#session63

The party stands over the frozen corpse of a Grave Behemoth—until it splits open and the dead crawl back out. The final moments are chaos: lightning misfires, bodies fly, and Elrohir’s echo returns wrong this time—black-eyed, obedient, watching. Celeste kills it by accident. Then the last zombie. Silence again.

For a moment. Sometimes the worst decisions start small.

“Hey, what if I just bite the snake?”

Reader. The snake was poisonous.

The party investigates the aftermath of the Grave Behemoth—no treasure, no answers, just rot and questions. The snakes look edible.

They are not.

Poison glands get harvested anyway. Because if Barovia teaches you anything, it’s that everything is a resource if you’re desperate enough.

Then the dead return. Again. Maddie answers with fire. Also with lightning.

Mostly to his own face. (Effective disengage, though.)

Elrohir’s echo? Still wrong. Still watching. Still copying—just a little too perfectly. Combat becomes a dance of not hitting your own allies while pretending to.

It works. Barely.

They move on.

And Barovia, as always, offers choices that aren’t really choices:

— a man bound to an infinite string (do not touch)

— a tree that isn’t a tree

— and Yarrow, who collects wanted posters like they’re art

Marius almost gets recognized as a murderer.

Solution?

“He dyed his hair.”

It works.

It shouldn’t work.

It works.

Yarrow is delighted. The party teaches him interior decoration.

He sells them substances that cause:

— spontaneous beard growth

— worms. Just… worms.

No one asks enough follow-up questions.

They steal herbs. They leave.

And somehow, despite everything— this still isn’t the worst thing waiting for them in Barovia.

The road to Vallaki offers no comfort.

And then Celeste speaks.

About the bracelet. About the boy she lost. About the hunger that followed. About Nibble. About Uno. About choosing wrong—and choosing again.

“Falling doesn’t make you evil. Choosing to rise again… that makes you good.”

She killed the thing that whispered power into her veins. She chose the voice that forgives.

And in return, she learned something far more dangerous: Strahd is the land. But he wasn’t always. And gods can be forgotten… or restored.

By the time the gates of Vallaki come into view, the horror has changed shape. No monsters. No claws.

Just a contract.

Sign your name.

Give your blood.

Surrender your gods, your voice, your thoughts.

The Horned Prophet is listening.

And in this new Vallaki? Obedience is mandatory. No one is surprised the paper is enchanted. The only question that matters now: