Session Analysis
Killed By Squirrel
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
Session Recap
The party’s fragile truce with the fallen deva collapses when he faints, revealing beneath his illusion a body of ash, grafted flesh, exposed bone, and a cat’s mismatched eye. Ja’ms detects necromancy; upstairs, Julius and Elora find Cameo breathing without a heartbeat and Vasilka revealed as a constructed woman held together by golem-binding magic. Elora and Julius execute the deva, only for his soot to race into the hearth and remake him as a skeletal servant of Velsharoon. In the ensuing fight, Spirit Guardians, Earthbind, a curse from Esmeralda, Namta’s crown visions, and a decisive flaming strike from squirrel-form Drisella destroy him for good. The party learns from the crown that Vasili manipulated the deva toward illusion, rage, necromancy, and the slaughter of Bellevues for body parts. They flee an approaching mongrelfolk horde, meet Strahd himself on the road, and retreat to Krezk with newly awakened Vasilka. There, the party discovers Ilya’s resurrection is similarly unnatural and marked by Velsharoon’s symbol. After uneasy drinking and rest, everyone falls into personalized nightmares, ending with Azareal surrounded by fire and the screams of the changelings they killed.
Notable Quotes
"You skinny fuck, you couldn't pull this off anyway."
— Namta, putting on a necromantic crown and immediately choosing violence
"Fuck you, you necro fuck!"
— Elora Meridian, teleporting directly into the deva’s personal space with Mr. Pointy
"What are we all if not pieces of other people?"
— Azareal Dawnsinger, offering existential comfort at the worst possible moment
Developing Situations
- Determine what the deva’s final release means for the three djinn curses and whether any path to healing remains.
- Investigate Vasilka’s fractured memories, leaking body, and connection to the Krezkov family—while deciding how much truth to tell her and Dimitri.
- Decide what to do about Ilya’s unnatural resurrection, lack of heartbeat, and repeated drawings of Velsharoon’s crowned skull.
- Learn who or what controlled the deva through the incorporeal strings seen behind him, and investigate the Abbey’s upper floors if the party returns.
- Decide whether to use, study, hide, or destroy the deva’s crown, bone sword, and inscribed glass wing fragments.
- Prepare for Strahd, who has now personally met the party, knows they were at the Abbey, and offered to answer if they speak his full name.
- Address the party’s nightmares, especially the guilt and fear surfacing around Lukan, Mako, the Thieves Guild, the changelings, and their changing bodies.
Major Events
The Illusion Comes Apart
The deva’s plea to be unbound and allowed to cure the djinn-cursed party members ended abruptly when he passed out. Azareal’s Medicine check found him alive but physically impossible: parts of his torso were intangible under the illusion, while the burned sun-mark on his chest crumbled to fine ash. Ja’ms cast Detect Magic through his guitar and received visions of rot, maggots, severed limbs, and reassembled bodies—necromancy had made or sustained whatever the Abbot had become. Namta’s Dispel Magic tore away more of the glamour, exposing clawed ribs, a ruined shoulder of bone and ligaments, missing facial features, and a too-small cat eye rolling in its borrowed socket. Upstairs, Julius and Elora found the horror extended to the Abbot’s “patients”: Cameo breathed but had no heartbeat, only a sloshing fluid inside him, while Vasilka was unmistakably assembled from different bodies and held together by golem-like binding magic. The Abbey’s healer had not saved them. He had remade them.
The Crowned Skeleton Falls
Julius drove Crush into the unconscious deva’s chest as Elora removed his head, but the body became soot, poured into the fireplace, and emerged again as a skeletal, glass-winged figure wearing the sign of Velsharoon, god of necromancy. The battle became a brutal group effort. Azareal’s Spirit Guardians cracked and singed the creature with radiant force; Julius battered it with silver-fused Crush, landed a Stunning Strike, and repeatedly denied it escape. Elora used a silver-tipped arrow, then made a spectacular dagger-teleport attack that drove her sword into the cracked leg Spike had mauled. Drisella, transformed into a giant squirrel with Quincy on her shoulder, Earthbound the deva while Quincy stabbed at its unnatural bone. Namta donned the fallen crown, endured psychic backlash, and used Vicious Mockery as the creature weakened. Esmeralda cursed it to suffer more from blunt force. When the deva called an animal horde to the Abbey, Namta spotted marionette-like strings on the wall; Dick and Esmeralda severed them. Drisella finally ended the fight with a flaming strike through its head. This time, the deva dissolved into gold, pink, and yellow mist, whispered “thank you,” and vanished through the broken window.
Thirty Minutes in a Crown
Wearing the deva’s crown gave Namta a prolonged vision of his past. She watched him arrive in Barovia under clear skies, only for the light to die as he descended into the domain. Vasili taught him from an old book of illusions, then turned furious whenever the deva’s magic involved light. The visions showed the deva’s growing frustration, his first violent killing of a Bellevue, the cracking and petrification of his holy symbol as he fell from divine favor, and his eventual communion with Velsharoon through a cracked mirror amid blood and body parts. Vasili appeared again and again around the deva’s descent, while the deva slaughtered more mongrelfolk and assembled a woman from female remains—Vasilka. The crown’s knowledge left Namta shaken, but it also explained why the deva’s body had been a patchwork and why the Abbey’s dead had not stayed in their graves. Afterward, the party examined shards from his glass wings. Azareal read the celestial script hidden within one fragment: “bind.”
Strahd on the Mountain Road
With more than a dozen crazed mongrelfolk converging on the Abbey, the party abandoned Cameo upstairs, carried the newly conscious Vasilka out a window, and escaped down the mountain. Halfway to Krezk, a calm stranger stopped them in the road and asked after the Abbot. When the party tried to bluff their way past, he introduced himself as Strahd von Zarovich, proprietor of Barovia. Esmeralda attempted to attack him and was frozen in place before she could land a blow. Strahd casually mentioned her mentor Van Richten, told the party they need only speak his full name if they want him, then sneezed into mist and transformed into a bat. At the burgomaster’s home, the group found that Ilya’s miraculous return mirrored Cameo’s condition: he breathed, but had no heartbeat, and fluid sloshed inside him. Worse, he obsessively drew Velsharoon’s crowned skull. Vasilka remembered the house as home and identified Ilya as her little cousin, though her body leaked ale from the back of her neck when she tried to drink. The party chose uneasy shelter, ale, and sleep over immediate answers—until their dreams turned against them.
DM Archetype
Achievements Unlocked
Azareal Dawnsinger
Fireball Remains Loaded
While maintaining Spirit Guardians in a room full of allies, you still carefully considered Fireball as the tactical answer to the skeletal deva. You never know when you need a Fireball.
Namta
Crown Me, Coward
You put on a necromantic glass-and-bone crown, took psychic damage, witnessed thirty minutes of murder, grave-robbing, and celestial corruption—and opened by calling its former owner a skinny fuck. Then you made the corpse god itch.
Drisella Red Dawn
Squirrel of God
You spent the battle as a giant squirrel, Earthbound a skeletal deva, let Quincy poke at it with his tiny sword, and finally ended the necromantic angel with a flaming strike. A squirrel just killed The Abbot.
Julius
The Wrong Princess Is in Another Abbey
When a mongrelfolk horde descended on the Abbey, you heroically evacuated the newly conscious patchwork bride while Cameo—the person everyone came to save—remained upstairs. It's the wrong one.
Ja'ms
Shield Full of Ale
You cracked open the Abbey's ale delivery immediately after escaping a necromantic nightmare and got blasted with beer at fire-hose pressure. Azareal caught the overflow in a magical shield, because apparently that is a glass now.
Elora Meridian
Fine, I Can Attack
When weapon-swapping ate your action, you declined to accept the concept of not attacking: you threw Mr. Pointy into the deva, teleported after it, and drove your sword into its already-maimed leg. Fuck you, you necro fuck!
DM
Thirty Minutes, One Second
You let Namta put on the evil crown mid-combat, then delivered an entire tragic descent into illusion, necromancy, rage, and body-part construction in the blink of an initiative turn. Trauma respects action economy.