Lessons from the Mists: Session 24 - A Trail of Teeth

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This session, the heroes are hot on the trail of Anna Krezkov, and find a cave full of creatures they were not prepared to fight... Let's get started!

The Recap

The heroes rush to investigate the scene of the crime and determine what happened to Dmitri Krezkov. Kane immediately performs an examination of the body, and determines that he was poisoned within the last hour. Meanwhile, Mary Sue Ann leads the search, with Angvar and Ylenia in tow, for Anna Krezkov. They discovered that she left through a back window of the cottage.

Kane reports his findings, and on a hunch, Ylenia asks Angvar to go down to the cellar and try the wine from the cask. He obliges, and discovers it too is poisoned (and shrugs it off, due to his dwarven heritage). Upon further search, the heroes realize that all of the wine casks they were given to deliver to Krezk are poisoned. Ylenia realizes after examining the wine further, and seeing faint black syrupy residue on a glass vial, that the druids that occupied the winery were responsible for poisoning the wine! All of the fermentation vats were poisoned, and they need to let the Martikovs know before the poisoned wine reaches their destinations!

Kane casts Sending to Elvir and warns him about the poisoned wine, who tells him he will look into it, and thanks him. Kane also sends word to Urwin in Vallaki that the wine shipment coming in is poisoned, and he should find a way to purify it. Urwin thanks him for his timing, as word was sent ahead of time from the Martikovs that a shipment would be arriving that night.

The heroes are losing light, and so they all leave the Krezkov cottage (instructing the guard on duty to not let anyone into the house) and follow Anna’s tracks all the way up the hill and to the Abbey. At the gatehouses, they are stopped by Otto and Zygfrek, wanting to know what they are doing here. Ylenia leads the negotiation, saying that they were following the trail of Anna Krezkov after they put her on house arrest. The watchmen admit they let her into the Abbey to speak to the Abbot, but she did not go inside: instead, she ran to the north side where the gardens are, and could not find her. The guards also question the heroes if they know anything about one of the Abbots patients going missing, and Ylenia feigns ignorance. The guards buy her bluff and, satisfied, let them explore the Abbey.

Searching the gardens, they find tracks and mud residue that lead up and over the wall, and down the side of the hill into the nearby forest. Because it is so steep, the heroes must find ways of getting down safely: Ylenia makes a successful Acrobatics check to not take any fall damage, while Angvar and Kane both use their large shields as slides to get to the bottom. Mary Sue Ann, however, is unable to keep her footing and falls down the hill, taking lots of fall damage, but they continue their pursuit. They pick up her trail, and realize from the gait of the tracks she has injured herself and is limping into the wilderness.

The tracks end at a small stream, but because of Mary Sue Ann’s high Investigation roll, they pick up the tracks a little ways down the stream, where they find evidence of other tracks not belonging to Anna Krezkov and a scuffle that occurred very recently in this forest. Many human bootprints and a splash of blood in the snow indicate some sort of conflict, but they can find no tracks in the snow from these human bootprints going towards the disturbed ground or away from it. Also, several large wolf tracks approach from nearby, but never engage in the conflict, and then lead away. Perplexed, the heroes examine their surroundings, discussing what may have happened here. No evidence of Anna remains, except for the splash of blood. Kane examines the trees, and finds broken branches and claw marks in the trees, no larger than a human hand. He tells the others he believes there were vampire spawn here, using the trees to traverse the forest. The wolf prints are curious, but he believes there was some kind of standoff here between the vampire spawn and wolves, as the two areas of disturbed earth are several feet apart. Not knowing what else to do, Angvar suggests they follow the wolf tracks and see where they lead.

The wolf tracks lead around a hill that overlooks Lake Baratok and van Richten’s tower, up to a cave resembling an open wolf’s mouth with firelight from within. The heroes climb up to the cave to investigate, and are quickly spotted by two guards - women in ragged clothing, clutching spears. They call for a man named Skennis, who approaches from deeper within the cave with nine wolves at his heels. Ylenia attempts to negotiate, but the guards are not having any of it - Skennis calls them “fresh meat” and all three transform into werewolf hybrids. It’s initiative!

Mary Sue Ann begins the combat with a well placed and destructive fireball that kills all the wolves and Skennis in a single turn. The others hack away at the other werewolves, but a third, white haired one joins the fray. The werewolves bite all but Kane, but all of the heroes resist the curse of lycanthropy, which Kane warns them about. However, when Angvar resisted, a voice in his mind demanded that he let go, and to feed, destroy, ruin. The heroes handily dispatch the werewolf guards, but the white furred one whispers as she dies: “Kiril… will skin you alive… when he returns.”

Exploring further into the cave, Mary Sue Ann finds a stash of clothing and a pond in a nearby cave, but nothing of importance. Ylenia loots Skennis’ electrum flute and gemstones, and they push further into the cave, finding several nests where other werewolves might sleep, and a path to the top of the mountain, where ominous wind howls. Entering the largest chamber in the small cave, the heroes find two women guarding eight children in cages. The women demand that they leave, but Ylenia declares they cannot while the kids are caged. They talk to these two women and learn they too are werewolves, but there is a schism among the werewolves. When Skennis stepped down from pack leader, the leadership came down to Emil and Kiril, and as is tradition, a ritual combat was held to determine the stronger of the two. Kiril’s mate lashed out and transformed in a moment where Kiril was certain to lose, and the fight was called off to complete another time. However, Kiril went to Strahd, asking for his protection and blessing, which he granted, and allowed Kiril control over Barovia’s natural wolves. With this and Strahd’s arrival in person, Emil was dragged off to Castle Ravenloft. Kiril believes in a pack made up of the strongest that receive the gift of lycanthropy, and forces the children they capture into a fight to the death, and the winner joins the pack. Emil, however, wants to grow the pack as large as it can be.

One of the women, Zuleika, has no qualms about showing that she is Emil’s mate and does not like Kiril’s rule. Siding with Zuleika, the heroes kill the other werewolf in front of her, a loyalist of Kiril’s. They demand that Zuleika release the children, and still she refuses. However, she will release them if they can bring back Emil. They also learn that Kiril is out on a hunt with several other wolves and werewolves, but he could be back any minute now.

The heroes are at a loss of what to do - if they leave to find Emil, they run the risk of letting more of these children die in Kiril’s combat. However, can they really take on Kiril and all of his minions without resting? Angvar suggests finding a way to ambush them, picking them off one by one. All out combat against seven werewolves is certainly suicide, he believes. Kane also brings up that Krezk is still in need of help, and they should seek out the Fidatov estate. All the heroes are aligned in one respect: Kiril has to die. The heroes think they can at least trust Zuleika to not attack them, and so they rest, waiting for Kiril and his cohort to return to the werewolf den.

And that’s where we left it!

So How Did the Session Go?

My prep for this session was made up of just using MandyMod’s guides to Krezk and building out the encounters for Fidatov manor, getting the story straight in my head. I got a lot of prep done regarding the manor adventure! And so they threw me for a HUGE loop when they decided to pursue Anna Krezkov to the bitter end.

I did not write anything down regarding what she might do, but I did want to show that she was not going to stand for being thrown out of her position as Burgomistress. I had a vague idea that she would attempt to flee Krezk and get into some trouble in the wilderness, but as players always do, they surprised me by wanting to know exactly what happened to her.

Recently, I just finished reading ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, and a large part of those vampires (as is true for Strahd vampires) is that they cannot enter a residence without invitation. I was racking my brain between last session and this one about who to reintroduce to them while they are staying in a house, but must be let inside. The scene that inspired me was in the movie Sinners, where Cornbread is trying to get let back into the juke joint after being turned into a vampire, and no one trusts him. When I knew Anna was going to flee, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to have her transform into a vampire in the wilderness and then return later. This all still did happen offscreen, and I figure that here was a good point to introduce the werewolf plotline, one of the last adventure hooks my players needed.

What happened in the forest? My idea is that a group of vampire spawn were hunting in the forest and came across an injured Anna. They fed on her, transformed her into a spawn. Meanwhile, a group of hunting werewolves were also on the trail of Anna, but they got there too late. These werewolves, under the protection of Strahd, would be punished for fighting the vampire spawn on the kill they got to first, and so therefore, the standoff. The werewolves ran off, and the vampire spawn plus Anna Krezkov, went back into the trees. And thankfully, my players were stumped by what they found there, but as they investigated, they found more and more clues that they were able to slowly piece together.

When my players arrived at the werewolf den, I had nothing prepped. I pulled up the page of the werewolf den on 5e tools and ran it straight from the book. I remember the political divide of the werewolves and their motivations from reading MandyMod’s guides a long time ago, and wanted them to speak to Zuleika which worked out great, but they came to the conclusion that there really isn’t a good way out of this situation that isn’t “wipe out all werewolves.” They all agreed no matter what, ritual combat between children AND turning a child into a werewolf are evil acts, and they are probably going to double cross Zuleika in order to save all the kids and wipe out the pack.

Thankfully, the werewolf den is a pretty simple adventure site. If the players want to get into shady morals, they certainly can (but that requires, of course, potentially leaving more children to die at Kiril’s hands) by saving Emil from Castle Ravenloft (potentially during the dinner? As one of my players suggested) and returning him to the pack, but my players wanted to see them all dead. Which means that for me, my job is to create a fun combat encounter with the werewolves where all of them don’t just turn into big bags of hit points - there needs to be real tactics and a sense of danger here.

Side note - I am not running 2014 werewolves, because they are ridiculously strong. RAW, they are immune to any physical damage not from a silvered weapon. Instead, I was using werewolves from the 2024 Monster Manual (with no damage immunities or resistances) with a trait I stole from Flee, Mortals! vampires. When a vampire takes any amount of radiant damage, they take an additional 10 radiant damage. I was ruling that a werewolf hit by a silvered weapon takes an additional 5 damage. My players had some silvered weapons and I wanted to show that those mattered, but not cripple anyone that didn’t have silver. I think that worked out just fine, I may even increase the flat damage to 10 depending on how I balance this upcoming big werewolf battle. Will report how that goes.

Until next time!