Chaos Follows You

The bats land. Baba Lysaga steps out of them in the middle of Madam Eva's camp and wants her gem back, and the first person to stand in her way is Ireena. The second is a four-foot kobold with sparks coming off his shoulders. Then the witch looks past him, goes white, and drops to her knees, and Gesch thinks, for one glorious second, that it's him.

It isn't. A grey wolf walks out of the treeline and becomes Count Strahd von Zarovich. He calls the witch mother. He makes the party a deal: keep Ireena safe, and he spares the village, and the witch won't touch them. He tells Helliax his wife is alive and his son is closer to Strahd than to him. And he tells Fiadh her mother was one of the few who could walk through the mists, and that she died outside them.

In the morning Madam Eva reads the cards for all five of them, including the exorcist she didn't want in her tent, and every answer opens another door. Fiadh's card points to a caravan two days north that will know her mother's name. Gesch learns the witch's curse will keep him out of the swamp for a year, and that it woke something draconic in him that was always there.

The party carries the jade crystal back to the bullywugs. Ghast reads the ritual, twelve standing stones start to sing, and a river that has run brown for years starts to run clear. The spent scroll turns out to be a page torn from a journal about Strahd and how to cleanse this land.

And on the road home, something with thorned knives is waiting to see how well they can keep Ireena alive. Vampire spawn and cloaked assassins that drink through their blades drop Ireena, Fiadh, Gesch and Helliax, twice. Cassius opens with a natural 20 and doesn't stop. Ghast drags three bodies out of the fight by the ankles. They win, barely, and walk on toward Barovia.