Elora is inconsolable. Her every movement is excruciating pain. What remains of her skin is sensitive to the clothes she wears and even the air. What hurts most of all, is that she can recall none of what she read in her dream the night before. She has damned herself for nothing. She spends the morning wailing and crying as Ireena tries to console her. The Martikovs give the group space, not wanting to pry into whatever they are going through. Riley searches through the winery and with some help from Stefania locates some bandages for Elora.
Bramo is also panicking. He tries to scream over and over again, but with no mouth all he can manages is a hollow moan. Bronwyn is able to hear Bramo’s words in her mind. She takes hold of him and communicates with him telepathically trying to calm him down. With Bronwyn’s help, Bramo learns he has a limited telepathy he can use to communicate with others. He also learns that he no longer needs to eat or drink. He wonders how he will be able to use his spells without the ability to speak.
Johan tries to tell everyone that things aren’t so bad. A few changes don’t matter as long as they are able to accomplish their goals. The rest of the group is not convinced. They are all deeply uncomfortable with these developments and particularly Johan’s worsening condition. They wonder what they have gotten themselves into.
After a long discussion, the group decides to press on. Their next destination will be a return to the Abbey of St. Markovia. No one is anxious to see the Abbot again, but they need to enter the sewers and find the missing gem. They decide to leave Pietro behind in the care of the Martikovs. They agree to look after the boy and Johan has a terse goodbye with his son.
Lucien tells the group he will part ways with them again since they are headed to the Abbey. He will instead head to the swamps of Berez and see what he can discover there. Riley warns him to be careful and not get into any more trouble on his own. He assures them he will not, but they all know that he will.
Elora is despondent and unresponsive, simply going along with whatever the group asks of her. She rides Johan’s skeletal horse while the rest of the group walks to Krezk. They reach the gates which are now fully manned with the guards. The guards refuse to let them in due to the recent attacks. The group explains that they were there a few days ago with a shipment of wine. Since they have no wine now, the guards will not let them enter. They ask instead to speak with the baron, Dmitri.
Bramo advises Johan not to bring his horse into the town. He tells him the image of a man covered in boils riding a skeletal horse through a town ravaged by death and disease would not go over well. Johan agrees to leave his horse outside.
Dmitri arrives, but is also hesitant to allow them entry. He asks what business they have in Krezk, and they convince him they have urgent business with the Abbot. That moves him to allow them entry. He goes to greet Bramo again and is horrified to see that he has no mouth. He starts to panic, and the group isn’t sure what to do. Bronwyn steps up and explains that this is the affliction which they must urgently speak to the Abbot about. Dmitri believes her and ushers them quickly away.
The group make their way through Krezk but hesitate to head up to the Abbey. They are convinced there must be another entrance into the sewer system that they can use. When asked where such an entrance might be, no one has any idea. They discuss the matter briefly but decide to head to the only confirmed entrance at the Abbey.
Bramo uses his skills to construct a device to allow him to cast his spells. He creates an arcane device capable of transmitting sound when he holds the device against his throat. The sound is crude and distorted, but sufficient to allow his spells to work.
They reach the gates of the Abbey and greet its Belview guardians, Otto and Zygfek. They tell Otto they have business with the Abbot, and he lets them inside. Bramo tests the limits of his telepathic powers by trying to command Otto. He tells Otto that Zygfek has insulted him which prompts Otto to attack her with a shovel. Zygfek backs away from him in fear. Verushka demonstrates increased social skills by greeting the two of them, asking how they, separating the two of them, and asking for consent to pet Otto. Otto is afraid and refuses, and Verushka accepts his answer.
All the commotion at the gate draws the attention of the Abbot. He peers from his window and watches the group. They quickly move past the window not making eye contact with him, hoping to avoid a confrontation. Verushka waves to the Abbot as she passes. The Abbot smiles back and waves, seemingly pleased with her progress.
The group move quickly to the shed outside the garden. They lift the hatch revealing a ladder descending into darkness. Johan is nervous about the tight spaces and wants to go in first. He climbs down the ladder into the darkness and falls as he reaches the ladder. He drops to the ground, but lands on his feet. He draws his moon sword and shines its light into the room. He sees that the ladder is broken and ends ten feet before the bottom. He calls up and tells the group about it. McCoy ties a rope to the top rung of the ladder, and they all use it to descend the final ten feet.
They find themselves in a stone room with pairs of doors to the north and south and a tunnel leading east. There is a sluice gate in the center of the room. Sewage drips from above onto a pile of bodies and debris and then drains along a channel into the tunnel. Bramo telepathically tells Verushka to search through the bodies. Verushka asks out loud if they want her to search the bodies. Mistaking her question for volunteering to help, they tell her to search the bodies.
As she searches the bodies, some of the animate and attack her! Riley and Lancelot rush over and attack the undead. With some help from Verushka, they make quick work of the undead and destroy them. Examining the bodies reveals that many of them are quite old. They all appear to be the bodies of other Belviews, but the oldest bodies are less monstrous and deformed. The pile of bodies shows their increasing degeneration over time.
The group tries to open a sturdy, locked door to the north, but they cannot manage it. Bramo fails to pick the lock after multiple attempts and McCoy fails to batter it down. They finally decide to search the other rooms instead. The other door to the north reveals moldy crates filled with supplies. They find among the supplies cloth, elastic bands, a rusted lantern, some oil flasks, and a key and take them. They use the key on the locked door.
Behind the locked door they find satchels, buckets, bags, and sacks all used to haul away stone. McCoy notices a path through all the equipment that leads him to a secret door on the far wall. Opening the door reveals a horrific scene. Two corpses lay inside, locked eternally in poses of combat as they try to strangle and gouge each other. They are fighting over a large container which has cracked open to reveal an enormous pile of gold and riches. The entire group is convinced this gold is cursed, and they all back away quickly, refusing to have anything to do with it.
They struggle with another locked door to the south and check the other door instead. This door disintegrates at their touch due to its age and decay. Inside, the room is completely filled with rocks, stone, and rubble. Put to one side by the door are some special items: a fossilized fish, a geode, a shiny, purple rock, and a stone with partial inscription on it. Elora uses a magic ritual to decipher to inscription. It mentions something about tending a garden and sleeping in eternal peace.
They break into the other room and find two corpses seated at a desk. The floor is covered in a purple fungus. Johan volunteers to enter the room and is attacked by the fungus. It lashes out at him and also reaches through the door to attack McCoy and Bramo. McCoy and Johan quickly cut the fungus to pieces. Investigating the bodies, they discover a woman at the desk has stabbed herself through the heart with a fine rapier. Across from her, a man has slit his own throat with a dagger. Dark, blood stains cover the floor beneath them.
On the desk is a ledger. Reading through it, Johan discovers that the Belviews had ambitious plans to improve their family’s status in Barovia undertaking this large construction project building the Abbey’s sewer system. However, later entries reveal that the Belviews dug too deeply and unleashed some kind of curse on themselves which has damned them. Johan takes some gold and honey from the desk along with the ledger and leaves.
The group head down the drainage pipes into the sewage network. Bramo and McCoy both become nauseated by the terrible stench of the sewage. They reach an intersection where the tunnel narrows and branches. Johan is uncomfortable in the tunnels and asks to go last as they enter the tunnels single file. They make their way down one branch which splits again into two tunnels. They follow one branch to a collapsed tunnel. The collapsed tunnel has two signs posted in it. One which instructs the workers to “DIG NO FURTHER” and another which is a strange poem memorializing the fallen Belview workers.
The group is forced to turn around and they head down the other branch with Johan now in the lead. This tunnel leads to an enormous swarm of maggots and their queen! Bramo annihilates the swarm with a powerful bolt of fire and also damages the queen. Johan finishes off the maggot queen with his sword. They search through the remains and find only the bones of the maggots’ prey.
They backtrack to the original intersection and head down the other tunnel. They find a drainpipe which leads further down. McCoy recklessly plunges down the pipe and impales himself at the bottom on sharp stalagmites. He calls up advising caution to the others. Riley ties a rope to one of the bars of the broken grate and lowers herself down with Lancelot. The bar gives way under their way, and she plummets downward. She manages to land on her feet without impaling herself, and she and Lancelot are okay. Bramo hammers a piton into the wall of the tunnel, secures a rope to it, and uses it to lower himself down below. The rest of the group follows him.
They find themselves in a small cave grotto. Waste pours down from the drainpipe above while fresh water trickles in from the cave wall filtering the waste as it all flows to another drain in the water below. A platform above the pool of water holds a complicated system of greased gears. A long, metallic arm connected to the gears stretches over the pool and partial covers the inlet of fresh water from the cave wall. Another set of gears is connected to a plate which partial covers the outlet pipe in the pool below.
The group studies the system of gears trying to figure out how it works. Crude signage on the gears explains that the master gears only turn in one direction. They can see that there are some missing gears along with extra metal rods jutting up from the water where gears could be mounted. A cloth, elastic band lies nearby disconnected from the system.
Further along the platform above the pool there is a crude shed. They decide the missing gears are likely in this shed and head over to investigate with Johan leading the way. As he approaches the shed, a strange creature slowly sits up from the water where it had been lying. The creature is humanoid in appearance, but grossly distorted in its proportions, all it’s limbs nearly double the length they should be. The creature is extremely skinny with loose, stitched together skin hanging from its bony frame.
The creature greets them speaking in long, slow, drawn out words. It identifies itself as Sloth. They greet Sloth and say they are there to check on the water levels. Sloth takes no action and they enter the shed to inspect it. Water rushes into the shed as they open it, and they see a number of broken gears inside. There is one intact gear inside along with some handles.
The gear is incredibly heavy and requires two people to carry it. The group asks Verushka to help, but she says no. The group asks why she won’t help, and she tells them she is demonstrating her right to say no. The group applauds her autonomy but begrudge her timing. McCoy and Johan manage to carry out the gear and place it on the machinery. They turn the cranks to no effect. Then they attach the elastic band and the outlet door starts moving. The outlet closes, sealing the pipe. The room begins filling with water.
They realize they cannot turn the handle backwards. The room continues to fill with water. They move the gear to another location, and this allows the outlet door to open. They have Verushka turn the handle for them and open the outlet door fully.
Riley lowers herself into the pool to inspect the outlet pipe. She sees that she can now fit into the pipe, but the flow of water is very fast. The group debates what to do and decide that the only way out is forward. Riley goes first and Lancelot insists on going with her. They shoot off, flushed down the pipe! The rest of the group follows. Bronwyn and Bramo go down together followed by Ireena and then Elora.
As McCoy moves towards the pipe, Sloth approaches him, and he has an awkward conversation with him then departs down the pipe.
Johan is the last to leave. He tells Sloth they have fixed the “problem” with the pipes for him. Sloth explains that he had no problem. He is content to lie in the water, sleep, and do nothing. Johan nods in understanding and enters the pipe, being flushed down as well.
Curse of Ravenloft 