Day 41: The Tidal Wave

General Summary

Day 41 (Хололуна 17, 735/?)

The sound begins shortly after midnight: a baby's cry, out in the winter cold. Ri-An and Osrin know it's likely a trap — especially when they see that it's the Woman in Black holding the infant aloft, the Woman in White nearby — but all the same, a crying baby is a crying baby, so after rousing the others, they proceed outside. Sylvain is prepared to try and use his silver tongue to navigate the situation as best he's able, but the minute he and Osrin step outside, the baby is unceremoniously shotgunned. To answer certain audience inquiries: no, the Woman in Black did not, in fact, crush the baby against her forehead before tossing it aside.
A battle ensues, one that shows the party some of the talents of these mysterious women they've seen only occasionally deployed, as well as the return of Imithren and the elven archer who Sylvain believes was responsible for nearly renting Osrin's soul apart before she could be resurrected. It is a hard battle, and it isn't long before both sides retreat to regroup — Strahd's servants, to the Ethereal Plane, and the party, back into Jeny's cabin.
Inside, they do their best to regroup, though many of them choose not to attempt to complete their rests for several hours, causing many of them to have to start their rests over entirely. This is a decision with no negative consequences whatsoever. With Osrin and Sylvain keeping themselves together enough to focus on a watch until they pass out, Ayduin resuming his long rest, and Ri-An joining not long after, it is Bodaway who stays up the latest, at Jeny's bedside, drowning in memories of his late mother's fatal illness.
Finally, not long after Ayduin awakes, Bodaway falls asleep where he kneels, and when Ri-An wakes an hour or so before dawn, they proceed to try to strategize with Ayduin — and realize, in the process, that something is terribly wrong with Ayduin, though they're able to rule out the theory that Ayduin and Chuckles swapped bodies fairly quickly. (Fortunate, given what would happen to Chuckles not long after.) Just around the time that they puzzle out what happened to Ayduin, they're startled — and the rest of the party abruptly awakened — by the booming sound of Strahd's voice coming from all around them outside.
"People of Vallaki. Know that it is the strangers from afar who have brought this curse upon you. Remember Berez the next time you think to harbour them or show them mercy."
The party rushes outside, Jeny and all, only to see a horrifying sight: the distant waters of Lake Zarovich far more active than a lake's waters should be, drawing back further and further — by the time they start to run, a wave of unfathomable size has already begun to crash towards them, so large it dwarfs the surrounding trees, the foam shaped into a stampede of many horses.
Chuckles is immediately knocked to pieces, and Osrin and Bodaway are knocked out, leaving Grghshnq, Ri-An, Sylvain, and Ayduin to tend to them and Jeny. Thankfully, they manage to save the unconscious party members — Ri-An bringing Osrin back to consciousness, Sylvain and Osrin getting Jeny to safety, Ayduin pulling Bodaway up into a tree with him, and Grghshnq sent off to collect Chuckles's pieces — but as the water begins to freeze over at an unfathomably rapid pace, Ri-An is trapped in the ice, and Sylvain is trapped under it.
Ri-An manages to free themself, and Sylvain is rescued by Osrin, Ayduin, and his own sword hilt, and again, the group limps to regroup by a fire, wet clothes hung to dry, doing their best to shelter against the wind. However, before they can complete a short rest, that chill wind begins to pick up, the sky darkening then suddenly blotted out by an unfathomable number of bats, wolves howling in the distance all around them. They have just enough time to try to place Jeny and Bodaway's unconscious bodies in the shelter of a nearby tree before they all find themselves surrounded by impenetrable fog, then hit with repeated fireballs.
Strahd von Zarovich has come to pay them a personal visit.
By the end of the battle, Ayduin is the last one standing, and an invisible Strahd grapples him, draining the last of the life from him — and as the unconscious party, shivering and exposed, barely clings to life in the face of their wounds, it is Ayduin alone who succumbs to them.
Ri-An was the first of their number to awake and, as such, the first to learn what had become of Ayduin. They remained inconsolable at his body's side when Osrin and a newly reformed Grghshnq came to consciousness an hour later. Not long after establishing the others were, at least, still alive, Osrin noticed a raven paying particular attention to their group nearby, and once everyone who was going to wake up had done so, that raven began to lead the party to the northwest. Following along — with Ayduin's body, Chuckles's still-inert parts, and Jeny's unconscious form all in tow — the party found themselves face to face with an unexpected group: a motley assortment of coill cailleacha, including Oileán, Mathghamhain, and Flann, as well as a male wereraven unknown to them.
After a discussion, in which the party learned how the many cailleacha they'd previously found as heads-on-sticks had ended up there — Strahd sending a large group to assault tuama beanniehaite the night he had the party over for dinner — as well as some news about Ezmerelda — that she'd escaped Castle Ravenloft, resucing Urwin, Danica, and Brom in the process, taking up arms alongsie the cailleacha but also possibly giving in to the same sort of corruption that had claimed Ismark, ultimately being captured by Strahd's forces the night of the assault — they agreed to go with the cailleacha in search of the Mad Mage. According to the intel they'd collected, with their wereraven ally Makar doing recon in raven form, the mage had some sort of magical sanctuary where, it was reasonable to assume, Strahd had been unable to reach them. It was, the cailleacha suggested, probably the best shot both groups had at surviving the night.
After a brief incident in which some people chased Imithren, some people gave up on chasing Imithren, and some people failed to find Imithren once she hid, the group managed to find the Mage and — thanks to Sylvain's silver tongue and the name Marlyn had given him before — kept him distracted enough for Oileán to sneak up on him, casting Greater Restoration and clearing his mind for the first time in some years.
A tense exchange followed, but eventually they managed to convince the Mage — Azuth — to shelter them. In the process, they learned that Jeny was, in his words, "not a who but a what," and that some aspect of her prevented her from entering his magical mansion, leaving Makar to carry off her polymorphed body to conceal it in the wilderness and watch over it in raven form while the others sheltered inside.

Report Date

15 Sep 2022

Primary Location

Vallaki

Secondary Location

The Mad Mage's Magnificent Mansion

Related Characters

• Ayduin
• Azuth Crummond
• Bodaway
• Bradán
• Brom Martikov
• Chuckles
• Coirt
• Danica Dorakova
• Ezmerelda d'Avenir
• Fiach
• Flann
• Grghshnq II
• Imithren Orren
• Laucien Ariessus
• Makar
• Marlyn Mordvinov
• Mathghamhain
• Oileán
• Osrin
• Ri-An
• Strahd von Zarovich
• Sylvain
• The Weaver
• The Woman in Black
• The Woman in Green
• The Woman in White
• Urwin Martikov