Scaling the North Face--Barovia

General Summary

Quick summary of the previous two sessions here also, since I haven't had time to do those:
When you picked up Julien, Casimir was acting a little strangely; he'd seen Julien doing something that clearly disturbed him but couldn't remember what. When you spoke to Julien, he said that he'd seen that you'd talked to Nira and that it made him feel uncomfortable because he didn't know how to feel about her. He'd drawn several pictures of her son, Hyskosa, and said that he was still around but not alive and was trapped in a castle. His nose started bleeding at that point, so you cut off that line of questioning. When you took him out of his room, you saw three vivisected bird corpses under the bed.
You got up the mountain face despite Julien getting blown off at one point. There were ice zombies along the face that looked like the unfortunate remains of former climbers, and they REALLY didn't like fire. Vanya had heard legends about two types of ice zombies, one that hungered for body heat and one that could swim through ice and snow as easily as a shark through water, but you couldn't be sure which type this one was.
The wind was bad enough that you got off on the east side at about 7200 feet, well before the summit, and started heading down the mountain pass. The wind was pushing against you, making travel difficult, and you both caught sight of a woman in very old-fashioned climbing clothes watching you. You couldn't tell whether she was hostile or friendly, only that she was extremely interested in you, and that her arms kept twitching toward you as if longing to embrace you. Rose, with a 34(!) on her Perception check, noticed that the woman's hair wasn't blowing in the wind. 

(It is absolutely impossible to find any kind of frozen-looking woman who's actually wearing the kind of clothes that you'd want to wear while out in cold weather, so let's just say that her face looks like this peeking out from under her giant hood. Congratulations on being one of the only images that wasn't a yuki-onna, Zombie Elsa, or Emily Blount from Snow White and the Huntsman: Winter's War, picture lady!)
You tried to get to a point where you were hidden from her, with minimal success, and then you clearly heard her voice on the wind asking who you were. Vanya replied that you were just travelers passing through, and that you would soon be on your way. The woman said "No, you won't; I'm sorry." Then, even though Rose had cast Read Weather and knew there wasn't supposed to be any precipitation to go along with this wind for the next 48 hours, it began to snow.

Related Reports

Previous session: Picking Up Nicolae's Trail--Barovia Next session: @je

Report Date

17 Aug 2022

Primary Location

The Balinoks

Secondary Location

Barovia