A Mysterioussss Woman Joinssss the Fight

Disclaimer: This includes spoilers for Curse of Strahd so don’t read if you don’t want to know.

We woke up to a much smaller version of the Triple A store. Sylvia let us know that we needed to leave now to conserve space. We gathered our things and left. We had heard rumors of a temple far to the south of Barovia and headed there immediately. The party needed to power up and learn more about Strahd. The rumors had stated that the Amber Temple was where Strahd had struck his deal for immortality and we needed to know if that deal could be broken. So we headed there as soon as possible.

On the way to the temple we got stuck in a raging snowstorm and lost Wick. The temple was located in high mountains. It snowed constantly and snowstorms were not unusual. Unbeknownst to us, Milo the Rogue had bought everyone warm clothes for the trip and handed them out, in an unexpected show of kindness, as we were about to freeze our butts off. Warm and cozy, we made our way towards the temple looking for Wick as we went. We were the first to arrive at the temple.

From Wick’s perspective, he moved through the storm blindly and eventually found himself in the presence of a mysterious woman. She was tall and dressed in the robes of a cleric. He looked past her and saw an enormous constrictor snake behind the woman. That was when he noticed the faint green scaling on her face and hands. He was afraid at first, not wanting the snake to eat him. They introduced themselves and that was how Kariss the Yuan-ti Pureblood Cleric of Bahamut joined the party. Kariss was beautiful and Wick was a sucker for hot ladies. She got annoyed at his obstinance at riding her snake to make their trip faster and at his lechery. 

With a flick of her wrist and a mental command she had her snake companion Kess scoop up Wick in its mouth and they began to make their way to the temple right on the heels of the rest of our party. We had already gone inside by the time they arrived at the front doors. Kess put Wick down and he proceeded to freak out about being in the giant snake’s mouth. He began to develop a fear of giant snakes right there. They made their way in. Wick reluctantly agreed to ride on the back of Kess, as long as there was no mouth near him. 

The rest of our party had already made our way in. We made our way through a dark corridor and were beset upon by some floating skulls. They began to shoot beams of flame at us and a battle began. We managed to fight our way down the main corridor around the first floor, beating a few as we went. We were fighting in the corridor when we made our way into a side chamber that looked like a library. There was also something in the center of the floor below us shooting more flame into our corridor. We thought it was a trapped room.

We managed to enter the library and found a young man with a scarred face. He begged us not to kill him and was shivering in the corner. Before we had a chance to react or ask any more questions, Milo the Rogue stabbed the young man in the chest and killed him. We were arguing and yelling at Milo when we heard a noise outside the door. We hid behind various furnishings and waited for the intruders to show themselves. Kariss and Wick entered the room and we almost attacked when Wick intervened and told us his side of the story. We were all a bit wary as we had been betrayed by a new party member before (remember Mulan/Calen). 

We made a temporary truce as Kariss explained that her god, Bahamut, had tasked her to come to Barovia to fight a terrible evil. We let her know that we were fighting against Strahd, the lord in charge of this world. She agreed to join us for the moment and we stepped out of that hall with a new member and a renewed sense of hope that we might be able to defeat this evil with the help of a cleric of the dragon god of Justice. Who better to align ourselves with than a cleric with a willingness to help.