Session 30: The Escape from Castle Ravenloft

General Summary

The party, having defeated Strahd's consorts and the powerful DeathKnight, find and dawn the powerful full plate mail that was worn by Sergie. They then decide to make their way to room that contains the skull of Arghanvost. Before leaving though, Mordenkainen casts a strange protective magic on the party that is unkonwn to them. The party plans its path carefully and make their way back toward the slide trap that woudl bring them down to the stairwell. As the party proceeds to go down they are amushed by three ghosts. The ghosts, using their ability to split the party up and attack via surprise, are able to further deplete the party's resources. 
The party then makes their way up from the catacomb level of the crypt and theyfind themselves in a small passage. As they enter the room with the expectation to try and short rest a mechanical trap is triggered. Perrin is able to use his nimble movements to jump out of the way but Sylas is crushed by a massive stone, killing him instantly. Rickard is quickly able to grab the magical scroll off Sylas's body and for the first time in his life, succesfully cast the spell Revivify. 
At this point the party is heavily depleted but they decide to push on even further. The enter a great hall that is covered in mist. There they meet a strange creature, Cyrus Belview, who is a servent here in the castle. He seems a little out of sorts and is worried about upsetting his master. The party moves on, not able to gain any useful knowledge from the strange man.
In the next room however, the Hall of Bones, they discover the skull of Arghanvost. As they enter the room, all of the doors slam shut and the party finds itself in a battle with Strahd himself. Using a wall of force he is able to split the party and start wearing them down. They are able to quickly shrink down the skull, put it in the bag of holding, and escape. 
As they rish back to room with the teleportation brazier they encounter two massive iron golems mounted on horseback. Strahd appears and makes a half hearted attempt to parlay with the group. Ignoring the attempts, Rickard runs into the room to activate the brazier, unfortuantely for him, he did not look up what an Iron Golem is and he gravely miscalculated his ability to simply run by them. The golems attack him and knock him unconscience.
Immediately Mordenkainen teleports over to Strahd, tells him something, and then out of nowhere, Strahd rips off MOrdenkainens necklace and you see the body and essence of Mordenkainen get sucked into the large gem that he wore around his kneck. Immediately Strahd walks out of the room and the golems return to being mere statues. As the party starts to teleport, they feel themselves being drawn into a familiar place, a Mordenkainens Magnificent Mansion.