After a long break, we have managed to get the group back together for D&D. We’re in a forest, and two of the party members have gotten into a fight and exploded. Currently, the forest is on fire because of their fight.

And we are running away from it. The elfadin has the stag, the bard casts cat’s grace to make it easier to weave through the trees, and the mercenary is in trouble. There is also a druid, who has recently assisted the party in finding their way through the woods. The bard attempts to inspire the mercenary, and then the druid turns into a dire wolf for the mercenary to mount.

We escaped from the woods, and there was a strange voice that we didn’t hear, memories that we no longer remember, and now we know that we need to find the Leader of the Feathered Ones, who lives among the vines. Though old, he has one more flight in him.

And we are now some place near the Wizard of Wines, and we’ve noticed that there are lots of vines around.

The swordsman that we’ve been dragging along with us seems to have a different set of memories than we do. And when the bard checks his notebook, he notices that his notes aren’t in his hand. There has been a shift in reality, someone has handcrafted a patch over this reality. But the changes seem fairly minimal and benign.

 

So, since Reive is stuck working with an unreliable schedule, we’re starting a new campaign.

We’ve got a human criminal who woke up after his execution in a strange metallic body, and had to craft himself a human suit to be able to blend in. It took him a while to realize that he’s a continent and a few hundred years away from where he died.

He was buried with a rather large rifle, which despite having no memory of, he knows intimately, including how to fire it, reload it, and craft ammunition for it.

For those who were wondering, the skin for the human suit came from “recycling” a bandit who died during an ill-conceived attack on the people who had recovered him from the ruins. The bandit continues to contribute to the greater good, post mortem, despite his ill intentions in life.

Speaking of the people who dug him up, one of them is a strange elf, and the other is a catperson.

He looks much like a beggar, wrapped in stained rags.

The adventure began with some traveling down a road, approaching a village. The party was look forward to relax over a nice roast beast at the village, but the village is currently be roasting by a beast. Kobolds and humans wearing purple robes are running around causing trouble, while dragons fly around overhead, spitting flames.

Running into the village, we ran into kobolds running out of the houses. They don’t live long, facing of against a tabbymonk, a elvish swordswomen, and angry half elf dragonstalker. Oh, and a tall silvery man who did some healing.

However, they were just a scouting party for something much larger, so we fled into the nearby keep, getting inside just before they sealed it.

Inside the keep, we helped with the defenses, and waited out the attack. There was talking about why the cult would be attacking the city. The old man kept smoking his pipe and mended things.

There were people who we probably should have killed, but they wanted to take things slow, so we went down the tunnel.

The door was locked, so the strange ragged man pulled off his gloves and then his finger tips, and then inserted the metal underneath into the lock. After a bit, he’d cleaned enough of the lock for the key to work properly again.

On our way out of the sewers, we ran into a rat swarm, which would have eaten our faces, if we hadn’t had a ranger who knew how to whistle for the rats.

Then the ragged man ripped something wiry from his arm, and dripped liquid from it onto the hinges. After that, the sewer exit opened silently.

Outside, a couple of kobolds and some dragonborn and a guard drake are searching for the party. But since they don’t know where we exited, the party manages to surround them.

The monk throws darts, the ranger manages to calm down the drake, the funny man shoots the leg off one of the dragonborn, and the other kobolds get knocked out.

Then the monk gets a skunk thrown into their face, which sickened her. After the battle, the ranger made the drake into a pet, and stored it in the basement of the tower. The beggar picked up the dragonborn’s severed leg, with the spoken intent of creating a lamp out of it later.

 

The party continues to try to get off the crumbling bridge. Ismark tried to leap onto the wagon, but failed, falling to the ground.

One of the werewolves leaps up and tries to pull Vellos from the wagon, Vellos resists, and then throws a thunderwave into him, knocking him off the side of the wagon.

The merc tried to press on, his horse was slashed by the larger werewolf as he got into range.

The elf drew the sun sword, which blazed to life, filling the forest with light.

Ismark gets up from being run over by the cart, and leaps onto the back of the cart.

Ianyor drops flat as the cart rushes towards him. The cart rolls over him harmlessly, but he fails to grab Ismark’s hard to pull him onboard.

We continued to flee from the werewolves, heading down the road.

After an hour of riding away, we ran into a barricade with children attached to it.

The party attempted to parley, but this didn’t work.

The elf rode his horse up to the barricade, then teleported over it, stabbing the werewolf as he arrived.

The huge winter wolf landed on the roof of the wagon and blasted with it’s breath, knocking down the strange sorcerer. Vellos fed a potion to the sorcerer, and then blasted the wolf’s mind. As it flew from him, Ismark stabbed it through the throat, killing it.

There was much fighting, and people keeping knocked down.

At some point, a strange woman on a horse showed up.

The wolves were killed or driven off, then stuff needed to be sorted out. Including the woman stealing the wagon from us.

The party hid in the woods, and then set up inside the tiny hut.

And in the morning, we woke up someplace else.

After a day’s walk, we found a barbarian and had a conversation.

Returning to the Vishtani encampment, the party partially split up to rest. The bard and mercenary ate and quickly went to sleep in the encampment. The wizard and the cleric studied the book, to figure out what would need to be done to weaken Strahd’s hold.

The wizard summoned a new familiar to replace the one that melted earlier. She attempted to summon a snake, and ended up with an undead snake. Cause Ravenloft.

Half the party headed back into the town, using disguises to get past the guards, who are still looking for us after that whole coffin maker’s house fire issue.

The cleric made some new friends, and was told about something that needs to be investigated in the west, the Wizard of Wines and his shipments.

The sellsword scouted out the town, determined that the guards have brought in reinforcements.

The party headed west, towards a covered bridge that we’d visited before. Nothing happened as we crossed it. We decided to head west, towards the Tower, the Winery, and the Hill.

They decided to approach the Tower. They passed a woodsman on the way, and then found a wagon near the base of the Tower.

The wagon was boobytrapped, and inside were alchemists fire.

We read a note and decided not to loot the wagon.

Then we opened a door by dancing in front of it.

The wizard sent in the snake. Then the Paladin decided to ride the elevator up the tower.

At this point, it started to get dark, so we went into the tower.

They found a suit of armour in the tower,  it turned out to be animated, but we couldn’t find the command word.

Then they noticed it had gotten dark, and the wolves were howling. So we took watch and rested over the night.

In the morning, they took the armour outside, and then proceeded to use identify on it. While they did this, the bard took up a position on the gargoyle, outside the window, securing himself with a piton and rope.

There was a command word to activate the armour, discovered by the wizard.

At which point the bard had the bright idea of telling the armour to “bring me the Sword of the Sun”. The armour rode up to the top of the tower, pulled the sword out of the stone wall, and held it up triumphantly.

At which point the sword melted the armour, and then dropped through the floors, before landing point first in the tower floor.

The bard used his rope to drop to the ground, and pulled the sword to him with mage hand. At which point the island started to collapse.

Vellos climbed onto the wagon, and proceeded to attempt to come up with a variety of command words for the wagon. This failed to actually summon the horses. So he tried famous Vishtani horse names. That didn’t work either. Then he screamed “Damn it, how do you summon these horses.” And that summoned the horses.

At which point we fled from the island, towards the wolves.

The paladin fired an arrow at one of the wolves and killed it outright.

The wizard threw fire at one of the wolves, burning them.

One of the wolves howled, and froze the ice. At which point, wolves moved onto the ice floe.

Then the cleric threw more fire at the wolves, sinking one of them into the ice.

Vellos decided to send his hand forward, handing off the Sword of the Sun to Twin Blade.

Twin Blade slashes out at the wolves, burning them with the sword.

Ianyor’s being pulled from his horse has blocked the bridge. He managed to kick his horse corpse off the bridge, but it’s slowing the rest of the party down.

The wizard manages to take control one of the werewolves, and turns it against it’s fellows.

The hand delivers the Sword of the Sun to the paladin, and it blazes up in his hands. 

The wagon continues to push forward, into the group.

The wizard continues to blast away, and in the process creates a cloud of fog around herself by accident.

The priestess fought the werewolf, the bard distracted the him while he fought against the drunk.

Then the bard blasted the fog back with a thunderwave, tossing the party out of his way, as he drove the wagon forward. This also cleared the fog away.

And then we got everyone back onto the wagon, as and rode off the causeway, running down the werewolf.

There are still more wolves in the woods ahead of us, and many of our resources were used up in the escape.