Lessons from the Mists: Session 43 - The Dark Powers

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This week, the heroes meet the mysterious prisoners of the Amber Temple, save a wizard thought dead, and learn the truth of the lich. Let's get started!

The Recap

The heroes begin this session by exploring the bedrooms and the rest of the amber vaults in the west hall on the lower level of the Amber Temple. They speak to and meet some of the other Dark Powers trapped in amber: Delban, the Star of Ice and Hate; Norganas, the Finger of Oblivion; and Vaund, the Evasive, who offers Ylenia a chance to escape from Strahd’s clutches, but she refuses.

The heroes move to the east hall and loot the intact bedrooms, including one that contains statues of golden hawks, and meet more of the Dark Powers: Savnok, the Inscrutable and Shami-Amourae, the Lady of Delights. Curled up next to one amber sarcophagus is a corpse that Kane recognizes: a half elf Doomguide of Kelemvor. Orthros, his old mentor. A search of his body shows that his tongue has been removed (possibly by his own hand), and a gaping black void sits in the middle of his chest. On his body is a note which reads:

To whomever finds this:

The mists called to me, and I sensed great evil within. I plunged forth, heedless of the costs. I came to this land under disguise, and sought out the monster behind it. Strahd von Zarovich.

He was dead, by my hand. I took all precautions necessary, and from nothing, he rose again. I discovered whispers of a great temple. I came here looking for answers.

There is so much beyond the vampire. These things are beyond undead. Beyond gods.

Fear them.

-----

Kane, I failed you. I wish I could teach you more. You may have grown past my guidance.

This thing may have the answers I seek. Must I consort with the thing that calls itself the Grave Wyrm?

It may be the only thing with the answers.

It calls to me.

-----

ITS INSIDE ME ITS INSIDE ME ITS INSIDE ME

YOU WILL DREAM OF TEETH AND NOTHING ELSE

ITS INSIDE ME ITS INSIDE ME ITS INSIDE ME

Kane is stunned and has no words. Angvar speaks to him, comforting him, then lays his hand on the sarcophagus that Orthros knelt before, meeting Tarakamedes, the Grave Wyrm. It taunts Angvar and Kane, and offers the great power of undeath. Angvar removes his hand and tells Kane they should move on.

Mary Sue Ann and Ylenia meanwhile meet Fekre, the Queen of Poxes, Dahlver-Nar, He of the Many Teeth (which Ylenia is intrigued by when it mentions it can restore the memories of her past lives). Angvar also speaks to Zantras, the Kingmaker, who wants to speak to Kane once more and offer him the great power that his old military commander never received. Angvar refuses.

The heroes move up to the upper level of the temple and explore the east hall. They find a lecture hall which contains a strange tear in space and time behind a lectern. The heroes discuss what to do, then decide to tie a rope around Pidlwick and send him through the other side. He does so, and immediately the rope goes taut. They pull Pidlwick out, and clutching his metal hands is Victor Vallakovich. He’s scared, confused, and very cold. He demands to know where he is, what’s happened, and asks to be brought back home to his family. The heroes tell him the news that his family is dead, Fiona Wachter took over Vallaki, and now she’s dead too. He says that’s impossible, he only attempted to teleport a moment ago, and that he finally got the sequence right. Mary Sue Ann tells him that she knows the magic was right, but there is no escape from Barovia. The lich mentions that the child was probably held in temporal stasis.

The heroes have a long discussion about what to do with the boy. Mary Sue Ann does not want him out of her sight, and so while Ylenia, Kasimir, and Mary Sue Ann watch over Victor, the lich, Pidlwick, Angvar, and Kane search the northern areas of the Amber Temple and meet the other dark powers in a vault breached by ghouls. They meet Dizlash, the Nine Eyed Spider, and Angvar tricks him into telling him the name of his champion, the serial killer that has been harvesting eyes in Vallaki: Vadim Slavichek. They also meet Zrin-Hala, the Howling Storm, and Sykane, the Soul Hungerer. The heroes reconvene and decide there are really no good options for communing with a Dark Power. They would all sign themselves over to a terrible fate if they became their champion. They also decide that they have gotten what they came here for, and keeping Victor in the Amber Temple is a terrible idea. Kane needs to kill the lich, then they will leave.

The heroes are led back out onto the balcony of the Temple of Lost Secrets and attack the lich. He commands the flameskulls in the nearby hall to support him. However, Victor attempts to escape the battle by casting misty step, but Kasimir counterspells it. With the lich having almost no access to spells because of his lost memory, he is not much of a threat and Angvar kills him with his flail that has been empowered by Kane. Angvar throws a net on Victor, who casts fireball on Kasimir. Kasimir falls to the blasts of fire from the flameskulls. Pidlwick takes Victor’s wand and swallows it, and Kane knocks out Victor. 

The heroes destroy the flameskulls one by one, but the last one casts fireball centered on itself, harming several heroes, and killing Pidlwick. However, the heroes prevail. Kasimir and Victor are unconscious, Pidlwick is dead, but the heroes live.

After the battle, the wizard in the statue’s head comes down and reveals himself to be an extraplanar jackal creature named Neferon. He reveals his history with the Order of Guardians, and how he did battle with his old friend Exethanter when he returned to Barovia after his sojourn through the multiverse, and though he could not bring himself to kill his old friend, he was responsible for his lost memories. He urges the heroes to give him a final death — he has no reason to believe Exethanter left the temple over these many centuries, and his phylactery must lie within somewhere.

Neferon also says that he will stand guard over the Amber Temple, but he cannot allow Kasimir to leave after his communion. The heroes believe Kasimir will do more harm than good with the power of Zhudun, and they allow Neferon to kill him. The heroes also tell him that they plan to defeat Strahd, and lock away Vampyr in amber. From what they understand, that will cause Barovia to slowly disintegrate, which may unleash the Dark Powers once more. They ask if it's possible that he secrete them out of Barovia when Strahd is defeated, and he tells them he will think on it. It may be possible.

The heroes return to the lich’s bedroom and search it. Ylenia finds some well-concealed seams in the wall that leads to a secret room. Mary Sue Ann peaks inside and finds a statue of a scaled arm and claw rising from the ground and clutching a small box made of bone. She brings it out and Kane blasts it with a guiding bolt. It shatters into glowing pieces, and the wisp of Exethanter’s soul escapes.

The heroes collect Kasimir’s staff, spellbook, and ring of warmth. They collect the bodies of Kasimir and Orthros for burial. They bring Victor’s unconscious body and Pidlwick’s inanimate frame outside to bring down the mountain. Waiting outside in a mild snowstorm is Ernst Larnak, sitting on a red leather armchair, smiling. Angvar smiles right back at him.

And that’s where we left it!

So How Did the Session Go?

Really well. Players had a TON of fun interacting with each of the Dark Powers, and they were REALLY fun to roleplay. Curse of Strahd gives us basically zero characterization for each of these Dark Powers, and I only gave them one line of what they speak like. For example, the heroes really enjoyed Savnok, the Inscrutable because he talked like a super over the top old wizard. Seriach, the Hell Hound Whisperer spoke like a drill sergeant. This may have taken away from some of the horror behind them, but in the interest of “players’ fun is the top priority,” I think it was a great success.

I decided to kill a character from Kane’s backstory offscreen to sell what these Dark Powers were capable of. This character was a mentor for Kane, someone he looked up to, admired, and served as a model for the kind of person Kane would want to become. In my mind, Kane at this point in the campaign is powerful enough to equal or exceed what I thought Orthros was capable of. If you’re not aware, a Doomguide is a powerful cleric of Kelemvor and his church agents. There are also necrobanes which I think are a little more like Witchers in that they are specifically trained to go out and eradicate undead. Orthros was a Doomguide. A powerful agent of Kelemvor stood no chance against the Dark Powers when they corrupted his mind, and Kane was super distraught about it, but the player still had a good time.

Planting Victor Vallakovich in the Amber Temple is something I planned for MONTHS and I’m so glad it finally paid off. The players were really torn about what to do with him, and they (correctly) assumed that he may be influenced by the Dark Powers here, and they needed to keep a VERY tight leash on him, lest he get them into more trouble.

Kane was adamant that the lich had to die in order to not anger his god, which was great. Even though the lich was basically helpless, the fight was tense because of the reversals with the flameskulls and Victor/Kasimir fighting each other. I had the players run Kasimir’s statblock which brought about the conflict. I really enjoyed revealing Neferon once his old friend was dead and he thought he could finally trust the heroes now that they resisted the pull of the Dark Powers, and killing Kasimir was a tragic but necessary thing. It felt in character for everyone involved in that conversation and their motivations. Also, destroying Exethanter’s phylactery was a really satisfying conclusion to the Amber Temple for my players.

Going into the session, I was worried about the fact that we did not play through too many combat encounters in this dungeon crawl, and if that might feel anticlimactic. Then I remembered several videos by Ben over at Questing Beast and the OSR style of play. Their style of play is significantly different from the way I usually like to play: with a structured story arc, a beginning, middle, and end with reversals and combat encounters that make it feel like a satisfying recognizable story structure. In the OSR style of play, GMs believe the world is the world, and the player choices when interacting with the world CREATES the story, not the GM creating the story for the players to play through. I stuck by my guns and decided to not go back and change anything or require the heroes to fight combat encounters they were able to skip because they had Exethanter guiding them.

The only reason that they were able to navigate the dungeon easily is because they found Exethanter so early. However, they could just as well have explored almost every room, fought everything, and THEN met Exethanter. There was no prescribed way of running the dungeon, and their choices and order of rooms they cleared had a significant impact on the way they navigated the dungeon. I felt way more at peace when I realized this and didn’t feel like I needed to put more combat encounters in there just to pad things out and make the conclusion of this story feel earned or whatever. However, if they spent a lot more time and went back through some of the rooms, they might have to fight more of the dungeon denizens because they no longer have Exethanter’s protection! But since they left almost immediately afterwards, no additional combat encounters were required.

I knew way ahead of time that there would be another showdown with Ernst Larnak at the Amber Temple. This may be one of the final confrontations with him, we’ll see! I originally had the idea that Angvar might be able to gain the knowledge of how to bind a devil and slay him for real from Exethanter and the library. The ritual would require the devil’s true name, which Angvar doesn’t have, but Exethanter would have said “the Dark Powers provide…” However, he never asked those questions, so we’ll see how things turn out next week.

Until next time!