Session Analysis
Turtle Truth and Fire
The Party
Julius
Human Monk
Ja'ms
Half Orc Bard
Elora Meridian
Half Elf Ranger
Drisella Red Dawn
Half Elf Druid
Azareal Dawnsinger
elf Cleric
Namta
Tiefling Bard
C
Cameo
Session Recap
The ale wagon continues south rather than east until Elora’s survival sense and Julius’s enchanted coloring book expose both the detour and a moving dot that tracks the party across Barovia. Azareal identifies the book as forbidden necromantic remembrance magic made from living tissue; its pages hold recorded memories. By tracing portraits, Elora witnesses Lukan serving a shadowy figure she identifies as Strahd, delivering bodies to the Abbot, and murdering Esmeralda’s mentor Van Richten. Julius sees Vasilka’s original life, the death of her child, and the Abbot’s eventual reconstruction of her body. Esmeralda swears Lukan will die, while Elora demands time to prove he may be controlled. The party reaches the Wizard of Wines, where a wood siren’s song enthralls nearly everyone until Azareal fireballs its tree and casts Silence. Inside, Davion Martikov offers wine and a reward for recovering a stolen magical source of the vineyard’s growth, possibly the Tarokka’s hidden Sunsword lead. Investigations uncover a missing gemseed, strange tracks, a deluded son mourning a turtle portrait, and a grave containing a magically cursed scarecrow head. Julius licks it and sees Yolanda’s terrified, severed head accuse several Martikov names before the session cuts away.
Notable Quotes
"Every page in this is a fucking phylactery? Where did you get this?"
— Azareal Dawnsinger, learning the coloring book has considerably worse vibes than advertised
"Nobody is killing Lukan until I get a chance to talk to him."
— Elora Meridian, drawing a line with Esmeralda after witnessing Lukan’s memories
"That is a turtle. I don't know turtles."
— Davion Martikov, offered a portrait his son insists depicts his dead fiancée
Developing Situations
- Determine whether Lukan is acting under Strahd’s control before Esmeralda carries out her vow to kill him.
- Learn who collected the party’s hair and other living traces for the necromantic remembrance book, and decide how safely to use its stored memories.
- Recover the missing gemseed or otherwise restore the Wizard of Wines’ failing crops, following the unusual tracks around the dead vineyard.
- Investigate Yolanda’s contradictory identity, Adrian’s apparent delusion, and the cursed scarecrow head beneath the burning tree.
- Find the Tarokka-promised weapon reportedly hidden at the Wizard of Wines while preserving the ale wagon’s larger journey toward Vallaki.
- Decide how to handle the still-burning ancient tree and the remaining siren and dark-druid threats around the winery.
Major Events
A Map Made of Memories
While the wagon rolled along an unfamiliar road, Elora determined they were traveling south rather than toward Vallaki in the east. Julius opened his carnival coloring book and discovered that its Barovian map carried a black dot that moved exactly with the wagon. The book also contained portraits: one looked unmistakably like Lukan, another was beginning to form into Azareal after his hair had been taken by a mongrelfolk. Azareal’s strong Arcana reading revealed forbidden necromancy woven through every page, each bound to a piece of living person or animal. Esmeralda explained that Vistani remembrance books preserve a subject’s past: tracing a portrait’s eyes reveals memories stored when its material was added. The party realized the book was not merely a map, but a grisly archive that had somehow been collecting them.
Lukan in the Remembrance Book
Elora traced Lukan’s portrait and watched his stored memories rush past: a smoky, shadowed figure offered him a liquid-gold dagger; he later appeared at the Abbey with a body for the Abbot; and he used the dagger to brutally kill an older man before returning the dark residue on it to the book’s maker. Elora recognized the shadowed figure from the page as Strahd. The murdered man’s description clicked for Esmeralda and the party as Van Richten, her missing mentor. Julius then viewed the portrait resembling Vasilka and witnessed a woman’s happy family destroyed, followed by confinement under the Abbot and awakening in a stitched, unfamiliar body. Esmeralda vowed that Lukan would die for killing her family and mentor. Elora refused to allow an execution before they could establish whether Lukan had been charmed or controlled, extracting a tense agreement that proof—not hope—would be required.
Siren Fireball at the Winery
The party diverted the wagon to the Wizard of Wines after recalling Madame Eva’s clue that a weapon of vengeance lay there. Cloaked figures urgently waved them inside, but the approach turned hostile: rotted vines, giant black feathers, dark druids, ghostly figures clawing from a mound, and living trees converged on the cart. A human-faced bat creature sang from a twisted tree, trapping most of the party, Esmeralda, and Stitch in a horrifying shared vision of floodwater, tentacles, devoured people, and a horse losing its head. Azareal alone resisted the psychic assault, then answered decisively: he released a stored Fireball into the tree and followed it with Silence over the area. The fire destroyed the singing creature and the silence broke the enchantment, allowing Stitch to drive the stunned group into the winery’s loading dock as the ancient tree continued to burn outside.
The Missing Seed and Yolanda's Grave
Davion Martikov welcomed the party with bread and increasingly excellent wine, then explained that two vineyard plots had abruptly failed after his son Adrian neglected his watch to meet Yolanda, a woman from Vallaki who was later found beheaded. Davion offered the group his rarest remaining wine and two flaming scabbards if they recovered whatever magical force once sustained the crops. Outside, Namta recognized the hexagonal imprint in the dead field as the resting place of a powerful gemseed, now removed. Drisella found multiple tracks around it, including three sizes of enormous birdlike feet and several humanoid prints. Upstairs, Adrian insisted a wet-ink portrait of a turtle wearing a wig was Yolanda, though the others saw only exactly that. At the burning tree where he claimed her head was buried, Julius uncovered not Yolanda but a jeweled scarecrow head atop an ancient rune-covered cloth. Detect Magic revealed twisted fey illusion magic in the gems; when Julius licked the head, it became a screaming severed woman accusing Davion, Eric, Rupert, and others of killing her before snapping back into straw.
DM Archetype
Achievements Unlocked
Ja'ms
Vampire Semantics
Trying to explain that Lukan might have been bitten, controlled, or otherwise compromised, you instead announced, “Look, Lukan probably fucked by vampire.” The party spent the next minute establishing that this was not, technically, a tactical diagnosis.
Drisella Red Dawn
Vineyard Field Notes
You kept your wine in hand while conducting an 18-point wilderness investigation of the dead crop, identifying three sizes of enormous bird tracks and several humanoid sets around the missing gemseed. The merlot never left your hand.
Julius
Good Cop, Bad Sconce
To interrogate Adrian, you tore a decorative sconce from the wall, learned its magical light was still floating in midair, failed to grab it, and held the empty fixture to his face anyway. “What did you do that night?”
Namta
And We Make ’Em Wail
When Davion Martikov drew a flaming sword because he thought Siren’s Wail meant you were literal forest sirens, you supplied the one clarification the band desperately needed: “And we make ’em wail.” The suspicious winemaker finally understood the pun. Words.
Elora Meridian
Sword Before Sauvignon
You recognized the Wizard of Wines from Madame Eva’s reading while the party immediately began theorizing about wizard-made booze. You redirected the entire expedition with the exhausted reminder: “We’re not there for the wine, we’re there for the sword.”
DM
Turtle Witness Protection
You let the party investigate a grieving fiancé’s portrait one reasonable step at a time—wet ink, illusion magic, false grave, cursed gems—while never budging from the fact that Yolanda was visibly a turtle in a wig. “That’s Yolanda. She’s beautiful, wasn’t she?”
Azareal Dawnsinger
The Forbidden Coloring Book Club
You inspected Julius’s adorable map-book, discovered that every page was bound with living tissue and necromantic remembrance magic, and immediately asked, “Every page in this is a fucking phylactery?” Julius had won it at ring toss.