Session 15: The Moon Remembers

Area U: Ruins of Berez, Memory Vaults

Morning in the Vault

The party wakes in the Memory Vault. No sunlight — just the cold glow of the orbs.

Khione is washing herself. Vess keeps her distance from Myra — not out of hostility, but out of an absence she cannot name. The memories of their friendship are gone.

Vess asks Taara about the butterflies. Taara explains: they are tied to her emotions but have their own minds. They will live as long as she does. One of Vess's quieter questions: "How old do they get?" Taara: "As long as I'm alive, they are."

The tunnel they came from is sealed. During the night, Logi had been experimenting with Cinder — the wildfire spirit growing restless in the enclosed space — and collapsed part of the passage. He explains this without much apology. There is only one way out now: up, through the sinkhole.

Outside

The party returns to the sinkhole entrance. Myra is reluctant to go out — she can't explain why. Corvin kicks her through.

The moonlight hits her the moment she crosses the threshold.

Her lycanthropy activates. She transforms — werewolf, hostile, with no memory of what she is or why this is happening. Brother Aldric stole that memory in the vault below. She does not know she is a werewolf.

With Myra gone to the wolf, the Heartbound Key — Corvin's Will, carried in her pocket — loses its stabilizing anchor. She can no longer hold it steady. Combined with the Pendant of Nyss already in Strahd's hands since session 14, two of the three artifact-links are now severed. The third — the Ring of Attraction, worn by Logi — pulls the armor toward its bearer. Logi is already turning.

The vampire tooth's lingering hunger surfaces in the moonlight and blood-scent. Logi transforms into a dire wolf, hostile.

All three artifact-holders are compromised simultaneously. Corvin has nothing left to hold onto. He turns.

Initiative:

Khione hears bones crack, fur growing, a rush of blood. On Vess there is a brief flicker — a phantom sensation of antlers, a small gasp — the shape of Nyss surfacing for a moment before the absence closes back over it. The pendant is gone. What it held is gone with it.

The Fight

Taara casts Animal Friendship on Myra. The werewolf slows, steps back, and retreats inside the vault entrance — passive for 24 hours. She finds herself on the floor inside, confused, out of the moonlight, out of the wolf. She has blood under her fingernails and no idea why.

Khione pushes Corvin into the water channel beside the stonework. He goes in and stays submerged long enough for the compulsion to lose its grip — the cold is unpleasant, and that small preference is his own.

Logi runs as a dire wolf and goes down unconscious in the dark at the wood's edge. Taara finds him. She removes the vampire tooth. It won't go into her pocket — instead it finds the nearest available vessel: one of the butterflies. The butterfly takes it. It is now a vampire butterfly, small as a thumbnail. It immediately bites Logi on the ear. It seems to consider this its purpose.

Logi transforms: dire wolf → small wolf → himself. He is on the ground and does not know what happened to him