Into the frozen temple,
Dark, cold, and silent.
The fear makes you tremble,
And mutter prayers for guidance.

Skulls made of flame,
Constructs of amber,
This was no longer a game,
No place to meander.

But continue you must,
Deeper into the lair,
Your faith and your trust,
The only wards from despair.

It’s another fine day,
In fair Barovia!

Other than the 12ft tall Ravenloft model, there was also a dusty chest in the room. Having been (literally) burnt by the last trap he’d missed, Bannor ran a series of careful checks before determining the chest was safe to open. Inside you found a scroll case which Zandeyr was very eager to get his hands on (reaching around Bannor to grab it).

The case was larger than a spell scroll, and you found worn sigils in the leatherwork indicating the geographic directions – suggesting it contained maps of some kind. Unfortunately it was empty, scraps of ancient paper dropping to the floor when you opened it, and Bannor unable to see any mechanism for hiding a scroll in the case itself.

What Bannor did find, however, was another false bottom on the chest. Inside the compartment rested a tome, gold writing etched on the cover. Zandeyr again ripped it out of Bannor’s hand, eagerly flipping through the pages seeking some quick result. It seemed to be some kind of educational text, containing exercises, routines, puzzles, mathematics, and logic, all tuned toward increasing the readers’ mental agility. Xarann took a quick look and confirmed it had magic properties, but Zandeyr wouldn’t let it out his hands for long.

Bannor studied the Ravenloft model carefully. It was a masterwork: carved – surely magically – from a block of solid stone, with doors that opened to show the rooms lining the perimeter. Searching closely, Bannor discovered a tiny name etched into the floor of the main entrance – Artimus, perhaps the architect of the building, speculated Zandeyr. You all agreed this would be worthy of further study before you approached Strahd’s home.

Viktor and Xarann had been carefully watching Zandeyr’s behaviour during this, and both agreed something was not right about your Ranger companion. He seemed to be overexcited, and hungry to be the first to lay hands on anything you discovered. He seemed to regret having had to hand over the staff to Xarann, mumbling that at least it’s power would be put to good use in Xarann’s hands.

The next room you checked held a surprise. Inside lay a long table, set for a formal dinner, and covered with lashings of steaming food: meats lathered in gravy, vegetables fresh and abundant, platters of fruit, carafes of wine and condiments of all kind. It was the best food you’d seen since arriving in Barovia, and the smell was mouth watering.

Alas you realised it was likely illusionary, a theory confirmed by Zandeyr when he spiked a piece of meat and took it outside at which point it promptly vanished.

The room opened back into the main chamber, the massive statue looming behind a half collapsed balcony. You debated again doing something about the void of darkness, but decided to press onward before attempting anything. Viktor opened the doors to the next chamber, and as he did so felt something wash over him briefly before it was gone. He warned everyone else to wait, and entered to the room to find cobwebbed candelabra and a 4 ft high statue at the far end. As he approached it he realised it depicted the same figure as the statue outside, but he could find no source for the peculiar effect he had felt.

Bannor entered next, and he too felt the wave, but he also didn’t react. He searched the alcove behind the statue for secret passages, but found nothing. The rest of you waited outside, but you suddenly felt the balcony starting to collapse beneath you, and managed to retreat to the feast room before anyone fell. A 5 ft ledge was all that remained, so Zandeyr set about putting pitons in the amber walls to allow safe movement.

Garn was the first to try it, and he entered the statue room despite Viktor’s too late warning. As soon as he did he felt an overwhelming compulsion to approach the statue. He knew in his heart that it held the answers to everything he had ever sought, the peace, the joy, the forgiveness. The nearer he got, the more intense the adoration he felt, and he stood in front of it in a state of utter reverie.

Bannor found a room to the East – a mirror of the one on the other side, empty but with an error slit overseeing the main chamber. There seemed to be nothing more to see here, so Bannor and Viktor went to leave, calling for Garn to join them. Garn didn’t move, and when Viktor approached him to find out why, he saw a tear rolling down Garn’s cheek as he stared intently at the statue.

Viktor knew what he had to do. He pulled out his mace, shoved Garn aside, and laid into the statue with all his might. After a couple of blows it shattered, and Garn fell to his knees, sobbing and begging for Viktor to stop. He flung a weak shield out but only fell backwards, the pain of what was happening unbearable. Viktor smashed the final traces of the statue into rubble, and suddenly Garn retched and threw up, his tears now of horror. He felt a deep revulsion for what had happened, and despite knowing it was some kind of magical effect, he was shaken at how deeply he had believed.

When Viktor relayed this event to the rest of you, Zandeyr was noticeably upset that this statue – ‘an object of great power’ – had been destroyed. Viktor took the opportunity to quietly bathe Zandeyr in the recovery spell he’d used on Bannor, hoping for a similar effect.

Having apparently reached a dead end on this level, you decided it was time to descend to the lower level via one of the many staircases you had discovered. Before doing that you returned to the entry balcony to fire an crossbow bolt at the statue’s head – just to see what happened. As it turned out, very little – the bolt disappeared into the black void, made a sound like something hitting solid stone, and dropped to the floor.

Still not trusting that the statue wouldn’t spring to life once you stepped into the vast hall in front of it, you instead descended via the thick dusted staircase on the Western edge. It opened into a long hallway, glazed with amber from floor to ceiling. On the wall flanking the main chamber were a series of niches, each containing a statue of a small animal: spiders and foxes, toads and eagles, dogs and cats. Viktor guessed these to be icons of familiars belonging to the wizards who once occupied these halls.

In the Southern wall at the foot of the stairs there was an imposing and impressive vault-like door set in the wall. It had a richer, thicker amber tone, and seemed to be somehow embedded in the wall – there were no obvious mechanisms or supports. The door had a circular glyph carved into it, and in the centre of that circle was an inscription: “Thus angels die, and oblivion awaits”.

That didn’t sound promising, so you left it. You moved down the hall, opening another normal door and finding what appeared to be a wizard’s bedroom. The next room was the same, but this one also had a poltergeist inside, which attacked you with screaming vigour, but proved to be no match. Xarann, standing guard outside the room, noticed that Zandeyr had stayed behind and was trying to open the vault – without getting anywhere, thankfully.

The next door was another vault, with another ominous message embossed in the centre: “Herein arkane knowledge and thought: you should afear”. Again you chose not to attempt opening it, and again Zandeyr was strangely obsessed with trying to shove it open, despite his obvious lack of strength enough to do it.

At the far end of the corridor there was another vault door, but this one was half open, and had no text upon it. Garn warned you all that there was something deeply and truly evil inside that room – his sense of balance thrown by the sheer power of the presence within. Even Zandeyr, who was poised to enter on hearing of the power inside, paused at this.

A subterranean creature with a single huge eye

The eye followed you everywhere

Garn blessed you all, and Viktor carefully opened the door wide. Inside was a small chamber of purplish-black marble, with two solid 8ft tall, 5ft wide amber sarcophagi. Standing in the centre were three loathsome hunched beings, each with a single baleful human-head sized eye in the middle of their faces. They slumped passively as the door opened, looked intently at Bannor, Zandeyr, and Xarann, then spoke.

To Bannor: “You accepted it? You took the gift? Do you think that was wise?”

To Xarann: “Your entire family? What will bring them back to you? Where will you find what you seek?”

And to Zandeyr: “How will you get it? How will you quench that thirst? Does it eat at you already?”

Before any of you could answer or question, Zandeyr nocked an arrow and fired it into the strange creatures. Reacting instantly, you all attacked. Xarann used his new staff to unleash a torrent of ice into the chamber, hail and piercing shards raining down on the beasts. This stopped anyone else from approaching, and the creatures tried their best to retaliate but were thwarted by the ice.

Once the barrage had stopped, you all charged into the fray, and the three creatures were dead before any harm had been done to any of you. Kill first, ask questions later, as has become your way.

Bannor dragged the bodies out of the room, and Zandeyr set about prising one of the eyes loose and trying to stuff it in a speciman bottle he carried with him. As he did so, Viktor tried another spell to remove the curse he suspected Zandeyr was suffering from, having seen no improvement after his last attempt.

Cautiously you reentered the chamber, and the evil felt like you were pushing through a physical presence, the air thick, breathing difficult. A third sarcophagus had been shattered, and Bannor searched it quickly, finding nothing and feeling a rising panic at the two still standing ominously to either side of him.

Zandeyr and Garn looked closely at the monolithic amber blocks, being careful not to touch them. Inside the richly coloured yellow, you could see a sliver, a shard, of pure darkness, no more than a few inches long, lying deathly still in the centre of the amber. A deep fear wrapped its arms around you, and you all retreated back to the corridor.

Viktor recalled the Tome entry you had recently discovered, but it wasn’t clear how it might relate to these rooms. You hadn’t yet met or found the ‘immortal’ creature Strahd had been referring to, nor could you unravel the meaning of the words that had been scrawled in the margin: Thangob, Shalx, Harkotha, and Maverus.

Unsure how to deal with these mysteries, and also sure the other doors concealed similar sinister evil, you decided to move into the central chamber. Bannor started working his way around the North wall, behind the statue, and found a largish chamber with shattered weapons and bones strewn about, the bones in particular looking like they had been smashed – perhaps by the amber golem you had encountered earlier.

Zandeyr went to the Southern end of the chamber, spying another amber door. This one wasn’t of the same calibre or craftsmanship as the vault doors, but it was equally firmly locked. He pounded it a few times to try and open it, and did the same to a similar door at the opposite end of the room.

Bannor nervously approached the rear of the statue, thinking to search it, but Viktor called him away to check the wall behind instead. Bannor had developed an understanding the layout of the temple, and realised there had to be something in the void between the two rooms above you that flanked the statue. This knowledge allowed him to discover a hair-thin outline of a door in the Northern wall. But there was no obvious – or even unobvious – way to open it. It was there, but it wasn’t opening for you via any physical means that you could see.

Garn had been keeping a close eye on the three smaller statues in the alcoves around the room, but there was no movement from them. You reconvened and decided to continue through and out the only exit, which would lead under the lecture hall you had visited.

As you started moving across the centre of the chamber, you heard an ear-splitting, sparking, crackling thunder coming from the statue, and you spun with horror to see a blinding bolts of lightning flashing toward you from the void around the head of the monolith.

Maybe you should have checked it after all.

Session played: 3 March 2020