Campaign Recap — Curse of Strahd

One heavily condensed summary per session, max 5 lines each.

Session 1

• Myra, summoned by a letter from Strahd, recruits Corvin at the tavern to guide her toward Castle Ravenloft.
• In the Svalich Woods they meet Vess; the mists take all three.
• The road delivers them to the door of Death House.

Session 2

• Deeper into Death House: a mirror dimension, then the ghosts of Rose and Thorn possess Vess and Corvin.
• In the basement, cultists chant "One must die"; Vess, guided by Rose, breaks her pendant on the altar.
• Strahd's voice reveals the whole ordeal was his entertainment; he invites the party to Ravenloft.
• He returns the pendant whole and unbroken, and the party finds itself outside — the house intact behind them.

Session 3

• Corvin is missing — chained in the Barovia church cellar, forced to watch the vampiric Doru feed on victims.
• Vess panics into deer form; chasing her, the party finds Logi barely alive in a ring of ash with his wildfire spirit, Cinder.
• They rest at the Blood of the Vine Tavern (the wine is blood) and drive off the hag Morgantha as she steals a child.
• Logi claims a vampire tooth that magically attaches to him; from the church, they hear Corvin scream.

Session 4

• The party frees Corvin from the church; Vess turns deer again and is chased into the woods by the loosed Doru.
• They witness the March of the Dead — spectral souls hurling themselves from the cliffs below Ravenloft.
• At a Vistani camp, Madam Eva's Tarokka reading: Tome at the Abbey scarecrow, Holy Symbol with the Vistani (via Arabelle), Sunsword in Ravenloft's chapel, no ally granted, Strahd in Sergei's tomb.

Session 5

• Wolves attack the Vistani camp at night; Myra's bedroll is empty, drag marks in the dirt.
• A brutal fight: Logi dragged down twice, Corvin felled once, before the pack retreats.
• Myra is found back in the village — alive and strangely untouched by the carnage.
• The party presses on toward the Old Windmill.

Session 6

• At the Old Windmill a kindly old woman sells dream pastries; Vess dreams bliss, Corvin dreams battlefield horror and sees his friends as monsters — they fight each other.
• The nearby village refuses entry until the windmill witch is dead; eight children have been taken.
• Returning, the party learns the truth: the pastries are made from the children.

Session 7

• Pipwick, a gnomish necromancer-wizard, joins — cursed by Strahd and banished from all forests after a vision.
• Vess, horrified by what she ate, flees as a deer and meets Pipwick in the woods; they rejoin the party.
• The party sets the Old Bonegrinder ablaze and battles the hag within.

Session 8

• Corvin falls in the windmill battle; the hag steals his soul into a soulbag and his possessions, then vanishes.
• Vess heals Myra with a touch to the ankle — the imprint awakens lycanthropy, with one purpose: werewolf Myra will hunt Vess.
• Strahd appears atop the ruins to remind them his invitation to Ravenloft still stands.
• The party follows the hag's trail toward the mountains.

Session 9

• Vess dreams of hands around her throat — Myra's — and wakes with a bloodied neck.
• Logi slips away into the forest during the night.
• The party finds the Morninglord's ruined ritual site: hollow, faithless, answering nothing.
• In the hag's domain, time freezes; her ritual reshapes Corvin — soul bound to Vess, body to Logi, will beneath Myra.
• When time moves again, the party kills the hag — the witch of the Old Windmill is dead.

Session 10

• In the Ruins of Berez, Baba Yaga's walking hut observes and measures the party before withdrawing.
• They complete the ritual to restore Corvin using three artifacts: Will into the Heartbound Key, Soul into the Pendant of Nyss, Body into the Ring of Attraction.
• Logi holds up a mirror: there is nothing inside the armor — Corvin is a hollow, animated suit bound by will and artifact.

Session 11

• New player joins: Taara, a Zephyrian of Minds.
• The party begins exploring the dungeon beneath the hag's house in the Ruins of Berez.

Session 12

• Continued exploration of the dungeon beneath the hag's house.
• The party encounters and deals with a gelatinous cube.

Session 13

• The dungeon is a Memory Vault: thousands of orbs of stolen memories that Morgantha harvests and sells to Strahd.
• Brother Aldric, a bound spirit, takes memories through touch: Vess loses Nyss and her friendship with Myra; Logi his grandmother's last words; Myra the knowledge that she is a werewolf. None of them know.
• The orbs show their own stolen pasts — including that Kyra was taken through the mists, not killed.
• Elara, a gentle memory-echo, guides them toward the contract chamber deeper below.

Session 14

• Descending past a choir of whispering orbs, the party finds Khione — a living prisoner in an orb who begs not to be left.
• The contract chamber reveals Strahd arranged everything: Morgantha's pact promises him "one soul from the bloodline of the letter-bearer" — Kyra. Both sisters were always the plan.
• Strahd appears, calm and satisfied: Kyra is alive; the whole party is formally invited to Ravenloft; he addresses Taara as an equal.
• Vess, with no memory of why the pendant matters, hands the Pendant of Nyss — holding Corvin's soul fragment — to Strahd.
• Before leaving the vault, the party frees Khione from her orb; she joins them.

Session 15

• The party wakes in the vault with Khione; Logi's experiments with Cinder have sealed the tunnel — the only way out is up.
• Moonlight triggers Myra's transformation (she doesn't know she's a werewolf); Logi turns dire wolf; with all three anchors compromised, Corvin loses his will and turns hostile.
• Taara pacifies Myra with Animal Friendship; Khione shoves Corvin into cold water, breaking the compulsion.
• Taara extracts Logi's vampire tooth — it bonds to one of her butterflies, which immediately bites Logi. A vampire butterfly is born.

Session 16

• The party leaves the swamp along the Old Svalich Road, heading for the castle via the village.
• A quiet roadside house holds faceless uniformed creatures demanding "who holds authority" — they are asking who owns each traveler.
• Corvin (soul with Strahd), Vess (bound to the pendant), Myra (moon-cursed), and Taara (vampire butterfly) are admitted as Strahd's.
• Logi and Khione are refused; Khione lies anyway, the creatures turn hostile, and initiative is rolled.

Session 17

• The Registry House fight concludes; the building ends up in flames with Vess trapped inside.

Session 18

• Vess is pulled from the burning Registry House; Logi burns his hands doing it.
• On the road, Khione catches a talking raven (unbeknownst to all, a wereraven of the Keepers of the Feather); it escapes. Roadside mushrooms are eaten, with strange results.
• At Vallaki, the gates open — the bargain (entry for the witch's death) is honored.
• The party tells the truth about the eight children: consumed in the pastries before they ever arrived. The Jarov parents' grief has no clean answer.

Session 19

• The party splits: Corvin and Logi find Arasek Stockyard, where something large slams against the inside of Rictavio's blood-stained carnival wagon; a crossbow and a ring are bought.
• The others settle in at the Blue Water Inn, ravens in the rafters.
• In the evening, Urwin Martikov reveals the truth: the Martikovs are wereravens of the Keepers of the Feather, a quiet resistance against Strahd — and something has gone wrong at the Wizards of Wine winery.

Session 20

• In the night, Myra transforms in the inn hallway; Corvin's attempt to restrain her only lends her strength.
• Logi throws her through the window — the crash rings across town, and the wolves outside turn toward the inn.
• Wereravens pour in through the broken window; the defense of the Blue Water Inn begins.
• Vess flees the inn when Myra transforms; unseen by anyone, Strahd captures her the next day.

Session 21

• Werewolf Myra deliberately hunts Logi through the inn until dawn releases her — she remembers everything, including enjoying it.
• In the chaos of the defense, the party kills a wereraven — Urwin Martikov, the Blue Water Inn's own innkeeper, father of Arabelle, the missing girl from the Tarokka reading.
• Corvin had already accepted Strahd's deal: fight the wereravens in exchange for release from the armor.
• Strahd arrives and returns Corvin's soul from the Pendant of Nyss; whole for one moment, Corvin chooses to stop — the armor collapses.
• The Heartbound Key goes cold, the Ring of Attraction goes still, and the empty pendant is discarded on the floor. Corvin is gone.

Session 22

• A pale twig has grown where the armor fell — it contains a single casting of Wish; a second Wish scroll lies hidden in a Vallaki bookshop.
• Survivors of the wolf assault on the north gate arrive, among them Yager Blut (Lorenzo's new character).
• Myra and Logi, the only ones who work out what the twig is, break it together: Logi wishes to defeat the fire elemental threatening his village — the misphrased wish strips his wildfire, leaving all his powers water-based, a loss he hates.
• Myra faces what she is, and uses a wish to restore her sister Kyra; she remains in Vallaki.
• Myra picks up the discarded Pendant of Nyss and keeps it.

Session 23

• At Ravenloft's self-opening gates, the party is joined by Mark, a butcher, and Azhurielle Vaelstorm, a merchant; Taara scouts the area and Myra stays outside with her sister.
• Strahd hosts dinner: the wine is blood from one of Mark's former companions, kept alive in a cabinet — remnants of an earlier party Strahd destroyed. He lifts an illusion revealing Yager and Mark were members of that same party.
• The castle separates its guests: Azhurielle is put down without drama; Logi signs a blood contract (the knowledge of how to restore his wildfire, in exchange for one unspecified service — only Myra, Khione, and Taara exempt).
• In the kitchen, Mark beheads a stag — it was Vess, caught and held transformed by Strahd since the inn.
• Logi and Khione reach her in time and stabilize her; she is alive, unconscious, barely.

Session 24

• Myra returns to the castle, Kyra beside her.
• In a gallery hangs an oversized wedding portrait: the groom a young Strahd, the bride Taara; beneath it lies the book Kept Memories.
• Logi reads the first two chapters aloud and no further; in the tower bedroom, Taara regains the happy half of her marriage — nothing of why she left or forgot — and later watches Strahd shelve a book she does not recognize.
• Strahd calls in Logi's contract: forced to lie that he and Mark killed Vess, framed for the children's deaths, Logi is banished by Taara and Strahd to Ashenwood — level 20 by a wish, still without wildfire, intending to face the fire elemental alone.
• Mark finds the Cleaver of the Last Cut, which bonds to his hand; Taara loses her memory of the party being trustworthy, Myra shows her the whole campaign in answer — whether Taara believes either of them is unresolved.

Session 25

• Myra's showing reaches session 4 and stops obeying her: Taara stands at the edge of the remembered Vistani camp while Mark and Yager dream the same moment, and Madam Eva looks past the party that was and speaks to the three of them.
• They wake at her fire above Olvenka, a hamlet no chapter letter covers, and spend a naming day there — Mark butchers and teaches, Yager hunts, Taara plays with the children and works out that the corner game they play was taught to them by her, generations back.
• Gifts at the feast, and the Jar of Kept Sun from Eva herself; then the land's cards are laid again and every session 4 result moves — all three treasures now lie outside Castle Ravenloft, Strahd waits in the study (K37), and Zuleika Toranescu is named as his enemy.
• Offscreen (Logi's epilogue): he kills the Ashenwood elemental, grown into a molten titan, gets fire back through the Bloodspear at the cost of every drop of water he had, is forgiven by the circle that exiled him, loses all the wish's borrowed levels down to 5, and portals back into Castle Ravenloft's library the same night.

Session 26

• Strahd meets Logi alone in the library the moment he portals back and takes credit for Ashenwood: the fire is the titan's own flame, the contract bought the means to take it, the contract is now discharged both ways — and where the fire burns, Strahd's hand can reach.
• Taara, Mark and Yager wake in the castle with the Olvenka day and its gifts real on them; Myra was inside the showing too, saw the new reading laid where her memory of session 4 held different cards, and was cut out by Madam Eva. She tells Taara, unprompted, that Taara banished Logi.
• Vess is found in the morning with her ears gone. Nobody in the party asks about it, and nobody connects it to anything.
• The full moon takes Myra: the wolf slashes the Pendant of Nyss out of Kyra's hands, goes out a window a hundred feet up, misty steps to the castle wall unhurt, and throws the pendant clear rather than destroy it — Logi's summoned eagle catches it. The noise wakes the party, and that is how they find Logi is back. In the morning Vess wakes as the stag, walks out of the castle, reaches that same pendant and becomes a fox; the party lets her go.
• At breakfast Strahd puts out a candle Logi cannot, confronts him on why he still insists he killed a woman who walked out alive, and writes the events into a book — partly rewriting Taara, Mark and Yager into the version where Logi and Mark did it. Then he says he wants to travel his lands with the party. No answer given.