Party 16

With the torch in his one working hand lighting the way, Varius takes off down the trail, quickly putting sixty feet or more between himself and the infested bats. Faria and Cassandra are still within reach of the creatures, and the swarm surrounding Astryos surges forward to also include the two women in its dusty embrace. The bats collide with all three elf-kin again and again, like moths crowding a flame. Faria is able to hold the creatures at bay, while Astryos is burned by the stinging spores released on contact. Cassandra is hit hardest of all, collapsing to the ground unconscious as she breathes in the burning dust raised by the bats. When she drops and stops moving, the bats that were surrounding Cassandra leave her, and continue on in Faria's direction.

Attacks against the swarming bats easily take out several of the infected creatures, but their numbers are simply too great, and running away starts to look like the only option. Faria dodges forward, grabs Cassandra and drags her down the trail, leaving the monk's quarterstaff where it fell. Beset by the greater portion of the swarm, Astryos drops his torch and pack to lighten his load so he can get away.

Once you've all put more than thirty feet between yourselves and the bats, they seem to lose track of you and flutter around a bit before resuming their mass movement across the trail and into the woods on the east side. Maybe it's the jostling of being dragged over the rough ground, but Cassandra suddenly regains consciousness. Only Faria completely escapes harm from the burning spores surrounding the bats. The cacophony of wings fades into the evening air, leaving silence again. Astryos' dropped torch smoulders faintly, next to his pack, about a hundred feet back up the trail. Dozens of downed bats twitch, or lie unmoving, along the trail.

It isn't long, maybe another twenty minutes, before the torches and the elves' darkvision reveal a junction where a smaller footpath from the south meets the main trail, which turns to continue west, passing a colorful wooden sign fixed to a tree. On the tree trunks around the footpath to the south, Faria recognizes splashes of color and crude symbols as blazes and warning signs to travelers.

Over the course of the last mile or so, Cassandra and Faria have noticed a gradual increase in the number of mushrooms sprouting from the soil of the trail. By the time you reach the intersection there are several good-sized patches of them at your feet.

The trail dips down in this direction and becomes muddier. The mushroom patches seem delighted by the moist earth and are positively thriving. Clusters of varied caps dot the ground and several trees along the path host broad orange shelf fungi. It's almost entirely silent out here, with only the sounds of your footsteps in the mud and the occasional dripping of water from tree limbs.

Sixty feet or so further along the trail, Cassandra, who is bringing up the rear of your group, hears a faint crunching noise from the woods to her right. At the outer edge of Varius' torchlight, about forty feet into the trees, she catches a glimpse of a figure in a dark cloak kneeling beside a tree. The hood is pulled up over, hiding their face.

No sooner has Cassandra spoken than the person kneeling by the distant tree stands and produces a sharp bird call, giving their location away to Faria and Astryos. Then they raise the hood of a lantern they hold just enough to let out a sliver of light, allowing even Varius to see where they are. "Hssst!" they call. "Over here, quickly! Come with me! Very dangerous that way!" From the voice, it sounds like a grown man is speaking to you, though the hood still obscures his face.

"What!?" hisses the man in the woods. He pulls back his hood, revealing a perplexed human face. Something dawns on him. "No, that's just the sign. It's our vineyard, but clearly gone to hell. We've got shelter back this way. Follow me if you want to live. " He waves you on as he starts walking deeper into the woods.

"Dag Tomescu, if that means anything to you," the stranger replies once Astryos and Faria come closer. "Ah, best not to step on that," he says, pointing out a large puffball mushroom near Astryos' feet. "We've got a sort of fortification in one of the old outbuildings. Come now, this way."

As he leads on by the dim light of his covered lantern, Dag Tomescu points out additional supposed hazards, all of a fungal variety: slime patches, fairy rings, clouds of drifting spores. In between these admonitions, he comes around to asking you about yourselves. "So, did you get lost in the woods where you come from and just find yourselves suddenly nearby, or did someone in one of our towns talk you into coming down here to see what's become of their wine shipments?"

As you catch up with Dag Tomescu, he sees Varius' monstrous arm and comments, "If there was any doubt you came from Krezk, that would lay them to rest. It looks like the Abbot's handiwork. I'm sure he's missing his wine."

The man leads on by the light of his lantern and your torches. When Faria talks about previous lives, he stops and says, "I'm certainly glad to hear you confirm Count Strahd doesn't consider you allies. But rest assured his antagonism has nothing to do with the lives you led until now. It is his nature to torment and then consume or corrupt those like you who are drawn here, even the ones who hope to serve him."

Starting off again, he answers the question about bats. "Everything was sedate here, relatively speaking, for some time, but yes, the same thing that pushed up all these mushrooms has infested all the wildlife nearby, bats included."

You trek through the woods for about fifteen minutes more, until a faint green glow appears among the trees ahead. "Here we are, home," Dag says with a touch of sarcasm, extinguishing his lantern. Your torches are nearly depleted as well.

The widespread fungal growths halt suddenly here, about sixty feet feet from an old single-story, farmhouse-sized building among some younger trees. It's run down, with briars and errant shrubs growing against its walls. There's a hole in the roof. The steady green light shines through gaps between the structure's slats.

"An old tasting room and storage building," Dag explains. "Hasn't been used in years, but we've been able to fortify it against this incursion." Dag opens the rickety front door and gestures inside, where three adults and four children are huddled around a lantern that is the source of the green glow. A curtain is drawn across one end of the room, and doors lead off to other parts of the house. It has the smell of a place where people have been living rough in close quarters for several days. "Found some more," Dag announces to these people who are presumably his family.

"Well, come in and settle down. We're likely to be stuck here for a while. We've got plenty of food if you're hungry," Dag says. Two of the adults, a man and a woman, acknowledge your arrival. The woman gets up and goes over to embrace Dag and speak with him quietly. The third adult, a man in his thirties, is preoccupied with charcoal and some scraps of parchment.

From behind the curtain, somebody groans and babbles incoherently.

"Davian?" says Dag Tomescu. "He's my father-in-law, so you're not so far off. We'll find him where we're headed."

"These growths, and the corruption of the local beasts, are the work of the hill people, who, since bats were your only concern, I assume you've not yet met. Nasty folks, always trouble for us. Normally they keep to Yester Hill, but now they've clearly awakened something up there, bringing the cancer that's annexed all but this tiny patch of our land. And it's only thanks to an old family thing that we still hold this bit." He points to the green glow in the lantern. "That's no meager flame."

When Dag and the woman, who he introduces as his wife Stefania, have finished speaking, he asks the room, "Is the old man still back there with the sick woman?"

The charcoal-wielding man puts down his parchment and says, "Sure is. He's doing what he can. She's a tough one, that woman. Running a fever but seems like the chop stopped the blight. She'll live."

"Looks like he's a little busy just now," Dag tells Astryos. "Something you needed from him besides wine? If it's just the wine, you're in for a wait. Strahd won't let the hill people choke off the supply forever, but they are his favorites, so he's likely to let them have their fun for quite a while. I'm sure he doesn't mind if it keeps us humble too."

A baleful horn sounds somewhere far off in the night. All the Martikovs look up from what they're doing. "Hill people," says the oldest child, a teenage boy with sandy hair.