The group slide down the drain propelled at rapid speed. They are battered against the walls of the pipe and drop 60 feet straight down into sewage water. Elora is seriously injured in the fall and patches herself up with a healer’s kit.
The group find themselves in a strange cave with iridescent, purple walls. One side of the room is a giant bowl depression and the other has multiple winding tunnels leading away from it. The group goes over to the bowl and finds it is filled with black tree trunks and tangles of white branches. Bramo ties a rope to himself and heads over to investigate. The small bodies of Belviews are entwined in the branches. Screams are frozen on their faces and they look like they are trying to escape. Bramo can see that the tree trunks are hollow and each one is sealed with a wooden plug. The group decide to leave the scene alone.
They head down one of the winding tunnels instead. One side of the wall has regular impressions in it, almost like a honeycomb. These wall sockets have been filled with skulls and bones carefully arranged and face outwards. As they progress through the tunnel, they most of the bones have been smashed. They find the badly burned body of another Belview. Studying the body, they can see it was immolated trying to run out of the tunnel. The group stays on guard. Further down the tunnel they find a pair of blackened skeletons wearing metal safety helmets which have been melted onto their skulls.
Turn the corner, the group is ambushed! Three skulls wreathed in orange flames fly out of the wall sockets and attack them! McCoy immediately goes into a rage and attacks them, but the rest of the group is surprised. The three skulls shoot jets of flame at the party burning the front ranks. Riley moves up and fights by McCoy’s side, destroying one of the flaming skulls. Bronwyn fires her eldritch magic at the skulls and retreats with Verushka who is afraid of fire.
Johan rushes into the fight with his moon sword. The glow of Johan’s sword has a strange effect on the enraged McCoy. Suddenly, his body shudders and shifts with the groan of metal and stone, the shape of his mechanical body transforming into a mechanical wolf hybrid! McCoy enters a frenzy and attacks Johan with his claws. He dodges out of the way as acid spews from Johan’s wounds.
Ireena moves up to try and contain McCoy and keeping him from attacking the rest of the group. She helps to finish off one of the skulls. Bronwyn and Bramo destroy the other with their magic. Johan tries to grapple McCoy and contain him, but McCoy is too strong and burst out of his grip. The group decides the only way to stop McCoy is to incapacitate him. They focus all of their attacks on him. Ireena reluctantly uses her silvered shortsword against him and allows Riley to get an attack on him which drops him.
As McCoy goes unconscious, his body slumps and transforms back to normal. The group quickly stabilize and heal him. An upset and confused Piddlewick hugs the confused McCoy as he wakes. The group explains what happened move him to the back of their marching order away from Johan’s sword. The group ask him to put the sword away and use another, but he refuses, telling them how much he likes the sword.
Making their way to the end of the tunnel, they find an ancient Wild Folk king on his throne. The king has a long, white beard attached to his shriveled remains with a crown of antlers on his head and a blanket of moss on his lap. Johan determines that the resting king is undead, and the group decides not to disturb him.
They back out of the tunnel and make their way down another one. This tunnel has the same honeycomb of wall sockets filled with skulls and bones, but the walls of this tunnel are covered in gold! The streaks and flecks of gold become more pronounced the deeper they move into the tunnel until the entire wall, including the bones, are covered in glittering gold. They find a figure at the end of the tunnel, it must be over 15 feet tall, but it is bent doubled over in the tunnel. Metal objects of all kinds are embedded in its flesh, forks, knives, fire pokers, horseshoes and other mundane metal items. Its mouth is lined with blades and coins and its fingers are knives and scythe blades. Instead of eyes, it has two enormous gems in its eye sockets, a giant ruby and a giant diamond. The creature gives a wordless cry and attacks them!
McCoy rushes forward to attack and back into the light of Johan’s moon sword. This time he is able to control his rage and does not transform. Lancelot tries to help Riley attack the creature, but his teeth cannot penetrate its skin. McCoy, Riley, and Johan engage it in a melee as it tries to push past them to reach the jewelry that Bronwyn and Elora wear. The greedy creature shoots a flaming sphere out from its ruby eye. The sphere burns Lancelot and McCoy and the heat from the sphere drips molten gold on them.
Bronwyn blasts the creature with one of her eldritch blasts, but it heals the creature! Confused, she falls back bringing Verushka with her. Realizing she cannot harm this creature with her weapons, Ireena makes an opening for Riley allowing her to attack it instead. She implores Elora to fall back, but Elora refuses to retreat. Elora continually launches bolts of electricity at the creature and Bramo tries to attack it with bolts of fire, but both are deflected by the makeshift armor embedded in the creature’s flesh.
Eventually, McCoy, Riley, and Johan are able to hack the creature to pieces with their magic weapons. Bramo pries the gemstones eyes out of the creature’s skull and pockets them. Then they cut and scrape the molten gold off of Lancelot and McCoy and collect it. While the group rests, Bramo works for an hour using a magical flame to melt gold off of the walls and collect it netting a tidy sum.
The group explore another tunnel and find it leads out of the strange purple cave. Traveling through rock and stone, it leads them down to an opening above a verdant green cave with a large pool of sparkling blue water. The group uses a rope to lower themselves down after Johan injures himself falling into the water. They reach a giant island floating in the pool water and discover it is actually a massive skull! Looking around the cave, they see that the white arches leading up a green hill away from the pool are actually the ribs and bones of a giant whale. McCoy is able to easily identify the creature and now realizes that the cave above must have been made by the body of a giant squid.
Rolling around in the moss covering the skull island is a tall, hermaphroditic humanoid with androgynous features and long, pink tentacles for arms. The creature is somehow strangely alluring. It identifies itself as Lust and takes an immediate interest in the group. Lust asks them many invasive questions. They seem ecstatic as they look over the group and make several demands for gifts and references to devouring the group. Lust makes the group uncomfortable running their tentacles over them without consent. Lust focuses on Johan who rebukes them causing Lust to attack him and try to entangle him in their tentacles.
Ireena steps up to protect Elora and allows Johan to reposition himself. Riley, Ireena, McCoy, and Johan surround Lust and unload attacks on them. The spellcasters unleash their magic on Lust, but Lust seems particularly resistant to Elora’s spells. Lust vomits up two swarms of writhing tongues, one on top of Elora and the other between Bramo and Bronwyn.
Ireena tells Elora to back away, but again Elora refuses to retreat. Ireena finally shoves her away to safety getting her out of reach of the swarm of tongues. Lust wraps their tentacles around Johan and McCoy and draws them in. One of the tongue swarms moves over Bronwyn but she bats it away. The other swarm burns Bramo with its acidic saliva as it licks all over him. Bramo struggles to attack or cast spells as the acid continues to burn him.
Lust is killed by Johan’s blow and dies with a disturbing, orgasmic groan. Johan moves to attack the tongue swarm on Bronwyn. Ireena follows and attacks the tongues which allows Bronwyn the opportunity to destroy them with her magic. Riley comes to Bramo’s aid and kills the other swarm of tongues.
After the battle, they wade into the sparkling, blue waters and find the Martikov gem hanging below the skull. The magic of the gem has purified the waters here and allowed all of the lush greenery to grow in the cave. The group looks around at the beautiful, vibrant sight of the cave feeling completely out of place in Barovia. They give the gem to Elora for safekeeping.
Exploring the rest of the cavern, they enter a flipper-shaped cave and find drawings of a ship being destroyed in a battle between a whale and a giant squid before under up under the mountain. McCoy realizes he is seeing a depiction of what happened to him and his crew but cannot make sense of it.
They find another cave which contains a lush, fruit tree with round, juicy, pink fruit. After checking the fruit for poison, they try some of it and see that it magically heals them.
In another cave they find a treasure trove overgrown with moss. There are all kinds of treasures, coins, and art objects and pieces of a sailing ship all coming from the ship the Augusta. Included in the pile is the mermaid masthead and namesake of the ship. The wooden mermaid has long, black hair and stretches her arms out before her. McCoy recalls that the masthead was enchanted to part fog in the path of the ship. McCoy recognizes the masthead as the woman he has been dreaming of every night. He remembers clinging to her in the water as the ship sank trying not to drown. Overcome with emotion, McCoy gently strokes the face of the masthead.
Going through the riches, the find a large horde of coins and toy boat which McCoy’s daughter made for him. McCoy takes the boat and identifies a barrel in the horde as a Cistern of Crystal Waters. He tells them it contains a magical pearl which purifies any liquid placed into the barrel. His crew used it to turn seawater into drinking water while at sea. The group collects the treasure with the intention of using the magical cistern as a replacement for the gem to purify the water.
In another cave, the group finds a giant squid beak. Bramo studies the beak and determines he could forge this beak into two great, magical shields. They take the beak along with them.
Heading to the whale’s tail, they find the cavern filled with fronds hanging from the ceiling. Beyond them is the captain’s cabin from the Augusta. McCoy brushes the fronds aside and enters the cabin alone. Inside, he encounters a monstrous figure perched on the cabin’s desk, an eight-foot-tall humanoid with tanned skin that is puckered along the seams. It wears a cape of human flesh that is a part of its own body. Its head is enlarged with a small, slit mouth and a single massive eyeball. Sitting atop the head is an ancient captain’s hat.
McCoy greets the captain and identifies himself showing all due respect and courtesy. The prideful captain chides McCoy for showing up late for duty but is otherwise unbothered by his appearance. McCoy asks a few questions about what happened here, and Pride explains how their ship was destroyed in a storm by a whale and a giant squid. Somehow the ship ended up here beneath the mountain. Later the Abbot came along and gave them new bodies but discarded them down here beneath the Abbey. Pride has reassembled the crew of the Handsome Boys here and now rules over them as captain. Pride tries to press McCoy into service, but McCoy manages to fool him and slip away.
McCoy returns to the group and explains the situation to the group. He tells them that they can fight and kill Pride if they want to, but he doesn’t think there’s anything else to learn here and they can just leave if they want to. He realizes that the “captain” he spoke to was not the actual captain of the Augusta but Gordon “Too Vain” Vaybe, a wannabe captain who finally got his wish. Thinking back, he realizes that the other Sins were also members of his crew transformed by the Abbot; each one embodying their worst traits.
McCoy isn’t sure how or why his ship ended up here, but it’s clear that crash must have happened hundreds of years ago. He has been dead much longer than he first believed. The wife and child he has been trying to return to have been dead for centuries. The girl he was watching back in Rivenstorm is at best a distant descendant or possibly a total stranger.
A dejected McCoy tells the group they should just leave. There’s no point in killing any more of the Sins. There’s no point to any of it. On their way out, they place the Cistern beneath the skull in the water to purify any water that passes over it.
They find a tunnel formed by a final blast from the whale’s blowhole which leads out of the cavern to the cliffs outside near Krezk. They use ropes and climbing gear to descend to the ground outside of the town. Johan summons his skeletal horse, and the group departs.
They arrive back at the Wizard of Wines and are greeted by the Martikovs. They tell them that Pietro is safe and there have been no incidents. They sit down to dinner and the Martikovs tell them that Vallaki has undergone a revolution in their absence. The Baron Vallakovich and his family have all been killed. Izek’s fate is unknown. Lady Fiona Watcher now rules over the town. The ban on saying Strahd’s name has been lifted and the mandatory festivals have been canceled.
The group shows Davian the gem the recovered from beneath the Abbey. They explain that 10 years ago it was taken from the winery by the Abbot who is an angel in disguise. His son Urwin has been telling the truth all along. Davian is moved to tears and chides himself for being a fool. He thanks the group and embraces Johan. He opens a bottle of Red Dragon Crush for them excited that they can once again produce it!
The group rests at the winery for the night. They plan to head to Berez the next day, then on to Vallaki the following day to collect Kasimir and finally head to the Amber Temple. They all have the dreadful feeling that time is running out.
Curse of Ravenloft 