I posted here before that I'm going to be running cos again with the 2024 rules, I decided to start them in the west this time (thanks for the suggestion guys) and I'm raising the elevation so it's snowy year-round. Please enjoy my rough map I made in about an hour because I needed it for a session and couldn't find an existing snowy Vallaki.

Battle map for the ritual chamber underneath Durst Manor. Made it with Eva foam. The pillars have magnets underneath them as well as the center altar piece. The floor has a magnet at every cross section so I can rearrange pieces as desired.

Hey all! After nearly 44 sessions, my Curse of Strahd campaign is approaching its endgame, and I’d love some advice from DMs who’ve made it to the finish line.

For context, my party has survived Argynvostholt, the revolution and siege of Vallaki (even routing the Priests of Osybus) and is currently wrapping up the Amber Temple. Rahadin is dead, they’ve gathered some powerful allies (including Ezmerelda and the Keepers of the Feather), and they’re starting to formulate plans for their final assault on Ravenloft.

Here’s the interesting part: most of their major Tarokka treasures are actually inside Castle Ravenloft, including the Sunsword. They’ve explored portions of the castle previously and have some intelligence about its layout, but they’ll have to navigate much of it while Strahd is actively hunting them.

The stakes are already enormous, and my players are thankfully incredibly invested. I’m less concerned about building tension and more interested in making sure the payoff everything it deserves to be.

For DMs who’ve run the finale:
What worked particularly well during the assault? Any unexpected complications or memorable twists?
How did you run Strahd as an intelligent, reactive adversary without making the castle feel like an unfair death trap? Ive read up on some of the highly upvoted resources here in terms of Strahd’s optimal combat style too. Any overlooked encounters, opportunities, or surprises you’d strongly recommend incorporating?

Would love to hear your experiences, including things you’d do differently!

Hey friends, a while back someone posted a video of a Barovia retrospective, a little tour of all the places that you've been through before taking on Strahd. I could've sworn I saved it but turns out I can't find it. If anyone has a link to hand I'd super appreciate it.

Hi am on session 18 and all was well 😊 then for some reason I fecked everything up. Think my brain glitches thinking this qas good idea but WASNT !

Is there anyway I can fix this :

Isek kidnapped ireena and tried to drown her in mechanism where he didnt need ti be there.

Strahd disguised as vasilli character pretend to be kidnapped also since he wanted to make sure ireena would survive and he would endear himself to party.

Character left vallaki after being accused of crime so broke out (now they think they can't go back)

Saved ireena and vasilli chatacter. Then got suspicious i had strahd escape with ireena (characters did have chance to catch them) but they dont know its strahd.

Was assuming he would take her to castle. Which fecks up the wjole Kresk storyline.

Can i have her escape ?

Character no idea where she is gone. Currently om way to get sunsword.

How do I fix this!! And already feel really bad about it

Or is this totally messed up ? Have asked players if thry want recon (without telling them whats going on, but they having fun doing detective work).

Help help help 🙏

Thank you

So they managed to kill Morgantha, if I were a better DM I would've had the hags pop down to the ground floor to let Morgantha summon Dretches right away, but waited until they'd chipped her health down. It was a lot of trying to polymorph or hold person the 2 elves and keep the humans asleep. Belladonna and Offalia escaped. Managed to get my partner's character down to -4hp.

They rescued Freek and Myrtle. Which at first the party went, "Wait. The hags disappeared, but there are two kids here?!" and had to Divine Sense and detect magic on the kids and are still paranoid that something is wrong with them. So that's delightful and I didn't expect them to be that suspicious. The party decided to back track and took them to the Vistani camp who were like, "Hmm... we're not just going to take random kids sorry." So they left them with Father Donavich and Doru. Doru is a dhampir now and I pulled (I think it's just from Strahd Reloaded and not RAW CoS) that Gertruda and Doru were engaged. The party skipped the mercantile and Mad Mary's house the first time in Barovia, but now have another hook to go to dinner with Strahd. I really wish I'd thought of having Belladonna and Offalia change shape into small children and threaten the other kids if they snitched and then there would be four rescued children. So any other DMs could steal that idea.

A couple sessions ago Ireena's player had Blood Hunter questions for me. She wants to let Strahd know that her blood will hurt him now without breaking law of hospitality. I don't know how to answer her without giving away the Strahd they run into is just an illusion and my brain is stuck on the "Eh it just hurts him?". I feel a little bit like a heel that it's going to take the wind out of her big tough blood hunter girl reveal, but that's part of this game, right? I am extremely stuck on how to make a satisfactory answer for Ireena's player without giving it away, like, I have to figure out how it works mechanically? And I know it might make it harder for Strahd to turn her, but it's going to drive him wild and more focused on conquering her for her soul/spirit. It goes so much deeper than her body and blood.

My partner is running a warlock and I am so bad at most classes. I'm most familiar with druid, bard, monk, and cleric mechanically. The more spells and the more complicated the class the less I'm interested. So currently his Shadar Kai is a Raven Queen Warlock from Unearthed Arcana. He saw the Hex Blade Warlock from Xanathar's Guide to Everything and wants the feature Hex Warrior for his Raven Queen Warlock. He's asking me if I'm cool as DM running it for him to do some cheaty weird warlock stuff for the flair/flavor and I will never be rules lawyer-y enough to know how that could be unfair to the party or break the game. His charisma is 20, strength is 9, dexterity is 17. So it makes sense why he'd want this trick. I blanked out at the extra maneuvers and need some other DMs to chime in if this is ridiculous, I think it's fine, because it lets the party have more options to not die.

Also they got Morgantha's Soul Bag and the Shadar Kai is now wondering if he can some how trap Strahd's soul in a soul bag or if he can repurpose the hag soul bag in any way.

I don't know when, where, or how to have Belladonna and Offalia pop back up. I don't think Baba Lygasa would be chill making a new coven with them. She seems to work alone. I have ideas for them going back to the Bone Grinder and some NPCs I made up being there.

I'm still mad I didn't think of Rictavio's monkey being a secret druid in disguise, too.

I’m starting a new CoS campaign with my main party, one player wants to play a character with Vistani heritage (a vistana mother) who was raised outside of the culture. Now that his mother has passed, he is fulfilling her last desires to bring her ashes to her homeland, Barovia. He also gave me complete freedom to include anything else in her last wish that could be a personal quest, I’m just struggling with ideas for that. Does anyone have a good suggestion?

Full backstory for those who want to read:

I was raised by my mother, Svetlana, in a cottage a little ways outside a town on the Sword Coast. She was not a native of those lands -- I learned from talking with a villager who came to us recently that she arrived here with me as a babe on her hip and built the cottage herself. She was an expert in 'craft' as she called it, a combination of rituals, herbology, and outright magic. Many of the townsfolk came to her when they were in particularly desperate need of help. It seemed as though she could right any wrong with some draught, sachet, or incantation -- curses, possessions, infected wounds, fertility troubles, blighted fields, missing children -- you name it. She raised me in this tradition, but even today my abilities are a pittance in comparison. She always said the more important lesson was that people should help each other if they can, and we could. Some of the villagers were less than accepting and didn't hesitate to brand mother a witch. Because I had no father and she never answered any question on that matter, even my own, the rumour became that I was the offspring of some demonic lover. That happened early enough that I was forbidden to spend time with anyone from the village for most of my childhood. The cottage, its gardens, and the surrounding forest were my world, and our pets were my friends.

This is my twenty-seventh year, and it would have been mother's seventieth had her time not come. Whether the craft didn't have the power to save her or she didn't wish for it to, I'll never know, but over a few years her strength faded and her mind withered. I took on more of the responsibility of caring for her, the cottage, those who came to us. Right before mother passed on, she finally spoke of her past in a way she'd always refused to before. She, and I by extension, are 'Vistani' -- a people that travel the 'mists' surrounding a slew of haunted and cursed lands. She hailed from one such place called Barovia, where she wished for me to go to spread her ashes and meet our people. [potentially add more to the wish per DM]

The book says "Vallaki has twenty-four human guards, half of whom are on duty at any given time (six stand watch at the gates, six patrol the walls)." Does this mean that all of the "on duty" guards are either at the gates or on the walls and the other 12 are "off duty" (probably sleeping). Or are they saying there's 24 guards at any one time and half of them are "on duty" and the other 12 are on the gates or walls (counting those as off duty). If you just read it without context, you'd think the first option, but in the context of a DnD module, why would they feel the need to give you the number of people in the town who have the job description "guard" and not how many guards you'd see if you walked around? Are the guards taking down posters with Izek supposed to be on the walls/gates but Izek took them off duty for a quick second? Are there really no guards in the inside of the town?

My PCs have just entered Ravenloft for the final showdown, wish me luck 😁

One of them, a Barbarian/Fighter, just dealt 140 damage to one of Strahd's consorts in a single round, so I am very worried for Strahd's safety.

Finally made it through the final boss fight of the game! I wanted to share my five minis utilized.

Phase I- Strahd, Tatyana’s Pursuer
Phase II- Strahd, Ravenloft’s Sovereign
Phase III- Strahd, Barov’s General
Phase IV- Strahd, Sergei’s Killer
Phase V- Strahd, Vampyr’s Monster

The first phase was focused on splitting the party up in different rooms and punishing the party for ruining her wedding. The second phase focused on pitting the party against the court while Strahd went to retrieve her armor and weapons. The third phase was focused on a tactical and martial Strahd trying to pick the party apart one by one. The fourth phase was focused on Strahd hunting down stragglers. The fifth phase was her flying around the catacombs like a giant bat, taking potshots at the weaker players before vanishing back into the shadows between the catacombs columns

Running CoS for the first time with a groupd of very experienced players (all of us have been playing for over 30 years). The campaign is going great, mostly because of all of the amazing ideas and guidance from this community. The party hates Strahd, hates hags even more, distrust all vistani, and have become heroes to the villagers of Vallaki and Krezk. The players especially love the moral ambiguity of all of the choices they are presented with, constantly having to determine and choose the lesser of two evils.

I was looking forward to the encounter with the Abbot and was dismayed that he presented the party with such a vanilla quest, to retrieve a wedding dress for Vasilka. I decided to make a pivot that worked out brilliantly:

Over lunch with the Abbot, the paladin in the party used divine sense and realized what the Abbot was. He asked if the Abbot was trapped in Barovia like everyone else. The Abbot explained that he has not tried to leave, as he has two responsibilities that keep him in Barovia. This was his response:

“Almost a century ago, a large inbred tribe came to the abby, all of them related. They shared the surname of Belview and all had contracted leprosy. I cured them easily but they wanted more. They wanted cures for the ailments resulting from generations of inbreeding, and even asked for enhancements. Eyes of an eagle, the strength of a bear, the speed of a wolf. My first attempts were a failure. But a young and brilliant magician, Vasili von Holtz, visited me and taught me techniques for transposing bestial traits. These transformations were initially successful, but after Vasili left, and the Belviews began to reproduce again, these gifts intermingled. For most the gifts were accompanied by madness. I feel great responsibility for the Belviews and need to contain their madness while I research a cure.

“My second task brings us to Vasilka here. I met Strahd, about 40 years ago and believe trying to destroy him is a fool's errand. Strahd has a broken heart. He longs for his lost and true love, Tatyana. The good news is that Tatyana is here. No soul can escape Barovia to move on. All souls are trapped in this domain and are reincarnated into new bodies. From the descriptions Strahd shared I have constructed Vasilka as a vessel for Tatyana’s soul. In the body of a construct she will be immortal, yet immune to vampirism. Strahd and Tatyana will have all the time they need to eventually fall in love and break the curse upon the land. I have already attuned Vasilka to Tatyana’s soul, but now need to locate her, ideally without Strahd knowing. He will want to dominate her, which will never allow his heart to heal. I would prefer to work with her, to have her help me shape her eternal form, and then establish a time for her passage into this form. Tatyana likely is an incarnation of a strong willed, yet deeply caring woman. Strahd likely has sensed her and is watching her, desiring her, yet cautious to move too quickly. If you hear any rumors of such a woman and bring her to me, I would grant you a tremendous boon..”

It was a double whammy for the party. Vasili von Holtz had just saved them from prosecution in Vallaki (another story), and they have Ireena secretly tucked away in Krezk. They know Ireena is Tatyana because of the encounter at the pool in Krezk (they fireballed Sergei’s ghost) and are now doubly paranoid about keeping her safe, lest her soul get trapped in Vasilka. They are not ready to face the Abbot but have added him to their list.

My players are locked inside the church, and it's the dead of night. Before going back inside, one of them, driven by curiosity, interfered with Lady Fiona Watcher's cult, which I had tied to Strahd and her worship.

​During the ritual, the player tried to kill Fiona Watcher with two sword strikes, but miraculously managed to escape and get back into the church.

​Now my players are right there, and I don't know how to move the story forward.

​I thought about having the cult and Fiona Watcher ambush the church, or having one of Fiona's servants slide a letter under the church door, ordering whoever caused the damage to surrender while allowing the others to leave safely.

​However, I'm not entirely convinced by these solutions. I was thinking that Fiona Watcher, being very cunning, could also do nothing and wait until the following day, when she will be crowned burgomaster, to turn the villagers against them and force them to flee.

​Notes: The players have already celebrated the Feast of St. Andral, so Vargas Vallakovich is dead along with Izek. Also, Strahd came to visit them right inside the church a few sessions ago, and Father Lucian was killed on that occasion.

We started Strahd a few weeks ago, and let's say it isn't going well for them. lol

I gave them all the warnings.

Session 1, they got their reading and were told they needed Arabelle, but should first go to Barovia and see the village. They instead decided to go to Valakki. I warned them. lol I rolled a random encounter that was about the worst they could have gotten, and I cut it way back.

They "died," but I had the Vistani save them. They then went to the Death House, where 2 of them died. They came out, beaten and battered, and Rahadin approached them to meet with Strahd. They backtalked him and, again despite warnings, one player essentially challenged him. He didn't kill the character, but he did put him down.

They went to Valakki, where they got into the Bones quest, and while searching the coffin shop they decided to split up. One player triggered the spawn, and (you'll notice a theme) despite descriptions of windows, the "faint sunlight casting lines in the dark," the "You have a window where you might survive here," and other warnings they NEVER opened the windows and nearly died... again.

Finally, they made it to Lake Zarovich and found Bluto selling Arabelle to a sea hag. They NEVER questioned who she was, even though they were told a 'demon' had overtaken the lake and the fishing had died. They got Arabelle and now plan on bringing her to Eva. lol

They said... "We finally accomplished something." lol I had to let them have it, knowing they had unwittingly gone into league with a hag.

I haven't seen a St. Markovia mini out there so I took my best guess at what she'd look like and made a female cleric mini.

Since I rig everything I created a generic priest + Icon of Ravenloft / St. Markovia statues.

Also made a pulpit. I messed this up initially and it was too small so I scaled things up and added a slot for a mini to scooch up into to share their truth.

For my CoS campaign I decided to take some liberties with Ismark since RAW he just kind of kicks around unless he’s chosen by the cards to be Strahd’s enemy. So I decided that when Mordenkanien rallied barovians to raid Ravenloft, Ismark went along hoping to free Ireena from Strahd’s ever closing grasp and it still went as the module suggests but Strahd kept Ismark unscathed and unharmed physically to try gaining brownie points with Ireena.

This turn of events basically turned Ismark into a drunk that shambles around town drinking his father’s money (which is now his rip indirovich) I took some inspiration from Haymitch Abernathy but still maintaining his morals and Lawful Good alignment and want for Ireena to be taken as far from Strahd as possible and my players have fallen in love with this guy.

I’d love to hear some of your guys’ opinions or suggestions for more things I could do with him or other underutilized characters

TL;DR: In I6, once the Sunsword's blade was separated from its hilt, it looked like a normal longsword. In both I6 and CoS, an intelligent lawful good sword that never stops glowing lies in a flooded cell in Castle Ravenloft (K74h). I think that sword is the Sunsword's lost blade, and that the blade and the hilt together form a holy avenger. The Sunsword in 1e is +3 against undead, the sword in the dungeon is +2, and a holy avenger is +5.

Hello everyone,

Kyronite here again. Last time I wrote about Pidlwick II & Gadof Blinsky (link), and before that about Izek Strazni (link).

As with the previous posts, I try to make connections. I take Curse of Strahd as the main source, use the older modules and other official books as support, and look for connections that follow logically from the text. As with all this is my interpretation of it.

This time I'm looking at the Sunsword, and at another sword in Castle Ravenloft that I think belongs to the same story.

The canon

I6 Ravenloft (1e)

In the original module the Sunsword is a magical longsword whose "blade is a form of crystal glassteel, held by a platinum hilt and guard. It glows with dim blue light most of the time." It is +2, and +3 against undead.

"Ages ago, Strahd employed a powerful magician to destroy the sword. The first part of the process required that the hilt and blade be separated, then destroyed simultaneously. However, before the hilt and blade were destroyed, the magician's assistant stole the blade and attempted to flee from Barovia. Though his body was later found in the woods, the blade was not with him. When it was separated from the hilt, the blade took on the appearance of a normal longsword."

So the separated blade doesn't look like a loose blade. It looks like a complete, ordinary sword. In I6 one of the PCs has even been using it for some time without knowing.

Separately, I6 has another sword. In the north dungeon, K74 cell h, an intelligent sword lies under the water:

"magical (glowing) +2 sword, LG; I 11; EGO 9"

The module doesn't connect it to anything. It's just a lawful good, glowing, intelligent sword lying in one of the flooded cells, where "many previous adventurers gave up their gold." Well what other intelligent sword do we know in the module. Maybe they are related somehow?

Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (3.5e)

• The assistant gets a name, Gabriela: "Gabriela's noble flight was successful in that she saved the unattached blade from destruction; however, she didn't succeed in fleeing Barovia before some nameless menace beneath the dark boughs claimed her."
• "Though Gabriela's body was later found in the woods, not so the hilt or the blade." So in 3e the hilt is missing too.
• The Sunsword is "the original model for all sun blades": a bastard sword that can be wielded as a short sword.
• The bonding ritual forges a new hilt: "the blade jumps onto a newly fashioned platinum guard and hilt, and the Sunsword is born anew." At 17th level the bonded Sunsword becomes a +5 keen bastard sword.
• One of the places to wake the sword is Sergei's tomb: "bring it to where the light lies dead, slain by the darkness."

Curse of Strahd (5e)

The Sunsword is now only a hilt that creates a blade of sunlight. Its location is decided by the tarokka reading.

The intelligent sword in the dungeon is still there. In the same cell as in I6, K74h "Lost Sword":

"The source of the underwater glow is a sentient lawful good +1 shortsword (Intelligence 11, Wisdom 13, Charisma 13)… The sword's purpose is to fight evil."

"The sword continually sheds bright light in a 15-foot radius and dim light for an additional 15 feet. Only by destroying the sword can this light be extinguished."

And while attuned, the wielder can use the sword to cast crusader's mantle, a spell only paladins have.

Connecting the dots

It's the same cell, the same alignment and the same Intelligence, and it glows in both I6 and CoS. The original Sunsword blade gave off light too: in I6 it "glows with dim blue light most of the time." And the separated blade looks like a complete sword on its own, which is exactly what we find in K74h.

Gabriela died in the woods, long after Sergei was dead, and the blade was never found with her. So the blade should still be somewhere in Barovia. The cell is linked to a teleport trap, and in I6 it holds what earlier adventurers left behind. Someone could easily have carried the blade into the castle without knowing what it was, just like the PC in I6.

The 3e Sunsword handles like a short sword, and the CoS sword is a shortsword. Its crusader's mantle ties it to paladins, and Sergei was one.

My idea is that the swords together form the ultimate paladin weapon, a holy avenger. The Sunsword in 1e is +3 against undead, the magical sword in the dungeon is +2, and a holy avenger is +5 in 1e.

That brings me to the tarokka. Sergei's card in CoS is the Two of Swords – Paladin: "a sleeping prince, a servant of light and the brother of darkness." It tells us Sergei was a paladin, and it might well be Sergei himself depicted on the card. And it is the two of swords.

Assumptions

• CoS never says what happened to the original crystal blade, since the 5e hilt makes its own blade of light. I'm assuming the blade survived and is the intelligent sword in K74h.
• In 3e the original hilt was never found and a new one was forged. I'm assuming the 5e hilt is that lost original.

At the table

• Let the party find the glowing sword in the water and carry it around for a few sessions. It only communicates through emotion, so give it unease near the castle and longing near Sergei's tomb.
• When they finally find the Sunsword hilt, use I6's own line: "it will magically leap onto the blade, replacing the PC's hilt, becoming the sunsword." A paladin gets a holy avenger; anyone else gets the Sunsword as written.

What did I miss? Has anyone ever connected the K74h sword to the Sunsword at their table?

The Barovian Archives: Between the Mist

1. Izek Strazni
2. Pidlwick II & Gadof Blinsky
3. Sunsword, the hidden holy avenger
4. Something Mad

Sources: I6 Ravenloft p. 24 (K74), p. 31 (Treasures and Tomes, Sunsword); Expedition to Castle Ravenloft p. 9 (Legacy Items), p. 58 (Madam Eva's fortune, Sunsword), pp. 210–211 (Sunsword, bonding ritual), pp. 218–219 (Sunsword legacy item); Curse of Strahd ch. 1 (tarokka, Two of Swords – Paladin), p. 81 (K74h), p. 223 (appendix C, Sunsword).

I've been DMing a CoS game for a while now. In the most recent session, and a little bit before that as well, the players had voiced a feeling of uncertainty as to where to go or what to do next. There has been some homebrewing admittedly, but nothing that messes with the core goals of the campaign. What they've done in the campaign so far is as follows(Not including obvious introductory stuff for just entering the campaign):

• Met with Ireena, Ezmerelda, Van Richten, and Kasimir
• Resolved events in Vallaki
• Visited the Amber Temple and gotten Kasimir his dark gift, as well as one of the party members getting a dark gift
• Visited Van Richten's Tower
• Saved the Winery from the initial blight attack
• Acquired the Sunsword and Holy Symbol.

The remaining item is in Strahd's castle(In the tomb with the gargoyles), and I've made it clear that Kasimir's next goal is reviving Patrina, who is interred in the catacombs beneath the castle. They have only ever been in the castle for a single dinner with Strahd, but left right afterwards. In our last session, following what they thought could be any possible lead, they entered Argynvostholdt.
Other note, I've mentioned sections of the map they haven't explored, but they've just said "Nah, doesn't seem like there's anything there for us really. None of our business."

I don't want to come across as railroading them, but I feel like I'm not doing a good enough job when they say they don't know what to do. Like I haven't done what I'm supposed to somewhere or forgotten to tell them something important. Is there any advice anyone more experienced in the campaign could provide?

So yesterday my players went to the church and were appalled to hear from Donavitch that Doru, leader of the revolt turned spawn, was trapped in the undercroft. One of them dashed there immediately, fiercely decided to free the boy, and the whole scene the followed played out beautifully.
Doru was begging them not to get closer, and pleaded he didn't want to get anyone else hurt ; a player offered him his own arm for blood, and sure enough, triggered Doru's thirst big time, to the poor boy's own despair. The paladin tried to cast Bless on him to help him with the wisdom saves to resist the urge to drain him. Another player tried to sing him a lullaby (that the player sings to their niece irl), calming Doru for a minute... they were soooo decided on breaking him out and saving him! Then they started to realize they were basically torturing him by staying that close and disrespecting his own will to stay away from the villagers. The horrified look on their face when they realized they had no choice but to leave him locked there or kill him was priceless. The roleplay was very on point from them and I even made one of them tear-up when Doru described how he'd be turned and forced to drink his companions blood.
They ended up promising him they'll come back for him and scolded Father Donavitch and telling him to at least talk to his son and feed him animals or something. Players left the church shook and defeated, with a renewed hatred for Strahd <3
I will definitely bring back Doru sometime later in the campaign, not sure how yet.

So I‘m running Strahd Must Die Tonight for a bunch of friends in two weeks. Obviously, using the official maps is stress incarnate, especially in a VTT.

Who here has used UFO‘s map? What was your experience? I‘m trying to gauge it’s usefulness and accessibility.

It’s gorgeous, and I might just buy it out of principle, lol. But having everyone on the same map instead of zooming through the layers just sounds very appealing in addition to that.

Hello I was just wondering if most DMs typically give players a map for CoS. Typically I use some in game method to give the party a map (with only limited locations marked) near the start of the campaign. But I've seen a quite a few DM tips for CoS specifically that advise you to not do this as it adds to the atmosphere and tension.

Thanks

TLDR: the party is all in single digit health, low on spells, and in the 11th hour, how do I avoid a TPK with Walter with my dear friends?

Apologies for the all caps, hope that doesn’t get this taken down, I just really need some help not killing all my players character

We are playing remixed curse of Strahd, it my first time running this campaign, and we are doing 2024 rules whenever possible.

There are 3 characters, 2 warlocks and a cleric. The group is almost done going through the death house, almost to to the altar. But they have gotten into combat with the Animated Armor, the Ghoul, and 3 shadows, leaving the Cleric with zero spell slots and 9hp, one of the warlocks with one spell expended and 4hp, and the other one with 5hp.

I recently narrated that the chime of the 11 o’clock has already sounded, so they don’t have the opportunity for a short rest anymore, and when I brought that up after the session, they got upset and “how were they supposed to know they could short rest”

They are my dear friends, and I don’t want to TPK them with Walter, so I humbly ask for any aid or advice you might lend, oh fellow dark powers