A DnD Tale - Van Richten's Guide to Raveloft - The Fall of the House of Lament

 

The image of the missing picture!

So we continue the House of Lament story. As Immeral have waken up in the tub with the words of Mara in blood on the mirror he returns to the parlour where van Richten and Hope still sleep. They begin by returning to the third floor and the nursery to try getting in to the locked door. A vision of a shield appears... and here I gotta complain a bit about the book, since it clearly references the seal of a god, but in none of the books I got (and I got pretty much every official book from Wizard of the Coast regarding DnD 5e) I could find it, neither Player's Handbook, nor Dungeon Master's Guide or even the van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft or even Curse of Strahd. I don't even know where people got the image above, but I'm suspecting one of the older books? How can you miss that? Not all of us have been here since the 1970's!

Anyway, van Richten is mentioning that it is missing the Belladonna for the image to be complete and they recall that there was a lone living flower in the conservatory below so they go down to get it and then return and enters the room after presenting it to the visage. They enter the children bedroom and sees a skeleton in a rocking chair and hear the voices of a boy and a girl from two toys, a purple dragon and a tin knight. They tell them about the hungry ones and how there mother locked them in their bedchamber and prayed to the god Ezra to protect them from the darkness and they want to leave. They are told by van Richten that the spell protecting the room now is gone so they should take the toys with them. They return down, but in the corridor they hear the coughing from the master bedroom. They enter and sees something shivering under the bed sheets. Immeral pulls it off and from the bed rises a zombie plauge spreader. It's dispatched without any problem, other than I rolled so bad for van Richten that he didn't hit any.

They go back to the foyer and see that the mist outside now have crept closer to the house and they seem to be surrounded. They head to the parlour and take a long rest to prepare for the end and a final seance. They ask Theodora for help and they get the message of "GET THEM OUT". They are hinted to go to the tower where they saw the vision of the bricked up prisoners. In the gallery they are attacked by four flying death's head that came alive from the busts. van Richten missed every attack, but the other was able to kill the other's without problem. They enter the tower and sees blood dripping from the ceiling and forming an alcove in the wall as well as running to the floor and seemingly pain a stairway down. As they investigate an armoured hand breaks out from the wall and a ghastly voice screams for Mara. A armoured knight breaks out together with two boneless creatures. van Richten is able to go first and actually doing pretty well against the first boneless, but is still hit by it twice so that it begin entangle itself on him. The other's take care of the boneless so that they can attack the knight alone. As he falls to Immeral's strikes and the light within the armour extinguish, the stairway down appears. They climb down and finds a door that leads to a wall with a gate leading to the storage room that they investigated earlier (the supposedly correct way to get down here, but it was a bit hard getting that, and getting the knight fight made it more fun). A short rest later they investigate a pit where they except Hope hear their voices echoing in the dark. Hope hear someone calling her and a faint amber light. They enter.

They end up in a cavern with an amber pillar standing on a patch of land surrounded by some black ink. Immeral and Hope recalls the amber sarcophagus from the Amber temple. Hope touches it and sees a vision of a spiralling eye, the eye of Tharizdun together with the image of a spider. Call back to their mission to get the rod of law as well hinting about the evil that the Temple of Elemental Evil is trapping (I just now realised that I don't have a name for the wizard/monk giving them their mission, oops). Also rather fun how I used the books vague description that you can tempt the players with any of the dark gifts detailed in the book, but the Amber Temple only had one per god, meaning that this is some real powerful god. Sometimes inspiration strikes right at the last moment. Hope has the Mark of the Raven, an amulet that now begins to glow which causes the pillar to almost scream in agony. Five tendril arises from the dark ink and a spectre appears above them. Now, I don't know how you would make it on an ordinary level 3 party, the tendrils act like shadows and drain your strength with every hit, meaning that instead of the 60 hit points they usually have my party have around 10 Strength to worry about. Thankfully they have the sun sword that showers all enemies in sunlight and they are affected by disadvantage on every roll. They are able to kill the tendrils and stun the spectre with the Mark of the Raven. Hope uses the sun sword and gets a critical hit as she thrusts the sword into the amber and filling it up with light. Another round and she repeats the action and the light burst through the stone and it cracks and then explodes. The murky water disappears and the spectre leaves her sword behind. They get the treasures and head out. Theodora seems to have created a corridor through the mist and as they leave they see the shadows of the children in the toys appearing in the mist and running to their mother before they leave. The End!

Well that was fun. The most action in any game we played. And the ending battle with the amber pillar was fantastic really, maybe better if I thought through the consequences of putting a level 3 end boss against 2 level 8 PC and an NPC of challenge rating 5. Made some changes in the spur of the moment, in Theodora's path you actually just need to leave the house after getting the toys, but even if that the best emotional ending it doesn't feel that earned. So I dropped in both other endings as well. What's better than a gauntlet of fighting the undead and a cursed artefact below the house to seemingly allow Theodora to get them through the mist? So that is that side story. We are thinking about using one of the compilation books to play other adventures, but the problem is that most of them are quite high experience and they already are a bit miffed about losing something like 3000 exp in the final session? Still, two weeks to next game, and this time with all sisters plus another player.