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| If this is Dhelt's response to returning an amulet, I want to be the hero who rescues his kidnapped daughter. |
Somers and Quill, Forgotten Realms denizens, arrived in this weird little dimension after killing a burglar who stole the holy symbol belonging to Lord Dhelt. Since then, our only mission has been to recover the holy symbol and get home; in this, we are principally opposed by the enigmatic, vampiric lord of the place: Count Strahd von Zarovich. We have been joined by NPCs native to this place, all of whom either want to destroy Strahd or escape this nightmare campaign setting.
A note on the burglar's body indicated that he stole Dhelt's symbol because he thought it was the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, perhaps the only artifact that can defeat Strahd. Our explorations, and our meeting last session with the great raven Pyoor Twohundredsummers, have led us to believe that the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind is in fact a different artifact, hidden by someone named Sasha. Its location was written on texts contained in the Old Church; the texts are readable only by someone holding Sasha's Reading Glass, which we obtained from Pyoor.
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| An inscription I failed to notice the last time I was in the church. Removing the "but" would have preserved the trochaic hexameter. |
Dhelt's holy symbol ironically has a secondary, and equally vital, use. After investigating other possibilities to no avail, we have learned that the way to warp out of here is to use a magical book called Trimia's Catalogue along with a fiery red gem, an elven crown, the feather of a wereraven, a Tarokka (read: tarot) card, and a "symbol of truth, honor, and religious devotion stolen from its rightful owner." Wheels within wheels, my friends.
At the end of the last session, Pyoor gave us a key that would open a locked door in the basement of the Old Church. We head there, hoping that the door will open into a room, and Sasha's scroll will be there, and that will be it. But of course, the door opens to reveal a stairway downward and we have to explore another entire level.
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| This is the third new Latin term I've learned this week. |
The Old Church: Lower Level 2 is presented as a vast library. We find a scroll immediately upon entering. It is an unencrypted account of how the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind once shot a beam of light that sent Strahd into a "long hibernation." It reiterates that the symbol is now hidden, and two other scrolls are the only keys to its location.
I end up having to loop around the level multiple times, as there are a lot of illusory walls, plus buttons and chains that open remote locations. The only enemies are shadows and shadow fiends, both of which sound scary but are actually relatively pathetic. Their vaunted partial invisibility doesn't work in the bright light of Mischa's "Light" spell. They supposedly drain strength, but I don't see it happen. They're immune to elemental attacks, but I don't need to use such magic. They mostly die in one hit. The shadow fiends (I think there are three of them) do hit hard, and a couple of times I have to back off to heal one of my first-rank characters, but in general the level isn't much of a challenge when it comes to monsters.
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| This was briefly scary. |
It is, on the other hand, a challenge when it comes to navigation. There are locked doors everywhere, and only one key to open them. That key is past a door that opens only to a particular button, which is nowhere near the door. Although I'm trained to look for variations in wall patterns by now, I cannot find this button despite multiple loops through the level. My characters often pipe up to alert me to oddities in the walls, but they don't here, and again I wonder whether having a thief in the party increases the chances of making that kind of identification.
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| A shadow wraith is trapped behind a chair. |
I finally have to resort to the cluebook to find the button. I'm glad I have it. The danger of doing what I did last session, hex-editing the party to escape a "walking dead" situation, is that once you know how to do that sort of thing, and you've broken the dam, it's tempting to keep doing it. Later, I resist almost overwhelming temptation to do it in the Old Church: Lower Level 1. There's a door in the southeast that I simply cannot figure out how to open, and the cluebook is weirdly no help.
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| The button I missed is to the lower-right of the chain. |
The key, by the way, opens four separate doors. I may be wrong, but I think every other key in the game has only been used once. It's a good thing I didn't get into the habit of discarding them after their first use. At the end of this session, I'm carrying 23 separate keys, including a dozen on two separate keyrings. I'll take alternative opinions, but I think "best practice" when it comes to keys is to either offer an unlimited keyring or to make single-use keys vanish once used. This is just absurd, particularly when the keys weigh half a pound each.
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| One of several keyed doors. |
Within the locked areas of the level, I find some potions, some scrolls, another set of Gauntlets of Dexterity, and Sasha's two encrypted scrolls. The way the scrolls work is that you hold Sasha's Reading Glass in one hand and the scroll in the other, then view the scroll. A little window appears that you can move across the writing to translate it. The scrolls use a simple substitution cipher, and it would be possible, if time-consuming, to figure them out without the Reading Glass. As it is, the fact that you can only see about five words at a time makes it annoying to transcribe the text.
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| The prism translates the text, bit by bit. |
Together, the scrolls say:
Where azure dome yields to constant gray, where sky and cloud are one and light is but a flash among the clouds, where death lashes brightly to the ground, go you there! Search below the thundering heavens for the prize. Amid the twisted wildwood, its guardian stands. One good, straight heart of oak waits proud and true, a beauty beneath the dread sky.
Go then to the gypsies, for from the Vistani alone may you acquire a certain potion, an elixir known to be the only passport through what mists shield the place. For only those guarded thus and true of heart may challenge the fog, that wall of poison which awaits between you, the forest of the undead, and the prize.
Once twined around in stone, then twice, then thrice, then twice more in circumflexion, each circle of four waits within the greater ring, waits for the planting of the seeds. Aye, for only the seeds of divine light, of Lathander Morninglord, when placed to rest within the inner circles may free the prize. Planted within that shady circumference, one to each circle of stones, these four symbols will bring down the light, rending beauty to release the prize. Then behold! There the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind awaits.
I don't know what the last paragraph means, and probably won't know until I get there, but the first two paragraphs make the next steps clear: Use the Vistani potion to cross the mists and find the stout oak.
Those readers who abandoned my blog when they saw the state of my inventory will, should they ever return, be happy to know that I spent about 30 minutes cleaning it up. I decided to use the apse of the Old Church as a storage place. I divested myself of all scrolls and quest items that I'm reasonably sure I no longer need, as well as extra weapons and armor.
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| Does this look any better? |
When I'm done, I have Somers in charge of the quest items plus a few excess potions and one excess scroll. Quill has all the keys, which alone make him lightly encumbered, but light encumbrance supposedly doesn't have any consequences. Mischa has the healing items and cleric scrolls, which together make him moderately encumbered. This gives him a -1 attack penalty. To counter it, I throw away his helmet, which according to D&D rules isn't doing anything anyway.
Quill's inventory has 10 doses of Keoghtom's Ointment, 16 Potions of Extra Healing, and two scroll cases full of "Raise Dead," "Neutralize Poison," and "Cure Disease," none of which I ever expect to use. I have some loose cleric scrolls like "Cure Light Wounds" and "Flame Blade," which I plan to use as soon as I can. They also weigh half a pound each.
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| We really made a mess of the church. |
Finally, Glorianna has the magic items, including Wands of Magic Missiles, Frost, and Paralyzation, plus several mage scrolls, a whole chest of Oils of Fiery Burning, and a number of buffing potions like Speed and Giant Strength. I leave a lot of extra stuff in the church. Not for the first time, I wonder if the game is so generous with loot so as to trick the player into encumbrance.
I don't know if it matters where I enter the mist, but for whatever reason, I go all the way back to the Svalich Woods, where I first arrived in this realm. I use the experience to develop my theory about respawning, which I cover below. I swallow the potion and enter the fog to the Undead Forest.
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| Some dialogue from Somers saves me from having to administer the potion to every character. |
As with the last time I tried this, I arrive on the other side and am immediately surrounded and torn apart by treants. These are the only creatures in the area, by the way, so I have no idea why it's called the Undead Forest.
This area takes me about an hour and is a complete nightmare. There are a couple of dozen treants in clusters all over the map. [No, Microsoft, I don't mean "in a state of disorder." I literally mean all over the map.] There's no place to flee where you don't run headlong into a pack of them. They don't seem to get hung up on obstacles as easily as other enemies; when I find a circle of stones, I at first think I'm saved, that they won't be able to fit through the gaps, but it turns out that they pose no barrier. Meanwhile, the party gets hung up on plenty of obstacles, often unable to move through what appears to be large gaps between pairs of trees.
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| The treants corner me. |
While I'm trying to deal with them, lightning bolts are shooting randomly out of the mists that border the map. And I keep accidentally fleeing through the mists and back to one of the other Ravenloft maps. This isn't a big deal—the Vistani potion seems to last forever—except that I have to watch the same 30-second animation every time I go back into the mists.
The map is dotted with swirly white teleporters, which become my salvation. After I have lured enough of the treants away from their starting points, one of the teleporters deposits me into an area devoid of treants. I can see them in the distance, but I'm not close enough to "activate" them. I start creeping close to them, activating them one or two at a time, killing them with missile weapons or spells before they reach the party when possible. They're worth 500 experience points, which sounds like a lot, but it barely nudges me closer to the next level. I need hundreds of thousands.
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| A weird teleporter. |
The only good news here is that I end up using a lot of my excess stuff, including every Oil of Fiery Burning, several wands, several scrolls, and a lot of potions.
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| An outraged treant escapes the fire I inflicted. Note that Glorianna has "Claws of the Umber Hulk" active. I don't remember that spell in another CRPG. |
The area has some mundane weapons, a Wand of Frost, some additional Oils of Fiery Burning, and a couple of items called Seeds of the Morninglord. I don't find anything that looks like a sturdy oak, however. I start testing the teleporters and eventually find one that takes me to a second Undead Forest that looks mostly like the first, except it has a big oak in the analogous circle of stones. Of course, this means I have to deal with an entirely new army of treants.
The map has two more Seeds of the Morninglord, two cleric scrolls of "Heal," two mage scrolls of "Fireball," and some more mundane weapons. It also has two Magic Stones, which appear to be throwing weapons, but they don't return or anything.
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| It's a miracle that such a small thing just sat her undisturbed all these years. |
The oak in the center of the stone circle is surrounded by four smaller stone circles. Sasha's scrolls said that I needed to plant a seed in each one, so I do.
A cutscene shows four hands thrusting out of the ground to grab the seeds. Then a lightning bolt hits the top of the tree, splitting it down the middle. The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind is revealed within. It's a shame that the tree had to be destroyed. I like oaks, even though I got bonked in the head by three acorns last week while walking around my house.
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| The hand thing is creepy. |
With the Holy Symbol in hand, we wander into the nearest mists and find ourselves on the Old Svalich Road North, which is convenient. We can't think of anything to do but confront Strahd.
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| Poor tree. |
Commenter VladimIr V Y alerted me that I forgot about a stairway in the main chapel. I have no idea how I missed it; it's not hidden or anything. I take it now. We wind our way up half a dozen small tower levels, fighting nothing more serious than doom guards (they're worth 1,000 experience points and pose no threat whatsoever). The Ravenloft Silver Tower Key is used three times during the ascent, belying my earlier comment about keys not being re-used.
At the top of the tower, we find imprisoned a large man who offers to join the party. He's a Level 6 chaotic good human fighter named Anshelm. The idea that we'd need a Level 6 fighter at this stage of the game is pretty absurd. (It would have been absurd even if I'd found him during the last session.) We thank him for his offer but send him on his way. It's not clear to me why Strahd would have bothered to imprison him.
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| I think perhaps "a turn of ill-luck" deserves some elaboration. |
We head back down to the dungeons to the final encounter with Strahd. As we approach, I get the holy symbol ready and cast all the buffing spells I can think of. Somers and Quill take Potions of Speed, Giant Strength, and Fire Resistance. I move forward.
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| Perhaps a bit over-prepared. |
We have the same dialogue with Strahd as before, except now we can taunt him with the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. He doesn't seem to be afraid of it. In fact, he pretends that it was All Part of His Plan.
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| I wonder if I could pull off a cape. |
The final battle is disappointing. Strahd can't be hurt by anything except blasts from the Holy Symbol, so all our buffing was mostly wasted. The Holy Symbol is a ranged weapon with a cool-down period. If I stand far away from Strahd, he blasts me with "Fireballs," which mostly do no damage because of my rings and potions. But I hate just standing around, so I get up in his face and attack with melee weapons during cool-downs, which gives Strahd a chance to attack with his claws.
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| Firing the artifact at the blue demon. |
I try to keep up with healing potions, but Somers is busted down to Level 4 and (somehow) only 7 hit points, so it's impossible to keep her alive. When Strahd succumbs to the last blast, Somers is dead.
I don't think I'm going to be able to bring these characters into the sequel, so that's fine, but something won't let me leave it at that. I reload the game and this time engage Strahd only from a distance. He barely does any damage to us before he disappears, dropping Lord Dhelt's holy symbol on the ground. I check out the sarcophagus in the center of the room to see if Strahd's body retreated to it, but the game gives me nothing.
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| I don't know if I can live with this. |
I could use Trimia's Catalogue right away, but I feel compelled to do a bit of "surplaying." There's no way that Strahd is dead—he's the key figure in a whole campaign setting, after all, and when he disappeared, we didn't get any experience—so someone might need this Holy Symbol of Ravenkind in the future.
I'm hoping that the game acknowledges our victory in some way, but alas, it doesn't. Nobody I talk to has any new dialogue, including Tatiana, the priest in the Old Church, the Vistani in the bar, and the bartender himself. The game has us call him "innkeeper" and ask for a drink even though we know his secret. Thus, we drop the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind in front of him and then prepare the items necessary to use Trimia's Catalogue.
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| The game doesn't let you drop objects on furniture, so I leave it on the floor. |
With no opportunity to remove Mischa or Glorianna from the party, or even ask if they want to come along, Somers clicks on the book. The endgame cutscene kicks in.
First, the book opens, and a number of flashes come from it as the various items are consumed.
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| I'm curious what all the text says. |
Then the animation shows us flying through a wormhole in space, passing a number of celestial objects but also a number of paintings showing various scenes. I suspect these are meant to be windows into various planes or campaign settings. I don't think any of them are identifiable, although there's a desert scene towards the end that could be the world of Dark Sun.
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| Or, I suppose, Al-Qadim. |
We end up in a flat plane with a throne in the middle. As we get close, we see the symbol of Helm, god of duty, on its back. Then Helm himself is sitting on the throne, depicted as a suit of empty, animated armor. He thanks us for recovering the holy symbol for "one of his most devout followers."
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| Those eyes are a bit unnerving. |
I guess Helm sends us home, because the next scene shows us climbing the stairs in Dhelt's castle and finding him in his chambers. He's delighted to see us and promises wealth and honors for the rest of our lives.
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| Who is well? It's been a long trip. |
And then, predictably, the final scene shows a thick mist snaking into a coffin in a cave somewhere, followed by Strahd's glowing eyes and sinister laughter. Why are villains always laughing after they lost?
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| Strahd returns to his refuge. |
Some miscellaneous notes:
- I end the game still not quite knowing how the game handles respawns. My best guess is that there are a fixed number of enemies in each area, some in the area initially, and some held in reserve to slowly repopulate the area after the party initially clears it. But once enough of these reserve monsters are depleted, the area is completely quiet—except maybe at night. And when the party unsuccessfully rests. I don't know.
- The Axe of Hurling and Dagger of Throwing were arguably the most useful items in the game. I don't think there were any other auto-returning throwing weapons. Incidentally, there are weird circumstances, against some enemies, in which these items don't return and end up on the floor instead. I never got a handle on why this happened. I was lucky enough that I always noticed their absence and managed to find them, but it was dicey a couple of times.
- I never found a key to the large door at the southern end of the Old Svalich Road South.
- The character sheets show a distinction between maximum attributes and current attributes. Quill, who was raised once, has a maximum constitution of 15 but a current constitution of 14. That implies the loss can be reversed somehow.
- I might be wrong, but I don't think the game offered any quest experience, just enemy experience. Although the experience tables in the manual go up to Level 20, I ended the game with Glorianna at Level 10 and everyone else at Level 9, all far from their next level. (I would have had to kill 2,957 zombies, if I could have found that many, for Somers to reach Level 10.) But Level 6 mage spells are programmed into the game. I can't imagine how you'd get there.
- Credits roll after the final scene, starting with the voice actors who played each character. I don't remember seeing this before.
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| Frank Schurter, whose name I accidentally clipped off, had a lot of responsibilities. He was also on the graphics team. |
I didn't make use of enough of Glorianna's higher-level spells to justify having a pure mage in that slot. Velika might have been a better choice assuming that thief skills actually make a difference anywhere.
I'm going to take a little time for the "Summary and Rating," as I want to go through the Ravenloft tabletop materials and compare them to the setting presented in the CRPG and to see if they answer any questions or provide any elaboration on plot points like the Vistani (what was the purpose of the whole visit to their camp?!), the wereravens, or the Amulet of Ravenkind.
Here's a final thought before I go: The title is yet another example of "banallure!" I assumed Strahd would somehow possess someone, or be possessed himself. Instead, the subtitle refers to the literal thing he's clutching in his hand—Dhelt's holy symbol. Dhelt himself is awfully gleeful over such a small thing; it's not like we saved his kingdom from invasion. At the end of the game, Strahd is still alive and presumably still in charge, we're back where we started, and Dhelt has a bit of jewelry back. I've said before that I like low-stakes plots, but this one might go too far.
Final time: 36 hours
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Next entry in this series
10/31/2026
