Lessons from the Mists: Session 37 - Into the Swamps

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This week, the heroes begin to explore the ruins of Berez and discover the horrors within. Let's get started!

The Recap

We begin this session with some housekeeping. I remind my players about some of the things they said they meant to do while in Vallaki but did not get established. The heroes decide to leave the disanimated body of Pidlwick II with Blinksy, who is astonished they found him. He tells Angvar that this is the masterwork of the toymaker he has been studying his entire life, Fritz van Weerg. He says he will attempt to restore the automaton to life.

Next, the heroes speak to Muriel Vinshaw about contacting Rudolph van Richten to inform him the heroes are going to Berez and where to meet. She agrees to have one of the Keepers’ ravens send a message to him, avoiding using a sending spell that Strahd might intercept.

The heroes meet Rudolph van Richten at the Raven River Crossroads, disguised again as Rictavio, driving his carnival wagon. They make their way south along the river. A day and a half after leaving Vallaki, they arrive at the ruins of Berez.

The road turns into marshland, with thick stands of reeds choking the path south. There are stagnant pools of water and a thick blanket of fog covers this entire area. Peppered here and there in the swamp are piles of rubble and the barely standing remains of stone walls - all that is left of the village. Flies buzz around the swamp, hungry for blood. The heroes leave behind their horses in a sheltered area and van Richten leaves behind his wagon, unlatching the back and bringing out Ingrid, his saber tooth tiger companion.

I set a point crawl map in front of my players next, telling them the mechanics of how this point crawl works. Here’s what they see:

The heroes decide their first course of action should be to explore the megaliths. Kane casts water walking which significantly increases the speed at which the heroes can travel from location to location. They ford the river and arrive at the circle of standing stones. Kane leads the investigation of the standing stones and finds some carvings that reminds him of the Forest Folk carvings throughout the valley. There are depictions of the Ladies Three, as well as some crude depictions of standing stones at other locations: one on a hill behind the carving of an old windmill, and a tiered hill with a huge tree at the top of it. The heroes discuss that this must be one of the Fanes of the Ladies Three, and the two other ones are a circle of standing stones at the Old Bonegrinder and the other is Yester Hill.

While investigating, Kane rubs some moss off of a stone and gets some flashes of visions. An obsidian knife, dripping with blood. A pale smile, with elongated fangs. A stormy sky, punctuated by screams. Then, the sight of a girl from behind with blue-white hair approaching a cloaked figure in the middle of the standing stones. The figure turns, and it is Strahd von Zarovich. He smiles at the approaching girl, and the visions end. Kane tells the rest of the heroes what he saw and they discuss what these visions might mean. Feeling like they have investigated thoroughly, the heroes make their way back to the village outskirts and press on to the village green.

The village green was once a huge field, used for festivals before Berez’ destruction. Now that the elements have claimed the village, a huge marsh extends before the heroes. As Kane is leading the way, he sees within a pool of water a corpse staring lifelessly upwards. The corpse does not look bloated or rotted much, and sort of looks like those corpses that Frodo and Sam see in the Dead Marshes.

Kane uses Eyes of the Grave to detect undead, and senses six undead in the area. As he turns around to warn the other heroes, one of the undead corpses rises from the marsh and grabs Mary Sue Ann. It’s initiative!

The pools of water in this area are deep and act as difficult terrain, but the heroes ignore this feature because of their water walking spell. As the heroes begin to fight the undead, more creatures join the fray. Scarecrows that were standing in the marsh detach from their posts and harry Angvar. In addition to that, some eels hiding in the reeds shock the heroes with electricity. Van Richten is pulled under the water by one of the undead and begins to drown, but is saved by Ingrid. The heroes eventually win the day, but they have made lots of noise in the village green.

They leave this area behind and move to the southern cottages. When they move, Baba Lysaga moves to the village green to investigate the disturbance. As the heroes stealthily move away, they see her flying inside the skull of Argynvost.

Mary Sue Ann sends Guinevere to investigate the southern cottages before the rest of the heroes approach. What she finds within are two small campfires surrounded by a handful of women in animal hides and festooned with talismans made of animal bones - the witches of Berez. In addition to that, she sees a huge mass of flesh behind the cottages where the witches are currently taking shelter. It appears to be a knot of huge snakes - a creature known as a marsh hydra.

Ylenia is unsure if the witches are necessarily hostile, and suggests she goes ahead of the rest of the heroes and attempts to talk to them. The rest agree, and she approaches, calling out “Gertruda” and looking lost and scared. Mary Sue Ann, looking through Guinevere’s eyes, sees that the witches hear Ylenia’s calling, and move to investigate. Some of them disappear into the reeds and hide.

One of the witches comes forward and speaks to Ylenia. Ylenia tells her she is looking for her friend Gertruda, who she thinks may have gotten lost in the wilderness. The witch informs her that there is no one named Gertruda here, and she may as well turn back now. Ylenia says she has nowhere else to go, and the witch invites her to join the rest of them. But she must first meet with their matron, Lysaga.

At that moment, there is a rustling from the reeds and an elderly woman emerges from hiding and seizes Ylenia’s face, pulling back her hood, and revealing her blue-white hair. “Pretty hair…” she says, and suggests that Lysaga should meet this newcomer.

Ylenia endures this for a moment, but sensing that things are going south, she whips out her rapier and stabs the woman grabbing her face and kills her.

And that’s where we left it!

So How Did the Session Go?

I think this session went pretty well! I was feeling a little under the weather this week and so my energy was a little lower than I would have liked, but with what we got through this session, it wasn’t that big of a deal. There are certainly bigger set pieces to come.

So, let’s talk about how I prepped Berez. I was really unhappy with how Berez is presented in Curse of Strahd, and so I thought I would redesign the entire thing. I was deciding whether or not I wanted to make Berez a sort of hex crawl, but ultimately landed on making Berez a point crawl, with each of the major locations contain an encounter and maybe some reward.

I also took inspiration from games like Horrified and Nemesis where the players are navigating a map that basically looks like a point crawl, attempting to avoid the monsters that are hunting them. The map I created of Berez is above, which I just threw together with like an hour’s worth of work in Affinity. So when I put the map on the table, I told my players that they would be tracking which location they’re at with a token, and I will show them where Baba Lysaga’s location is. Certain actions they take at each of the points of interest might draw her to them.

Here’s how the process of the point crawl works. Each point crawl turn is 3 hours (which I reduced to 1 hour after the heroes told me they cast water walking). This time accounts for trudging through the harsh environment as well as keeping quiet and hidden. The environment played less of a factor after they had water walking, but I still wanted time to be meaningful here. When moving to a new location at the start of a point crawl turn, the heroes must make a DC 12 Wisdom or Intelligence check. On a success, Baba Lysaga moves before the heroes, and the heroes can move knowing where she ended up. On a failure, they move before Baba Lysaga does. If at the end of this movement phase Baba Lysaga and the heroes are in the same POI, they confront the witch!

I took inspiration from this page of DragnaCarta’s Curse of Strahd Reloaded for the map of the locations, but I changed most of the encounters. If the heroes clear a POI, then they can move freely through that location again without having to face the encounter.

The encounter we played through this session was in the village green. It is basically just a resource drain fight, but the reward is that the village green is connected to a lot of other areas, so the heroes have a lot more options on where to go next. The encounter was okay and fun. I used six bog bodies and two lightning eels from Flee, Mortals! And three scarecrows from the 2014 Monster Manual. It worked pretty well, I thought!

Ylenia’s gambit to try and talk to the witches paid off by removing one creature from next session’s combat, which was very good for the heroes! The witches were very fun to roleplay. These haggard, villainous women that have thrown their lot in with Lysaga have no qualms about being physically hostile to a stranger. It was great to see Ylenia’s players’ reaction to this woman grabbing her, but then Ylenia was not having any of it and killed her. Super great roleplay, but now the heroes have to contend with the witches and the marsh hydra next session. More on that combat encounter then!

Until next time!