Pickaxe.

Turning to Cresic, a strange power and vibration is felt spreading out from Castle Ravenloft, leaving the party with intense foreboding.

However, the party come before the mysterious abbot and present Vasilica to him.

In gratitude, he uses his divine power to restore Jesper to life, using a few of his treasured possessions as an anchor for his soul.

After Jesper's resurrection, Dog's body and Irene travel to the pond in Cresic, Dog's body undergoes his own transformation.

As the magic of the pool cleanses the Lycanthropy curse, also returns some of Dog's body's previous memories and life, and on swearing an oath, Dog's body awakens as a new man.

But before the party can fully celebrate their successes, a raging storm descends over Cresic, and in the storm clouds dozens of black and red devils cry out and swoop down to attack the Abbey and Town.

And commanding them stands a fully armored and battle-ready strad von Zarevich.

And that is where we're starting.

A little bit of quick notes. Jesper, obviously, is now back, leveled up.

We have Jesper back in, and Dog's body has indeed changed class to become a paladin, and now has some different gear.

You've ended up equipping some heavy armor, splint mail, I think, right, and moving on from there.

Nice. So for those of you mathematicians and people that like all them in maxing and stat stuff, just be aware that there's been a couple of little changes and swaps around and stuff like that.

In terms of, and Katie wasn't here last week, we've caught up as best as possible, but Katie, if there's any questions, just be like, wait, did that happen? And then we'll just fill you in.

Seems pretty standard, you know, if we're strad, if we're honest, no surprises in strad.

It was like a couple of nice things, and then, oh no, a really bad thing. So, perfectly.

Oh, no, imminent death. Cool.

You currently have with you, Ismark and Irina. Esmeralda was up at the Abbey, working with the Abbott to coordinate, and the original plan before this sudden storm and these demons and things had come in.

The previous plan was to take the Abbott's kind of makeshift army that he's really created, this kind of religious zealot army of the townspeople of Cresic who have sworn absolute loyalty to the Abbott, and as well as these angel creatures that he seemingly has created or summoned, you're not quite sure.

And the idea was to take all of them and too much on Valky, and then on to Castle Ravenloft, and use that army as some sort of distraction whilst you guys entered Castle Ravenloft to try and either kill strad or stop whatever he's up to.

Because there is definitely something of foot, something unnatural is happening. I mentioned it in the recap, but you felt the strange pulse kind of echo through the land of Barovia.

And I believe it was the Maya, and maybe Dog's body could sense that there was almost like a ticking, like the turning of cog wheels in the earth itself.

...