hps of damage). 

He smiles a blood filled toothy grin at Mordekai, "An extreme move, but worth it.  They'd have hurt us more gravely if you hadn't of done it."  He holds out his hand to the tiefling, "Well done, I will take such a blow for the team when I must...to take down Strahd it is worth it." 

The group continues their march south towards the village of Berez.  The trail hugs the river for several miles. The dirt and grass soon turn to marsh as the trail dissolves into spongy earth pockmarked with stands of tall reeds and pools of stagnant water. A thick shroud of fog covers all. The land is filled with massive trees that rise out of the swamp into the foggy abyss above. Scattered throughout the marshy forest are old peasant cottages, their walls covered with black mildew, their roofs mostly caved in. These decrepit dwellings seem to hunker down in the mire, as though they have long since given up on escaping the thick mud. Everywhere you look, black clouds of flies dart about, hungry for blood. The fog cuts how far you can see down to less than 200 feet. The fog is much thinner on the far side of the river, where a light flashes amid a dark ring of standing stones. The river appears to be about 400 feet across, and is brown and sluggish. 

Meepo comes dripping out of the trees.  "Stupid wet..."  He grumbles, as he tries to brush the mud from his cloak and boots.  "Meepo no like wet..." He glances up to the others as he walks back onto the road.

Before party moved any further, Lionel softly touched Izmark's shoulder, letting golden light to cover the him from tip to toe. Wounds closed and stopped bleeding, though some pain remained (20 hp to him). He nodded to warrior's speech - well said, and all the right things mentioned.

"I wonder when this place was indeed the village," broke Lionel silence when they stepped into the misty grave of the former settlement. "and what happened to the people."

River was a surprise, and not of the nice kind - even if they were soaking wet already from the rain and fog, swimming was a different matter, so, Lionel stopped to look around for some means of crossing the water obstacle.

"Do you think the light leads to the witch?" Olin whispers to Lionel, seeing him peer across the river. "We know remarkably little about her..."

"A very, very good point," vigorously nodded Lionel. "I would even say, we came unprepared." He sighed. 'Well, we know she can bring scarecrows to life and sent them to attack others. Guess we will have to go with that." "And I am not sure what worries me more - if the lights in that stone rings are from witchcraft happening right now, or if it is some kind of another un-natural phenomenon."

Mordekai clasps hands with Ismark and shakes it (my first instinct was genuinely to refuse the handshake to avoid spreading diseases...).  "I'm only sorry I couldn't get you out of the damage zone as well."

He turns to regard the flashing light across the river, "Well, it's the one place that stands out from here.  It's either where we need to be going, or it's a trap.  Either way, there's evil to be destroyed, so it seems to be the obvious direction to go in.  I dread to think what manner of things could be lurking in that water though."

Mordekai will look around for any signs of scarecrows.  Perception: 11

"Right. I know we've only been at this for a short time, but with all we've been through you'd think we'd stop charging blindly into danger." Olin looks around for any wildlife, preferably of the avian variety. If he finds any suitable creature he plans to ritually cast speak with animals and try and get some information about the light across the river, the witch, or anything else useful for the situation at hand.

The group doesn't see any scarecrows, or any ways to cross the water near here, though you can spot barely anything through the darned fog.  You could always go back a couple miles to the bridge and bush whack all the way back here.  Would take hours though.  

Olin spots a small Whinchat perched on a nearby bent over reed.  He speaks to it.  The bird looks across the river at the light.  "Raven man in circle of stone. Man is man but also raven. Very strange don't you think.  Most strange.  Lots of strange around here.  There are a bunch of fake men stuffed with feathers, but they move and are bad.  Watch out for those. Lots of snakes in the place filled with stone people who don't move. Watch out for the snakes!!  They'll EAT YOU!  Goats over that way. Human woman around, she is rotten. Stay away from her. Who are you? Why are you here? Hard to walk in part land part water areas like this.  Not many people around here.  Say, if you see any beetles would you let me know. I've been looking all day and haven't found more than a couple, and i like beetles.  There are a bunch of ravens over that way.  They're trapped in cages.  You should rescue them. I think the rotten lady kills them." 

Meepo has Rat fly up and down the shoreline, looking a good distance in both directions for a way to cross the river, or anything else of interest.

Olin thanks the whinchat for all the very helpful information, then, "Which way did you say the caged ravens are? We'll definitely set them free." Olin then says a quiet prayer to Silvanus asking for guidance and looks around for any beetles.

Perception, 12+1

(Assuming a 26 finds at least one beetle...)

Olin points out the beetle(s) he's spotted. "These ones look particularly tasty, don't you think?" After the bird has eaten he beckons the whinchat closer. When it's as close as it will come he whispers, "You asked who we are, why we're here. We are here to free the land of evil and rot. We've already done good work, but there's more to be done. The rotten human woman, she's next. Can you speak to the raven-man across the river? Will you ask him to help us?" Olin gives the whinchat enough information about Urwin, Davian, and the others to identify them as friends of the only other raven-men Olin knows.

The bird eats the beetle, overjoyed, hopping around in happiness.  The it chitters quietly in amusement, "Silly, I don't know how you can talk to me, but I don't speak raven, and raven doesn't understand me!  How do you speak to me, most mysterious. I have a feeling you will free the land of evil!  Great for you!! And all of us!! Thank you!!"

Rat flies up and down the river but doesn't find any crossing nearby. He does pass four old broken down cottages crouched by the river, but they're collapsed down to nothing more than outlines of walls and stone walls to separate the properties.  It's quiet, and dark in the fog. 

Mordekai watches Olin chatter to the bird, feed it some beetles and chatter some more. The bird seems to be responding to him, which fascinates Mordekai. 

"Were you just talking to the bird? Did you get any new information? What would you suggest we do?" 

"Rat find broken buildings, but no bridge." Meepo announces as Rat returns.  "Any idea which way?"  He asks the group.

Olin tells the others everything he learned from the small bird. "Quite helpful, I must say." Olin looks across the river. "If what I suspect is true we might have a potential ally across the river, but I don't know how we get there to find out. We could always yell, but who knows what unwanted attention that might bring..." Olin rubs his temples, wishing he had a cup of tea. "Unless we want to spend the rest of the day backtracking and cutting through forest we can press on into the village to seek the witch. Avoiding the scarecrows and snakes, if we can."

(I so nearly took Fly as a 3rd level spell.)

Mordekai casts Guidance on himself, and moves to the edge of the river to check out the water.  (Wait, how wide is it?  You said 400ft, but you also said the fog cuts our vision down to less than 200ft, and that we can tell the fog is thinner on the other side and can see the flashing light coming from the other side - was the 400ft a typo, or did you just mean that we can only see halfway across the river, but that we could still make out a flashing light through the fog?  Anyway, Mordekai is looking for how deep/fast flowing is the river?  Is the water clean or filthy?  And are there things in it that he can see?)  Investigation: 16 + 4 Guidance

(Would not help - if the river is 400ft - quite the size! - moving one or two members pointless. Lionel can fly but just for a minute, but it's useless here)

"Wait, you mean the bird told the witch is on that side? First good news since the hilt." Lionel contemplated for a moment using the weapon - as a light sourse - but outruled it as too dangerous, if the witch is near by. "Then whatever is happening on the other side can wait. First thing first - let's meet our witch." Paladin was not sure in his ability avoiding anything, but will do his best here.

So, to be clear, the fog on THIS side of the river, where the ruins of the town are, plus the witch, imprisoned ravens, snakes and scarecrows, cuts vision to 150 feet.

However, over the river and on the other side, the fog is much thinner and you can see 500 feet.  The river is 400 feet wide, sluggish, and brown.  Though, upon investigating, it looks like it might be quite shallow. No weird eddies.  Just, impossible to look through the water, so WHO KNOWS what's under the surface waiting to get you.  MWAHJAHAAAHAH.  Um.  Anyway, the ONLY thing on the other side of the river seems to likely be a wereraven.  The way the light is flashing once every few moments, you figure they are either dancing, or...trying to signal you.

In one last effort to see whether the river is in any way safe to cross, Mordekai casts Dancing Lights to create 4 globes of light, and sends them into the water, around a foot deep, to see if he can still see them at all, and if they shed any light into the water surrounding them. After 30 seconds or so, he'll make them converge into a glowing humanoid shape (if the spell works like that? Otherwise he'll just recast it) that he sends "wading" out into the middle of the river like glowing humanoid bait.