CoS 10: Yester Hill

Chapter 10: Yester Hill

Chapter 10 of my Curse of Strahd campaign brings us to the base of Yester Hill, an ancient burial mound created by the barbarian tribes who first settled in the Barovian Valley thousands of years ago.



As the group ascends the hill Aust begins to hear whispers directing him to one of the cairns. Randak follows and attempts to dissuade him from unearthing whatever is under these black slimy rocks.

The others get to the top of the hill and see before them the 30' tall statue made of twigs and mud packed earth. The group surmises that the statue is a crude representation of Strahd. The ones on top of the hill notice recently looking burial mounds but do not investigate while Aust continues to move rocks. Randak orders Beaky (undead Raven familiar) to peck at Aust to get him to stop but to no avail.

A little while later, the group hears a lone horse enter the valley and head their direction. But instead of a horse they see the flickering flames of a nightmare ridden by Strahn. he ascends the hill waits. Most of our group hides. Phun Ki crawls over the black boulders and nearly gets zapped by lightening while Aust continues digging. Strahd glances at Aust, but diverts his attention to the rising bodies from the shallow graves. Twelve dark figures rise and begin dancing around the great statue while our group watches cautiously.

After a short while, erupting from the statue is a treeblight! The "undead" creatures that summoned/created the monster descended back to their graves.

About that time, Aust pulls a blood stained spear from the grave. Curious how/why there would still be blood on a centuries old staff was at the forefront of everyone's mind. UNTIL the rampaging Treeblight began rumbling and RAAWWRR'ing down the hill towards the trail.

At first, the group wanted to let it go but Randak, the clever dwarf that he is, thought that the monster was heading to the Winery and destroy it. Thinking this was a bad idea, the group decided to stop it.

Some stabbing, slashing, magic throwing and cursing later the treeblight fell while Strahd over looked the battle from atop the hill. Well, all except that one time he appeared behind Randak and bit him nearly killing him...Ouch!.. Strahd then departed into the mists on his nightmare.

From the woodpile of the treeblight the group finds a glowing green pine cone and assume its one of the seeds that Martikov's told them about.

The group quickly heals up, then ascends the hill again. One of them, (I think Randak) decides that they should look into the "undead" creatures and begins digging up one of the graves. He hits something somewhat solid and hears an "Ouch!" from under the ground.

The undead creatures are alive!

No one suspected it and were soon surrounded by mud-caked Druids and Barbarians. This battled did not go well for our group as most were nearly taken out. Dragomir actually incapped but eventually succeeded his Death Saves after 5 rolls. Coming to the groups rescue was Strahd. He killed 2 of the Barbarians and a few Druids before departing with an evil laugh that echoed through the valley.

The group gathered their senses, did some quick heals, and headed back to the Wizards of Wine.


To be continued...