First Fight with the Wolves
General Summary
Excerpt from Seir’s Little Black Book (Session 1/28/20): Penned in Borokin’s hand, via dictation
I was done with everything, so I went to bed. We woke up, and Khaylen expressed a desire to explore the abbey a bit more. I agreed to come with her, as I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t going to get into too much trouble. As we were getting ready to head out, we bumped into the abbott, who brought us breakfast. He told us that Ezmerelda told him about what had happened, and thanked us for the help. Khaylen told us about the shriek. She said that it was the psychic remnant of all of the creatures that had been on the operating table. I asked the abbot if he knew anything about the people who used to live her. He says merely that people up here used to have much issue with madness and disease, as well as cannibalism. “The operating table became a butcher’s table.” I lost my appetite as he spoke, and Zin took my food. Glad to see that he was feeling a bit better. Thoradin complained to the abbot, telling him he would have preferred if the abbot told us about what was happening instead of keeping it a secret. The abbot said he was annoyed that we were snooping about after dark. We agreed that we needed to head out as soon as possible. The abbot said that we should try to be back in a week. I was happy to leave the place, and the rather intense time crunch gave us plenty of an excuse to leave. As we headed out, we noticed a thick fog in the early morning. O remarked that it didn’t seem magical. We split our group- everyone agreed that having me and the baron in the same room would likely result in a too dramatic a confrontation, so I teamed up with Thoradin to pick up the horses. I wasn’t super happy about it, but I knew that yelling at the baron about his extensive lying probably wouldn’t have made it easier to come back, and, ultimately, I have something more important than my feelings to worry about right now. Khaylen, Zin, O, and Letho went to talk to the baron. Ezmerelda was talking to the baron and baroness. Khaylen overheard some of their conversation. The baroness was saying that she feared for someone’s safety. Khaylen delivered our story. She said that the tracks we followed curved off Northeast around the mountain. By the time we lost track of the trail, we had to go stay at the abbey, as it was far too late and too dark. Khaylen tried to comfort the baroness about the loss of her daughter’s remains. However, the woman still seemed quite nervous. She walked away and deadbolted the door behind her. Ezmerelda led the party to the side of the path. She told them that the baron was distraught and was having difficulties controlling himself. He was as well-restrained as possible. Ezmerelda told the family that she knew of their affliction- they admitted that the son had escaped some restraints and killed his sister on the way out. Apparently he is probably somewhere out in the woods out north. As they talked, Ezmerelda slipped into a barovian method of speaking, suddenly sounding much less Vistani. Letho wanted to figure out if his weapon was silvered. However, as the baron was busy being a werewolf, he probably didn’t do much to it. Letho pretended he wasn’t privy to this bit of information, and asked the baroness about it. She told Letho the baron was sick and went to get Letho’s sword. It had a bit of silver on it, but clearly not enough. The balance was all screwed up. Letho picked up his sword and thanked them. Ezmerelda handed Khaylen a flask of wolfsbane potion. Apparently, it can calm werewolves, so if we could force the son to ingest it that would be good. Thoradin and I got the horses without much difficulty. Thoradin leaped up the side of the draft horse despite his short legs, inspiring me to do something similar, though my feat of acrobatics was made far less impressive due to my longer legs. The horses were large, but well-behaved. We headed out of the town. When we were a little ways’ out, Thoradin noticed general unrest from the birds in the forest. From some rather large distance away, we heard a howl. It was from north-northeast. Khaylen turned the cart to head back towards town, and Letho insisted that he wanted to run towards it. Thoradin tried to convince Letho to turn back. Then, we heard more noises- there were more than two wolves out there. O, Khaylen, and I tried to cast spells that reproduced wolf noises away from us. Khaylen tried to calm down the horses, but she failed. We turned east at the sounds of more wolves to the west, and started hurrying on towards Villacki. I stayed astride a horse, unsure of how exactly to get off. Thoradin guided us along the path, and Khaylen did her best to control the cart. As we got closer to the bridge, the howls seemed to join along the path. They were a couple of miles back. Khaylen said that she was pretty sure that something was happening back there, but expressed a lack of desire to go and check it out. I concurred, especially considering how nervous our horses were. As we got onto the bridge, the sounds of howling stopped. Birds erupted from treetops to the west, flying in our direction. We agreed to make our stand on the bridge. Letho lended Thoradin his half-silvered weapon and drew his spear. O climbed a tree to cast from a distance. The melee fighters lined up along the bridge and we talked about our strategy: kill all the wolves, try to spare any werewolves until Khaylen could deliver the wolfsbane. Letho stood way out on the bridge, making it easier for the wolves to surround him. One of the wolves seemed crazed. It stepped out of the mist, six of them hanging back behind it. Thoradin stepped into bow range and fired an arrow at the biggest one, but missed. Khaylen did something similar. I cast an illusion of the baroness’s voice, begging for the wolves to stop moving. I hoped that one of the wolves was the werewolf son, and would perhaps recognize his mother’s voice. The large wolf attacked Letho, sinking its teeth in his arm. The blood spurting out of his wound burst into flames on the wolf’s face. O sniped the wolves on the bridge with eldritch blasts. Her aim was impeccable, knocking one right off of the bridge- such an impressive child! Letho cast compelled duel on the larger wolf and shouted out to Thoradin that “this one’s mine!” He stabbed it with his spear, resulting in some surprised yelps. Khaylen cast a spell to put some of the wolves to sleep, and I cast a spell that surrounded some of the others by outlines of violet light, making them easier to hit. However, Letho was surrounded by wolves, and got knocked backward, cracking his head against the edge of the bridge. Thoradin also found himself knocked over by a wolf, which sunk its teeth into his arm, filling him with a chill feeling. Black shadowy hands burst from Letho’s body and pinched up his wounds- it seemed to be how he healed himself? One of the wolves Zin attacked, one of the smaller ones in fact, appeared to be a werewolf. Thoradin hit a few with some arrows and thorns, waking them up but killing two in the process. One of the wolves I hit with fire seemed to be taking a lot of hits without being taken down- maybe it was a werewolf? It ran back and howled in a loud-commanding tone. Most of the wolves stopped attacking, but one of them decided in some moment of stupid fervor to make a beeline for you. Zin made an effort to stab it, but was unable to kill it. It started to approach you, getting up on its hind legs. O cast an invisibility on you, making you disappear from in front of the creature’s very eyes. Letho stabbed the largest wolf nonlethally, and their leader attacked him while he did so. The large wolf collapsed to the ground. Its hair fell off in chunks, revealing the small body of a bleeding child. Khaylen threatened the creatures, telling them to back off because we wanted only the boy. She also suggested we all go to help you, which I was already all on. Zin stabbed the one going after you, saying, I quote, that he wanted to “stab it but not, like, in its valuable organs”, fearing it was a person. That didn’t stop him from giving the attack quite a flourish. I cast a spell, creating an illusory copy of you right in the space where he had originally disappeared. As I was running towards the wolf, I collided with the invisible Borokin. The wolf leader turned into a vaguely more human-shaped form and turned to face Khaylen. It told her “we don’t want your help, we want blood for blood”. Then, he ran. Unfortunately, I fear we have made yet another enemy. Letho, not wanting to deal with having an angry wolf to deal with, chased after it. The wolf near you leaned forward through the illusion I created (not convincing, I fear), and pounced on O, knocking her to the ground. I think that, at this point, most of our group was pretty done dealing with this wolf with kid gloves, so we all started to dog-pile (pardon the pun) on him. I cast a spell on it, causing it to run off into the trees. At this point, two wolves had escaped (unfortunately), but the boy was unconscious on the ground. Letho healed him to the point that he regained consciousness, and I examined his body- he definitely looked to be the baron’s son. Khaylen and I forced the wolfsbane potion down the boy’s throat. He convulsed and fur sprouted from his neck- it was quite interesting. Thoradin and Letho pursued the wolf chief after Letho downed a healing potion. Khaylen ran off after the people chasing the wolves, and O, Zin, and I decided to guard the child, as well as the newly-visible Borokin.
Report Date
08 Nov 2022
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