# The Lightbringers' Expedition to Castle Ravenloft - updated 12/19



## Dr Midnight (Jul 1, 2007)

_*Session 1 - Chapter 1*_
*SAVING ALEIGNE*​
Five arrows flew at them. Gerrit Applecatcher saw the one that might have hit him and smacked it with a backhand blow, snapping it in two.

The halfling and his traveling companion, an elf named Arianna, were in yet another bad situation. They were on a swaying platform that was suspended by ropes over a fifty foot drop. The catwalk to the north held a minotaur with a greataxe and three goblins with shortbows. On the catwalk to the south stood an ogre (armed with another greataxe) and two more goblins with shortbows. The platform swung slowly from ledge to ledge. As it reached the ledge, the larger creature would swing its greataxe at them. As they swung back, the goblins would fire. 

Gerrit and Arianna had walked right into this trap. Neither had the skill or careful foresight of a rogue or trapfinder, so they found themselves in the middle of predicaments like this from time to time. It was no accident, though, that they still lived- both were fearsomely skilled. Gerrit was a holy monk of the order of Vennia. He had the piety of a man in the service of a goddess and the reflexes and combat training of a boxer. Arianna was an elf’s elf- deeply connected with nature at its root and able to hit a tossed apple with three arrows before it struck the ground. 

 They’d come today to retrieve Aleigne Foritelle, the seven year old daughter of an Ortilan blackmith. She’d been abducted by three ogres two nights past- assumedly to be sold on the dark market. Child meat was a delicacy to some monsters that could pay the price, and even to some beastly nobles from more savage lands. Aleigne would be sold for several hundred gold pieces and then be used for food- or, if she was lucky, enslaved.

The constabulary of Ortil had declined to pay the fee to have a group of mercenaries seek out the kidnapers’ lair. The reason was simple numbers- Aleigne’s family was of the working class. Her father was a simple blacksmith and what with the Five Kings’ War going on, the city couldn’t spare the coin to retrieve a poor family’s child. Had it been the magistrate’s son or a friend of the royal family it would be a different story… but as it happened it was little Aleigne.

This is where the two adventurers came in. The poor of Ortil band together in times of need, and they reached out to Arianna and Gerrit. The two of them had performed free services for the public before. Arianna was not opposed to taking some payment, but Gerrit’s willingness to put his own life in danger for the well-being of others often moved her to do the same and together the two had earned a loyal following in Ortil as the people’s group.

Arianna pulled and fired three arrows in one fluid blur. One of the arrows shattered off of a goblin’s buckler, but the other two found their marks, killing the goblins instantly.

Gerrit leaped from the platform and sailed over open space. Beneath him, the pit’s bottom could not be seen, and sharpened wooden stakes rose from the darkness. He kicked out and the remaining goblin ducked. Gerrit flipped off the wall and landed beside  him, then pointed down the hallway. “Run.” 

The goblin looked unfazed. “Uh… no.”

Gerrit fell into his fighting stance. “Your choice.”

Arianna, who remained on the swinging platform, had swung up within reach of the minotaur. It roared and hacked at her with its greataxe. She ducked the clumsy blow with ease, but the rope holding the northeast corner of the platform up was cut with a twang. The platform tilted and swayed just a bit as it began to swing back to the south. Arianna pulled two arrows and drilled them into the minotaur’s chest, keeping her balance all the while. The goblins on the south ledge fired on her and missed. She noted their sloppy archery techniques with distaste even as she took aim at the ogre.

The goblin beside Gerrit dropped its bow, drew its morningstar and swung. The blow whistled over Gerrit’s head and the halfling carried his motion into a spinning roundhouse kick followed by a spinning back kick. The goblin’s lifeless body bounced off of the minotaur, who began stomping towards the halfling eagerly.

The ogre took a swing at Arianna. The blade skirted along her ribcage, taking some meat with it. She’d already been struck in the opening moments of the trap, and now was feeling less confident. She took two arrows from her quiver and planted them in the ogre’s eye sockets. Dying, it fell forward and its face smashed against the platform, driving the arrows up through the back of its head. He tumbled down into the darkness, dead.

As the platform fell away to the north again, the two goblins fired. One arrow found her and she fell to the platform, barely conscious. Her blood pumped out over the swinging plane and her lungs wheezed feebly. 

Gerrit somersaulted forward, under the minotaur’s swing. He lashed out with a kick to a pressure point in the monster’s knee and jumped back towards the platform, which was swinging in his direction. He had jumped nimbly but misjudged the platform’s stability and it rocked as he landed. He sprawled to the ground beside Arianna. To the north, the minotaur raised its greataxe for a triumphant killing blow on the prone halfling. Gerrit’s hand reached out and slapped Arianna’s calf, delivering a healing spell. He then rolled over, avoiding being cut in two and coming just short of rolling over the edge of the platform. The axe came down and cut along his back painfully.

Arianna, on cue, flung her legs over her head and rolled back to a kneel with an arrow already nocked and drawn. It fired up and into the minotaur, killing him. 

The two adventurers stepped off the platform onto the north ledge. They looked back at the southern ledge and the two goblins there dropped their bows and ran. They’d  seen enough. 

Here on the northern ledge there was a wooden door, and behind it was the sound of sniffling. Gerrit opened the door on a small closet-shaped room. Aleigne was huddled into a corner and she gasped as the door opened. 

“Aleigne?” Arianna said. “Are you alright?” The girl hesitated, then nodded. Her cheeks were tearstained and her arms were bruised, but aside from this, she was fine.

“Are… are they all gone?” Aleigne asked.

A sound from the southern corridor. Arianna looked back and smiled to see Jade, her animal companion, walking forward. The black leopard licked goblin blood from its paws and looked to her master.

“Yes,” Arianna answered. “They’re all dead. Let’s get you home.” 





Back in Ortil, there was all due fanfare- which is to say that Aleigne’s father cried and shrieked with joy, the lower class cheered, and there would be drinks on the house at The Stag & Boar Pub. 

Later that night at the pub, the ale flowed freely. Pints of lager were ladled out from an immense barrel into clay steins. The owner of the pub even tapped one of his kegs of fine dwarven spirits that crashed down the throat like a fiery battering ram.

Gerrit and Arianna sat and tried to deflect the adulation, reshape it into fellowship. It didn’t always work. The two of them were well known and loved among the workers. Sometimes it was hard to shake the compliments and back-patting.

An unkempt and jolly man clapped two more glasses on the table in front of the heroes and sat down. “Another round for the two-a yez! Say, I been thinkin’. You should have for a name.”

Arianna took a sip of her drink and looked up. “What?”

“Well, you been doin’ this so long and it’s just the pair of yez. Time to admit yer an adventurin’ party and come up with a decent name. All the good parties got names- The Order of Honor, The Shield of Brilliance, Edmund’s Regulars… “

“I don’t know, Froffin,” Gerrit said. “All the good names are taken. Do you have any ideas?”

Froffin demurred. “Um. Well. I do got one idea. It’s not great, but… I was thinkin’ like The Disciples of Virtue’s Path or somethin’. Cause you, Gerrit, you’re all religious. And you Arianna, you’re… um… an elf.”

Arianna smiled. “And elves are virtuous?”

“I dunno. I’m drunk.”

“Don’t mind him,” Hortor laughed from an adjacent table. “The way Froffin goes on, you can call yourselves the ‘Too-Polite-To-Say-Shut-Up Friends Of A Sodded Lush.” 

Everyone laughed, no one more than Froffin. 

The door to the tavern opened and the laughter died out.  Standing in the doorway was a man no one had seen before, leastwise in the Stag & Boar. He was thin and his legs and arms were wrapped loosely in some kind of fabric. His head and torso were covered in some kind of drapery, and the hood hid his face. He looked around the room and stepped inside.  

It was clear that he had the room’s attention, so he spoke. “I’m looking for one known as Arianna.” His voice was cool and surprisingly human- a dark hooded man in a tavern at night was expected to have a burbled rasp or crushed ice sort of speech.

Arianna raised her hand. “I’m here.” 

The man stepped towards her with his arms held slightly spread from his sides. Arianna’s keen eyes saw inside the hood despite the shadows. He was merely a man, no older than perhaps twenty-three. 

“I’ve got something for you,” he said. He reached up and across his chest, towards his sword. The tavern’s patrons all tensed, ready to spring from their chairs and fight to the death to protect the elf. Jade, who’d been slumbering at Arianna’s side, looked up and growled deeply in her throat. The man’s hand passed beyond his sword hilt and into the folds of his tunic. 

He pulled out a piece of parchment that was folded over and sealed with a glob of burgundy wax. He handed it to the elf, turned and left. 

“Well that was unnecessarily dramatic,” Gerrit said as the mood relaxed once more. “What does it say?”

“Read,” she corrected with a smile. “The written word cannot ‘say’ anything.” The halfling rolled his eyes. 

Arianna broke the seal and opened the letter. There was a folded map. She put this aside and read the letter aloud. “’Dearest Arianna. You do not know me, but we are closer than you think. I believe you are my last living relative. I would be most honored if you would travel to my home on Farplane for a visit. Tell no one you do not trust about our relation, as some will not understand.’ It’s signed ‘your great-uncle, Count Strahd Von Zarovich.’”

Gerrit blinked. “Who?”

Arianna shrugged. “Never heard of ‘im.”





_*Dr Midnight's*_
*EXPEDITION TO CASTLE RAVENLOFT*​




.


----------



## Richards (Jul 2, 2007)

Excellent!  After all this time, another Doc Midnight story hour!  I'm looking forward to this.

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 2, 2007)

Thanks Johnathan! Good to have you on board. Word of warning though- as with my last several dozen story hours, I can't say for certain that I'll ride this one out. My ratio of completed to unfinished story hours isn't great.


----------



## Squash Cop (Jul 2, 2007)

Like I said before, well done and I look forward to more.


----------



## Jon Potter (Jul 2, 2007)

Dr Midnight said:
			
		

> Word of warning though- as with my last several dozen story hours, I can't say for certain that I'll ride this one out. My ratio of completed to unfinished story hours isn't great.




Ahh... but it's always a fun ride while it lasts!


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 2, 2007)

_*Session 1 - Chapter 2*_
*COD OIL, CROW'S NESTS AND SEA TOADS*​
In the morning, Jade, Gerrit and Arianna set out for Chandrar, a town to the north. It was a coastal town. It was the closest town where they might find a ship that might take them as fare to the Island of Farplane, to the northeast. 






Gerrit said “I took the liberty of dropping in on the library last night. I looked up your uncle’s castle. By the position on the map it’s closest to a town named Barovia, in the foothills of a mountain range. I couldn’t find many specifics, other than that the region is buried in coniferous black forest and that the townspeople are highly superstitious.”

“Superstitious?”

“You know… they bury their dead with herbs and garlic, toss salt over their shoulders, stuff like that.”

“Sounds like they like to waste food.”

“Maybe once we taste Barovian cooking, we’ll understand why.” They laughed. 

It was forty miles to Chandrar. If they pushed hard, they could make it to town by ten o’clock.




​That night, they walked into Chandrar. This was a fishing and shipping village that might have been quaint if not for all the foul-smelling dockworkers. 

Arianna and Gerrit found a wharf with a run down yet good-sized sailing barge. Its captain was overseeing a crew of dwaves loading crates of ice-packed cod into its holds. 

“Excuse me, sir,” Gerrit said.

“Yeah?”

“We’re looking for passage to Farplane. Can you take us?”

The captain tipped his cap and grinned. “Sure can. I’m Captain Evory, this here’s my ship the SeaToad. We’re settin’ out fer Farplane in the mornin’,”

“Will you be stopping in at Palervale?”

“First stop.”

Gerrit smiled. “Excellent. Well then, how much will you be asking as fare?”

The alarmed moans of dwarves behind the captain cut the conversation short. The dwarves were backing up the wharf, away from them. Jade had found the crates of fish and was eagerly licking the condensation off the side of one. 

Captain Evory turned back to the group. “What’s that?”

Arianna said “Um. That’s my animal companion, Jade. She’s harmless.”

“She don’t look harmless.”

“She’s obedient, really she is.”

“She stays locked up somehow on ship. Leashed or caged. Okay?” Clearly he was not loving the idea of having the two hundred pound cat aboard his ship.

Gerrit cleared his throat. “Perhaps there’s some service we can perform on board that will help the voyage somewhat.”

Evory thought on this. “Hmm. What can you do?”

“I can be as nimble up in the rigging as anyone on your crew, and I have good eyes. I might be good in the crow’s nest.”

This caught Evory’s attention. “That might be a help. We have to keep watch at sea, constant watch, for Gald’s black scum.”

By this he meant Hald Guerrik, the self-proclaimed Pirate King of the Saerrin Sea. Though the five ruling kings of the mainland denied him a claim to the islands and eastern sea, all efforts to thwart him had failed. His navy was a fleet of privateers and he ruled a large island where the materials to produce black powder were in ready supply. Sailing the Saerrin Sea was a tricky thing, especially if you had cargo to carry. One in five voyages were plundered further south. Up here by Gimfrit Strait it was slightly better, but only slightly. 

Evory shifted his weight. “It’s because o’ the pirates that your fare will be so high, I’m afraid. I have to hire a half-dozen mercenaries to help guard the hold each time we go out. It’ll be ten gold each, plus five for the cat.” 

The adventurers paid him that much plus an extra ten gold for the trouble. He blinked in surprise and said “Well then! You two can have my private cabin. If you’ll give me about a half hour, I’ll have it fixed up for you all nice-like.”

Arianna and Gerrit said thank you, called to Jade, and went for a walk about town. They entered the market square. Everywhere were shanty-booths of vendors selling fish and fish-based items. 

A bottle of brownish liquid was shaken in Gerrit’s face. “Cod oil!” 

Gerrit stopped walking and looked at the craggy old lady selling her bottles of cod oil. “Sure! I’ll buy one.” He pulled out a coin and dropped it in her outstretched hand, then took the bottle. 

The woman looked at the coin in disbelief as Gerrit walked on. It was a gold coin. She ran back around in front of him. “More cod oil!” she shouted. “All kindsa uses, it has!”

“I’ll take another,” Gerrit said as he paid another gold. He took the bottle and placed it with the other in his haversack.

They walked away from the woman, who was shouting after them about how you can’t have too much cod oil. “You know,” Arianna said. “That’s probably not even worth five copper pieces.” 

Gerrit shrugged happily. “I know. I made someone’s day, though. Vennia rewards us for every little bit of good we do.”

Within a half an hour, they’d turned around and re-entered market square. Arianna sighed. “Tell me again about how we’re rewarded for the ‘good’ that we do?”

"Please shut up.”

The market square was lined with vendors, and each was turned to Gerrit. Their eyes gleamed like sharks’ as they moved in, waving useless sea-gotten trinkets and items. The adventurers looked down and began shouldering through the masses towards the SeaToad.

“Coral amulet! Magic!”

“Tuna? Tuna for you-na?”

“Did you know that kelp can cure almost anything?”

“Grouper, got plenty of big fat grouper here!”

“Cod oil! Makes a terrific gift!”

“I had a rash once. Know what I did? I spread on some Squid Paste!”

“Shrimp poppers?”

“Lobster muffins! Can’t be beat!”

The two of them (plus a shaken Jade) reached the ship and bolted the door behind them. The captain’s quarters were little more than a wooden box that smelled of… well, the captain of a fishing vessel. Gerrit put down his things. “At least we can get some rest, finally.” Arianna sat on a chair and began to meditate as Gerrit stretched out on the bed and shut his eyes. 

Something else was wrong, though, and in a moment his exhausted mind grasped it. The dwarves above deck were still clomping around, loading crates of ice-fish. The noise down here in the cabin was almost cacophonous. Gerrit sighed sadly and tried to ignore the noises.

The dwarves didn’t stop loading the ship until maybe two in the morning.





​
A knock at the door woke Gerrit and roused Arianna from her meditation. “Whuh?” Gerrit asked blearily. “Whuh time?”

“Wakey wakey!” Captain Evory said as he popped his head inside. “What, are you guys hibernating? I let you sleep in all day… it’s almost seven A.M.! There’s work to do… and bring the cat!”

Gerrit crawled out of bed and began to pray. Arianna fed Jade and within a few moments, they walked above deck. 

They were at sea. The SeaToad moved out, eastward from Chandrar Bay and for the first time, they’d left the mainland. The water ran by in a blue-grey wash and the filthy deck swayed underfoot. The kingdom of Thendis began to shrink behind them. Ahead, only ocean. It was seventy-three nautical miles from Chandrar to Farplane. They could expect to arrive sometime tomorrow afternoon. The men in the ship's crow's eye held spy-glasses to their faces as they scanned the horizon for privateers.

 “Heyyy,” Evory said. “There are my two favorite fares. All right. Gerrit, here’s a spy glass. Get up there and keep a watch. Rusty’ll tell you which direction to look in.” 

“Gotcha.” With a jump, Gerrit was swinging from line to line, sometimes flipping, sometimes turning, sometimes catching the next line with the backs of his knees, ever moving up. 

“Huh,” Evory mused. “He is good in the rigging. Anyway. Arianna, I got a special job for Jade here. Come with me.” He led the elf and the leopard to a large wooden block, where a gore-slicked man in a rubberized apron was cleaning fish. 

Arianna was horrified. It was the worst thing she’d ever smelled, and that included the encounter with the Otyugh. “What… what is it you’d like for Jade to do here?”

The man cleaning the fish zipped his knife up a fish’s belly and with a finger pulled out the innards. They fell to the bloody deck with a splat. A young man pushed them and other fish guts out a deck-drain with a pushmop. 

Evory said “I’d like to give kitty here an all-she-can eat buffet.”

“You want my animal companion to eat fish innards?”

“Yeah! She likes fish, doesn’t she? It’d be a great help- Junior can’t push that mop all day, and besides, the guts in the sea are effectively chum. By the time we pass Hallowed Point we’ll be trailing sharks.”

“Jade isn’t a bottomless pit for fish tripe. I’m sorry, but I can’t allow it. I’ll take over for Junior for a while, if that helps.”

Evory shrugged. “Okay, suit yourself.” He walked away. 

Arianna tied Jade up belowdeck and approached Junior. “Hello,” she said. “I’m going to be taking over for you for a while.” 

“Really? Fantastic! Here’s the mop- the trick is to not step on the spleens. If they burst, the bile really gums up the wood.” He handed her the mop and untied his apron and walked away. “Oh. One more thing.” He turned back. “After about an hour or so, your hands will start to develop really horrific blisters. Don’t worry, though- after another hour, they’ll pop. Have fun!”

Arianna stared after him from her place on the stinking, moist, crimson deck, holding a blister-slicked mop, with her mouth agape.





_*Coming up*_
*ISLANDS ON THE HORIZON*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 3, 2007)

_*Session 1 - Chapter 3*_
*WE'RE IN TROUBLE*​
Up in the crow’s nest, Gerrit was getting acquainted with “Rusty” and learning the basics of being a lookout. Gerrit’s portion of the sea would be the northeast, while Rusty covered the northwest and the third man would keep his eyes on the south… which was of course where trouble was likely to come from. 

Gerrit scanned the horizon from shoulder to shoulder, as Rusty had instructed. The line was clear. By noon the distant islands of Westerwynne and Hallowed Point would become visible. Gerrit watched for them as eagerly as he watched for the privateers.

Down on deck, Arianna was having a less enchanting experience. The man cleaning fish was a talkative brute named Belpurt who seemed to think the elf was interested in hearing about the particulars of his job and seeing his skill with a cleaver. 

“Most can’t clean a fish with a  cleaver,” he said. “They use a filet knife. Like novices.” He laughed and tossed a glut of intestines to the deck. 

“Could you please be careful?” Arianna asked wearily. “You almost hit me with those.” 

“You know what the novices also don’t do? Drain the livers. You take a liver, like so, and squeeeeze…” He squeezed a fish liver out over a stained wooden bowl that was filling with vile liquid. “This is the oil. You can get a killing for this stuff at market. I heard someone paid a gold piece for a bottle just yesterday.”

“Yes, yes,” Arianna wheezed. “I think I might sit down for a bit. The sun is getting to me.”

“Ahh, it does bake down, doesn’t it? Know what’s a good sunscreen? Cod oil. Here, smear some on ya!” He dipped a hand in the bowl and reached for her. 

Arianna promptly dropped the mop and ran away. “I’ll just run and get Junior. His shift’s back on anyway.”

 “Suit yourself.” Belpurt shrugged and then rubbed his oily hand all over his face and the back of his neck. He got back to work. 

Around noon, the cook served a meager fish-hash which had been fried in the skin. Dinner that night was worse. Jade enjoyed Gerrit and Arianna’s shares, and they ate their trail rations below deck, well away from where the sensitive cook would see.

When night fell, Arianna took Gerrit’s spot in the crow’s nest. She had eyes that could see better and further in the dark than the crew, and the night wind was soothing on her sunburn anyway. She didn’t need sleep. Gerrit, however, turned in early so that he’d be up at first light to continue the watch. 




Gerrit bounded up to deck, well-rested and ready to watch. “Good morning, Captain Evory.”

“Mornin’. Ain’t you chipper.” 

“Ain’t I just.”

“Wind’s with us today. We should reach Palervale around one, maybe earlier.”

“Fantastic. Well, I’d best get up there.” Gerrit leapt up and began flipping his way to the nest.

Arianna was scanning the horizon dutifully. Her skin was its usual unblemished shade. Gerrit hopped into the nest and said “Goood morning. What happened to your sunburn?”

“I couldn’t take it. At some point I just used a cure spell.”

“Oh come on, you big baby. I was in the sun twice as long as you were, and you don’t see me burning magic.”

Arianna slapped the spyglass against his chest. “I happen to have a very fair complexion, I’ll have you know. Have fun, I’m heading down before the sun gets too high. I won’t make that mistake twice.” She climbed down and Gerrit sighed happily, surveying the ocean. He could see how some could fall in love with a seaman’s life, roving from port to port on the foam.

He also liked studying the far-off lands he’d only heard of. Westerwynne was a broad and flat island… just a flattened black patch on the horizon. Wellden, on the other hand, was a small island that had three tall mountains silhouetted against the sky. One of the peaks almost looked like it had a flag planted in it. Gerrit couldn’t see the island too well, but he enjoyed marveling at just why someone would mark the top of a mountain with a flag. He would have so many different cultures to learn about on this trip.

Within a half hour, Rusty joined him. “Mornin’ Gerrit. You’re up early.”

“Yep. I quite like it up here.”

“That’s good,” Rusty said. “I imagine you’ll miss it tonight when you’re back on dry land, eh?”

“I just might. Hey Rusty… that’s Wellden, right?”

“That island behind Hallowed Point? Yep.”

“Why do they have a flag planted on top of one of the mountain peaks? Some local custom?”

Rusty held up his spyglass and took a look. His mouth went slack and he dropped the glass, then began ringing the bell that hung over their heads. “Ship! Ship to the north!”

Gerrit looked again. “That’s a ship? I… oh no…”

“You may not be cut out for this after all, Gerrit. Now think very carefully- when did you first spot the peak with the flag?”

“Uh… it came into view about a half hour ago.”

Rusty slammed his fist against the nest’s basket and the whole thing trembled. “Damn. They’ve had time enough to spot us for sure.”

Evory shouted up from below. “What’s going on up there?”

“Ship, captain! Between us and Wellden. They hid in the shadow of the mountains as we breached the horizon.”

Arianna came up from below deck to see what all the shouting was about. Rusty tossed her a spyglass, which she caught deftly. “Elf! You’ve got good eyes. Look to the north. There’s a ship, and at the top of the mast is a flag. What’s on the flag?”

Arianna looked carefully and said “It looks like three red teardrops on a black field.” The crew began looking to each other fearfully. “The ship is moving to the right of Hallowed Point.”

“That’s it then,” Evory said through his teeth. “They’re moving to intercept.”

The six mercenaries Evory had hired were roused and armored. They got up onto deck around the time that the ship was completely visible to the right side of Hallowed Point. Evory looked to the garrison and then to the ship again. “I don’t know why I hire the men. To feel safe, I guess. This won’t help us. That’s a fully loaded privateer. Maybe upwards of one hundred thirty men. Probably twelve cannons to a side. At the speed they’re running, they’ll overtake us before we can reach land.”

Gerrit said “Despair won’t help. We should come up with a plan.”

“What plan could help us now? Despair’s the only hope we have left! If we surrender everything we have, they won’t kill us and send my ship to the bottom of the Strait. Unless you’ve got a fierce plan, I don’t think we’ve got a prayer.”

Arianna thought quickly. “If I could just touch their ship, I could warp the wood of their hull and make a big breach. They’d sink within minutes, or at least slow down enough for us to escape.”

“You’d have to get over there, first,” Gerrit said. “But how?”

“I… I could turn into a fish and swim to the ship’s underside.”

Captain Evory said “In these waters? Think again. Since we’ve been shoveling tripe overboard as usual, the sharks have been thick in the water since last night. You’d never make it. If only we had some other way to dispose of the fish guts, eh?”

Arianna ignored that. “I could fly over as a bird! But… I couldn’t cast the spell. I need hands and speech to make the spell work. I could turn into myself again, but then I’d be in the water.”

“It’s a wash. Do we have another plan?”

The ship was beginning to grow larger in the distance. The mast against the gray of the sails could now be seen with the naked eye.

Gerrit licked his lips as he thought. “I think I may have something. I think I can keep them off of us until we reach Farplane. Maybe.”

“Well by all means, let’s hear your idea.”

Gerrit began talking.





_*Coming up*_
*THE PLAN*​




.


----------



## Felix (Jul 3, 2007)

Ha HA!

Great to be reading you again Doc! See this one through at least until Strahd has them by the jugular!


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 3, 2007)

_*Session 1 - Chapter 4*_
*TAKING ON THE INDOMITABLE*​
The pirate ship drew close. It grew close enough to read its name- it was called the Indomitable. The men on board ran about grabbing cutlasses from uncapped barrels and shouting threats over the railing. A man with a large coned megaphone stood at the nose and yelled to them. “You are overtaken! You will slow and allow us to board. Do so and no one will be harmed. Refuse us and be destroyed!” The pirates all screamed in approval. 

Gerrit, Arianna, Evory, the mercenaries and crew stood at the rear of the SeaToad, watching the ship get closer and closer. Gerrit was at one corner of the rear of the ship, Arianna at the other. Evory nervously looked to the northeast, where the port of Palervale was also growing close… but not nearly close enough. They were maybe a half hour away from docking, and the Indomitable would be on them in minutes. Evory shifted from foot to foot. “There are maybe two hundred of them,” he moaned. “Now? They’re close.”

“Just a minute more,” Gerrit said. They have to be right on us.” 

So they waited. The Indomitable came close enough to see the rotted teeth in the gums of the pirates. They leered at Arianna over the railing and made lewd gestures.

Evory murmured “They mean to take her too.”

“They won’t,” Arianna replied.

Gerrit said “Everyone mark her position in your mind. Ready… now!” He and Arianna raised their arms and cast.

Thick mist began billowing off of them in great clouds that were over fifty feet wide. The entire ship’s hull was obscured to the pirates’ view. Only the masts and sails rose above the mist. It carried behind them from their speed, but the wind was with them kept it dispersed between the SeaToad and the Indomitable.

The adventurers’ bodies kept generating more mist as everyone on the SeaToad bent to pick up a shortbow. A crate of them had been found in the cargo hold, and the mercenaries had had enough arrows for all. The ends of each were wrapped in rags and wetted with cod oil.

The arrows were lit and Gerrit shouted “Fire at will!” Glowing firespots shot off into the mist. Thunks, splashes, exclamations, and a few screams came back to them. 

A thunderous report boomed through the mist. A quick, low moan went over them, and then a splash from the fore of the ship. 

Evory whooped excitedly. “They’re firing blind! The cannoneers can’t see our masts to aim!”

The SeaToad crew fired another volley of fire arrows out into the fog. More thunks. This time, an alarmed voice cried out and a tremendous explosion came from the pirate ship. Pieces of wood rained down on them as pirates screamed in the distance.

Arianna grinned. “Someone hit a black powder keg!”

The Indomitable fired its cannons again. This time the cannonballs sounded closer, making their ghostly pass in the fog. They crashed through a few layers of canvas and crashed into the surf. The spray fell on the SeaToad’s aft deck. Evory said “That one was closer. They won’t keep missing.  Unless we hit another bank of kegs they’ll hit us soon.”

Gerrit laughed. “True, and with more than cannonfire.” 

The prow of the Indomitable was beginning to emerge from the gray. It loomed steadily toward them. 

“Hold your fire,” Gerrit said. “I’ll be right back.” Before anyone could ask what he was planning, he jumped out over the sea and landed on the prow-mast. He ran down its length to the deck of the ship, still billowing mist from his body. 

Here, pirates were running about in a panic, gray shapes disappearing into the fog as quickly as they’d emerged from it. None of them even seemed to notice the halfling darting amongst them in the thick mist. Fiery wreckage, arrows, and pirate bodies littered the deck.

Gerrit was looking very specifically for the area of the ship that had held the powderkegs. He knew from his talks with Rusty the day before that any bulk item on a ship was likely not moved far from its main store. Three kegs may have detonated, but more would be nearby in the hold below the deck. With a moment’s looking he found it- a smoking black patch surrounded by pirate corpses. Nearby was a staircase leading down into the hold. A lattice of iron was beside it. Gerrit bent to look through it and saw the kegs, row on row, sitting prettily twenty feet below. 

A dying pirate lay near Gerrit with a barrelstave buried in his chest. When he moaned his voice gurgled- the stave had hit a lung. “Please,” the pirate gasped. “please kill me.” 

Gerrit leaned in and said “This is what you get when you traffic with scum. _Be judged_!” He then stood and smashed one of his bottles of cod oil against the iron grate, then took off running for the fore of the ship. The pirate watched as the oil lit on fire and dripped into the hold below.

“Hey,” a pirate yelled through the mist. “One of them’s boarded! Get ‘im!”

Gerrit ran at full speed to the front of the ship and leaped, smashing a bottle behind him as he did. The foredeck lit on fire and the pirates on his tail cursed and screamed. Gerrit sailed over the ocean and the SeaToad came into view again.

That was when the remaining powderkegs went. 

This explosion was far more spectacular. Boards of the deck flew in ever direction, some just missing Gerrit by inches. Wet pieces of pirate showered everywhere. Gerrit was struck in the back by the shockwave and carried foreward, over his crewmates and onto the deck. He landed and rolled to a kneel. 

The Indomitable, behind them, lurched to port. Maybe the rudder’s mechanisms were damaged, or maybe a pirate’s corpse had draped over the wheel. Whatever the reason, the injured ship was making a hard turn to port and leaving them. The screams of the injured and confused pirates faded into the mist. 

As the SeaToad pulled into port at Palervale, the crew, adventurers, and curious wharfspeople watched the smoking Indomitable head away. 

Evory stepped out onto the dock with Arianna, Jade and Gerrit. “I suppose I’ll have to get her repainted,” Evory said, “and renamed. They’ll be looking for the SeaToad now. I might have to have serious refittings done before I dare go back out to sea.”

Gerrit frowned. “I’m sorry for that.” 

“I’m not. We gave those thieves a black eye and I’d do it again in a second. Good travels my friends.” He held out his hand.

Gerrit shook it. “And to you. Goodbye Captain.” The adventurers left Captain Evory there, clapping and hooting as he watched the Indomitable limp back out to sea. 

The forest beyond Palervale was dark, and the mountain beyond that darker still.





_*Next session*_
*DINNER GUESTS*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 3, 2007)

Felix said:
			
		

> Ha HA!
> 
> Great to be reading you again Doc! See this one through at least until Strahd has them by the jugular!



Wow, I'm surprised anyone here still remembers me. Thanks people! If I've still got fans, people might be interested in that you can now buy *The Adventures of the Knights of the Silver Quill* (http://www.lulu.com/content/586907) and *The Adventures of the Knights of Spellforge Keep* (http://www.lulu.com/content/588165) as softcover books. You can also get them as free downloads. I don't make any money off of these.

This isn't the same group I've played with before- I've moved and am in a new area, knowing few gamers hereabouts - hence there being only two of them. They're playing gestalt characters. Gerrit is a monk / cleric and Arianna is a ranger / druid. 

We play again on Saturday, possibly with a guest player, which I'm excited about. Here's a more detailed map of the area if anyone would like to take a peek.


----------



## Richards (Jul 3, 2007)

I've never tried the gestalt character option.  How are your players liking it?

In any case, I'm enjoying the hell out of your new Story Hour.

Johnathan


----------



## Squash Cop (Jul 4, 2007)

Richards said:
			
		

> I've never tried the gestalt character option.  How are your players liking it?



It's fun.

-Gerrit


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 4, 2007)

It certainly does look fun, I'd love to play one sometime.


----------



## Wee Jas (Jul 5, 2007)

Dr Midnight said:
			
		

> This isn't the same group I've played with before- I've moved and am in a new area




I don't approve of this at all.   You know what you get?  F+


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 8, 2007)

The game went oddly tonight. Ever have that feeling like you're having a really bad headache, but without the pain? My head was a mess- complete disorientation, couldn't stay in character, couldn't convey the direction the dialogue was taking... tons of problems tonight. Wasn't my best session. 

And of course the players didn't react at all as I expected to one (supposedly brief) development, so I had to improvise with a head full of mud. I feel like I'm recovering from a concussion or something. Man.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 9, 2007)

_*Session 2 - Chapter 1*_
*RAILROADED*​
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Arianna said to a passing woman. “I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the village of Barovia.”

The woman glared at them with thinly veiled enmity. “What, do the devil’s minions come out in daylight now? I think you know all about the problems up in Barovia.”

Arianna and Gerrit exchanged a look. “I don’t understand,” Gerrit said cautiously. “We…”

“Just don’t be plaguing us, here, with your mischief. Move along or I’ll alert the constable.” The woman stalked away.

Arianna shook her head and watched the woman storm off.  “What do you think that was about? Look, all around us, others are glaring at us.” It was true- people were giving them the sideways glance as they went about their business.

A young boy with a candied fish on a stick said “It was because you came in on a boat that was trailing mist I think.” He took a lick of his fish. “People were saying they didn’t like your mist, I think it was the mist. I think they didn’t like your mist. Yeah.” He grinned.

“Our… mist? The spells we used to escape the pirate ship?”

The boy shrugged. “I don’t know but this one lady said a bad word about your mist and spat on the ground.” The boy laughed and walked away. 

The adventurers were about to move on when a dwarf was thrown out of the Sorrowful Cup tavern. He came stumbling backward out of the saloon-style doors and tripped over Arianna’s panther Jade. His arms pinwheeled as he toppled over. In an instant Jade was on him, pinning him to the ground and growling low in her throat. “Sit,” he mumbled up into the cat’s snarling face.

Gerrit and Arianna helped the dwarf to his feet while laughter came from the tavern. “Thank you,” the dwarf said into his chest as he stood. “That was less than dignified.”

Arianna brushed him off. “Are you alright? What happened?”

“I don’t even know. Superstitious townfolk don’t know how to treat a stranger. All I did was ask how to get to Barovia and several large apelike goons took to muscling me out of their bar.”

“You’re going to Barovia?” Gerrit asked. 

“Yep. I’m joining an adventuring group that’s already establishing themselves there. Big problems up in Barovia, so I hear.”

“What a coinky-dink, we’re going ourselves.”

“Huh.” The dwarf thought for a moment. “What’s a coinky-dink?”

Gerrit ignored that. “Care to travel together for a while?"

A voice from the tavern shouted something about _let’s go get those mist-using monsters and maybe that dwarf too_, followed by drunken cheers of encouragement.

“Sounds good,” the dwarf said as he started hustling for the crossroads. “Name’s Crickbourn.”




The road east out of Palervale was a rutted dirt road lined with thin underbrush and dark evergreen trees. The wind blew through the treetops and across the party’s backs. Leaves skipped along the road beneath the sky and the elf, the halfling, the dwarf and the panther walked for hours toward Barovia. 

The sun began to set and the forest took on a sinister cast. The trees were dark shapes moving by them in the gloaming as they walked. A dim mist had begun to build on the ground and over lateral distance, adding to the melancholy flavor of the scenery. The crescent moon was climbing in the dusk sky. 

Arianna shivered and wrapped her cloak around her shoulders.

The sun’s light was almost entirely gone when a noise came from up the road. The party stopped in the road and listened. Horses’ hooves and the turn of wheels. Through the trees, a red light could just be seen on the curving road ahead, coming closer.    

Crickbourn licked his lips, looked around and darted into the underbrush. Gerrit turned to him. “What are you doing?”

“Uh. Hiding.” The dwarf hunched his shoulders behind a tree, partly from embarrassment. 

Gerrit and Arianna stood on the side of the road and watched. The mist of the road was lit with a reddish light. A carriage came around the corner. It was led by two pitch black Vistani stallions wearing equally black blinders, bridles, and jutting feather headdresses. The carriage was an ornate, enclosed space with burgundy curtains. A red-glassed lantern hung from each front corner of the carriage.  Somewhere off in the far distance, a wolf howled.

No one was driving the horses. 

The carriage stopped on the road by the heroes and the horses stamped the ground. The door to the carriage opened. The inside was empty and lined with comfortable looking red silk cushions.

“That’s… creepy,” Gerrit said.

Crickbourn was peering out from behind his tree. “Are we supposed to get in?” 

“I don’t think I want to get in that,” Arianna said, shaking her head. 

“Um. Move on horsies. Get along now.” Gerrit waved his hands westward, trying to get the horses to move. They ignored him. 

Arianna stepped up to the horses. “I think I can get them to go away.” She pushed aside one horse’s blinders and looked into its eyes, speaking softly, trying to establish a connection. She stopped and looked closely for a moment, then with a start jumped back from the horse. She clutched her robe around her and her face was aghast.

“What?” Crickbourn asked. “What’s wrong?”

“The eyes,” Arianna said. “They’re made of glass. They’re painted glass, like taxidermists use. Someone took out its  eyes.”

Gerrit gasped. “Vennia preserve us. Did it listen, at least?”

“I don’t even know if they’re alive. I don’t want to try again.”

 The howl came again from the woods- only this time, there were two wolves baying to the moon. They sounded closer. Crickbourn quickly ran back to the road from his place behind the tree. 

“We should just keep walking,” Gerrit said. “How much further can it be to Barovia? We’re almost there, I think.” He looked up the road and was astonished to see that the thin mist they’d been walking through was now a thick fog that obscured the distance. Their vision only saw maybe a hundred feet into the mist. The trees were now mere shapes, gray against gray. “The fog is getting thicker.”

“It is,” Crickbourn said. “Maybe we should get in.” 

“Nonsense, it’s only fog.” Gerrit walked up the road cautiously. The others watched him almost disappear into the mist.

In the mist, Gerrit was struck by something, and he couldn’t put a finger on it at all. In a moment it came to him- it was silent in the mist. No wind, no birds, no whisper of leaves in the trees. Barely his own footsteps beneath him, barely his own breathing. It was silent as the grave. 

The further he walked, the more the fog thickened. Before long he couldn’t see his own hand at arm’s length before him. He turned back to the carriage and the others.

Arianna watched him melt from the fog on the road and saw a hunched shape following him, just over his shoulder. She called out “Gerrit, behind you!” The halfling quickly rolled to a kneel, facing the way he’d come. There was nothing there. He waited for a moment then rejoined the others. 

“That fog’s too thick,” Gerrit said. “It plays tricks on you. I don’t think we should walk through it.”

“What are we going to do?” Crickbourn asked. 

“I think we should camp here tonight.”

“We could get in the carriage. No mist in there.” The dwarf clearly was clutching to his sanity, surrounded as he was by mist-shrouded wilderness. His eyes bugged as he looked around.

Arianna said “I’d rather camp than get in that thing. Traveling will be better by daylight.”

The door to the carriage swung shut with a click. The horses began to trot off, west, into the mists. The red light faded and the heroes were alone in the road in the thick fog. 

The howling came again and Crickbourn jumped. “That was close. Maybe five hundred feet off. How many did that sound like?”

“At least three,” Gerrit said. “And from different angles. They’re surrounding us.”

Jade was looking around, nearly panicked. Arianna petted her and said “They’re big. They’re also baying in a certain pattern… which means they’re hunting.”

“Damn,” Gerrit said. “Maybe we should have gotten in the carriage after all. This is bad.”

“We should climb a tree,” Crickbourn said. The others agreed before he was even done voicing the idea. They all climbed up the nearest tree. From here the ground was completely covered in mist. 

The howls came from every direction. This time there were no fewer than six of the bestial voices, maybe a hundred feet away from the tree and circling.

Then, the red light began to dimly bloom again from the west. “The carriage!” Crickbourn cried. “It’s coming back!” The horses, seemingly undeterred by the wolves in the fog all around them, pulled up and stopped on the road. 

Crickbourn said “I’m going, wherever that thing is headed has got to be safer than this.” He crawled out over the branch towards the roof of the carriage and slipped. He fell to the ground with a  thud. More frightened than hurt, he scrambled to his feet and leaped into the carriage. He readied himself to close the door quickly if he saw a wolf and shouted “Are you coming? If so, hurry!”

Gerrit, Arianna and Jade ran out over the limb and landed on the roof with a thunk. 

Something dark and obscured by mist circled the carriage from its place on the ground. “Immense,” Arianna murmured. “It’s fifteen feet long from nose to tailtip.” Another passed by it, circling in the opposite direction. The horses paid them no attention, and they ignored the horses in turn.

The heroes swung down into the cab of the carriage, and Jade jumped to the ground and then in. Crickbourn shut the door just as something lunged, rocking the carriage on its axles. Claws raked the wood of the door and the horses began moving. After all that silence, the movement of the wheels and the rocking of the cabin was a welcome change.

They settled back on the pillows and let the carriage take them wherever it would.






_*Coming up*_
*CASTLE RAVENLOFT*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 12, 2007)

_*Session 2 - Chapter 2*_
*CASTLE RAVENLOFT*
_Some text taken or paraphrased from EXPEDITION TO CASTLE RAVENLOFT_​
The carriage moved oddly. At first it followed the dips and bumps of any road, and its passengers swayed inside with the motion. Then the carriage would tip as though it were driving along a hill. The party inside braced themselves against the side of the cabin. “We must be almost perpendicular to gravity’s pull,” Gerrit said. “How are we not tipping over?” The windows were obscured entirely by the curtains, but no one wanted to part them and look outside.

The carriage righted itself, but within moments they were climbing a steep hill. The horses didn’t seem to slow or register any strain. 

At one point they were bracing themselves against the ceiling. 

The cart slowed to a stop after about forty minutes’ time. Crickbourn was green from the rolling motion. The door opened and revealed that they’d left the mist and forest setting. The pale blue light of the moon was illuminating crags of rock.

Crickbourn leaned forward. “It looks like we’re in the mountains.” He looked out and to the road behind them. The carriage was stopped on a curving rocky path. He then turned to the front of the carriage. “Oh my.” He stepped out, staring. 

“What is it?” Arianna asked. She and Gerrit got out, and Jade followed. 

Castle Ravenloft towered before them.

Twin guardhouses of turreted stone kept a silent watch over the approach, broken from years of use and exposure. Beyond these, a wide chasm gaped between the Balinok cliffs and the walls of Ravenloft, disappearing into the fog-shrouded distance far below. The lowered drawbridge of old wooden beams hung precariously between them and the arched entrance to the castle courtyard. The chains of the drawbridge creaked in the wind, their rust-eaten iron straining with the weight. From atop the high strong walls, stone gargoyles stared at them from hollow sockets and grinned hideously. A rotting wooden portcullis, green with growth, hung in the entry tunnel. Beyond this, the main doors of Castle Ravenloft stood open, a rich warm light spilling into the courtyard.

“Vennia above,” Gerrit murmured. “What manner of man is this Count Strahd?”

Arianna pointed. “The moon! It’s grown full!” The full moon, thick and yellowish, hung in the sky behind Ravenloft’s main tower.

Crickbourn shrugged. “So?”

“The moon is and has been in its crescent phase. It’s not due to be a full moon until a fortnight hence. It’s larger than I’ve ever seen it.” The face the patterns on the moon made, what the elves called she-inside, was here taking on unfamiliar angles and strange casts. It didn’t look like a face anymore. Arianna didn’t like it. “Shall we go inside?”

“I don’t know that I trust this drawbridge,” Gerrit mumbled. The bridge looked to be ancient, rickety wood supported by two pockmarked iron beams. He tested its weight with one foot and it creaked audibly. Dust floated down into the unseen white abyss of the chasm. With a few minutes’ work they’d crossed the bridge using rope and a clever series of knots. 

They walked through the archway. Here, thick fog swirled around in the darkened courtyard. Ahead, torch flames fluttered in the wind on each side of the keep’s open main doors. Warm light shone out from the doorway. Although windows and arrow slits were visible in the walls above them, no illumination was seen from within, barring the main entrance.

They walked cautiously into a small entry chamber. It was illuminated by flickers of fire in the mouths of two coiled stone dragons that formed an archway at the room’s far end. Their mouths directed the light in the adventurers’ direction, and the room beyond was dimly lit as well.

This small entryway opened into the castle atrium. Here, cobwebs hung from dust-covered columns supporting a great hall. Stone gargoyles squatted motionlessly on the edge of a balcony circling some twenty feet above the floor. Cracked and faded frescoes adorned the domed ceiling, nearly obliterated by centuries of decay. Two great bronze doors stood closed opposite the arched entry. To the left of the entry, a wide staircase climbed into darkness. The only lit passageway was the wide hall that opened to the right. The torches seemed to be forming a path. 

The adventurers walked into the hallway. The torches ended on either side of a closed set of double doors. The carvings on the wooden doors were ornate designs of knights and great dragons with curved, frowning mouths. 

Arianna put her hands to the bronze handles of the doors and pushed. The doors opened inward on a dimly lit dining room. Crystal sang in the gloom as great chandeliers hung overhead. Motes of light danced in glass and china on a great dining table, which was set for four places. At the head of the table, someone was seated with his back to them. The figure stood. His back was slightly hunched and draped with a fine black cape. His hair was pale gray, almost white, and it was combed back smoothly. The figure turned. 

“Ahhhh. Welcome to my home.” He spoke in the thick accent of the region. His face was aged and friendly. Arianna placed him at perhaps seventy years old. The eyes crinkled as he smiled at them. “I am Count Strahd Von Zarovich. You must be Arianna. Ah but you are a vision. I see the family resemblance.” 

The doors closed behind them with a click. Strahd gestured to the chairs. “Please, have a seat. I have prepared food and drink in anticipation of your coming.”

“Thank you, Count,” Arianna said, taking a seat and doing her best to maintain her dignity despite the unsettling room. “If you don’t mind, I had some questions.” 

“Of course.” Strahd sat and smiled. “You wonder how I found you, and what our bond is.”
“Yes. Um. Firstly, though, I was wondering about the carriage. How did you know where to find us, and how does a carriage with no driver find its way?”

“Barovia is an old, strange land. We have many customs you would consider odd. I have many friends that keep me abreast of the goings-on on the road and elsewhere. News travels quickly. As to the carriage, the horses know their way.” 
“Even without eyes,” Gerrit said. 

Strahd smiled and went on. “I found you through my network of tellers. I have had feelers out amongst the islands and continents of this sea for some time, looking for my heir. Some weeks back I was told that my nephew’s baby girl had been found. You were taken from the land by your father and when your parents died, you came to rest at an orphanage in Ortil.” He waved a hand dismissively. “These details are unimportant. What is important is that now you have been found and can resume your throne.”

“Throne?” Arianna was distracted, despite the promise of wealth. She was born one hundred and sixty years ago. How old was this Count? He looked human. Mostly human, leastwise.

“Yes. The coffers of Castle Ravenloft have been overflowing for time immemorial, and I shall not live forever. I had feared that when I died, the castle might be overrun by scoundrels and unsavory types. Now, you are here and can assume your position.”

Gerrit was listening and studying the table. The food smelled delicious, but he didn’t dare try it. He cast a spell, surreptitiously, that allowed him to detect the poisons in the things around him. The wine glasses glowed a faint green, but the meat seemed alright. He dug in. Crickbourn saw his example and did the same.

Arianna went on. “Familial relations aside and begging your pardon, Count, but I’m not driven by material wealth. I appreciate the importance this castle must have to the Von Zaroviches, but I don’t know that I’d want to give up my life in Ortil and move here.” 

“Oh, you shall. You will come to understand, one way or another, the pull that this castle and its charms can hold. I suspect that you will spend the rest of your life here.” He smiled again. “But before I can believe you are truly an heir to the castle, I must be absolutely certain that you are the child I sought. You will have to assert your devotion to Ravenloft.”

“Devotion? How?”

“Firstly, there is a matter of knowing, alchemically, that we are kin. It is a matter of… blood.” At this, the doors opened again and three black-robed men, thin of frame with large hoods hiding their features, walked in. One held up a pin and a small vial. “We shall need three drops of your blood,” Strahd explained. “My mages will study it and determine our true relation. With your consent.” The mages waited expectantly.

“You mean to take my blood.” 

“Yes. Do you not have enough to spare?” Strahd chuckled to himself. 

“Crickbourn,” Arianna said. “You’re familiar with the workings of alchemists, yes? Have you heard of any such process?”

Crickbourn shrugged. “It seems entirely likely. Alchemists are finding new uses for chemistry all the time. Determining family through blood doesn’t sound like a stretch at all, considering what alchemists these days are capable of.”

Arianna pressed her lips tightly together and considered. “I guess I don’t see the harm.” She stepped forward and the alchemists drew three drops of blood from her fingertip. Once they had what they needed, they hurried from the room. 

“Excellent, Strahd said. “Now, to your familial duties. You are young and strong, are you not? I am old and frail. I can defend my home easily enough, but outside the walls of Castle Ravenloft I am almost meager. I am afraid there is a problem- a matter of some witches.”

“Witches?”

“Yes. Upstart black magic types. The foulest sort of people. They mean to drive me out or kill me and take Ravenloft as their own. To this end they’ve enacted a brilliant campaign of propaganda and muckraking.” He sat back unhappily. “They have turned my own people against me. The people of Barovia, my own good citizens, now believe I am some undead fiend and spit upon my offered hand. The witches have told them that their problems are my doing.”

“What are their troubles?”

“Ahh, there is a zombie plague about Barovia. The witches brought about some means for the dead to return to life. Each night, the people of Barovia quake in fear as the dead roam the streets. They blame me. They call me ‘the devil, Strahd’ and curse with my name. As the people turn against me, the witches can use them to help overthrow me.” 

“This is all very unfortunate,” Arianna said, not certain she believed what she was hearing. “What is it that you’d like for us to do about it?”

“As a Von Zarovich, if my name is slandered, so is yours. I expect you to take personal offense… and with the gift of youth and power, retaliate. You will kill the witches. You will end the zombie plague. You will find something called ‘the Tome of Strahd’.”

“What is the Tome of Strahd?”

Strahd leaned back in the chair and gestured with disgust. “It is a nothing, a manufactured confection of lies that these vile monsters have used to turn the people against me. It is a book that I supposedly wrote. In it ‘I’ detail how I killed my own brother - unthinkable! – to woo his betrothed. After this I become some sort of undead beast. I’m unsure of the particulars. You can understand, I’m sure, why this has upset me so. I want you to first seek out Madam Eva, who will tell you where to find the book.”

“All right,” Arianna said as she took a bite of the steak. “What are we to do with it when we find it?”

Strahd smiled. “Why, destroy it, of course.”






_*Coming up*_
*A RESTLESS NIGHT *​




.


----------



## Richards (Jul 13, 2007)

I know this is a new gaming group, but have they gamed before?  More importantly, do they know the backstory of Ravenloft and Count Strahd von Zarovich, or was this all new to them?

And again, excellent job on the writing front, although I can see where you'd be kind of frustrated at the players not "taking the hook" with the creepy carriage.  Very evocative stuff.    I think you've gone up a couple more levels in the Storyteller prestige class since I last read your works!

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 13, 2007)

Oh, they game. They're not super crazy regular gamers, but they know a plot device when they see one. I like to think they were inside the characters, who actually didn't want to get in. I liked it, it made things interesting. I just hadn't expected to have to go that way.

On railroading, I don't like to do it... but Strahd's in control, and he's not having them NOT get in. They could have stayed out and fought whatever emerged from the woods and it'd have been fine, just... irritating. I'm used to players screwing up my plans and usually can improvise. Last weekend, though, I was feeling really incapable. Know that feeling when you've been staring at a monitor for hours and hours and your eyes almost feel like they're vibrating, you can't focus? That was happening to me. I almost felt drugged. Had a bad headache for the next two straight days. 

Thanks for the writin' compliments Richards. I really haven't written much since the Knights, so I can't say I've kept in practice. I dunno.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 13, 2007)

_*Session 2 - Chapter 3*_
*OVERNIGHT ACCOMODATIONS*
_Some text taken or paraphrased from EXPEDITION TO CASTLE RAVENLOFT_​
The group walked down a dark hallway, led by Strahd, who was holding a candelabra. They came to a spiraling stone staircase that circled upwards into one of the towers of the castle. They walked up and up and up, passing cobwebs that swayed with their passing… but not with Strahd’s. 

They were led to a large door that opened into a lavish guestroom. In this room a king-sized canopy bed was veiled in black with gold tassels. Two overstuffed chairs flanked a small table, upon which sat a decorative lamp. A closed door inscribed with decorative floral carvings occupied the east wall. The ceilings were maybe twenty feet high.

“Here we are,” Strahd said with his polite smile. “I apologize for lumping you all into one room, but I fear my other guest rooms are occupied.”

“They are?” Arianna asked. She recalled pulling up to the castle and seeing no lights anywhere but in the entry chamber.

“Just so. You are an adventuring group, though. You are used to all sharing the same quarters.”

Gerrit said “Crickbourn’s not really… one of us, in matter of fact. He was with us on the road when the carriage came and he came with us for safety.”

“Oh,” Strahd blinked. “I had no idea. Well, you are welcome just the same, noble Crickbourn.”

“That’s okay,” Crickbourn said as he unfurled his bedroll. “I probably wasn’t going to get to stay in a nice place like this tonight anyway.”

“Tonight, roam of the room freely but do not leave it. The castle is very old, and its corridors are not entirely safe without the right perspective. If you must leave the room for anything… don’t.” He bowed with a smile. “And now if you will pardon me, brave heroes and kind Arianna, I must visit my beloved.” 

Crickbourn looked up sharply to the Count from his bedroll as Gerrit asked “Your… beloved?”

“Yes. The fair Ireena, who resides in Barovia. Her father has recently passed on, so she will be grateful of my coming. Ahh. Someday we are to be wed.”

Crickbourn said “Goodnight, Count.” 

The Count looked to him and said “Yes. Goodnight.” The door clicked shut and a bolt slid home, barring them in. 

Gerrit shook his head. “A guy his age, going after a girl young enough to have just recently had a living father… ‘get the fruit while it’s fresh’, eh, Count?”

Arianna sneered as she unpacked her satchel for the night. “That’s disgusting.”

“Hey, he’s your relative.”

The dwarf lay down and said “This is a different land, with different customs. It may seem odd to us but we must accept.”

“Ehh,” Gerrit said. He was investigating the room. He lifted the mattress. “Hey! I’ve found something!” He pulled out a thin silver ring and a journal of some sort. He read it briefly, flipping forward through the pages. “This belonged to some guy named ‘Harp’. Came to the castle forty years ago… because he was told he might be the last heir to Castle Ravenloft.” 

Arianna paused and looked up. “That’s odd.”

“Yes it is,” Gerrit said, skimming ahead. “He was invited to the castle… held… not allowed to leave? Huh. This says Strahd was holding him captive, apparently while assuming control of Harp’s property in a distant land.”

“How does it end?” Arianna asked. Jade had hopped up onto the foot of the bed and was already snoring softly. 

Gerrit cleared his throat and read. “It says ‘I cannot live any longer in this captive manner. The things I hear at night! The things I have seen! I will go mad if I don’t escape, even at the risk of death. I will attempt to flee the castle tomorrow. Dwinnea keep me safe, and may I see my wife again. –Harp.’ There’s nothing else.” 

Arianna sat on the bed. “I wonder if he made it.”

“I’m sure he did,” Crickbourn said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

Gerrit tossed the journal on a nightstand and began to rummage through a closet. “I’m not really tired yet… this place is creepy. Hey, robes!” He began admiring simple black robes that were hung in the closet. 

“You always are impressed by the most mundane things,” Arianna said, bemused.

The halfling had already forgotten the robes and was bracing himself in the closet, climbing up to the low ceiling. “I think I’ve found something.” He pulled and the panel in the ceiling swung down on a hinge. An extending steel ladder fell from its concealed position, threatening to make quite a racket, but Gerrit reached out quickly and caught it before its feet could clang to the floor. The corridor went straight up, the ladder disappearing into darkness.

Arianna walked over and even Crickbourn, who’d been sullen, showed interest. “Secret passage?” Arianna asked. 

“Looks that way. Want to check it out?”

Crickbourn walked forward. “You hold the ladder steady, I’ll climb. I can see in the dark anyway.” He climbed and whispered “Looks like it goes up the rest of the way to the fourth floor.” Despite his best efforts to creep silently upward, he was a dwarf, and one who’d had a trying day. The ladder’s frame rattled slightly in its moorings. He got to the top and pushed gently upward on the hinged panel there, lifting his head only enough to see into the room.

Something pulled up on the trap door, exposing him completely. “Now!” someone yelled. Crickbourn gasped as two men in black robes, the blood mages of earlier in the evening, began to tip a large bubbling cauldron towards him. Above him, the third mage had opened the trap door while sitting on a sturdy table. The dwarf hadn’t been remotely quiet enough, and the alchemists had readied themselves for a trespasser.

The cauldron clunked down to its side and boiling, opaque, dark red liquid gushed out over the cobblestones toward the startled dwarf. He had only a moment before it hit… but luckily, a moment was all he needed. He called upon his magicks and summoned a seven-foot diameter sphere of energy that hovered in place around him. Its pearlescent surface resembled a soap bubble. It trapped the arm of the alchemist holding up the trapdoor firmly in its grasp. 

The boiling liquid hit the bubble, splashing and covering it in its sticky red color. The bubble had acted as a ramp and the arm that was trapped in the bubble with Crickbourn clenched and spasmed from the pain of the burns. While the mages in the room began rushing about, looking for a way to help their trapped peer, Crickbourn waited for the liquid to subside.

“What the hell’s happening?” Arianna asked, running over. 

“I have no idea… sounds like liquid sloshing up there,” Gerrit said. He was at the bottom of the bubble, looking for a way to climb up. “I heard voices shout ‘now’ and then Crickbourn cast a spell. Crickbourn, if you can cancel the spell, I can get up there and fight!”

Crickbourn let the spell go and climbed down as Gerrit hustled up around him, heading towards the room above... which was entirely dark now. Something above spoke, just above the passage, from the darkness. A spell struck Gerrit in the chest. Later, he could only describe the feeling as being “shot with a heart attack.” His hands crumpled into claws and he grimaced from the pain. 

Gerrit began climbing down, now, quickly. He was a sitting duck in this corridor, and he’d be almost helpless above in the dark. He didn’t think he’d be able to take another hit like that.

As he neared the bottom, the feeling struck him again and he fell the rest of the way. He struck the cobbles of the floor hard and his spasming lungs wouldn’t let him breathe. Arianna pulled him back from the line of fire and shut the trapdoor, bracing it. As Gerrit began to cough, color came back into his cheeks. The other two waited for sounds, signs of the mages coming down to continue the attack. There was nothing until the door at the top of the shaft slammed shut. 

“I think they’re done with us,” Arianna whispered. 

“That’s good,” Gerrit wheezed from the floor, “because I’m done with them. They only hit me twice and just about finished me off.”

“The Count will hear about this for certain,” Arianna said. “We’re bound to be in trouble tomorrow.”

“Hell with him,” Gerrit said as he sat up. “We’re not captives, like this Harp was. We’re not children to be spanked. If he doesn’t like that we looked about, he’s free to kick us out.”

Crickbourn muttered “We should stop and do as the Count said. This exploring has only done us ill, as he’d hinted it would.” 

“Yeah,” Gerrit said, healing his wounds with his holy power. “Let’s turn in. Jade, uh… guard that closet door. If anything starts coming through, meow loudly.”

Arianna positioned herself by the closet. “I’ll watch it. I don’t sleep anyway.” She sat down and watched the closet door as the others slept. 

Gerrit tossed and turned all night. He was having the most awful nightmares.






_*Coming up*_
*EPILOGUE: DISPLEASED *​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 15, 2007)

The game was super fun tonight... I'm incredibly weary and tired right now, but this was the kind of session you live for, where great things happen just in the nick of time. 

Oh man am I groggy.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 15, 2007)

_*Epilogue*_
*DISPLEASED *​
Sometime after dawn, Strahd stood in the study. He was staying well clear of the hated sunlight that streamed in through the window. He was studying a painting that hung on the wall. The portrait was of a woman- young, beautiful, wearing an evening gown with her hair tied back in an elegant fashion. Her eyes were dark, heavy-lidded… haunted. Strahd thought he saw something there and leaned in to look more deeply. 

“Do not look on her.” Strahd started at the sudden voice and looked around. A short, shadowy figure stood in the doorway. It stepped forward to reveal the dwarf, Crickbourn. “You haven’t the right.”

“I meant nothing,” Strahd said. “Only a curiosity in art.”

“You failed me last night. You should never have mentioned her,” the dwarf said, moving closer. 

Strahd shook his head. “No, I… I was in character! It was in keeping with…”

Crickbourn kept walking forward. “You told them your beloved would be grateful of your coming. What, now, will they think as they reach Barovia and find only people that hate and fear you? They’re sure to find a girl whose father has died recently, and to whom your attentions have been devoted. She will claim to despise Strahd, as the rest… but you told them that she would be happy to see you. Does this not strike you as a contradiction?”

“Yes, I see your point. I…”

“I have no use for a Strahd that cannot keep his tale straight. You had one job, and it was simple: provide the details that I wanted them to know. You improvised and now this little added piece of information might cause them to wonder.”

Strahd backed up slowly, spreading his hands as he tried to reason. He stopped at the edge of the window’s sunbeam. “I have erred. I apologize. I only meant that as we know, Ireena will…”

Crickbourn’s eyes flew wide in fury and the whites filled with blood. He lunged forward. “_Do not speak her name! Not in this room!_” His form melted and elongated, and his hand shot out and grabbed Strahd by the throat, holding him up. Strahd was bodily smashed out of the window and held aloft over the heights of the cliffs. The sun opened small ember-lit sores on Strahd’s face and he grabbed meagerly at the iron arm that held him. Smoke began to rise from his fine clothes.

He tried to choke out a plea for clemency, but the sun’s rays pierced him to his heart and the form of the vampire was turned to ash. The cloud of white flakes swirled lazily in the air, and Strahd Von Zarovich lowered his arm and let them drift over his face. He wore the clothes that the polite elderly imposter at dinner had worn, but his face was harder, younger, pale and dead. His black hair was slicked back and his eyelids, cheeks and temples were a bruised purplish color. His eyes were shut as he felt the sunlight kiss his ash-dusted face. 

“…For that is not her name at all.” It was spoken softly, almost a whisper. 

The eyes opened, and they were without pupils or irises, entirely red, like large drops of blood. Strahd backed from the window, disappearing into the shadows of the room. The red eyes were all that could be seen there and they glowed fiercely in the darkness.






_*Next session*_
*BAROVIA *​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 15, 2007)

_*Session 3 - Chapter 1*_
*BAROVIA *
_Some text taken or paraphrased from EXPEDITION TO CASTLE RAVENLOFT_​
Gerrit was walking up and down the corridors of the  castle, following a voice. The voice was whispering his name insistently, but every time he turned another corner there was no one to be seen- only the whisper of his name coming from the next corner. The voice had kept calling him down stairways and down ladders, down, down, further down. No matter how far he descended there was always another staircase or trap door, and there was always the voice whispering to him from beneath.

_Gerrit_

He woke up suddenly. Was that the distant sound of glass breaking? He rubbed his head and sat up in the bed in Ravenloft’s guest room. He hadn’t slept well at all. He had kept half-waking, thinking he heard horrible things in the darkness… and that nightmare. It hadn’t been especially   frightening, but the sense of dread was still soaked into the pores of his mind. He eagerly tried to forget it. 

“Morning,” he said groggily.

Arianna came out of her meditation on the chair facing the fireplace. “Good morning. Sleep well?”

“Well enough.”

“Liar,” the elf said with a smile as she stood up and stretched. “You were tossing and turning all night."

Gerrit got out of bed and went about his prayers. The pall of the nightmare still hung on his thoughts- in his mind, his goddess was distant. Cold. She had no face. 

Arianna interrupted his morning prayer routine. “Gerrit. Gerrit!” 

“What?”

“Crickbourn’s gone.”

Gerrit got up and looked to the floor where the dwarf’s bedroll had been lain. His possessions were all gone, but there was a folded note in their place. Gerrit picked it up and read.
_
Friends-

Thank you for your hospitality. I’m afraid it’s now my time to go on my way… I have to join others in the battle against the undead around Barovia. I have a spell that will open the deadlock on the door for me, and I’m sorry if I woke you up as I cast it. I’ll leave the door unlocked. Perhaps I’ll see you around. 

Crickbourn​_​
“That’s bizarre, I didn’t even notice him leaving,” Arianna said, scratching her head. “I’m normally pretty alert in the midst of my meditations.”

“Quiet dwarf,” Gerrit yawned. “Let’s get moving.”

Downstairs, they found no breakfast, no torches lit, and no Count. Only another note, this one written in an elegant hand on a much older piece of yellowed parchment. 

_
Arianna

In these times it can be hard to know the right thing to do. I trust that your dedication to your family will guide your hand. The carriage is waiting outside. It will take you to the gates of Barovia.

I recommend that you act surreptitiously. By this I mean that it would not be wise to announce that you are a Von Zarovich or that we are aligned in a cause. Rather, act as an outsider with good intent. Counter the filthy lies of the witches where you can, fight the undead, and befriend the good people of Barovia. Their hearts will open to you, I know. Don’t forget to work on locating the despicable “Tome of Strahd” and erasing its lies from the world. 

My apologies for not attending you this morning, but I have work to do elsewhere… as do you, I think. Good luck today.

Your great-uncle, 
Count Strahd Von  Zarovich​_​
“Ahh,” Gerrit sighed. “No breakfast. Looks like trail rations in the carriage. Well, let’s go.”





​In the carriage, Gerrit gnawed unhappily on one of Froffin’s pressed-oat bars. This one was supposedly blueberry flavored. “These things really are unpleasant,” he said through a mouthful of brick-tasting thickness.

The carriage began going through its odd motions… tipping backwards, looping oddly, almost seeming to go backwards at one point.
Gerrit finished his oat bar and grimaced. He crumpled the paper wrapping and dropped it into his haversack. He looked up at Arianna and found her staring off into space, deep in thought. “Something wrong?”

She blinked and smiled, then looked away. “No. I’m just not sure this is what I want. This Strahd gentleman, he seems nice enough but I can’t say I trust him. I get a weird feeling from him, like he’s not who he says he is.”

“What would he be playing at, though?” Gerrit asked. “Why would he be looking to use you? You don’t have much money or political power or anything. Also, if he wants to seduce you, he came at you with the wrong angle for that from the start.” He shuddered and Arianna laughed appreciatively.  “I know what you mean, though. This whole thing is weird, and that castle is just outright creepy. We’ve just got to keep our eyes and ears open.”

“Yeah, but beyond that, I’m not even certain I want to be heir to this castle or fortune. Money’s nice enough, but what’s that worth? Plus, this area…” She parted the burgundy curtains and looked out. She very quickly shut them. She’d seen something shapeless and unnatural in the fog as it passed. “I wouldn’t want to live here,” she finished.

After a time, the carriage stopped and the door opened. They got out onto the road, almost exactly where the horses had picked them up the night before. The carriage moved off and they began walking.

Black pools of water stood like dark mirrors about the muddy roadway. A shroud of thick, cold mist spread over the ground. Giant tree trunks stood guard on both sides of the road, their branches clawing at the mists. In every direction the fog grew thicker and the forest seemed more oppressive.

“I will say, though,” Arianna admitted, “that despite the oddness of the customs here, I am a bit  enchanted by the quaint old-world architecture and superstitions. The whole region has a… certain flavor that Ortil and the mainland don’t. Does that make sense?”

They arrived at a waypoint. Gray in the fog, high stone pillars loomed up from the impenetrable woods on both sides of the road. Huge iron gates hung from the stonework,  dew clinging to their rusting bars. Standing before the pillars were two stone statues of armed guardians with wicked polearms. Their carved heads lay among the weeds at their feet, neatly broken from the stone shoulders.  As they walked towards the gate, it opened with the high, keening sound of iron on iron. They walked through the gate and it closed behind them with a scrape-clang.

Gerrit said “That’s not enchanting, that’s just unnerving.”  They walked on. Jade stalked at Arianna’s side, keeping her eyes to the mist, not trusting.

Tall shapes loomed from the dense fog, and the muddy ground underfoot gave way to slick, wet cobblestones. A dilapidated wooden sign read “Welcome to the Village of Barovia.” As they grew closer, the shapes resolved into tenements whose windows were boarded, broken, and lightless. Nothing moved nearby, though the fog limited visibility. Faint sounds, as of something groaning, echoed hollowly from somewhere deeper in the settlement.

“Oh, I don’t like that,” Arianna said. “Zombie?”

“Sounds like it. We’d best be ready.”

They walked forward slowly. The streets were choked with mist, limiting vision to only a few dozen feet. The buildings here at the edge of town looked abandoned, burned out, or barricaded. Garbage littered the ground, and a carrion stench assaulted their noses. Ahead, an overturned haycart blocked the street. 

Gerrit held up his hand, motioning for them to stop. They peered into the mist ahead. Were those shapes, bobbing slowly? The sound of clumsy shuffling could be distantly heard. Arianna clutched at his arm suddenly and gestured down a thin alleyway to their right that ended in a wall. At that wall, a man was facing away from them, swaying on his feet. 

“Should we talk to him?” Arianna asked.

“I’d rather find out of he’s alive, first,” Gerrit said. 

The man raised his arm. There was a bite on  his wrist that had turned black, and yellowish, jaundiced veins ran from it. The wound leaked clear stuff. He slowly slapped the wall as if looking for a way through. The shapes ahead of them, beyond the haycart, were groaning and walking with stiff limbs. The heads jerked with each step and their was no fluidity to their movement.

“Right,” Gerrit whispered. “I’m going to cast a spell on us… I think it would be best, for now, if we weren’t seen. We need to learn more before we just start attacking these things. Do some investigating first.” He began to cast the spell, speaking the words of prayer.

The man at the end of the alley slowly turned around. His eyes were glazed and dead, and his lower jaw had been ripped off. His tongue looped and curled stupidly beneath the roof of his mouth and his tunic was stained with old blood and pus. He looked toward where the noise had come from, and saw nothing. He turned back to the wall and kept trying to find a way into it, where the soft pink food was hiding. 

Invisible to undead, Gerrit, Arianna and Jade slipped up the street.






_*Coming up*_
*PAINT THE TOWN DEAD *​




.


----------



## Numion (Jul 15, 2007)

Good stuff!

The links to your pdf's at lulu.com were great, it's been a while since I read those storyhours back here. Now I'll have something to read, thanks!


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 16, 2007)

_*Session 3 - Chapter 2*_
*DEAD CITY*​
The two adventurers and the black leopard carefully wove their way up the street, taking the time to avoid touching zombies as they passed. “Remember,” Gerrit said. “If we attack, the spell that hides us is canceled.” Arianna nodded.

The scenery was horrific. Groaning zombies melted into and out of view on a desolate street. Doors or windows that weren’t barricaded were smashed in, and the grisly details seen within suggested tales of terror,  hopeless fighting and screaming death. Looking in on the gore was weighing on the minds of the halfling and the elf, bowing them from the strain, so after a time they did their best not to look.

The everpresent mists cleared slightly, revealing a human body lying face down in the street amid the garbage. One of the buildings facing the street had its door smashed in. It looked like this poor fellow had been dragged from him home and partially devoured. His face had been gnawed off and the skull gleamed white where it peeked out from the black-red mess of his uneaten musculature.

Gerrit made a motion that he would go and scout ahead… there was a fork in the road coming, and he wanted to pick the least populated direction to move in. He walked off, leaving the elf and her panther to stand near the eaten man. 

The corpse’s shoulder twitched. 

In a flash, Arianna had her bow drawn and an arrow nocked. She and Jade stepped back from the corpse and watched it. Its chest began to jerk. Its neck wriggled, slightly. 

Arianna watched its head for any movement, fully expecting the corpse to rise as a zombie. That’s why she was so surprised when its ribcage burst open with a moist cracking sound. Coagulated blood misted up around the wound as an immense, fat, pulsating worm rose up from the chest cavity like a cobra. It was a maggot, clearly, but it was maybe a foot in diameter. Its black mandibles clicked and it seemed to be looking to Jade. It chittered and hissed. 

Arianna’s lip curled up out of disgust. _At least it’s living or it couldn’t see us_, she thought. _Not undead…which means it’s okay to put it out of my misery_. She aimed her bow at it.

Gerrit, maybe twenty feet away, had gauged that he wanted to take the right path. A zombie emerged from a door and the halfling had to jump back to avoid being brushed by it as it passed. Pressed against a wall as he was, he saw Arianna with her bow drawn against the maggot. He extended an arm and said “Arianna, no!!” 

It was too late… She’d released her grip on the string and it thrummed. The arrow shot into the maggot with a wet _spluck_ sound. 

The zombies all around turned to them and started opening their jaws, walking forward.

“I thought you said don’t attack any undead and we’ll be safe,” Arianna cried.

“No, I said _don’t attack!_ Anything! At all!”

“Arrgh… well, I don’t know these things!” The elf pulled two arrows and plugged them into the zombie behind Gerrit, sinking them to the fletching. It kept coming and made a grab at him. The exposed finger-bones of the zombie scraped small cuts in Gerrit’s skin and immediately he felt something flush into his bloodstream. He kicked the zombie in the leg and spun away.

The corpse on the ground writhed again as another maggot burst from the abdominal area, trailing intestines down its length. The maggot that had been shot was still very much alive, and together, they lunged for Jade. They bit at her and a quick paralysis overtook the large cat’s nervous system. Meowing slightly, she fell over on her side with a thud. The maggots clicked their mandibles together, anticipating their meal. Viscous drool oozed from their maws. 

Arianna reacted by feathering the maggots with arrows at a blinding speed. Try as she could to pin them down, their shapeless jelly-bodies didn’t die and the maggots lurched for her cat. 

Zombies were emerging from buildings and coming from the mists. They tried to overwhelm Gerrit but the halfling moved quickly, ducking and dodging among them. 

The maggots sank their jaws into Jade and began gorging. Arianna panicked… try as she might, she couldn’t seem to kill the things. It was clear that a few more moments and the cat would be dead. 

“Hold on!” Gerrit said. He began preparing a spell that would heal the cat, and he moved towards them. The spell glowed in his hand, ready to be cast. “I’m coming! I won’t let them… agh!!” A zombie had come from behind and sank its teeth into the firm meat of Gerrit’s shoulder. The halfling grunted from the pain and his arm whipped up to punch the zombie with a snap-backhand. “Get… _off_!” He discharged the healing spell as his fist-connected, and the zombie’s head rocked back from the blow. Holy energy coursed within its head, making war with the unholy forces that made the dead walk. The zombie fell down dead.

Arianna planted two more arrows into one of the maggots, then two more, then two more. The pudding-skin of the thing burst and foul-smelling white jelly spread from it. It was down, but its brother survived. 

Gerrit called upon the power of Vennia to turn the undead. His holy symbol flared to brilliant greenish-white life and the majority of the zombies around them shielded their eyes, lurching away. 

Arianna planted both hands on her dying panther’s body, releasing healing energies into it. At the same time, her foot shot out and ground the remaining maggot into paste. It popped as the other had and died in a splash of pearlescent, clotted yellow-white. 

Gerrit was fighting zombies in hand-to-hand combat. It wasn’t working tremendously well, and Arianna’s own attacks weren’t having much success either. The halfling yelled an explanation as he ducked a clumsy swipe. “The zombies don’t respond well to arrows or blunt damage… which, I’m afraid, is all we have. Slashing weapons work best!” 

Arianna thought on that for a second, then went to the side of the road and pulled a plank off of one of the barricaded windows. With her druidic power she shaped the wood, running a hand up and down it, forming a handle, forming a blade.

Jade got shakily to her feet, hissing at the maggot-corpses. She ran and leaped, tackling a zombie that had been approaching Gerrit. Her jaws bit and her claws raked, tearing off grayish bits of meat with each attack. The zombie pushed at her fruitlessly, and then got a grip on her neck, then leaned forward to bite.

A shadow fell over the zombie, and it looked up to see Arianna holding aloft her rudimentary wooden sword. “Hands off my kitty,” she growled as she swung. The zombie was killed. 

The zombies were retreating or dead, but more were approaching through the mists, as Gerrit could hear. “Come on,” he called. Together they ducked into the building with the smashed-in door, and ran up the stairs. Once there, they gathered beds, bureaus, anything they could find and pushed them down the stairs to form a barricade at the staircase’s bottom. They hid in one of the rooms, healing, as the undead milled about downstairs.





_*Coming up*_
*HORROR  IN TOWN SQUARE*​




.


----------



## Mycanid (Jul 16, 2007)

Ohhhhh boy oh boy oh boy oh BOY!

ANOTHER Dr. Midnight storytime thread!   And this time a DnD one! Excellent!   

[Patiently waiting for the next installment]


----------



## Squash Cop (Jul 16, 2007)

This last session was the best one yet, I really felt the desperation of a zombie infestation.

Richards; I've been gaming for 20 years and I do know the Ravenloft story pretty well. It's been fun trying to play dumb.

Arianna's player has only been gaming on and off for the last six or seven years.


----------



## Richards (Jul 17, 2007)

Wow -- all kinds of maggoty goodness!

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 17, 2007)

_*Session 3 - Chapter 3*_
*MEAT IN THE GRAVE*​

In the second story of the abandoned house, Gerrit was healed to full strength and Arianna refined her wooden sword. Jade licked her fur clean. 

“Those aren’t normal zombies,” Gerrit said, shuddering. “Those things were tough.” He could feel the queasiness in him; whatever had made the things undead had begun to molder and poison him inside. His insides trembled and he broke out in a cold sweat. His skin was yellowish. He got up and moved to the window, looking over the town. 

Down on the street, zombies walked aimlessly, looking for food. The roofs were all of similar height, as almost every building in town was two stories tall. Over the roofs, dimly in the distance, a shoddy church steeple could be seen. 

The rooftops were lined with crows. The birds watched the streets eagerly, looking for carrion. They numbered in the hundreds, and that was just the number of them that Gerrit could see from his window. 

Down the stairs, the zombies were banging feebly at the barricade and moaning. They weren’t making progress, but the sound was too unsettling to allow the adventurers to relax. 

Gerrit kept sitting then standing again, pacing, leaning on something and repositioning. The situation had him unnerved. Arianna herself seemed only somewhat less disturbed by the zombie infestation… her eyes kept darting to the door with every _thunk_ from below, but her face appeared calm.

“I can’t stay here,” Gerrit said. “I’m going to get out, move over the buildings and get a lay of the land. See if I can’t find any survivors or trouble spots.”

“Good idea,” Arianna said, relieved to have some conversation drowning out the sounds from the first floor. “I’ll go too. We can cover more ground if we split up. I can turn to a bird and fly… how will you move?”

“I can cast _air walk_. It’s effectively flying. What about Jade?”

Arianna looked to the cat, who looked back. After the maggot attack, the normally fierce panther seemed kittenlike in her eyes… she might not be able to fend for herself should she be caught with Gerrit and Arianna gone. After a moment’s consideration, Arianna said “I think she’ll be alright. The barricade should hold. It’ll only take us ten minutes to do a sweep of the city anyway, I imagine.”

“You’re probably right. Okay, you take the south of the main road and I’ll take the north. Move out and cling to the border of town, then loop back in and fill the remaining area. Meet back here in ten.” Gerrit perched on the windowsill and leaped up to the roof of the next building over. He grabbed the lip of the building’s roof and vaulted up to a kneeling position, then cast a spell on one of the roof’s tiles. The tile lit up bright white. It would be a beacon to them in a sea of foggy, similar roofs… to help them to find Jade again. He then spoke holy words to Vennia and felt her fill him with the ability to walk on air. He took a step off the roof, then another, and he was strolling out over the infested streets of Barovia toward the church steeple in the distance.

Arianna petted her animal companion soothingly, then straightened and faced the window. Her face went blank with concentration, then grew a quick fur of feathers. Her body contorted and shrank and she spread her wings and flew to the south as a crow. 

To Gerrit’s left, a mass of the black birds rose up and flew off, startled. The halfling changed course and walked in that direction to see what might have caused the disturbance. As he crested the roofs’ edges, he saw down into the town square. 

Rough barricades blocked most of the access to the square; however, the eastern barricade had been breached, and zombies were swarming through the opening. A woman in half-plate near the center of the town square valiantly fought the creatures, but she was heavily outnumbered and the zombies were closing in quickly. 

Gerrit thought quickly and saw a sign hanging over one of the buildings in the square. It read _Bildrath’s Mercantile_. He ran downwards to a window on the second story and climbed in. 

“Gahh!” A fat man who’d been watching the battle from the window almost fell over backing away as Gerrit stepped into the building. “Parriwimple, they’re flyin’ now!”

Gerrit held his hands out, palms up, in a gesture of desperate sincerity. “Please, I need lamp oil and lots of it. Right now.”

The fat man sneered as he saw that the halfling wasn’t a flying zombie… he was a customer. “We’re closed, get out.”

“That woman below, I can help her! Just give me some lamp oil!”

The man rubbed his lower lip and thought. “Fifty gold. Each.”

Gerrit wasn’t phased. “Done.” He grabbed a sack of coins and dumped it out onto the floor. He was handed two bottles of lamp oil and he was out of the window in a flash, leaving the fat man inside to gather his gold and continue to watch the show.

Gerrit walked over the breached barricade, stuffing the bottles with ripped pieces of the coin sack. He lit them on fire and hurled them below to smash onto the barricade and the zombies rushing over it. With a thirty-foot high fireball, the barricade was ablaze. Fiery zombies thrashed about and died twitching like insects. The zombies that hadn’t yet reached the barricade hissed and retreated… leaving a problem area within the town square that he and the armored woman might just be able to work with. 

He could walk down and carry her off to safety, but the town square looked to be the only area of town where people still hadn’t hammered the doors and windows shut. The zombies would break in and slaughter anyone remaining. It would have to be a fight. 

Arianna, flying as a crow some distance off, noticed the rush of sound and the bloom of orange light to the north and came winging over as fast as she could muster. 

Gerrit was running down to the ground to join the armored woman. She looked up to him and caught his eyes. “Are you a warrior? Can you help-“ She didn’t have time to finish the thought. A dirt-caked skeleton that both she and Gerrit had mistaken for a zombie came from behind, raising its arms high, and brought them down on her shoulders. In a great blast of dirt and dust, the woman was gone, leaving only a lump of earth where she had stood on cobblestones only a moment before. 

Gerrit gasped and noticed the dirt moving slightly. The woman was still alive, but buried in a shallow grave by the creature. Gerrit would have to move quickly. As he reached ground level, several rapid-fire thunking sounds came from behind him. He looked behind to see the zombies peppered with well-placed arrows, then looked up and nodded.

Arianna, standing on the roof’s edge, nodded back with a smile and kept covering him from above. 

Gerrit called upon the power of Vennia once more to drive the undead from him. Several of them croaked and covered their faces, fleeing from him as best they could. 

The dirt pile trembled and a hand shot up from it. It grasped about for something, anything, as its owner suffocated beneath the earth. Gerrit grabbed the hand with his own and attempted to pull. The woman budged a bit but didn’t come free. 

Arianna’s arrows rained down on the dirt-thing that had entombed the woman. Arrows jutted from its entire right side like brush bristles. Without her cover fire on the other zombies, they were closing in on Gerrit, who was taking damage from all sides.

The halfling held his arms out to his sides and a concentric wave of low frequency vibrations rippled out from him and through the crowd of undead. Several toppled over and more yet died on their feet as their heads caved inward from the holy pressure.

With a crushing blow, Gerrit was knocked to the cobbles. The entomber had finally landed a hit, its hands beating all but the last life from the cleric monk. Gerrit looked up and raised a hand as if to ward off the coming strike. The entomber reared back and even as Arianna continued to fill it with arrows, it smashed him into the dirt. Gerrit felt the dirt surrounding him, packing him in tight. As he tried to draw a feeble choke of breath, dirt filled his nostrils. He couldn’t breathe, and what was left of his blood ran out into the dirt.

“No!” Arianna jumped off the roof, turning back to a crow in mid-fall, then flew the rest of the way to Gerrit’s grave. She changed back into herself and landed, digging into the dirt with her hands. She’d seen the damage her friend had taken, and she knew that he’d had the zombie infection put into him in the earlier battle. It might already be too late… what she dug up might only look like her friend, biting hungrily at her as she pulled him free.

She was so concerned that she failed to notice the entomber shamble forward. It raised its arms, ready to pound yet another warrior into the dust. 

The ground parted beside them both, and a filthy figure rose from the earth with dirt falling from her shoulders. It was the woman the zombies had been fighting… Gerrit had loosened the soil around her just enough. She raised her sword as the entomber lowered its arms to strike, and the arms were severed just before the elbows. 

The woman then raised her sword to the sky and it glowed, a great sphere of light blooming from her. The few remaining undead clawed at their eyes and ran away, even through the flames… and died blazing within a few more steps.

“Fear not,” the woman said. “Urso is kind.” She and Arianna pulled Gerrit from the earth. He wasn’t breathing. He shuddered slightly. “Heal him, if you have the means,” the woman said. “I must tend to his direr needs.” 

Arianna’s hands sent healing energies into him as the other woman cleansed him of all disease. The yellowish tinge went from his skin and he coughed forth a clod of earth. He continued to cough and wheeze for some moments as Arianna filled him with healing. 

Gerrit had come within a hair’s breadth of becoming undead. He would later tell that the most terrifying part was that even as his brain starved for air, he had begun to hunger for meat. 

The thought of meat had caused him to drool ravenously in his own grave.





_*Next session*_
*INCIDENT IN THE TAVERN*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 24, 2007)

Had a kinda half-session tonight because I was out all weekend and wanted to get some game in. We're still not up to "the reading" as promised. Cool stuff happened though, interesting character points and all that.


----------



## Felix (Jul 24, 2007)

Good to hear; keep it up, Doc!


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 27, 2007)

_*Session 4 - Chapter 1*_
*ASHLYN OF THE LIGHTBRINGERS*​
“Thank you for your assistance,” the woman said as she helped Gerrit to his feet. “Urso is good for bringing you to me when he did.”

Gerrit shivered and did his best to shake the feeling of coming very close to undeath. “I assure you, we’re the ones that…” his sentence was cut off as he coughed up some blood.

“…are thankful,” Arianna said with a smile as she patted Gerrit’s back. “I’m Arianna and this is Gerrit.”

“Ashlyn,” the woman said with an aire of pride. “I’m a member of a group called here to fight the zombie scourge.”

Gerrit looked around. “Where is your group?”

“I’m afraid we separated. Two have gone on to investigate a lead in the search for the source of the infestation and we’re waiting for one to catch up from where we left. What of your group?”

Arianna blinked. “Our group? Oh, it’s just us.”

“A two-man adventuring team? You must be impressive.” Ashlyn raised an eyebrow.

“When not getting slammed into the dirt, maybe,” Gerrit laughed uncomfortably. “We do have another member lagging behind. Jade needs to be picked up.”

“Ahh yes,” Arianna said. “She’ll be getting nervous about now.”

Ashlyn held her hands up. “I beg you. Before you go, would you help me to hold the barricade while it’s repaired?” Behind her, the ruined barricade still burned, a small pile of blackened wooden bits. It’d not hold zombies back for long, that much was clear. 

“Of course,” Arianna said. She extended a hand and water showered from her fingertips, extinguishing the dying fire in a matter of moments.

Ashlyn looked mournfully to the wood and said “It’s a shame about that barricade… not that your help wasn’t welcome, but we’ve used almost anything  that isn’t nailed down. We’re running out of wood to build these barriers with.”

Gerrit thought for a moment. “Is there a blacksmith’s shop in town?”

Ashlyn replied “I believe so… but if there is, it’s not here in the barricaded area. We can’t get to it.”

“I can,” Gerrit said as he tapped his boots of striding and springing. “Have someone draw me a map.”




​Within moments Gerrit was gone, running across rooftops to the blacksmith’s shop. Ashlyn was inside the tavern and Arianna was standing sentry at the east entry to the town square. The wet pieces of charred wood smoldered at her feet.

She listened for the groans of zombies and heard them. They came from all directions but the east… zombies still marched uselessly against the north, west and southern barricades. She couldn’t hear zombies from the east and somehow that was making things worse. Her pores were tightened and her hair tingled at the back of her neck. Her eyes searched the fog on the eastern road, looking for jerking humanoid forms. 

The watching for them was worse than fighting them. Anxiety began to chafe her and she felt as though the moans she heard were getting louder, closer. She felt them closing in.

Something thumped next to Arianna, and she whirled, her bow already nocked and drawn.

Gerrit threw his hands up. “Whoa! Hey!  Easy. Just me.”

“Sorry,” Arianna said she put away the bow. Her face flushed with embarrassment. “I think this place is getting to me.”

“The town?”

“The whole region. I don’t like it.”

“Well, cheer up. Here’s a present.” Gerrit upended his magical haversack and tables, chairs, benches, stools, boards, cabinets, curios, and shelves clattered out onto the cobbles. He shook the sack again and hammers and nails fell out. “With these we can nail the barricades together, making them stronger.”

“That’s a fine idea,” Ashlyn said as she came out with the townsfolk. The people were hard-beaten by circumstance, but they still managed to smile and nod at the two heroes for their contributions. A few introduced themselves. One asked Gerrit of the blacksmith, and Gerrit had to relay that he hadn’t seen anyone, but the door wasn’t smashed in. He might be holing up elsewhere. The man didn’t seem comforted.

 Once the townspeople were off and running with the barricade repairs, Gerrit took to the roofs once more. He’d been budgeting his time and figured that he had ten minutes before his beacon of light spell wore off, giving him only that much time to find the building they’d left Jade in. 

He traveled back to the area and began looking around. No shingles glowed in the mist. Gerrit quashed the feeling of panic and kept looking, hoping he’d only missed it. Nothing… and then, there, behind that smokestack. He leaped off in that direction.

Now to see if Jade was all right. They’d left her upstairs in a house where zombies were clawing at a barricade they’d left at the bottom of the stairs. They’d been gone longer than they’d hoped, leaving more chance for the zombies to burst through the blockage. 

The sounds of the zombies from within the house seemed louder than before. Had they made it through? They were moaning and gnashing and stumbling around… but was the sound coming from the first or second floors? 

The halfling took a breath and bent over the edge of the roof, looking into the window. Something came out of the darkness towards him… and licked his face. Jade was fine.

Gerrit  dropped into the window and held his haversack open for the cat. She crawled in, fitting easily into the extradimensional space inside. Gerrit left the flap open for her peace of mind and began loping back over the rooftops toward the center of town.




​Back at the Blood on the Vine Tavern, the reunited group strolled in. It was noon and the day had been hard so the elf, the halfling and the cat felt entitled to a drink.

Inside, the mood was still grim. The townsfolk had been under a zombie siege for days now and the cracks were showing in the patrons’ calm. A tall, bald barkeep polished and cleaned glasses over and over again, whether they needed it or not. He said nothing and stared straight ahead. A pair of gypsy men played a card game at a table and kept glancing around. Families were piled into the common room, taking up most of the floor space and huddling together for comfort. A man in soiled nobles’ clothing absently sipped wine from a goblet. His eyes were blank and his pinky finger was extended from the glass.

“I do that,” Arianna remarked as she passed. 

The man looked up. “Huh?”

“The finger. I do that too, when I hold a drink.”

The man looked at how he was holding the glass. “I guess I didn’t know I did it at all,” he said in a thick barovian accent. “I never thought about it.” He managed a smile at Arianna. “You did a good job repelling the zombies. I was watching. You’re quite skilled with a bow.”

“Thank you,” Arianna smiled. 

Gerrit rolled his eyes. His traveling companion could be quite a flirt when she wanted to, and this handsome nobleman fit the bill for her type. 

The man gestured to the empty bench at the table. “Would you two care to sit down?”

“Not at all,” Arianna said as she sat. Jade curled up on the floor by the bench.

“I’ll get drinks,” Gerrit said, walking off to the bar. He muttered “I’ll need ‘em,” under his breath.

“I am Ismark the Lesser. It’s good to meet you.”

“Arianna, pleased, I’m sure.” She shook his hand daintily.

“So what are you doing in Barovia?”

“We’re here for the same reason Ashlyn is, I suppose. We came to fight the zombies… only been here for a day or so. How about you? Do you live here?”

“I do,” the man said sourly, swirling his wine in his glass. “We normally have fewer undead, this time of year.”

“What can you tell me about Count Strahd?”

The man looked shocked to hear the name come up in polite conversation. “That fiend? That devil? I can tell you he’s a murderous monster. I can tell you he’s responsible for all this.” He waved a hand about himself with a disgusted expression on his face. “A few months ago he tried to pay us a visit. I don’t know why. My father bravely stood up to him, using the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. Then the attacks began. Only recently came the zombies.”

Gerrit arrived with more drinks and sat down. Arianna took a healthy swig of some local Barovian ale and grimaced. “That’s stronger than I’d expected.”

“Is it strong?” Gerrit took a gulp himself and his face contorted. “Horf… yes it is.”

Arianna downed another draught and asked “So your father stood up to Strahd?”

“Yes. He was the burgomaster of Barovia… he’s dead now. Strahd’s doing, I’m certain. I don’t know how. His body lies these ten days and more in the family mansion. My sister remains with him, barricaded there against the walking dead. I don’t even know if she’s alright.” 

“That’s terrible,” Arianna said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“It’s fine. There’s naught else to speak of, these dark days.” 

Gerrit said “Here’s to better days, then, eh?” They toasted and finished their glasses. 

Arianna’s head swam. The ale had been quick to affect her, muddling her thoughts pleasantly. She grinned. “It’s really not so bad here… undead aside, it’s rather quaint. It’s far gloomier up at Castle Ravenloft.”

Gerrit froze. As the conversation and ambient noise in the tavern slowly died away to silence, Arianna became aware that everyone was staring at her. She realized the mistake she’d made and looked at her empty ale glass. She muttered to herself. “Damn it.”




_*Coming up*_
*CAST OUT*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 28, 2007)

_*Session 4 - Chapter 2*_
*CAST OUT*​

“You’ve been to Ravenloft?” Ismark asked. Every eye was on Arianna. 

The elf squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. “Um. Yes, but… it was just the first place we visited on Farplane.”

“It was?”

“Actually, uh, no… we passed through a town after calling at port. Palervale.”

The villagers jostled at this. “So,” Ismark continued. “You arrived from the south and still went first to Castle Ravenloft, when traveling there would take you through or past Barovia.”

Arianna shook her head and rubbed her temples. This wasn’t going well. “No. I mean yes, but it wasn’t our fault. A carriage came to us on the road and picked us up last night. It took us to the Castle.”

Someone in the back of the tavern gasped. Ismark seemed aghast. “You rode in the black carriage. You had business with the devil.”

“No! Strahd just wanted to talk to us, that’s all.” 

Several of the villagers spat on the floor. Looking around, Ashlyn saw that the mood had quickly gone very dark. She leaned over the Gerrit. “Who is this Strahd? I’ve heard the villagers curse with the word- I thought it merely a local equivalent of the evil eye.”

Gerrit cleared his throat and spoke up. “What Arianna means to say is that we were taken to the castle beyond our control.”

“So Strahd wanted you there,” Ismark said with baleful eyes. “He has a purpose with you.”

“He sent us to fight the undead. That’s the truth. He sent us to fight the zombie scourge for his people.”

“His people?” Ismark and others stood up. “His people?? We, who have suffered under the thumb of that monster since time out of mind? His people?”

Gerrit held his hands up. “It’s not what you think.”

The bartender said “I think you’d best leave.” He looked at Ashlyn. “You too.”

The paladin blinked in surprise. “Me? I swear to you, I have no idea what’s going on! I don’t know this Strahd and I don’t know these two!”

“He seeks to subvert us with ill-meaning ‘heroes,’” Ismark told the crowd. “There is some darker purpose here.”

Ashlyn, Arianna, Gerrit and Jade walked out of the Blood on the Vine Tavern and were followed by a slowly stalking mob. Some had picked up pitchforks, others had torches. 

The undead moaned from all around, beyond the barricades, hidden by mists. Arianna felt the first stirrings of panic again.  “Where will we go?” she asked. 

“Anywhere,” Ismark said. “Run back to your master and tell him we’ll not be so easily ground under his heel.”

The paladin, the cleric, the leopard and the ranger climbed over the barricade that led to the northwest road. No zombies were milling on the other side. They looked back at the townspeople and saw no pity there, so they turned back and began walking.

“We must find shelter soon,” Gerrit said. “The day is young but we’ve already done more fighting than we’d expected, and with stronger zombies than I’ve ever known. We must rest and replenish our magic.” His eyes searched the fog ahead, leery of moving shapes.

Ashlyn nodded. “We have several hours until nightfall. We just have to find a suitable building and hole up in it for the night. In the morning we can move on.”

Arianna asked “Where?”

“Well, two members of my group went on to the church at the end of this very road. That was three days past and I haven’t heard from them. It may be a good place to start. Or we can escape Barovia and find Madam Eva.”

“Madam Eva?”

“Yes,” Arianna said as they walked. “She’s reportedly a seer of hidden truths. She lives in a gypsy encampment to the west. The villagers seemed to think she’d be able to give us answers.”

Something shifted ahead and the adventurers stopped. A shape, then another, emerged from the fog. The zombies began groaning with dry, hungry throats as they advanced.

Gerrit looked around and spotted a door. It was hammered shut and the building looked secure. “Hold them off,” he said. “I can get this door open and we can block ourselves in for the night.”

There were four of the zombies now. Arianna said “hurry, then.” She drew her longbow and  Ashlyn took out a crossbow, loading it with a glass-tipped bolt. Liquid sloshed inside the bolt’s bulb. 

“What’s that?” Arianna asked.

“Alchemical flare bolt.”

“What does it do?” 

Ashlyn fired at the closest zombie and the bulb shattered as it struck the chest. A reddish flame bloomed from the wound and the thing’s torso was on fire.

Arianna nodded as she began firing her arrows. “Nice. I might have to pick up some of those.”

Gerrit called upon Vennia to turn the undead from them. A pulse of white light shot from him and several of the zombies gurgled in fear and fled. Still more were melting from the fog, though… there were seven now.

Ashlyn dropped the crossbow and drew her longsword. She laid into the zombies and it became clear immediately just how much more effective a slashing weapon was against these creatures.

While the women fought, Gerrit ran to the door and slammed against it. The door was well secured. He spun and kicked it. Dust fell from the door’s jamb but the door itself barely budged. 

Arianna fired arrow after arrow, and Jade ran amongst the zombies, slashing them and biting. “Hurry Gerrit, there are more coming!”

A zombie lurched forward and sunk his teeth into Ashlyn’s arm. She cried out and smashed the thing in the face with her pommel. She backed away as the zombies closed in. 

Gerrit reared back and with a grunt planted his foot through the door’s crossbeams, smashing the door in. The group rushed through and then began pushing heavy pieces of furniture into the doorway, blocking the zombies’ entrance. The half-rotted arms reached through the barrier and clawed at the air. 

Arianna sat in a chair and breathed. Outside, there must have been about two dozen zombies by now, each of them slamming at the walls, gray shadows through the windowpanes. There were more by the minute. After a while, she began singing to herself just to drown out the sounds of the groaning dead.





_*Next session*_
*GOING TO THE CHAPEL*​




.


----------



## Mycanid (Jul 28, 2007)

Keep it up Dr. Midnight. Good read!


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 29, 2007)

Man. Tonight's session... I've been called a RBDM before, whatever the hell that means, and I think tonight I topped myself.
[sblock]We had a new player tonight who's never played D&D before. She's a childhood friend of mine. She spent a couple of hours going over her new character and reading up on magic items to buy, getting excited.[sblock]She died in the surprise round of the first combat. I let her character die and I let her sit there for the rest of the game watching the others play.[/sblock][/sblock]
I don't deserve happiness.


----------



## Richards (Jul 29, 2007)

In regards to your spoiler, 



Spoiler



is this childhood friend of yours still a friend after that kind of treatment?  



Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 29, 2007)

Looks that way. I promised her a better time next session and I can pretty much guarantee that. 

[sblock]She's already rolled for reincarnate. She got... a troglodyte.[/sblock]


----------



## Richards (Jul 30, 2007)

BA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jul 31, 2007)

_*Session 5 - Chapter 1*_
*REGROUPING*​
The adventurers carefully secured the upstairs by barricading the staircase, this time with much greater care. A couch was tied securely to both posts of the stair’s banisters and the door remained blocked. 

The second story was much like the first abandoned house they’d stayed in. They closed and shuttered the windows and tried to capture something of a cozy feel with their bedrolls laid head to foot in a triangle. 

Jade was happily petted by all while Arianna and Gerrit answered Ashlyn’s questions. They didn’t see any reason to keep Ashlyn out of the loop- they immediately liked and trusted her more than the odd count. Ashlyn, who’d been alone in a strange place for days, was more than eager to socialize and feel like a peer instead of a scrutinized outsider for once. 

They’d broken into the abandoned house just after noon, so there was a lot of time to fill before nightfall. The conversation went on and on.

Eventually, they fell asleep with a lantern burning for comfort. 




​_THACK!_

Arianna sat up from her meditations with a reflexive snap. She clutched the bedroll’s blanket up to her chin as something large flapped against the shut window. 

Gerrit said “What is that?” Its silhouette, as seen through the window’s shade, was like a giant bat with a misshapen body that seemed to have no arms, legs, tail or head.

Ashlyn shivered. “Those come around sometimes at night. I won’t tell you what they really look like. You’ll not sleep well.” She laughed, trying to lighten the mood. 

The thing fluttered at the window for a few moments and flew off. Arianna released a sigh as it did. They all laid back down and tried to relax. They were almost asleep again when glass shattered at the other end of the house. 

Immediately the three and Jade were on their feet, scrambling for their weapons. Jade snarled at the dark doorway. Gerrit picked up the lantern with one hand and walked forward, and Ashlyn followed with her sword.

They crept out of the room and onto the second story landing. The noises were coming from the north bedroom, with its door open just a crack. Something inside was moving. It shuffled about softly, crushing broken glass underfoot with polite crunches, and breathed through deep, rasping lungs. Gerrit peered through the crack and saw melted faces, all together in one tapestry of skin, leering in the moonlight. He signaled to the door and made a kicking motion. The others nodded.

Arianna, Gerrit and Ashlyn counted to three and burst into the room. Ashlyn stepped to the fore with a shout and her sword poised to strike. 

The creature turned, held its hands up and screamed. It was a half-orc. Its forehead was plastered with sweat and its arms shook with strain and fright. It reached back and pulled out a greataxe that was shaped like a meat cleaver, brandishing it against the heroes. It wore grisly hide armor made of sewn-together faces of  different kinds of monsters. 

“Get back!” It yelled.

Ashlyn squinted and lowered her sword. “Toufghar?”

The half-orc blinked in surprise. “Ashlyn?”

Arianna loosened the slack on her bowstring. The two arrows nocked there remained ready to fire at a moment’s notice. “So you two have met.”

“Urso be praised,” Ashlyn laughed as she sheathed her sword. “This is Toufghar! He’s one of my adventuring party. You’re back! Where _were_ you for three days?”

Toufghar, not yet over the shock of having things attack him from the darkness, continued to breathe heavily and look around the room with wild eyes. “I… I was looking for shelter from the vargouilles. I came in here and… hell, Ashlyn, I can’t believe it’s you.”

The paladin gestured to his great cleaver. “Put that silly looking thing away. Relax. This is Arianna and Gerrit.”

“And Jade,” Arianna added, tilting her head at the snarling black leopard. 

“Pleased to meet you,” Gerrit said, holding out a hand. 

Toufghar sheathed his cleaver and shook the halfling’s hand. “Toufghar, pleased to meetcha. Sorry about just crashing in here.”

Ashlyn asked again “Where were you? Where is Thendrick?”

“I don’t know. We got separated today, coming back. Got jumped by a group of zombies headed by three ghasts. He took off in one direction and I went in the other. I’ve been creeping around in the shadows like a thief all night, taking to the rooftops. Then I got a clutch of vargouilles after me, and I jumped in here. I was blocking up the window and in comes you guys.”

“Okay,” Ashlyn said, scrunching her eyebrows as she thought. “So… what happened when you went to the church?”

They walked Toufghar back to the room and gave him some fresh water from their skins. His nerves seemed shot and he talked at a good pace. “Um. We get there, right, and the priest guy is this crazy looking old man named Danovich. His robes are soiled and his eyes keep going all over the place. The church smelled awful. Anyway, he said that he was too busy preparing spells and prayers that would protect the village from the zombies and that we should go away. We said that we felt that the infection could be traced back to the church, and he got really angry. Said we couldn’t prove it. We left peacefully, but I think he was ready to fight. Guy was squirrelly. Cracked from the strain of dealing with the dead, I imagine.”

He took another swig and said “So we left. As we were coming back up the road, the undead hit us. When Thendrick ran off, it was in the church’s direction. I think he might be back there.”

Ashlyn nodded. “Okay. We’ll go get him first thing in the morning, as a group… but Toufghar, if this all happened today, what were you two doing this whole time? You’ve been gone for three days.”

Toufghar blinked again. “Three days? What? Ashlyn, we left this morning.” He thought for a moment. “Right? I think. Didn’t we?”

Ashlyn only stared back at him.

Toufghar leaned back in his chair and put a hand to his head. “Hell. What’s happened to me? Where have I been?”

Outside, bats hung from tree branches in the light of the moon. Their eyes glittered like drops of blood.





_*Coming up*_
*DANOVICH*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 3, 2007)

_*Session 5 - Chapter 2*_
*GOING TO THE CHAPEL *​
In the morning, the four adventurers and Jade collected their things and began discussing how they were going to move through the streets to the church.

“There’s maybe a hundred and fifty feet from here to the church, but it’s going to be a hard trip,” Gerrit said. “I don’t want to risk all of us moving over the rooftops, so I suggest that I cast that spell once more that makes us invisible to undead… leastwise to unintelligent undead. The more clever kinds may see us. This time? No one attacks anything. _Anything_.” Everyone nodded and Arianna turned a bit red.

With the spell cast, the group climbed over the barrier and out into the street. The sun was overcast through the mists and it was another pale, cheerless day. They began to walk through the streets, weaving past the zombies that lurched around them. 

They reached a crossroads. At the intersection, a dead horse lay rotting in the street. It was almost rotted away, but a group of zombies were kneeling around it and feeding on handfuls of sickening brownish-black horse innards. 

Arianna held her hand up and stopped the group. She stared at the zombies and made the motion to fall back. The group moved back up the street until the mists hid the intersection.

“What is it?” Ashlyn asked.

Arianna  said “I don’t think those were zombies.”

“I saw it too,” Toufghar added. “Teeth like wolves. Eyes were shining. So?”

Gerrit thought for a second. “Sounds like ghouls. Good eyes, ‘anna. These may have a chance of spotting us, and thus attacking.”

“So how do we move to the church? These houses are tightly-packed, there aren’t alleyways to creep through. We’d have to circle way back around to find a throughway.”

The group discussed the problem for a bit and in the end decided to move as planned, as quietly as possible, keeping a ready eye on the ghouls.

They walked up the street. They stepped heel-to-toe, quiet on the cobblestones. They kept to the far side of the road from the horse carcass and passed it. 

A ghoul looked up from its meal and stared straight at them. It didn’t move and it didn’t look away. 

“Faster. Faster now,” Gerrit said nervously. The group upped the pace somewhat. The ghoul stood from the carcass and began to stalk slowly after them. Its disease-slicked lips drew back from its canine teeth and a line of drool stretched lazily down from its jaw. 

The church was dead ahead, maybe fifty feet away. Gerrit broke into a sprint. “Run! We can make it!” They dashed madly for the church’s double doors. Behind them, the ghoul didn’t pursue. It had noticed that its companions weren’t coming as well, and as hungry as it was for fresh meat, it didn’t seem to think it alone could take down four well-armed adventurers and one enormous leopard. It hissed and trundled back to the horse. 

Arianna, Gerrit, Toufghar, Ashlyn and Jade reached the church. A gray, sagging edifice of stone and wood stood atop a slight rise, on the very roots of the great pillarstone of the omnipresent castle. Light flickered through holes burned through the roof shingles, and the sound of hoarse chanting was audible within. 

The adventurers burst into the church and leaned back against the doors as they shut, breathing heavily. Only now did they look around. The church interior was a shambles, with overturned and broken benches littering the dusty floor. A claw-scarred altar brooded at the far end of the church, directly north of a gaping hole in the rotten floorboards. A croaking voice coming from that same direction chanted the phrase of a nonsense prayer.

“Another lovely place,” Ashlyn muttered. Then, loudly, she called “Hello?”

A wild-haired man rose from behind the altar. His face was thin and pallid and his eyes bugged madly from his skull. He wore the stained robes of a priest of Bellethanne.

“Pardon our intrusion. We’ve come from-“

The priest trembled as he screamed _“You can’t take my son from me!!_” and cast a spell from a scroll he held in a knotted hand.

Ashlyn’s breath caught in her throat and her eyes rolled up into her head. She and Jade fell to the floor of the church with soft thumps. _“No!_” Arianna shouted. 

Toufghar was first to react through the shock, and he began striding towards the man, hands outstretched. “Easy now,” the half-orc said. “You can see that we come in peace. There’s no call for attacking us.”

Doors behind him opened and the cramped hallway the others stood in was now filling with zombies from adjacent rooms. Gerrit began magically repelling the undead and Ashlyn plugged four arrows into a zombie’s head.  

Toufghar, meanwhile, continued his steady walk toward the priest. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s talk.” The priest responded by gibbering something unintelligible and casting another spell at him. Toufghar felt his limbs lock up and his blood slow in his veins, then release. The spell hadn’t killed him… but it had been meant to.

The half-orc sneered and pulled his frost-rimed greataxe from his back. “You always say I should be more diplomatic, Thendrick,” he muttered to himself. “I gave it a shot.” He jumped up to the altar’s side and swept his cleaver through the priest’s midsection.  Frozen blood cracked against the church’s wall. Toufghar swung again and the priest fell back, running to the hole in the floor, clutching his intestines to his gut.  

“I’m coming, I’m coming, I won’t let them take you _I won’t_-“ and the man jumped down into the darkness. 

Arianna and Gerrit finished off the remaining zombies without too much of a problem. Arianna kept her bow trained on the hole in the floor as Gerrit knelt to study Jade and Ashlyn. “They’re dead,” he said softly. 

“Dead? No.” Arianna shook her head, unwilling to believe that her cat may have left her. 

“I’m afraid so. I can’t raise them. Can you do anything?” 

“I can reincarnate them, but not until tomorrow.” 

“Hell,” Gerrit murmured. “They might not even come back right.”

“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. Only other option would be taking them to the nearest holy man, and we can already see that that’s not going to work here in Barovia.”

“Good point. What do we do about the priest, do we go down after him?”

Arianna stepped up to the edge of the hole and looked down. Her keen elven vision pushed the shadows aside, somewhat, and she saw the bottom halves of the priest and… something else. The priest seemed to be whispering to the half-seen thing, which had arms too long for its body. It swayed on its feet and its skin was jaundiced and tight. Other things shambled about down there. The priest leaned forward and, it seemed, hugged the creature he stood before. The thing raised its clawed hands up and hugged him back, tearing slightly at the flesh on the holy man’s back. Arianna recoiled from the hole in loathing. “No, he’s got company down there. He’s in league with the dead. I don’t think we should go down.”

“We can’t not go down,” Toufghar said angrily as he returned from a cursory exploration of the church.  “Thendrick’s not up here. He might be down there, still alive.” 

“It might be suicide. We should wait until we have Ashlyn back.”

“He might not have that long.” Toufghar cursed and kneeled by a trapdoor. He opened it and a set of wooden stairs led down into the darkness. Whispers and shuffling ceased from below. 

Everything was silent in the cellar of the blasphemed church. Toufghar looked to the stairs, wondering if he should go down. Below, horrible things looked to the stairs, hoping he would.





_*Next session*_
*MIDNIGHT MASS *​




.


----------



## Richards (Aug 5, 2007)

Ah, so your childhood friend was playing Ashlyn...looks like she's in for some "interesting times" in the very near future.

I can't wait!

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 5, 2007)

Session 6 went off splendidly tonight with new player Mike and his house... which was just the best, most atmospheric room that I've ever thrown a die in. Mike's not too shabby either. He has a Sega Genesis connected to the TV, two very cool dogs, and a great disposition. Dream player, dream game room. Score! 

The last two sessions had little to write up. Big things happened this time and it may take four or five updates to get it all in. Oof.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 6, 2007)

_*Session 6 - Chapter 1*_
*REINCARNATION*​
The adventurers had lost a party member. They didn’t dare go below the trap door to face the priest, but nor did they dare leave. They could reincarnate Ashlyn in the morning, once Arianna memorized the spell. Of course, they’d only just woken up and come to the church… it was maybe 9 in the morning. 

Gerrit, Arianna and Toufghar would have almost twenty-four hours to pass while locked in a room.

They spent about three hours bringing each other up on the relevant events of their time in Barovia, making as long and detailed a story of it as they could. That got them to lunchtime. After a meal of trail rations, they began telling stories of their respective adventures outside of Barovia. That got dull around five o’clock, and Toufghar was pacing the room. 

He opened the hinged stained glass window and let a little air in. Zombies passed by outside, heedless of the window or the living watching them. Toufghar rested his elbows on the sill and said “They almost look like people, just walking around like that.”

“They _are_ people,” Gerrit said irritably.

The half-orc shrugged in reply and kept watching the world around them. “Sun’s setting. At least it’ll feel like night soon.” 

The group checked and re-checked that the door was well blocked against intruders. After the sun went down, they lay down and tried to go to sleep. After a time, they did. 





​Gerrit woke up, the side of his face lit by a pale greenish glow. The light was coming through the window, from outside. The halfling yawned and got up. He leaned out the window and looked. 

Green-white radiance was blossoming from the center of the meager graveyard behind the church. From this point of spectral light marched a ghostly procession. Wavering images of doughty women touting greatswords, woodwise men with slender bows, dwarves with glittering axes, and archaically dressed mages with beards and strange pointed hats – all these and more marched forth from the graveyard, their numbers growing by the second. 

They marched slowly with shoulders hunched up the west road, a pale green line of ghosts. They went over the Ivlis bridge and up into the hills that curled about towards Castle Ravenloft. When the last one disappeared around the rocks near Lysaga Hill, Gerrit turned from the window and went back to bed. There had been no need to wake the others- it was only a pretty midnight distraction. 

Something about the procession of spirits bothered him. His mind gave in to sleep again before he could figure out what it was. 




​“Okay,” Arianna said. “I haven’t ever actually cast this spell, so I’m not sure what the likely results are.”

“What do you mean?” Toufghar asked. “She’s going to come back to life, right? Isn’t that the point of the spell?”

They stood over Ashlyn’s body in the room. Morning light was streaming in through the window. The three of them were eager to have Ashlyn among the living again so that they could leave the room with confidence. 

Arianna covered Ashlyn’s body with a sheet they’d found on the high shelf. “Yes, but it’s complicated. She could come back… different.”

“Different how?”

“She may not come back as a human at all,” Gerrit said. “She may return to us as something else.” 

“Oh, like a dwarf or a half-elf?”

“Or a goblin.”

Toufghar looked horrified. “She might come back as a _monster_?”

Arianna shrugged. “Technically, yes, but she’d be the same inside. Same soul and mind, different body. Or she might come back in the same body. We won’t know until the spell’s cast.”

“Well, can you cast it right, so that she’s _not_ a monster?”

“It’s not that simple. Okay, stand back.” Arianna kneeled and said some words, then made some gestures over Ashlyn’s covered body. She concentrated like this for ten minutes or so, moving her hands in swirling patterns and speaking indecipherable words. With a final flourish, it was done. 

The sheet covering Ashlyn slackened and fell away where the head, hands, and feet were. Her plate armor alone seemed to be holding up the sheet now. 

“She’s gone,” Toufghar said in wonder. “Did you do it right? What happens now?”

“It’s not immediate. It may take a moment to work.” They kept staring at the draped armor. 

Something beneath the sheet moved, and then the head, hands and feet areas of the sheet were rising again, filling out in new forms. The head especially took on a bulbous, misshapen cast. 

Arianna pulled at her collar uncomfortably. It wasn’t looking like the pretty paladin woman they’d known with the braided pigtails was coming back. 

The draped form moved slightly and began to sit up. It pulled the sheet off its head and looked at them. It wore Ashlyn’s full plate armor, but the head was that of a scaled, brownish lizard-thing. The cruel green eyes blinked at them. 

“Hi!” 

Toufghar’s jaw dropped open. Gerrit reached up and politely shut it for him. Arianna forced a smile. “Welcome back, Ashlyn.” 

“Back? What happened?” The lizard’s tongue darted out of its mouth, testing the air. 

“You died yesterday in a battle with a mad priest of Bellethanne,” Gerrit said. “Arianna brought you back to life just now. How do you feel?”

Ashlyn shrugged. “Fine, I guess. Wow, I was really dead? Thanks for doing that, then. You  have my gratitude.” She stopped and looked at Toufghar. “Touf, what in the world are you staring at?”

Toufghar continued to stare with his thunderstruck expression. Arianna answered for him. “Uh. Well, it’s not every day that you wake up as a lizard, eh?”

“What? A… what?” Ashlyn raised her hand to look at it, and instead of her strong pink hand with closely trimmed nails she saw a scaly clawed mitt that was purplish-brown on the outside and pale white on the inside. 

Ashlyn screamed and almost immediately there was a flush through the room’s air- a noxious scent that wasn’t unlike a latrine pit full of burning hair. Arianna, Gerrit and Toufghar all wretched as Ashlyn wore out her throat shouting. 

When the ruckus had died down, a rheumy-eyed Gerrit was covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief and trying to fan the smell out of the window. Toufghar was still vomiting into a trash bin. 

Arianna was trying to comfort Ashlyn, who was crouched in a corner. “What in the world _am_ I?” Ashlyn sobbed. Her long forked tongue shot out of her mouth repeatedly as she spoke. 

“Well, I think… based on the lizard attributes and… um… the musk, I believe you came back as a troglodyte.”

“A what? This is awful.”

“It’s not so bad. You’ll secrete a scent when frightened or excited, but otherwise you’re not much different. It’s just your body. Your soul is unchanged.”

Ashlyn nodded and reached into her _bag of holding_. “I understand. Well, no point crying over it. There’s a job to do, and Urso is my judge.” She took out a hat and placed it on her head. The hat allowed her to magically change her appearance, and her lizard form melted away to reveal the human paladin they’d known. She stood proudly, affecting the noble poise of a holy woman. “If I’m destined to be a troglodyte, then I’m going to be the best damned troglodyte I can be.” Her small, pink human tongue darted out. “Let’s go.” 

The others exchanged a look as they followed.





_*Coming up*_
*INTO THE PIT*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 6, 2007)

_*Session 6 - Chapter 2*_
*INTO THE PIT*​
Ashlyn and Arianna searched the main level of the church properly. Arianna found a nook in the altar with a hidden journal, some religious trappings, and a piece of ancient parchment. She looked at this last item and skimmed the text. “It seems to be a necromantic procedure. It’s for raising a… a _‘blaspheme’_.”

“Huh,” Toufghar said. “Maybe we should have used that on Ashlyn.”

Arianna shook her head immediately. “That would be bad. This is black magic… the wicked stuff. It gives me a headache even reading it.”

Gerrit took the journal and began reading. “Re-ordered candles from Bildrath’s, washed robes in river, held mass, heard confessions… it’s an accounting of Danovich’s day to day life. Pretty standard fare.” He flipped ahead, looking for the breakpoint. “Here’s a longer passage… ‘Ireena Kolyana is not the natural daughter of Kolyan Indirovich. Ireena never knew, but old Kolyan found her one day at the edge of the Svalich Woods near the very foot of Ravenloft’s crag. She was but a girl then and had no memory of her past. Kolyan adopted her as though she were his own and loved her dearly.’”

The cleric went on, then stopped and flipped back. “Wait, wait… saw it… here. Listen to this. ‘There is a book, the _Tome of Strahd_, that might shed light on the steps necessary to destroy the monster of the castle.’”

Ashlyn said “Wait. Didn’t you say Strahd wants you to find this book? Why would he want it if it might help to kill him?”

“He doesn’t want it,” Arianna answered. “He wants us to destroy it. Gerrit,  I’m having some very severe second thoughts about my dear old uncle. Where does the journal say that we might find the Tome?”

Gerrit went on. “’It is well known that Strahd kept meticulous notes from ancient times on all he did or said. Perhaps some weakness of his could be found there. This tome was once located in Ravenloft’s library, but  now I’m not sure where it is. I asked Madam Eva about it, and she mumbled something indecipherable. Why do seers always speak in riddles?’ That’s where the entry ends.”

“This Madam Eva we keep hearing about seems to have all the answers around here,” Toufghar said. “We had three mentions of her come up before we even met you two.”

Arianna nodded. “If we’re going to find this book, maybe we should talk to her.”

Gerrit pointed to a page in the journal. “I’ve found it. There are no entries for four days, and then one that reads ‘I’ve lost Doru. Bellethanne has seen fit to take from me my only son. My son is dead. I found him laying on the altar. He’s dead.’” Gerrit rubbed the back of his neck. “Hard stuff to read… his penmanship gets more and more scratchlike as his mind unravels. ‘Found something. Could have a way. My son could return. Found a piece of paper that could let me have my son back. Doru could come back! I’ll bring him back. Bellethanne be damned, my son will walk again.”

Toufghar shivered. Gerrit added “That was thirteen days ago. The last entry is three days old. ‘Doru has returned and we’re happier than ever. I laugh more. Today two men came and asked questions about the zombies. I don’t care about zombies. I sent them away. Then one returned. I was struck by how much he looks like my boy. Doru doesn’t look like he used to, but this new fellow resembles him. I could have two! I’ll make another and have two sons. Then I’ll laugh even more than I do now. I tried some of what my son’s friends are having. Doesn’t taste bad. Tastes like pork, and pork tastes like dinner. Fill my plate and laugh and laugh together.’” Gerrit closed the journal. His face was very pale. 

“That man was Thendrick,” Toufghar said. “He has Thendrick. Downstairs.”

Arianna said “The spell apparently won’t work on something that’s not a blood relation. He might still be alive.”

Ashlyn nodded. “So… we go down there and get him.”




​The group walked to the back room, the one with the trap door leading down. “We should formulate a strategy,” Ashlyn said. 

“Right,” Toufghar said as he opened the hatch and stepped down into it. “You guys do that, I’m gonna take a look.” 

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Touf…”

“Oh relax, I’m not going all the way down. I just want to look and see what they’re…” He stood on the steps and hunched low to look beneath the floor level. He saw all the walls of the cellar, a hard-packed dirt floor, and light coming from the hole in the church’s floor. There were no creatures to be seen. His eyes widened. “Oh n-“ 

Something bit through the back of his left ankle, severing his Achilles tendon with a moist _splurch_ noise. Instantly a magical infection paralyzed his limbs and he began to plummet forward into the cellar. Both Ashlyn and Gerrit lunged for him but failed to stop his descent.

Things began to lurch from behind the staircase towards the helpless half-orc. Arianna, at the back of the room, broke into a run for the main church area. Gerrit tumbled down the stairway with two cartwheels, landing perfectly and kicking at a skeleton that had begun to chew upon Toufghar. 

Ashlyn lumbered down and swung her longsword into a zombie. The cut that was opened along its chest glowed bright white for a moment and the thing hissed in pain.  

The mad priest Danovich emerged from his hiding place and began casting spells. “I told you you’d never take my son, _never take my son!_”

Arianna landed in a kneel on the dirt floor, firing two arrows past her friends and into the darkness behind the staircase. Something there giggled with black sharklike teeth and eyes that shimmered like a cat’s in the darkness. It walked out and Arianna recoiled at the sight of it.  

It resembled a corpse that had been surgically modified by a lunatic. Skeletally thin, its arms were too long while its head was wide and wedge-shaped, with a mouth split so that it was able to open wider than a normal person’s would. Its teeth glittered like shards of black, steaming ice. Two arrows jutted from its chest. 

“You must be Doru,” Arianna murmured as she put more arrows into the priest’s undead son. “Pleased to meet you.”

Whatever in Doru’s bite had paralyzed Toufghar wore off and the half-orc stood up with a  broad slashing motion. He’d been entirely conscious of being eaten alive by skeletons as he lay helpless on the ground, and the sensation had driven him mad. His eyes bugged, his veins bulged, and his clothes tore from the strain of his muscles. A bloody froth had begun to seep from the corners of his mouth. He smashed at the skeleton with his cleaver.

Gerrit was dealing with two zombies and a skeleton all at once and taking a good number of hits. He called upon the power of Vennia and drove two of the undead away from him with holy power. 

Doru was rushing at Arianna. It ran with a loping stride that didn’t keep to a straight line- it zigzagged across the earthen floor and giggled with a boy’s voice. It reached her and sank its teeth into her shoulder. The elf screamed even as her body went limp. 

Ashlyn leapt forward and laid her sword across the thing’s back, opening a long, dry wound that was filled with dead maggots. White light from her sword shone from the gash. Doru turned on her and lunged for her and bit at her arm, almost tearing it entirely off of her. Ashlyn’s muscles went dead and saw Doru move for her throat.

Arianna’s body unfroze and she called out “No! Here!” Doru turned to her as she stepped back, casting a spell. A blade of fire grew from her hands and she swung it into the blaspheme. 

Toufghar was bleeding from almost a dozen different wounds and running on rage. He cackled as he cut and hacked at the dead. 

As Ashlyn had been bitten and paralyzed, she had become frightened. The foul waft of troglodyte musk filled the already dank cellar. Gerrit and Arianna gagged, Toufghar didn’t seem to notice, and Danovich vomited.

The priest was focusing on Gerrit, who was defending himself against the remaining zombie. The priest cast a spell and moved towards the halfling with a finger, about to deliver death by touch alone. Gerrit saw it coming and lashed out with a punch in an attempt to distract the madman and ruin the spell. The fist and the finger passed each other on the way to their targets, and the priest’s nose was smashed flat. In his pain he lost the spell and the black energies fizzled as the finger touched Gerrit’s shoulder. 

Through his bleary eyes, Danovich saw Ashlyn cut a wound open in Doru. “No, not my son! _Don’t you hurt my boy!_” He ran forward, forgetting magical crafts or tactics entirely. He just wanted to attack the witch that was hurting his son. Ashlyn saw him coming, whirled around with her sword and plunged it through the priest’s gut, right up to the hilt. Danovich gasped and slid off the sword to the  ground, muttering his nonsense as his broken mind died.   

Gerrit limped towards the blaspheme and attempted to land a _cure_ spell upon it. He overextended his reach and stumbled forward, and Doru bit into the halfling with its knifelike black teeth. Gerrit fell to the ground and his eyes rolled slowly up into his head. They were yellow underneath. 

Toufghar, gibbering and howling in fury, cleaved a chunk of meat off of Doru. Arianna landed a blow with her flaming blade and Ashlyn landed another with her longsword of undeadbane. The blaspheme wounded and paralyzed them with every attack, but it couldn’t keep up with the massive amounts of damage it was taking. With one more raking blow from Arianna, the top of its head came off and its body turned to dust. 

All over town, zombies stopped walking. Their white eyes fell back into their skulls and their bodies tumbled to the ground limply. Not a zombie was left standing… every one of them died its second death. The necromantic infection had been put to an end.

The three remaining adventurers barely noticed that just before Doru was destroyed, Gerrit had been slowly attempting to stand up.






_*Coming up*_
* THE AMAZING THENDRICK*​




.


----------



## Gold Roger (Aug 6, 2007)

I don't think the module makes such liberal use of it, so I take it you really like Libris Mortis?


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 6, 2007)

No, only kinda flipped through the art once in the store...


----------



## Richards (Aug 7, 2007)

Dr Midnight said:
			
		

> They could reincarnate Ashlyn in the morning, once Arianna memorized the spell.



"Memorized?"  You going old-school on us, Doc?  

Hey, I've been meaning to ask: what pantheon are you using?  I don't recognize any of them - are they a homebrew?  In any case, I'm loving the adventure so far.

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 7, 2007)

I don't know what the hell druids do. I hate druids.

It's all homey-brewey... This is the campaign world I was going to use a few years back, never got a chance.


----------



## Gold Roger (Aug 7, 2007)

Dr Midnight said:
			
		

> No, only kinda flipped through the art once in the store...




Doh!

It is one of the best 3.5 books out, imho. Might be worth a second look.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 10, 2007)

_*Session 6 - Chapter 3*_
*THE AMAZING THENDRICK*​
“I think Gerrit’s dead,” Toufghar wheezed as the rage left him. 

“Damn,” Ashlyn said. “Can’t we have four party members for more than a half hour?”

Arianna began gently loading the halfling’s body into his haversack. A muted call came from the wall behind the staircase. Toufghar recognized the voice immediately. “It’s Thendrick! Thendrick’s alive!”

Arianna walked to the wall and found the hidden door. Inside, she found a man in a dark room strapped down to a wooden table. All around the small room were foul greenish chemicals and body parts. “Who’re you?” the man asked feebly. “I dun know you.” He was dressed in fine black and gray robes with a burgundy vest as a colorful accent. He seemed to be in his early thirties with handsome and kind (though exhausted) features. His closely cut hair was snow white, as was his pointed goatee. 

Toufghar and Ashlyn appeared and helped Arianna with the straps. “Took you long enough,” the man said. 

“Thendrick, it _is_ you! Are you alright?” They stood him up and he leaned on them as they walked him to the door.

“Just need to walk it off. I feel better alread…” They reached the church’s main cellar area, with Ashlyn’s troglodyte musk still hanging heavy in the air. Thendrick was suddenly and violently sick.




​The fresh air did wonders for him and before long he was walking on his own as he sipped from a cure light wounds potion. They exchanged pieces of their stories as they walked. “It was awful, but thankfully I don’t remember much of it,” Thendrick said. “Toufghar and I were jumped by ghouls and were separated. I ran back for the church and hid inside. I told the priest I was hiding from ghouls, turned to look out the window and then everything went black. I woke up later strapped to that damned table. The priest came in and fed me some awful-tasting stuff and kept calling me ‘Doru’, said we’d be a family again. I think the gruel was drugged because my memory gets really hazy around there. I must’ve been trapped in there for… how many days has it been?”

“Five,” Toufghar offered cheerfully. 

“Huh. Feels like six. Anyway, he kept trying to cast some spell on me from this ancient yellowed parchment. It never worked and he’d get frustrated and march off. I came and went. Dreamed a lot.”

Ashlyn said “He was trying to turn you into whatever he’d turned his son into… a _blaspheme_. Very nasty undead, we can tell you.”

They walked through town towards the village square, past fallen zombie corpses. They were silent for a time. Sorrowful women wearing headscarves were examining the dead, looking for loved ones they could finally bury. 

Thendrick turned to Ashlyn. “So you’re a troglodyte now.”

“Yep.”

“How’s that working out for you?”




​Back in the center of town, a cautious group of villagers were eyeing the returning heroes. “How are we going to deal with this?” Arianna asked. “They were about to lynch us as we left last time.”

Thendrick said “We walk in and tell them we’ve defeated the evil of the church.”

Toufghar winced. “Maybe we shouldn’t put it that way.”

“Well,” one of the townspeople called out as the adventurers neared. “You leave, the zombies all fall over and you come back. Is this your doing?”

“Yes,” Ashlyn said with her head high. “We discovered that the source of the necromantic infection was cloistered in the basement of the church. We destroyed it and now the town of Barovia is free.”

The villagers looked to one another and no one could seem to find objection to allowing the adventurers in. They parted and Arianna, Ashlyn, Toufghar and Thendrick walked among them.

“You left with a little fellah,” an observant older man said. “You come back with a big fellah.”

Ashlyn nodded. “Our little friend died fighting the undead. We were hoping you could tell us where we could bring him back to life.”

The man pointed back, the way they came. “Danovich is the local holy man, lives up yonder.”

“Um. That won’t do. I’m afraid he… uh… perished in the fight.”

“Ahh. Now that I come to think on it, he never was good at bringing back the dead anyhow.” 

Toufghar looked very much like he was holding back a joke. Thendrick didn’t give him the opportunity. “Is there anyone else that might be able to help us? We have a fallen friend and we’d like to bring him back as soon as possible.”

“I’ve got what you need,” a voice called out over the crowd. All heads turned to see a fat man smiling from the entrance to Bildrath’s Mercantile. He beckoned to them and walked inside.

The group walked towards the shop. “I think Gerrit had a quick dealing with that man,” Arianna said. “Charged him fifty gold pieces for oil. A gouger and a profiteer.”

Ashlyn nodded. “We’ll have to be careful… don’t worry, Thendrick has a silver tongue when it comes to dealing with churls like this.”

Inside the shop, the fat man introduced himself. “I’m Bildrath. This here’s my shop. I got a roll of paper you might be interested in. It brings back the dead.”

Arianna asked “May I examine it?” She took the paper and looked it over. “It’s for real,” she said. “A scroll of _reincarnate_.”

Ashlyn looked to Bildrath. “How much?”

The shopkeep leaned back and smiled. “Times like this, stuff that brings back the dead goes for a good penny. I could get three thousand gold for it from the more wealthy townspeople. The burgomaster died not long back. His family’d pay prettily for this.”

“Three thousand?” Arianna’s mouth hung open. 

Thendrick stepped in. “Really, sir. This is for a hero of the town. This man died helping to destroy the evil that was keeping Barovia under siege.”

“And I’m sorry for his loss,” Bildrath said. 

“Well, is there perhaps some way we can make up the cost of this scroll to you?”

“Yes. Gold.” The shopkeep laughed to himself.

Thendrick thought for a moment and adjusted his strategy. Affecting a look of tired boredom, he glanced around the shop with a sniff. “This won’t do. I’m afraid we’re going to have to take our business to a competitor if you won’t budge on the price.”

“Be my guest,” Bildrath laughed. “Go, seek, find another shop in town that managed to have held off the zombies. Just remember that if at first you don’t succeed… please come again.” He ushered them out the door and closed it with a polite click.

“Well that didn’t work,” Toufghar muttered.

 “What are you doing?” Arianna asked. “We need Gerrit back! We have three thousand gold pieces, it’s going to be pricey but we can pay it.”

Thendrick shook his head. “It’s always best to give a hard negotiator some time to think that we’re not motivated to buy. He’s asking a ridiculous amount. Besides, we get Gerrit back in less than two days anyway. Three thousand gold to bring him back forty hours ahead of schedule really does seem like a bit much.” 

Toufghar sighed. “So what now? Do we go see this Madam Eva?”

Arianna thought for a moment. “The burgomaster’s daughter. Ismark’s sister. She’s been locked in the family mansion with her father’s body since the plague began.” 

“How do you know?” asked Ashlyn.

“It came up just before Ismark had us thrown out of town.”

Thendrick scratched his head. “So… why visit her? I mean, no disrespect intended and I’m sure she could use the company, but why her, now?”

“Her father was the last known person to stand up to Strahd… with something called the _Holy Symbol of Ravenkind_.”





_*Coming up*_
*BRING OUT YOUR DEAD*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 12, 2007)

I know I'm not done with Session 6 yet but Session 7 went off tonight. I've gotta say, I'm proud of how some things turned out. Some great mood was harvested during one scene, and I completely improvised a big chunk of the story that fed into the overall plot quite nicely. By the end everyone was a yawnin' dope, myself included, but the first three hours were pretty good. 

Remind me later to break down just how I had the atmosphere going for (that one scene). I've never had this kind of control over a room's atmosphere and I went all out with music, lighting, accents, props, dramatics, etc... it really paid off in the mood of the scene.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 12, 2007)

Note: Thendrick was improperly credited with line of the week for Session 6 ("maybe we shouldn't put it that way"). It was really Toufghar who busted out the funny. It's been corrected.

It's also come to our attention that for whatever reason, we were wrong- Reincarnation requires a body that's been dead for no less than a week, not 48 hours as we thought. We're not sure how that belief got started among us. That'll be edited out as well.

Hey, anyone reading? Responses are rather sparse. Sound off!


----------



## Gold Roger (Aug 12, 2007)

Reading and greatly enjoying myself. Two questions:

-How much do you alter the adventure. From your campaign it looks like great fun. I will start a new campaign this week. And Expedition to Castle Ravenloft seems perfect fit for the theme (being being Eberron with a gothic flavor). Am I justified in judging its quality by your storyhour?

-You started out with Gestalt characters, as far as I remember from CM, because you had only two players. You now seem to have five players. Are all characters gestalt? Or have the other two been converted to normal rules? What classes does everyone have?


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 12, 2007)

Ooh, questions!



			
				Gold Roger said:
			
		

> How much do you alter the adventure. From your campaign it looks like great fun. I will start a new campaign this week. And Expedition to Castle Ravenloft seems perfect fit for the theme (being being Eberron with a gothic flavor). Am I justified in judging its quality by your storyhour?



Thanks. I've got some problems with the module and I've altered it a bit. My biggest complaint is that (and I'm not spoiling much, but I'll block it anyway) 



Spoiler



Strahd's "secondary goals" are pretty weak. The module points out that Strahd is a genius with a motive and careful reasoning behind everything he does, but the goals given for use are simple and lack the scope and planning that a genius would involve, in my opinion. I changed things to allow for a Strahd with multiple shadowy motives and a use for the party- so that he wouldn't just stamp them out from the start, as a genius might. His using a party to destroy his rivals (as in the goal Brook No Rival) AND destroy the things that make him vulnerable make more sense to me. Mayyyybe there are further goals to his actions that we haven't seen yet, who knows.

I recommend going this route- changing or coming up with your own secondary motives.





			
				Gold Roger said:
			
		

> You started out with Gestalt characters, as far as I remember from CM, because you had only two players. You now seem to have five players. Are all characters gestalt? Or have the other two been converted to normal rules? What classes does everyone have?



Well, that's tricky- I'm not the best with game balance, but we've been doing pretty well so far with the new characters coming in at 8th level and the original gestalt characters holding at 7 for a while.


----------



## Gold Roger (Aug 13, 2007)

Dr Midnight said:
			
		

> Thanks. I've got some problems with the module and I've altered it a bit. My biggest complaint is that (and I'm not spoiling much, but I'll block it anyway)
> 
> 
> 
> ...




[sblock]That shouldn't be a problem for me. I'm aiming for a very pulpy and not very realistic villain. My Strahd will be more Dr Evil than an actual genius anyway.[/sblock]



			
				Dr Midnight said:
			
		

> Well, that's tricky- I'm not the best with game balance, but we've been doing pretty well so far with the new characters coming in at 8th level and the original gestalt characters holding at 7 for a while.




So it's a mixed party right now? Surely sounds like an interesting experiment.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 13, 2007)

_*Session 6 - Chapter 4*_
*IREENA*​
The group approached the burgomaster’s mansion at the south end of town. The house was aged and dilapidated and behind a rusting iron fence. The gates had been twisted open; one lay torn from its hinges, while the other swung crazily in the wind, screeching and clanging with mindless repetition. The house beyond was marked by claws, fires, and ominous stains. Every window was boarded, every door barricaded.

They walked to the main door and knocked politely. No one answered. “Looks like this house has been more harried than the others,” Toufghar observed. “It’s not just zombies been bangin’ on this door.” His fingers traced some deep clawmarks in the wood.

Out of the corner of her eyes Ashlyn caught movement. Someone had parted the curtain and peered through the window, between the boards. She knocked again. “Hello… are you Ireena? Can we speak with you for a moment?”

A muffled woman’s voice from inside said “Where are the walking dead?”

“They’re gone. The zombies are all gone.”

The door opened slightly. A nervous eye peered out and surveyed the area. “Who are you?”

“We are the Lightbringers,” Ashlyn said graciously. “We’ve destroyed the plague on Barovia, and have come to ask you about something your father had.”

“Father’s dead.” It wasn’t so much the passing of information as it was something the woman acknowledging to herself. “I’m Ireena. Come in.”

The well-furnished mansion showed considerable wear, though the holy symbols hung in every room of the house drew attention from the soiled divans and ratty carpets. A man’s body in burgomaster’s robes lay in state in the front room. The smell of decomposition was cloying. The woman had clearly attended to her father’s corpse with care, but it had been a fortnight since he’d passed and the body was quickly giving in to the more graceless aspects of death.

Almost as jarring was the appearance of the woman herself. She was young, no older than eighteen, but as haunted as any veteran the group had ever seen. Her eyes looked exhausted and wide, her hair was lank, and her cheeks were hollow. Through the strain of the past troubles, though, it could be seen that she had very fair features. An oil painting hung over the fireplace and it depicted her in a happier time with bright eyes and the hint of a smile.

Arianna cleared her throat and attempted to ignore the smell of the decaying burgomaster. “We’ve come because we heard your father was the last man to stand up to Strahd Von Zarovich. We want to know how he did it.”

Ireena’s eyes looked to the corpse. “The master of the castle punished my father for standing against his commands. My father held him off with the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, until he paid with his life. He was poisoned! It had to be Strahd. That devil. That black fiend.”

“So you don’t know how he was poisoned, or by whom?”

“No. I woke up and he was dead and there were no marks on him and then the zombies started and now the zombies are gone but he’s still d...” She covered her mouth, seemingly out of shame that she might run on like that forever.  

“Take it easy,” Ashlyn said soothingly. “It’s all over now and we’re going to help. Can you tell us where the Symbol of Ravenkind is now?”

Ireena shook her head. “I no longer have it. I couldn’t make it work and nor could my brother Ismark, though it was still precious to me. Some nights ago something evil slipped in and stole it in the dead of night.”

“Who might have taken it, do you know?”

“The thief could have been a servant of Strahd, but if so, I don’t know which one. It could have been something else entirely. Evil of every sort has begun to collect in the woods around Barovia. The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind could be anywhere… Strahd’s reach is long, and if he had it stolen, he likely wants it as far from the castle as possible. Maybe the wise woman knows.”

Thendrick said “You mean Madam Eva.”

Ireena nodded. “Yes, you have seen her?”

“No, but she’s apparently very popular in these parts.”

Ireena looked at them and seemed to come on an idea. “Are… are you going after Strahd? Up to the castle, I mean.”

The heroes traded doubtful looks. “At this point we don’t know what we’re going to be doing,” Ashlyn said diplomatically. “We’re just gathering information.” Ireena nodded again and looked as though she might say something further. She kept quiet. Ashlyn decided not to push the issue. “You’ve been most helpful, Ireena. Would you permit us to carry your father to the graveyard, that he might have a decent burial?” 

The girl’s eyes welled up with tears. “Yes. Yes, please. That would be very kind.”

Thendrick, Toufghar, Arianna and Ashlyn walked from the burgomaster’s house carrying him on a litter. Ireena walked behind. They passed villagers on the streets collecting their dead, and each of the townsfolk noted the procession, stood up straight and bowed their head out of respect for a good man who’d died too soon. 

They buried him in the family plot at the Church of Bellethanne, beside his wife. Ashlyn performed the service. The group left Ireena at the grave to mourn her father in peace.





_*Next Session*_
*SPOKESMAN*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 13, 2007)

Now that we've finally got five players, it's time for one of those "dramatis personae" sections. I went by ear on this one with what I've got- if any of you players out there want to correct / add anything, let me know.


_*Human Paladin 8*_
*ASHLYN*​Ashlyn appears to be a pretty woman with perfectly hammered full plate armor emblazoned with the crest of the god Urso. Her strong features and poise are betrayed somewhat by her penchant for wearing her hair in braided pigtails, but none can doubt her leadership ability and dedication. Being the most capable, she is the unofficial leader of the Lightbringers.

Ashlyn is, in fact, a troglodyte. This is due to a common reincarnation side effect. She wears a hat of disguise to assume her old appearance, so that you’d never know she was actually a lizard creature unless you’re in the room with her when she’s frightened or excited… and she expels a sickening musk against her will. It’s an embarrassing problem and she’s working with it.


_*Human Sorcerer 8*_
*THE AMAZING THENDRICK*​Thendrick is an at ease gentleman who usually appears to be on the verge of laughter. His practiced, yet infectious smile comes easily and often. He seems to be in his early thirties, yet his neatly combed hair is entirely white as snow. His delicate and attractive facial features are accentuated by the pointy goatee that he wears groomed tight and neat. Thendrick's clothes are all of black and gray, except for a variety of bright, solid-colored silk vests which he frequently wears, two of his favorites are the burgandy and the turquoise.  His lightweight, flowing black cloak sports an ornately embroidered hem of silver thread and is immaculate despite the dirt and dust all around.

Thendrick's father was a performing magician and entertainer. Though Thendrick himself developed genuine magical skill as he aged, he pays homage to his father (and lives out his schoolboy dream) as a stage magician in between adventures. 


_*Half-Orc Barbarian 8*_
*SLOTH TOUFGHAR*
Toufghar wears hide armor composed almost entirely of the grisly remains of foes he’s defeated. Most of it is made up of faces. He carries an enormous greataxe of frost that was forged (by his specifications) to resemble a giant meat cleaver. Despite his ghastly grin and zeal for the darker things adventuring has to offer, he’s not a bad fellow by any account. He’s just… gruesome.


_*Gestalt Halfling Monk / Cleric of Vennia 7*_
*GERRIT APPLECATCHER*
In the service of Vennia, Goddess of Growing, is a young monk named Gerrit. He was an orphan at the Monastic Garden Enclave and had to frequently deal with bullies. On one day he rebuffed his attackers, who were hurling apples at him, by catching and deflecting them. In this way did he both mark his path on the way to becoming an able fighter and earn his surname.

With his boots of striding and springing and his tumbling skill he makes a tremendously tough target to hit, as well as being able to get and travel almost anywhere. Gerrit can come up with clever uses for common items to overcome the odds. A fine example of this would be the time he defeated an entire pirate ship using two bottles of cod oil. No, really.


_*Gestalt Elf Druid / Ranger 7*_
*ARIANNA*​Arianna was another young orphan at the Monastic Garden Enclave. She didn’t take to the religion or eastern fighting styles, but she did learn to love nature and embraced the art of walking amidst trees in peace. This led to a vocation in exploring and defending wooded areas, in which she excelled. She befriended Gerrit Applecatcher at the Enclave and the two have been adventuring since going out on their own from the orphanage in Ortil. 

Recently she has been informed of her ancestry by a Count Strahd Von Zarovich of Barovia. 

Arianna is always accompanied by her obedient black panther Jade.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 13, 2007)

_*Session 7 - Chapter 1*_
*SPOKESMEN*​
In the morning, Gerrit was reincarnated. The sheet was placed over him and as it deflated, Arianna held her breath. The sheet rose back up in a familiar shape. When it was pulled back, it was the old Gerrit… a halfling. 

He blinked. “I’m… back?”

“You’re back. Good to see you.”

He sat up and rubbed his neck. “I feel like I haven’t slept in a week.”

“You were a tough case, my friend.” She folded the sheet and put it away, then helped him to his feet. “You actually became a zombie just before we destroyed Doru. Not an easy one to bring back.” 

“You did a great job.”

“Yeah, it’s a miracle you even came back male.” While Gerrit’s mind reeled from the implications, she smiled and finished putting away her magical trappings. 

Toufghar burst into the room. “Hey, look!”

Thendrick was following close behind, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry, he gets like this every time there’s an impressive new kill to strip.”

Arianna looked at the half-orc and was about to ask what he meant when she gasped in disgust. Toufghar was proudly showing off the clawed hands of Doru the blaspheme, sewn into his armor at the shoulders so that the fingertips hung down over his upper arms. He grinned. “Nice, huh? The face was cut in half so it wouldn’t really do. Besides, this looks so much more fearsome.”

Ashlyn was horrorstruck. “Touf, the claws are still caked with gore. Our dried blood.”

“I know! It’s so perfect. It’ll be a shame the first time it rains, because that’ll wash away quickly.”

“Well,” Gerrit said at last. “Glad I came back.”




​The group wanted to set out for the gypsy encampment along the edge of the Tser Pool to find Madam Eva, but Arianna had reconsidered Bildrath’s offer for the scroll of reincarnate. She missed Jade terribly. 

Arianna made the trip alone and found herself at Bildrath’s Mercantile once more. “Well hello!” he called as she walked in. “Done with shopping around for a better price, are you?”

“Um. Yes,” she said politely. “Do you still have it?”

“Of course. Now… let’s talk price.”

She hadn’t expected that. She paused for a moment and collected herself. “I believe you quoted the price yesterday as being three thousand gold pieces.”

Bildrath shook his head with a smile. His neck fat jiggled visibly. “No no no no. I said I could get that much from the wealthier families in the area. You’re wealthier still… an adventurer.”

“You’ve got a mistaken impression of how an adventurer lives, sir…”

“No, I really don’t. Every now and then some hero comes through town on the way to the castle to do what the hundred or so before him couldn’t. They’re all rich with no concept of savings. I’m sorry, but I can see that magical weapon slung over your back. You’re not poor. You can afford this.”

The smug smile he gave her made her want to take the weapon out and show him how it was properly used. “I’m afraid I’ve only got three thousand two hundred gold pieces on me at the moment.” 

“That’s fine, we’ll do that and trade. What about that panther I saw you with before? That’d fetch a fine price.”

Arianna bristled. “Surely there’s another way for us to work something out.”

“No, I’m-“ he stopped and thought for a second. “You know… I just had a thought. Bring your friend here, the white-haired fellow.”

Arianna stormed out, using the walk to steady her nerves and calm down. When she returned with a confused Thendrick, she was almost done cursing. 

Bildrath greeted Thendrick warmly. “Hello my friend. How are you today? Are you interested in helping Arianna here make a great deal?”

“Ahh… I think so.”

“She wants a scroll but can’t pay for it. I propose that I give it to her for two thousand five hundred gold pieces and you do a service for me.”

“Okay. What’s the service?”

Bildrath smiled his wormy smile. “You seem to be rather charismatic… you have a way with words. I notice the slight figure and robes, as well. You’re a wizard, yes?”

“Well, technically I’m a sorcerer, but…”

“Over the course of this zombie infestation, I did what I had to do. I charged money for supplies. Some would say this makes me a bad man. Some would say it makes me a tragedy profiteer. I’m not too popular in town right now and need to do some P.R., so here’s the deal: later today, you do a show out in the town square.”

Thendrick brightened immediately. “Oh I can certainly do that, I’m trained in stage magic you know. Why, my father made it his profession.”

“Great, great. Okay. You come out, do some flash and dazzle, say a few words about the shop and I’ll give her the scroll for a steal. Sound good?”

“Yes, that sounds fine.”

“Fantastic! Now we’re networking, this is beautiful. What’s your party name, I’ll work it in with the tagline ‘the newest group to go up against Strahd’ or something.”

Arianna immediately recalled what Strahd had told her about bringing the public faith around to his side. “Uh…” she began. 

“Splendid,” Thendrick replied. “I think we have a deal.”

“Great,” Bildrath said. “Work up a routine. Be back here at noon.”




​At noon, a low stage had been erected before Bildrath’s Mercantile. Children paid in pennies had been all over town for hours, crying out the news of a show at Bildrath’s. There weren’t many people in attendance, but that was mostly because the zombie plague had killed so many. The crowd in the town square actually represented a good portion of the survivors.

“Almost showtime,” Thendrick said. “Can you believe he gave me a script to read at the end? Wish me luck!” He began to walk off.

Arianna grabbed his sleeve. “Try to get him to leave out the part about Strahd.”

“Oh Arianna, he just meant that he’d introduce me as someone going up against Strahd. It doesn’t have to be true… ninety percent of performance is illusion. Besides, how would this get back to him? He’s just an old man, right?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“What are you saying?”

Arianna looked around and spoke low. “I’m saying I’m having serious doubts that he is what he says he is. It would be wisest to keep from broadcasting any intent one way or the other.”

Some light applause interrupted the elf and she and Thendrick looked to the stage. Bildrath was stepping to the front. “Friends and fellow Barovians,” Bildrath said in a somber voice. “Over the last week and more we have been under assault. Terrible undead have trod through our fair town and taken from us our brothers, sisters, fathers and sons. We have come through a tragedy only to see dark days as we bury our own dead through rheumy eyes. We must never forget what happened, and always honor the fallen.

“All the same, we must remember that our departed loved ones would not want us to live in blackest grief.” He turned his face to the sky and looked very sad. “We must pick up the pieces and begin to laugh again… to enjoy what we have left of the life we live. It is in this spirit now that I pledge to bring to you a moment’s respite… some entertainment.”

Bildrath grinned benevolently. “Barovia! From the Lightbringers, the newest and greatest party to go up against that monster in the castle, Strahd Von Zarovich, I give you: _The Amazing Thendrick!!_”

Thendrick bounded on stage and waved to the crowd. The applause was halfhearted but the showman in him knew to press on with confidence. “Greetings! Hey, who here would like to see a little tumbling? Maybe some magic? Well okay then! I’d like to present my esteemed assistant. All the way from Ortil on the mainland! Please say hello to… _Gerrit Applecatcher!_” The halfling cartwheeled up the stairs to the stage, bounding up into a double-flip and landing in a kneeling pose with his palms out to the crowd. The crowd’s cheering got a little louder. 

“Hey Gerrit,” Thendrick said. “I think they liked that. I think they’d like to see a little more, what do you think?” Gerrit held his hand to his ear and the audience clapped for more. Thendrick laughed. “Come on, I think you can do better than that. Let him hear you!” The crowd applauded loudly, some people shouting. 

Gerrit began flipping around the stage. Side-flips, full on backflips, daring leaps ending in somersaults, getting faster and faster. The applause built as he went. He wrapped everything up by bounding off of the building at the back of the stage and going into a high vertical jump. He flipped five times, landing neatly in a dismount position. The audience loved it. 

Thendrick said “Wonderful! Gerrit Applecatcher, everyone! And now, Gerrit, if you’ll bring my chest of secrets to the front, we can move on with the show.” Gerrit pushed a large footlocker to the fore of the stage, then stepped back. 

Thendrick began moving his hands in wide arcs. The chest opened slowly and the people ooh’d and ahh’d. A glowing symbol began rising from the chest. It was the holy symbol of Bellethanne. Since the terrible downfall of the church was discovered the day before, the people had been despairing. Seeing the symbol of Bellethanne lit up and levitating was a way to play to their hopes. It was a cheap way, Thendrick acknowledged to himself as he moved it to a pedestal to sit, but it worked. 

The next trick involved an archery target. Gerrit stood ten feet to its left, and Thendrick was loading his crossbow with a clip of bolts. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is an ordinary repeating crossbow. I can assure you, it is quite real… no trickery here. Watch, now, as I shoot a bullseye…” He aimed at the target. “By shooting at my assistant!” He quickly switched his aim to Gerrit and fired. The crowd gasped. Gerrit slapped at the bolt and it flew off, striking the target on its upper portions. The audience cheered as Thendrick emptied the clip at Gerrit, who struck every bolt from the air and into the target. 

Thendrick cast a spell in the air over himself and the halfling. “Hmm… no bullseye yet. Watch, now, as we do the same trick… twice as fast!” He pulled the trigger rapidly and Gerrit cracked at them with both hands. With the last bolt, Gerrit spun a full turn around and backhanded it right into the center of the bullseye. The crowd went wild. 

“Thank you! Thank you, everyone! And remember…” Thendrick pulled out his script. “…that whether it’s rope or steel, bowstrings or barrelstaves, you can find everything you’re shopping for at Bilbrath’s Mercantile! Yes, that’s Bilbrath’s Mercantile, on the corner of Diril and Main.  Our prices are simply… amazing.” He and Gerrit bowed and left the stage.

Bildrath let Arianna have the scroll for two thousand five hundred gold pieces despite Thendrick’s mispronunciation of his name on stage. Business was booming at Bildrath’s Mercantile and he was too busy ringing up orders to have a care for the sorcerer’s error. 

The group eagerly took the scroll to a secluded area and used it. Within moments, they were staring blank-faced at Jade, who was blinking back at them. “Well. Um,” Thendrick began, trying to put a positive spin on the entire embarrassing event and its result. “At least we entertained the people, huh?”

Arianna shook her head. “Shut up, Thendrick.”

Jade had returned as a giant crocodile.





_*Coming up*_
*THE READING*​



.


----------



## Richards (Aug 14, 2007)

Dr Midnight said:
			
		

> Jade had returned as a giant crocodile.



I'll say it again:  BA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 18, 2007)

_*Session 7 - Chapter 2*_
*THE READING*​
The Lightbringers walked west on the road out of Barovia. 

Jade, in her new form as a giant crocodile, was having trouble keeping up. She was twenty feet long from nose to tailtip and fearsomely large but her stubby little legs were far inferior to the lithe panther’s limbs she’d run with before.  She plodded along as quickly as she could manage and the group held back a bit for her sake. Arianna reached down and patted her scaly head. This would take some getting used to. 

Thendrick had joked “Maybe we should kill her and try again.” He laughed as Ashlyn punched him in the arm. “Kidding! I was just kidding. Ha ha… ow.”

The road crossed a small, well-kept bridge over the Ivlis River and then wound to the south, just beginning to skirt the edge of the Svalich Woods. As they walked Gerrit and Arianna looked past the coniferous trees into the darkness beyond, recalling the feeling of that first night on the road. It made their skins crawl just to be this close to the black forest again. Gerrit could almost hear the distant howling of those immense wolves.

The road curved back around to the north, then west again, then forked. Here, an old wooden gallows creaked in a chill wind blowing down from the high ground to the west. A frayed length of rope danced from its beam. The well-worn road split here, and a signpost opposite the gallows pointed off in two directions: “Tser Pool” to the north and “Castle Ravenloft” to the west. Across from the gallows, a low wall, crumbling in places, partially enclosed a small plot of graves- presumably housing those who died at the end of that rope.

Toufghar pointed north. “The Tser Pool is where the gypsy encampment is. Let’s go.”

Ashlyn stepped past the rock wall into the graveyard. “Hold on. I want to look at some of these.” The plot was horribly maintained- dead leaves and broken branches littered the ground between the ancient headstones. 

She leaned forward to try to read one of the names on a headstone. The letters were so weather-worn that the name and date were almost smudges in the surface of the stone. “The cemetery at the church of Bellethanne was at least well-kept. This one shows no respect for the dead. It’s a shame.” She sighed.

Shapes were moving on the ground. Wispy darkness, like shadow-smoke, was rising slowly and swirling from beneath the leaves over each grave.  Ashlyn backed away and the others nervously looked about. “There’s one over by the gallows, too,” Thendrick noted. The blackness was beginning to form into vaguely humanoid shapes. 

“This is never good,” Ashlyn said. “What do we do?”

Gerrit looked at the things that were forming in the mist. “Let’s do this the easy way: we run.”

They ran. 




​
The road to the Tser Pool encampment ran north along the Ivlis River. To the west and north, the mountains seemed to close in and the darkening early evening sky cast them in a gloomy light. The group was heading into a niche made by the river as it ran down the mountainside. Castle Ravenloft sat silhouetted against the clouds to the north.

The canopy of mist and branches overhead suddenly gave way to open sky- though the sky was dark with clouds. A circle of colorful wagons and a scattering of tents were ranged around a dancing bonfire, and a handful of men and women in colorful garb sat quietly near the wagons. Beyond the camp, a small lake reflected the angry sky overhead. 

Ashlyn stopped the group, not sure of what to make of the group of gypsies and how they might be greeted. The Lightbringers were certainly outnumbered… by three to one, she quickly judged.  

A man at the bonfire looked up and saw the group, then nodded. All heads turned to the adventuring party. One by one, they pointed to the rear of the camp, to a large burgundy tent that the cheer of the firelight didn’t touch. Ashlyn nodded back politely and led the uneasy group through the silent gypsies to the tent. “So they _have_ been expecting us.”

As Ashlyn reached the tent, a cracked old woman’s voice said “Come in, come in.”

They walked inside. The old woman before them hunched over a small, linen-draped table. Her black eyes gleamed as she shuffled a deck of weathered cards. Her hands were bony and spotted with age. When she spoke, her voice crackled like dry weeds. “Ahhh, the new heroes. I am Madam Eva.”

Ashlyn cleared her throat. “Well met. We are the Lightbringers. We’ve come to ask you about-“

“Strahd,” Eva smiled. 

Arianna said “Not exactly. We’re curious about him, but mostly we’ve come to ask about the locations of a few artifacts.”

Eva shook her head. “No. Strahd. It is the master of the castle that most weighs upon your minds… you especially, Arianna. Who is he, what are his intentions? Madam Eva can tell you. Do not worry that he might be listening. For the first time since your arrival, he is not.”

“What?” Gerrit stammered. “Watching? Has he been watching us all this time?”

“Of course. You are but fish in a bowl to the master.”

Arianna asked “How? How can he possibly be watching us?”

“Let us think. Did you, my dear elf, happen to give him anything?”

“No! He said he’d sign me into the will and give me his inheritance, but I never gave him any…”

Eva shook her head. “You gave him your blood. Three crimson drops. Surely you thought it odd at the time, yes?” Arianna’s eyes went wide and understanding crashed in, followed by queasy horror. 

The gypsy woman smiled. “He uses it to watch you, scrying whenever he wishes… though not now.”

Ashlyn said “Can you tell us about the Tome of Strahd?”

Madam Eva cackled and laid out a single card. It showed a man weeping at a grave. Below him, in large letters, was written

[SBLOCK]GUILT​[/SBLOCK]

“Cut the deck.” She handed the deck to Ashlyn, who cut it and handed it back. Eva laid out one card beneath the GUILT card and then another, overlapping it horizontally. She stared at the cards and was silent for thirty full seconds. Thendrick was just about to ask her if she felt all right when she spoke. “The tome you seek holds knowledge of the ancient and knowledge of the land. If you find it and delve into its secrets, you will discover the source of the lord’s strength. If you read it carefully, you may also discover how to rob him of that strength. But you knew that already.” Her eyes glittered in the lamplight. 

“You want to know where to find it. Heh heh… you will seek the tome where the moon is hidden but most powerfully felt. Fear the night, and the moon, and most of all its children.” She looked up and smiled with one crooked tooth.

“The moon’s children?” Toufghar asked. 

“Danovich was right,” Arianna said. “You do speak in riddles.”

Gerrit said “The moon could be hidden just about anywhere- underground, in a building… but I’m betting it’s in the forest, where the ‘moon’s children’ live.” He looked grimly to Arianna. “I think we’ve got to go among the wolves.”

Ashlyn shivered. “Tell us about the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind.” Eva chuckled and laid out another card. 

[SBLOCK]THE TALISMAN​[/SBLOCK]

 “Cut the deck.” Ashlyn did, and the old gypsy placed two more cards on the table. “Thissss…” She seemed to think for a time with her eyes closed. Finally she opened them. “This symbol is a powerful force for good and protection against the forces of darkness. Seek it in the place of blasphemy, where humans plumb their darkest nature.”

“The holiness in this item waits for hands of holiness to touch it once more, but that is not enough to bring its power back to life. Oh no. You must bring the symbol to the place of its antithesis, beneath the master’s own roof, where hellish magic is made. This will not be easy. I do recommend beginning with the book.” She laughed aloud, rocking back in her chair. The sound was like rocks shifting together in a wicker basket.

Arianna said “Tell us about Strahd himself.”

“Ah. The one thing you truly are curious about. Why, Arianna, do you wait so long to ask? Such a shy girl.” 

[SBLOCK]THE DEVIL​[/SBLOCK]

She laid the card on the table and seemed to relish the frightened hush that came over the Lightbringers. “Cut the deck my dear.” She watched as Arianna wiped her brow and cut the deck, then handed it back with a slightly trembling hand. 

Madam Eva grinned at her and spoke. “He who dwells in Castle Ravenloft is a powerful man whose enemy is light and whose powers are beyond mortality. You will seek him in the castle, and though he might find you many times, you will find him only once… among his riches, hidden away from sight.”

“Out of darkness and chaos, the cards find their reason and foundation. They show the purpose of all things- the key to life and death and else beyond. Every piece moves with a purpose, and none but the master can know the objective of the game. No piece on the board, however, is as important as the queen… who is but one move away from her king.”

Arianna stood up. “I believe I’m going to step outside for a minute.”

“Are you all right?” Gerrit asked. “We can stop if you like.”

“That’s okay, you guys go on. I just want to get some air.” The Lightbringers watched as the elf walked from the tent. 

“She is troubled,” Madam Eva hissed with a smile. “She now knows that the lord of the castle has seen her doubting his intent, and has watched as she hunted for his motives. She fears him. Rightly. She will soon learn that when you speak of the devil… the devil appears.”

Outside, Arianna took a full breath of the night air and tried to rub some of the coldness from her arms. She stopped as she noticed that the jubilation of the gypsy people was gone and a hush now hung over the camp. Only the crackling of the bonfire remained. None of the people were out here. The campsite seemed deserted, save for one tall figure standing by the fire.

“Hello, Arianna. I think we should have a talk.” Strahd smiled at her and his eyes shone red with the reflection of the flames.





_*Coming up*_
* THE MOON’S CHILDREN*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Aug 21, 2007)

It feels like just a few people are reading. Lurkers, want to throw in here? I'm considering dropping the weekly write-up. The lack of responses is getting depressing, boo hoo.


----------



## Qwernt (Aug 21, 2007)

I have been reading your material for some time now and would really appreciate if you could PELASE CONTINUE WRITING!  If this requires me to reply daily with Great Write-up, I will.

I enjoyed The Silver Quill, Spellforge Keep, The Starwars adventure (sorry can't remember the name), the Super's (can' remember the name).  They were all well written, and exciting.  Right now, beyond Lazy Bones, this is the only story I am reading.  Again, it is well written and has an interesting story line (even if you lots one of your more enjoyable to read about characters by a certain players - Jee Was).

Please keep writing!


----------



## Peterson (Aug 22, 2007)

Doc 

Great storyhour, as always.  I've been considering picking up Expedition to Castle Ravenloft myself for a while now, so I've been following this storyhour with extreme interest.

Please, keep writing this.  

Peterson


----------



## Sabriel (Aug 23, 2007)

I'm a chronic lurker, but I've been greatly enjoying your story. I definitely was not expecting Jade to come back as a giant cro codile. Given Ashlynn came back as a troglodyte, it almost makes me wonder if there's a higher than normal risk of reptilian reincarnation in ravenloft...


----------



## richshea52 (Aug 28, 2007)

*Lurker*

I normally am a lurker, but your request for a reply and the fact that you are local has forced my hand.  This story is fantastic, and you bring it to life.  There are few that I follow that keep my interest this is definitely one of them.  

Since the wife and I had kids, I have not played for almost 5 years and these story hours keep me going.  

Keep up the good work, I have not read the Quill or Spellforge Keep books but I will now.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Sep 3, 2007)

_*Session 7 - Chapter 3*_
*FIRESIDE CHAT*​

Strahd held his hands over the bonfire. “How bravely, and how bright, the fire burns against the darkness… not knowing how easily it can be extinguished.” He looked like a kindly grandfather warming himself at a fire, until he turned his head to her and the eyes flashed with the threat of his words. 

“Uncle Strahd,” Arianna said, immediately unnerved. “How nice to see you. Did you travel by coach?”

“I am wondering, beloved niece, how your new friends saw fit to put on a performance condemning me in the center of Barovia.”

“That was a miscommunication… uh… You saw that?”

“Word spreads quickly. Tell me, how is it a miscommunication that the ‘Lightbringers’ are ‘the newest group to go up against’ Count Strahd Von Zarovich?”

“That… he wasn’t supposed to say that. Bildrath, he…”

Strahd shook his head. “Bildrath is not the problem. The problem is that you yourself doubt what I tell you, and that you’re taking the words of the idiot peasants to heart. You believe what they say about me and aren’t acting against their slander.”

“We’ve been doing our part. Seeds need fertile soil to take root, and it will take time to turn them back to you.”

“Lies. You may have a silver tongue, but know this: I have a forked one. ” He waved a hand at her disgustedly. “I have given you enough time on that count. You will focus on finding the Tome, and when you find it, you will destroy it.”

“Just a moment,” Arianna said. “I think I’ve had just about enough of your orders. I’m not here to serve you and to be honest I’m not even sure I want this inheritance. I think-“

“_Silence!!_” Strahd hissed and leveled his clawed hand at her. His eyes closed like a fist around her mind and she couldn’t move or look away. His words melted into her as he spoke. “_You will find the Tome, and you will destroy it as soon as possible. You will not read it, nor will you allow any of your companions to._” He lowered his hand. “You will not disobey my directions this time, I think. Should I hear of these ‘Lightbringers’ acting against my best interests again I shall have to take further measures.”

Strahd stepped back into the shadows and disappeared against the night. Arianna stared after him, still feeling him in her mind. Her eyes were open wide and aside from trembling she didn’t move at all.





​Gerrit, Thendrick, Toufghar, Ashlyn and Jade emerged from Madam Eva’s tent. They’d gleaned from her just about all they could and grew frustrated with her cryptic answers. They came upon Arianna outside the tent, staring off into the darkness beyond the fire. She’d have looked relaxed if her arms hadn’t been pinned to her sides. Tendons stood out in her neck and she was breathing quickly. 

Ashlyn stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “Arianna?”

The elf gasped and whirled. A thin sheen of sweat was on her brow. “Oh, it’s you. You… uh… you scared me.”

“Is everything all right? You seem tense."

“Fine! I’m fine. I just got spooked by the reading. Did she tell us anything else?”

Thendrick looked down at his notes. “Yes. She mentioned a few things. Here’s what we’ve gathered… for the Holy Symbol, we’re going to find a place ‘where humans plumb their darkest nature.’ I’m betting that means it’s in that church somewhere. Once we’ve got it, we’ll have to take it ‘to the place of its antithesis, where hellish magic is made.’ No idea where that could be. Luckily, we won’t have to worry about that for a bit- she did mention that we’d have better luck starting out for the Tome of Strahd. The Tome will give us a clue to his weakness, it looks like, which may explain why he wants it destroyed.”

Arianna tensed at this and said nothing.

Thendrick continued. “The Tome will lead us to three defiled places, where we must unearth three relics. Once we have them all, we must destroy what we have created. To find the Tome, we go where ‘the moon is hidden but most powerfully felt,’ and we’ve got to watch out for the moon’s children.”

“Whatever that means,” Toufghar sniffed. 

“Wolves,” Gerrit said distantly. “Those huge wolves that live in the forest.” 

“What, _that_ forest?” cried Thendrick. That’s the scariest looking patch of woods I’ve ever seen. There are huge wolves in there? I’m not going in that!”

“I have to,” Arianna said. She shook her head and spoke again. “We have to. We must find that book.” 

Thendrick sighed. “Great. Well, after that Eva mentioned that Strahd will find us many times and we will find him only once. This is our time to strike. We’ll find him ‘among his riches, hidden from might.’” 

“Sight,” Ashlyn corrected.

“Oh.” Thendrick looked at his notes. “That does make more sense. Anyway, uh… ‘every piece moves with a purpose, and none but the master can know the objective of the game. No piece on the board, however, is as important as the queen… who is but one move away from her king.’ We thought that might be Ireena, so we asked about her next. Her card was the empress. ‘She has loved him before and will again. The master covets her.’ Not sure what that’s about, and what part she has to play in all this, but she’ll be one to keep an eye on.” Thendrick folded his notes and placed them back in his pocket. 

Arianna said “So. We go to the forest?”

“Are you crazy?” Toufghar asked. “It’s nighttime. If there are werewolves out there to be dealt with, the dead of night’s not the time to do it. I say we spend the night here.” The others nodded. Arianna, who was unnaturally eager to get moving, resigned herself to the delay with a pout. 

“You guys watch my stuff,” Toufhgar said as he stripped off his armor. “I’m going swimming.” He ran to the Tser Pool and jumped in with a splash. 

A voice spoke behind Gerrit. “You go to fight the werewolves. Yes?” The halfling turned to find a Vistani man standing there wearing gypsy clothing. He had a curling mustache and a colorful scarf. His eyes crinkled with a kindly smile. 

“Yes,” Gerrit said. “How did you know that?”

The gypsy laughed. “I am Vistani. You needn’t have the second sight to see some truths. For instance, your friend just now broke the surface of the water, fragmenting the reflection of the moon. Thus, I know you’re going to fight the werewolves. Little signs like this exist all around us if we have the wit to see them.” He extended a hand. “My name is Miolho. I am very glad to meet you and your people.” 

“Gerrit Applecatcher,” Gerrit replied, happy to meet a friendly person in this land. “You have a lovely encampment here.”

The gypsies were beginning to filter back out of their tents and into the common area. Some kept a watchful eye to the sky and the darkness beyond the tents. They broke out a few bottles of some spicy tasting Vistani cherry ale and over the course of the next few hours, they toasted, danced, wined and cheered the adventurers. 

In the morning, Toufghar and Ashlyn found that they’d each been robbed over the course of the night. They’d each had so much fun, though, that they called it an even trade-off and waved to their new friends as they left for the Svalich Woods.







_*Coming up*_
*THE SVALICH WOODS*​




.


----------



## Despaxas (Sep 3, 2007)

Great writing, as always, Doc. People might not post, but I'm sure they read  Keep up the good work.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Sep 5, 2007)

_*Session 8 - Chapter 1*_
* THE MOON’S CHILDREN*​
They walked south, past the crossroads. They hurried as the shapes of black mist began to re-form from the graves there.

The road curved to the east and they walked until the road came close to the thick wall of trees that marked the start of the black forest. Beyond the first few coniferous trees the forest was steeped in mist and what little sunlight entered it filtered through in pale rays. The forest floor had scarce underbrush, as the canopy of evergreen needles and ash leaves didn’t allow much to grow down here in the dark. The woods looked as forbidding as any dungeon entrance.

Arianna and Gerrit were especially wary of the woods as they recalled their first night in Barovia, walking the road. The feeling of being surrounded by immense lupine shapes that glided through the mist like sharks came back to them now and they shivered at the thought. 

Luckily, they had some time to prepare. They continued walking on the road and entered Barovia.  Once there, they located the blacksmith’s shop that Gerrit had found on their second day in town. The door still hadn’t been opened- apparently the blacksmith had never returned. 

The group pulled off the planks that covered the door and forced it open. Once inside they gathered a pile of the silver they had on hand- silver trinkets, silver belt clasps, silver coins- inside a pot and lit the burner beneath. 

_You must use the color of the moon’s own light_, Miolho had said the night before after a few snifters of drink had been downed. _To kill the werewolf, one must use the metal that is as born of the moon as he is. Silver is only made under moonlit mountains, or so I have heard it said._

Once the silver was melted Arianna began dipping her arrowheads into the mixture and placing them to cool on a rack. Toufghar was studying his immense greataxe. “Does anyone actually know anything about smithing or metallurgy here? I mean, dipping arrowheads is great, but how are we going to apply this to our main weapons?”

“I don’t think anyone here knows,” Gerrit said. “We don’t even know if a simple silver-plating will work.”

“So why are we even wasting our time on something that could be a dead end?”

Gerrit didn’t look up from the set of thick silver rings he was attempting to solder together. “I’m guessing you haven’t been in a tree at night, surrounded by these things. They’re the size of ponies.” He held up his makeshift set of silver knuckles and turned them over as he examined his craftsmanship. “I’m not taking any chances.”




​The Lightbringers stepped through the trees from the plains and entered Svalich Woods. 

Here, the mists turned slowly in the shafts of light. The trees faded away in the fog to tall pale lines in the distant gray. The dead pine needles and black soil crunched softly as they walked to the south. 

None of them really knew where they were going. The Svalich Woods were vast, and Madam Eva had only told them to seek the Tome where the moon was hidden but most powerfully felt. The werewolves were all they really had to go on. Arianna kept a watchful eye out for tracks. 

They had been walking for twenty minutes when Gerrit cocked his head. “Listen… does anyone else hear that?” Everyone stopped and listened. The pale notes of a pan pipe were drifting from the forest ahead. 

“Stay here, I’ll scout it out,” Arianna said. She moved towards the music, passing silently and quickly through the trees as if she were walking on feathers. The trees thinned somewhat as she made her way. Dim gray light spilled through the canopy, and the ground grew choked with undergrowth. A wide swath of clearer ground formed something like a path or trail.

An elf was seated on a branch, some thirty feet above the ground, playing a slow and ethereal song on his pipe. He didn’t look at Arianna, but she knew he had seen her- she had made no effort to stay hidden. She decided to join his song as a means of offering peace and began singing softly along with the song, which was an elven lullaby she recalled from her childhood. 

When the song was through the elf lowered his pipe and spoke in soft elven. “What evil do you bring to these woods?” He never turned his head to look at her.

“We bring no evil. We come in search of the moon’s children.”

“You ought leave.”

 “Perhaps, but we have rather important business here.”

“You ought leave.” The elf went back to his pipe and played on. 

Arianna, having nothing more to say, turned to rejoin the group. When she reached them, she relayed the information and as there was nothing for it, the party all readied their weapons and walked forward. When they reached the clearing, the elf was gone. They were about to walk through when Toufghar stopped. “Noises. Movement.”

Arianna whipped out an arrow and nocked it. “Where?”

“Just beyond the mist. Saw a shape. I think we’re not alone here.”

“You’re not,” the  elf said as he stepped out from behind a tree to the rear of the group. They whirled to face him. He was unarmed and looking irritated. “You’re surrounded. I don’t believe you understood my meaning when I said ‘you ought leave.’”

Thendrick, who was closest to the elf, was known to Toufghar and Arianna as having something of a quick temper. He wouldn’t anger easily, but if he perceived a threat, he was more likely to attack than to back down… and he would attack swiftly, with a frightening glare in his eyes. This often belied the thin and affable sorcerer’s demeanor, but it was just as much a part of him as his aptitude for grooming and dressing in finery. He stepped closer to the elf and looked him in the face. “By what right do you have us surrounded? We’re as free to walk in these woods as you are.”

“You should turn around.”

“You should make us.”

The elf sneered. “Did you come from that village? Did they send you? They will die screaming if you don’t-“ 

Thendrick blasted him in the face with a powerful rash of purple light-bolts. The elf cried out and leaned on the tree. He looked off to his left and nodded, and something there broke from its position in the underbrush and ran south. At the same time, several large shapes began loping in from behind the clearing’s thick trees. These were wolves that stood five feet tall at the shoulder and slavered pinkish froth from their maws.

The elf stepped behind the tree he’d been near and sounds began to come from behind it. Wet sounds, popping sounds, like celery sticks being snapped inside a waterskin. The elf’s grunts of pain turned deeper and throatier. 

Arianna fired at the wolves as they ran in. Toufghar swung his axe up to meet the first one as it leaped and his silver-coated greataxe thunked into its ribcage. It yelped with pain and circled the group, favoring its side. “I think the silver-plating worked,” Toufghar said. 

Gerrit smashed a wolf in the face with his fist, which was holding four silver rings that had been melted together. The silver “brass” knuckles did their part and the halfling cartwheeled away from another wolf’s attack as the first reeled from the punch. 

Thendrick stepped cautiously towards the tree as the noises slowed and the elf stepped back from behind the tree. He was now nine feet tall and still standing on his hind legs, though his body was entirely covered with fur. His elongated torso rippled with muscles and shaggy fur. The head was a mockery of a real wolf’s head- a lengthy muzzle lined with too many teeth, furious eyes that were bright yellow, triangular ears that were long almost to the point of being lapin. It growled deep in its chest and swung at Thendrick, clawing deep tears in his expensive robes and flesh.

Thendrick stepped back quickly, trying to summon the energies for another spell. The werewolf stalked toward him. 

Ashlyn’s silver-coated sword cut through fur and bone. She had dropped a wolf already and was holding off the others with some effort. 

Arianna did her best to keep some distance so she could fire her silver-tipped arrows, two at a time, into the faces and torsos of the werewolves that tore at her companions. 

Gerrit mostly served as a bait and distraction, flipping about and lashing out with a well-timed blow here and there.

Toufghar was having a fine time wheeling his greataxe about and hacking off werewolf limbs until a set of jaws clamped around his upper arm and shook, tearing free a number of tendons and almost shearing off the skin there entirely. The half-orc roared in pain and clubbed the werewolf in the face with the butt of his axe, then finished him off with a furious horizontal slash.

Thendrick unleashed a palmful of bees that glowed like embers and shot into the face of the elf-wolf.  The monster howled in pain and died, its face immolated by Thendrick’s magical attack. 

The other werewolves were dealt with in short order and the party was left gasping for breath, surrounded by the bloodied corpses of several elves. With a quick round of healing spells and potions the party got moving again. It wasn’t even noon yet but they were hoping to be done and out of the woods before dark.






_*Coming up*_
*THE DEN*​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Sep 11, 2007)

_*Session 8 - Chapter 2*_
* THE DEN*​

Drizzle fell as they continued walking. The moisture collected on the branches and large cold droplets fell down the backs of their cloaks, making them even more miserable than they’d been, trudging through a werewolf-infested black forest as they were.

Arianna had picked out a definite path. She stayed twenty feet ahead of the group and watched the ground for signs of pawprints. “The trails are all converging,” she called back. “We’re getting closer to some kind of hub for them.”

“It’s been an hour and a half since we were attacked by that elf,” Ashlyn said to Gerrit. “But Arianna says we’re deep in their territory. What do you make of that?”

“It’s curious.  Maybe we’ve just gotten lucky.” 

“I don’t like it. It feels like a trap.”

Arianna held up a fist: _I see something, everyone halt_. She crouched and was still for almost three whole minutes, then motioned for the group to follow her. She drew her bow and stepped out into a clearing from which the trees seem to lean away. A rocky outcropping was at the far end of the clearing, and a cave opened there like a screaming mouth. The group stepped quietly across the clearing to the cave, watching for traps and watchful of any movement in the treeline.

The reached the cave’s opening. The ground here was hard-packed and heavily traveled by wolfs’ prints, Arianna  saw. The humid air coming from the cave smelled like damp animal fur. Only the sound of dripping water was heard from within. They entered. 

They hid in the darkness for a bit and waited to see if anything approached the cave from outside or came up from within. When nothing happened, Ashlyn used her hat of disguise to take the appearance of a bipedal werewolf. She stood twenty feet to the group’s front and led them slowly down, holding a torch up.

The tunnel was a well-worn one. It was about six feet wide and seven feet high and its girth was fairly consistent as they traveled steadily downward on its slick stone slope. Small rivulets of rainwater moved with them over the lichen-stained rock. 

A passageway opened on the left-hand side. They explored it briefly only to find that it branched out geometrically into smaller passages that not even Gerrit could pass through. “This area isn’t even used,” Arianna said. “It’s useless to them. Let’s keep moving downward.”

The air was growing more and more stale. It seemed there was no circulation in this cave, and what little air there was stank of fur and hot breath. It was cloying and almost suffocating, adding to the claustrophobic dread of the thin passageway as it moved deeper. 

“We must be at least a hundred and twenty feet below the ground at this point,” Toufghar whispered. “This is… I gotta get out of here.” He tugged at the neckline of his hide armor and his eyes bugged. 

“Easy,” Thendrick said. “We’ll kill something soon. That always makes you feel better.” The half-orc nodded and kept walking. 

The tunnel finally opened into a small cavern. Ashlyn stepped towards it carefully and looked inside. Here, the dank animal air was almost unbreathable. The cavern was perhaps forty feet long and twenty-five wide, and lit with dancing shadows from Ashlyn’s torch. The last ten feet of floor weren’t visible, as the floor dipped there into some kind of pit.

There were no werewolves.

A young woman was crouching on the ground, facing away from them, wearing the remains of tattered purple robes. Her ribs stood out from her skin in the torchlight and her lank hair hung like seaweed from her head. She was trembling. 

Ashlyn was at once relieved and troubled to have found no werewolves. She let the wolf illusion slip from her and replaced it with the one of her human self. “Ma’am? You’re safe now, we’re…” her speech caught in her throat as she saw that the woman wasn’t trembling after all- she was gnawing on something. The woman ripped something free with a squelching sound and tossed a legbone off into the darkness of the pit, where it landed with a clatter.

Ashlyn concentrated and then spoke over her shoulder to the group. “I detect evil.”

Thendrick shot the woman through with a ray of bright white light. She screamed and the sound echoed a hundredfold through the stone of the cavern. The sudden light and sound dazed everyone, and when their vision returned, the woman was lying, shuddering, on the stone. A blackened hole was burned entirely through her midsection. 

“You shot her in the back,” Gerrit said. “We weren’t even fighting.”

Thendrick shrugged. “Better her than us.” 

Ashlyn went to the woman and knelt by her. The woman turned her face upward and she was just a girl, maybe seventeen years old, beautiful and innocent. The eyes were crinkled in pain and despair. Her tormented splendor was so heartwrenching that Ashlyn’s eyes failed her even as they welled up in tears. She was blind. “Easy,” Ashlyn said. “Just relax.”

“So… you came to destroy us,” the girl choked. “Not thinking we were… clever enough to…”

There was a loud thud and the girl stopped talking altogether. Ashlyn heard the others gasp behind her. “What just happened?” Ashlyn asked with some alarm. “What just happened, someone answer me!”

Toufghar spoke from nearby with a proud smile in his voice. “Not good. Dangerous.”

He had casually walked up and crushed the girl’s head with a boulder. 




“You’re an ass, Toufghar.” Ashlyn sat nearby with Gerrit attending her blindness. She was still steaming over his killing the young woman, but in her time with the Lightbringers she’d seen many such instances. For Thendrick and Toufghar, shooting first and questioning the corpse was a common occurrence no matter how often she pleaded for reason. 

Arianna and Gerrit, however, were aghast at the blatant disregard for adventuring protocol. “That was horrible,” Arianna said in disbelief.

“She had it coming,” Toufghar said with a dismissive shrug. “She was going to get dead one way or the other.”

“At the _very_ least we could have listened to what she was saying,” Ashlyn grumbled. “She said something about how we didn’t think they were clever enough to… splat. Clever enough to what?”

“We’ll never know, so let’s not worry about it,” Thendrick said. He stepped to the edge of the pit and looked into it with the help of the torch. It was filled almost to the top with the mouldering bones of the eaten. Skulls, ribcages, legbones, spines, armbones and pelvises of dozens of different kinds of creatures lay in a flat heap. Rotting chunks of brown-black meat still clung to the sickly greenish bones in the nooks where werewolf teeth couldn’t reach. Scattered with the bones were scraps of cloth, bits of belts, a few rings and necklaces. It seemed the bodies weren’t used for anything other than food, and then the corpses were tossed into the pit along with all their belongings. Thendrick put a hand to his mouth, closed his eyes and leaned on a wall to help ease the rising nausea.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Arianna said. “This is clearly the werewolves’ den. Number one, no werewolves. Number two, no Tome. We’ve wasted our time here. There’s _no damned Tome!_”

Toufghar kept his eye up the tunnel and said “The night’s not over. We can be sure that the werewolves are out there somewhere.”

Miles to the northeast, beneath the light of the moon, over a dozen pairs of yellow eyes shone from the bushes surrounding Barovia. 

The howling began.





_*Coming up*_
*THOSE LEFT BEHIND *​




.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Sep 12, 2007)

_*Session 8 - Chapter 3*_
*TORN TO PIECES*​
The group left the cave and searched the crag of rock around it. They didn’t find the Tome or any werewolves, but evidence of their living around the cave was everywhere. Bones, tufts of shedded fur, and spoor marked this as their home. Arianna even found a place at the top of the rock where she guessed that the werewolves gathered regularly to bay at the moon. 

The group sat at the top of that rock overlooking the forest around them and took a rest. The moon was full, as ever, and it shone down through the mist that walled off the horizons. The view was almost clear from up here, and they could see for almost a mile over the treetops.

“We shouldn’t stop moving. We need to find that book.” Arianna paced restlessly.

Gerrit stretched. “’Anna, we’ve been on the move for hours. Five minutes isn’t going to make the Tome any more lost than it already is. Relax.”

Toufghar said “I’m really getting tired of this place. Mystery upon mystery. I truly miss kicking open the doors in dungeons and stabbing monsters. Things are so much simpler when you don’t have to investigate shadowy motives and worry about political machinations.” Thendrick and Gerrit agreed with sighs and nods.

“We’re still doing the will of Urso,” Ashlyn said. “If we can find this Tome and rid Barovia of…” she stopped and looked around, recalling that Eva said Strahd watched constantly. She cleared her throat. “…We’ll be doing a great deed for the innocents of the region.”

Thendrick tossed a pebble off into the forest. “I just wish we knew where all the damned werewolves went to.”

With that, Ashlyn remembered the words of the elf-wolf they’d met earlier in the day. _Did you come from that village? Did they send you? They will die screaming…_ After Thendrick had attacked the elf, he’d signaled to another wolf that had run off to the south. The paladin stood up abruptly. “Damn it. They went to Barovia. Come on, we have to move!”

The group hustled through the forest back to the northeast, where a trail was visible. “A dozen and a half, maybe, moving at speed,” Arianna huffed as she ran. Jade the giant crocodile crashed along after them as fast as her legs could carry her, but all the same she slowed the group down a great deal even with a _haste_ spell cast on her. 

Thendrick leaped over a stump. “Maybe we can still catch them in time!”

“No,” Gerrit said. “They left hours ago. They’ve had a good long time to do whatever they want.” No one spoke and after another minute of running, he concluded his thought. “There will be blood, and lots of it.” 




They reached Barovia sometime just before midnight. Only a handful of lights were on in all the village and as they moved closer, they saw that those houses with lights on all had doors that had been smashed in by powerful furred arms. 

The Lightbringers drew their weapons and entered the village, walking slowly. 

Bodies lay in the street. This bore little semblance to the scene after the zombie infestation, however, as these bodies were little more than wet red rags. They had been torn to pieces. One corpse was a sinewy skeleton lying in a paw-smudged pool of its own blood. All soft tissue had been violently ripped and from it, and splatters of blood on the walls and doors facing the street here were still inching downward in slow drips. There wasn’t a sound in all of Barovia save the heroes’ footsteps on the cobbles.

“It’s so quiet,” Thendrick whispered. “Is everyone dead?”

“The werewolves are gone as well it seems,” Arianna noted. “They dodged us and hit our weak spot.”

Toufghar sniffed. “I don’t know these people. They ain’t my weak spot.”

A wailing cry came from the south of town and the Lightbringers broke into a run. They came upon the burgomaster’s mansion. Before it, Ismark lay dead. His sister Ireena was screaming and cradling him with his blood on her clothes. She appeared untouched. 

Ashlyn reached her first. “Ireena. Ireena! What happened, where did they go?” The grieving woman didn’t even seem to recognize that their presence. Ashlyn reached out and shook her shoulder. _“Ireena_!”

Ireena’s head snapped toward the paladin and after a moment seemed to recognize her. “You! What… did you go into the woods? _You went out to the werewolves, didn’t you? You brought this upon us!_” She slapped Ashlyn’s hand away and continued to glare at her with clenched teeth. “_You brought death upon Barovia!_”

Thendrick said “Ireena, we understand that you’re upset, but you have to-“

“You did this to us,” Ireena growled. “Go to hell.” She went back to weeping on her dead brother’s chest as the Lightbringers stood nearby, watching her, feeling utterly powerless to help.






_*Next Session*_
*REVENGE *​




.


----------



## Qwernt (Sep 14, 2007)

<clap> <clap> <clap> Everyone is dead and it is the Adventures vault, Hurray.....

Wait a minute, that was not in the script.  The good guys win!


----------



## Dr Midnight (Sep 16, 2007)

Tonight's session was KILLAH... the players did things I didn't expect, which has been par for this campaign, but this time it completely worked out. Great drama.

Action, intrigue, and a cliffhanger.

Aaaand 



Spoiler



another death.


----------



## Richards (Sep 16, 2007)

Looking forward to it as always, Doc!  And here's hoping that 



Spoiler



the "reincarnated as some type of reptile"


 cycle can finally be broken.  Or not, as it's been rather humorous the ways it's happened so far.

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Sep 17, 2007)

_*Session 9 - Chapter 1*_
*SECRETS AMONG FRIENDS*​
In the morning, the group woke and shuffled out of the blacksmith’s shop into the dim light of the city street. The night had been miserable and the day offered no cheer, just the same overcast gray murk that was every day in Barovia.

There were more survivors among the villagers than just Ireena. Wary folk had turned off their lamps and remained silent to escape detection in the midst of the werewolf attack.  Now these people were out on the street, carrying their dead to the cemetery. Pails of river water were poured on the cobbles to wash off the blood. The dead of the zombie plague hadn’t even been fully removed from the streets, and now there were fresh bodies from an entirely new horror. The people of Barovia went about their duties with numb detachment. 

The Lightbringers saw that the church had several pieces of timber stacked up against it, and more scattered on the ground. The werewolf siege had begun at dusk, as the people were readying to burn their profaned church to the ground. It was to be a celebration of the end of an era of fear.

“What now?” Toufghar asked.

Ashlyn shook her head. “I don’t know, give me a moment.”

“We’re supposed to find the Tome, but it wasn’t where she said it would be and-“

“I said give me a moment, damn it. Let me think.”

“Sorry.” The half-orc wandered over to Gerrit and spoke to him. “I just can’t stand this feeling. We did what we were supposed to do and didn’t find anything.”

“I know. More people just got hurt.” Gerrit shifted his weight and crossed his arms. “Maybe we should concentrate on finding the Holy Symbol. It’s in a place ‘where humans plumb their darkest nature’. That has to be the church.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

Arianna said “No, no, we have to find the Tome. First thing.”

“It wasn’t there, ‘anna.”

The sound of horse’s hooves on the ground echoed up the streets. No one in Barovia rode a horse, and so every head turned to watch a gypsy man with a bright red neck scarf riding towards the adventurers. He pulled to a stop and looked around warily. He seemed nervous. “Which of you is Arianna?”

“I am,” the elf replied. The man pulled out a parchment note sealed with a blob of wax. Arianna held out her hand for it. He gave it to Thendrick, then turned and rode off. 

“That was odd,” Thendrick said as he broke the seal. He read it silently, took a breath to read aloud, then stopped as his eyes traced the last parts of the page.

Toufghar asked “What does it say?”

Thendrick folded the note and quickly placed it in the folds of his robe. “Nothing. Just a personal note. I think we should head back to the werewolf den. We may not have searched it properly.”

Arianna said “Why would a note for you come from a man who only wants to know who I am?”

“I’m heading to Bildrath’s, I want to stock up on a few potions.” Thendrick began walking toward the center of town. The others followed. 

At the entrance to the shop was a sign. It read 

*Official Sponsor of the Lightbringers, the Newest Group of Strahd-Slayers! *​
Thendrick sighed and pushed open the door. Ashlyn followed. 

Bildrath was doing brisk business again. It seemed that he thrived on the town’s hardships. People needed rope, locks, wood, hammers, weapons, holy symbols and more. The shopkeep looked up from his sales and yelled “look who’s here, it’s The Amazing Thendrick and Ashlyn of the Lightbringers! Welcome, welcome!”

Thendrick sidled up to the counter. “So we’re ‘sponsored’ now?”

“Oh, that’s just a promotion. You know how it is. Don’t worry, as a sponsored adventuring team you’re entitled to anything in the store… at _cost._” Bildrath beamed with pride.

“Great. We need two potions of _cure paralysis_, three of _cure moderate wounds_, and a few material components.” He thought for a second more and said “And do you have a pencil I could use for a moment?”

Outside, Toufghar, Gerrit and Arianna were leaning against the wall. Arianna was petting Jade. The passing people gave them odd looks.

Gerrit studied his nails and tried to ignore the glances. “Why are we being stared at like we’re evil outsiders again?”

Arianna replied “They’re not sure if we brought the werewolf attack down on them. Ireena seems certain, but these people only have suspicions. They haven’t broken out the torches and pitchforks about it.”

Toufghar said “What happens when they find out we did?”

“We didn’t, don’t say that.” Arianna exhaled and slid down the wall to sit on the cold cobbles. “I didn’t come here to fight the undead and werewolves. I just wanted to meet a supposedly rich uncle.”

“It’s odd,” Gerrit agreed. “I think about it now and then. You came to look into an inheritance and I came for the travel. Here we are all caught up in aristocratic intrigue, fighting against an evil we haven’t even confirmed the existence of yet.”

“In horrid weather.” She looked up and crinkled her nose at the deep gray sky. “I’m so sick of drizzly dark days.”

Gerrit nodded and smiled. “Are you saying you’d like to leave? There’s really nothing keeping us here…”

“No. I’m staying.”

“Me too.”

Arianna stared off into the distance and muttered to herself. “We have to find that book.”




Later, they were walking again through the woods to the south. Arianna was scouting ahead, looking for tracks. The others lagged behind.

Thendrick slowed and got Gerrit’s attention with a look. He slowed and the halfling followed along until they were fifteen feet or so behind Toufghar and Ashlyn. Thendrick handed Gerrit the folded letter and Gerrit read it silently.

_I blame myself. I do so enjoy my riddles. Your mission benefits me as well, though, so I have further information. 

You would hem and haw over the place where humans plumb their darkest nature. The time is not right for you to make that journey, but when it is, find the coven on the hill. 

Your focus right now should be the Tome. Tsk tsk... you were right there. You lot are going to have to learn that to know the secrets of death itself, you're going to have to walk knee-deep in the dead. 

Do not reveal any of this to Arianna, as she is... watched.

-Eva_​
Gerrit looked up at Thendrick with a confused expression. Of course they all knew Arianna was being watched. Strahd was scrying on her… almost constantly, if Eva could be believed. Then again, Arianna had been acting oddly lately. She always seemed a bit more motivated than the others to find the Tome. She’d been a bit irritating about it, in fact. 

At the bottom, Thendrick had quickly scribbled something in pencil. 

_If we find the Tome, keep it from her. If we get separated, meet back at Madam Eva’s._​
Gerrit folded the note and handed it back to Thendrick with a look. The two nodded and walked on in silence. Thendrick broke away from Gerrit to move towards Ashlyn. He was about to signal her to move back as well when something rustled in the underbrush, two hundred feet ahead. 

“Damn,” Arianna said. “Just a sentry. Wolf. Saw us and ran off. _Damn!_ We should stick more closely together. They could attack at any time now.” 

They closed the group up, putting an end to Thendrick’s attempts to notify Ashlyn as to the plan. They trudged on through the brush toward the werewolf den.






_*Coming up*_
*KNEE DEEP IN THE DEAD*​




.


----------



## Qwernt (Sep 18, 2007)

So, where will Arianna's loyalties truly lie?

Good stuff!


----------



## Qwernt (Sep 28, 2007)

How do we expect any update if we don't eat our bumping?

Please keep up the writing.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Sep 28, 2007)

More stuff's coming, we've just been in a hiatus and I've been lazy about writing.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Oct 3, 2007)

_*Session 9 - Chapter 2*_
*KNEE-DEEP IN THE DEAD*​
Once more they breached the clearing and Arianna patiently searched the field for traps as they made their way across it. 

“The cave seems uninhabited,” Gerrit said. “Again.”

Toufghar muttered under his breath as he spun his axe’s haft in his palm. “This is stupid. They’re never home and we keep wasting our time.”

“It’s not a waste,” Arianna said. “We have to find the Tome, and this is the only way.”

“I bet we don’t even have to find the Tome,” the half-orc grumbled.

“There were definitely werewolves in the area, and recently. One moved quickly – here – within the last hour or so. I’ll bet it’s the sentry. He came and warned them, and now they’re ready.”

Ashlyn unsheathed her sword and cracked her neck with a swift head-jerk. “So what’s the plan?”

Thendrick stroked his chin and thought for a moment. “We go down. We should leave someone up here to defend the entrance. They may be trying to close us in.”

Toufghar laughed. “Split up, we’ll be safer that way, right? We should stay together. We’re being hunted.”

“We’ll leave Jade to guard the entrance,” said Arianna. 

Gerrit looked at her. “All alone? Are you sure?”

“Not a bad idea,” Toufghar said. “She all but blocks the tunnel anyway, and she’s more n’ big enough to take on a group of werewolves.”

“Yeah, but… Arianna, Jade doesn’t have silver-plated tee…”

“She’ll be fine,” Arianna said curtly before entering the cave. Gerrit and Thendrick exchanged another look.

Jade was left filling the mouth of the cave, facing outward. What with the shape of the rock around the cave, she somewhat resembled a monstrous turtle with a small mountain for a shell. The heroes descended carefully, as before, testing the rooms to their left and right as they went, listening for noises. There were none. 

They reached the inner den and unlike before, not a creature was within. Ashlyn gasped and pointed. The body they’d left behind, that of the mad nymph that Toufghar had crushed with a boulder, was gone. “Do you think she’s still around? Could she possibly have survived that?”

Toufghar tilted the rock up and looked beneath. “Nope.”

“How do you know?”

He pointed and grinned. “Most of ‘er head’s still here.” It was true- the underside of the rock was still smeared with skull fragments, brain and hair. 

Arianna examined the few remains. “Her body was pulled free.” She traced a line of blood on the slick stone ground. “She was torn apart and eaten, right here. Spatter on the walls, some drips on the south end of the cavern, her corpse was picked clean and tossed… here.” Her torch illuminated the pit of bones. They glistened wetly in the light. 

“Knee-deep in the dead,” Thendrick whispered.

Arianna squinted at him. “What?”

“Nothing. Look, I don’t think there’s much chance of it but I think I should search the pit. ‘Anna, you guard the cave mouth and listen for Jade.” Arianna looked at the sorcerer suspiciously as he clambered over the rim of the pit and lowered himself into the pit. He quelled the waves of rising nausea as he pushed his foot down past the first few bones. A ribcage tumbled aside as it brushed his two hundred gold piece bullywug-skin boots. As the bones neared his knee he felt for the bottom and didn’t find it. He lost his balance and pitched forward, scrabbling for a grip on the rocks behind him but finding none. Thendrick hopped off his perch and plunged into the grisly pit. The bones clattered around him as he fell in deeper than he’d guessed the bottom would be. This wasn’t knee-deep at all. With a splash, he was standing up to his neck in filthy skeletal corpses. Water had pooled in the pit at waist-level and he felt the cold, loathsome corpse-soup soak into his robes.  

Thendrick was horrified beyond telling. The first time he’d seen the pit, he’d had to turn and lean on a wall to keep from throwing up. Now, very keenly aware of the slimy clicking of the bones all around him, nausea was a distance behind him. What he felt was more like the first tickle of real madness.  He shut his eyes and concentrated, employing the skills he’d learned as a spellcaster to keep his mind focused and alert.

Ashlyn called to him. “By Urso, are you okay Thendrick?”

“Heh… s’cold,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He got to work on casting a _detect magic_ spell- it gave him something to think about other than the bones. When he was finished, a dim yellowish light appeared to his eyes as coming from beneath the bones, roughly seven feet to his left. 

Thendrick waded there, making a terrible sloshing, crumbling noise that echoed through the cavern as he did. He reached out and felt with his hands, trying to ignore the bones he recognized by feel (_mandible, patella, tarsals_) and concentrate on finding the magic item in the pit. His hands fell upon a floppy leather shape and he clutched at it, then moved back to the lip of the pit. 

With Gerrit’s help he climbed out. His robe was ruined: immersion in the brownish water had turned it into a mucous-slicked horror. 

Arianna approached. “What did you find? Let me see.” Her eyes seemed to bug slightly, but that might have been a trick of the torchlight.

Thendrick opened the leather satchel and looked inside, hiding its contents from Arianna. “Ahh, we’ve finally made some money on this little excursion. We’ve got quite a few gold pieces here, and at least one large gem. Here’s a ring… that’s our magic item.” He held it up. It was made of clear glass, with no markings on it at all.

Ashlyn, looking over Thendrick’s shoulder, said “Hey… a book! Is that it?”

Arianna snatched at the satchel. “Let me see.” Thendrick quickly grabbed the book out and held it away from her. It was dry, very luckily above the water table of the charnel pit. Its cover was without a title but a metal crest on its front had a small, clear banner reading _Von Zarovich_.

Tension mounted in the cavern. Thendrick and Arianna were staring each other in the eye, squared off. Each mouthed words- Thendrick’s arcane, Arianna’s divine. They were preparing to cast. Gerrit shifted his weight nervously from foot to foot. Toufghar and Ashlyn, having no idea that Arianna should not be trusted, watched all this in confusion. “Uh,” Ashlyn said, eyes flicking between the sorcerer and the druid, “What are you two doing?”

All at once, Arianna lunged at the book and her opened palm gushed forth a volume of water. It splashed over the book just as Thendrick finished his spell, turned and ran from the cavern. He ran so fast that he appeared to be a blur, leaving drops of pit-water suspended in the air behind him. Gerrit, whose _boots of striding and springing_ made him almost as fast as the spell of _haste_ that Thendrick had cast upon himself, took off for the tunnel as well. 

Arianna screeched in alarm as the book moved away from her at a frightening speed. She had to destroy it, just had to, Uncle Strahd had told her to and _that was that, she must_. She would kill to do it. She ran up the tunnel after Gerrit and Thendrick, screaming for them to give her that book. 

Toufghar and Ashlyn, left behind, didn’t even have time to ask each other if they knew what was going on. They just ran up the tunnel as well. 

They didn’t want to be left behind. Not here.






_*Coming up*_
*RUN  FOR COVER*​




.


----------



## Qwernt (Oct 4, 2007)

Dr Midnight, you have a flair for the disgusting er dramatic.

I do have to wonder, why is it that the groups you run invariably have one of the party members turn evil/try to destroy the rest of the party?  Out of the 4 that I attribute to you, only the super heros didn't have this issue.


----------



## stonegod (Oct 5, 2007)

Gold Roger said:
			
		

> I don't think the module makes such liberal use of it, so I take it you really like Libris Mortis?



Actually, the module makes heavy use of it and _Heroes of Horror_


----------



## stonegod (Oct 5, 2007)

Just finished reading to learn how others are running this (I'm running it hear on the boards). Good stuff.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Oct 10, 2007)

Update coming in a few minutes. Just wanted to tease you with this session's line of the week, which SADLY was too real world-jokey to make it into the story. 

Thendrick said it after putting on his sunglasses and getting the band back together.

"We're on a mission from Strahd."


----------



## Dr Midnight (Oct 10, 2007)

_*Session 9 - Chapter 3*_
*RUN FOR IT*​
Running at full speed up the tunnel, Gerrit and Thendrick heard the shriek of despair from Arianna echo past them. Gerrit huffed “He got to her... I can’t believe… she’s gone.”

Thendrick said “It may be temporary… We’ll see what we-“ He stopped short as he realized he should see the light of the sky outside the tunnel by now. No, there it was- something huge and dark and furred was blocking the exit. Several somethings. “Werewolves. Exit’s blocked.” With werewolves ahead and a crazed, homicidal party member bringing up the rear, things didn’t look good. 

Gerrit licked his lips. “What now? There’s nowhere to go!”

Thendrick smiled. “There’s always somewhere to go, my boy.” He reached out and took hold of the halfling’s shoulder, spoke a word, and the two vanished in a blaze of violet sparkles. They reappeared in the field under the moonlight, and looked back to see the mouth of the cave swarming with werewolves. Jade lay dead. She’d fought valiantly, but lacking silver teeth, she couldn’t do enough damage to kill even one of them.

Gerrit gasped and pointed to the west side of the clearing. The black carriage was waiting. “That’s the carriage that took us to Strahd’s palace,” he said. Its red lamps lit up its patch of the field’s grass and the door opened with a squeak. 

Thendrick said “What in… how did it get here? There are no roads through the forest, and I don’t think something of that size could fit between the trees.”

Gerrit shook his head, spooked, remembering his first night in Barovia. “I don’t think it needs roads.”

“Well, I’m not getting in it. Not now.” Thendrick said. “Damn… Jade’s dead again. Well, in that case I have no qualms about doing this.” He shot a fireball from his hand and it detonated amongst the werewolves. Several were engulfed in fire and howled and screamed as they died. “That thinned them out a bit… the others can take care of the rest. Here’s the plan, Gerrit. I can _dimension door_ us three more times, getting us that much further into the woods, but it won’t even get us halfway to home.”

“What do we do then?”

“We start running.”  





Orange light bloomed from the cave’s entrance, just ahead, and a half a dozen monsters screamed in agony. Arianna stopped and her frenzied eyes darted around her. Werewolves were just ahead, but where was Thendrick? Oh, that sly sorcerer… she’d put an arrow in his throat if he kept the book from her. She would. 

“What the hell’s… going on?” Ashlyn puffed from behind. 

Arianna turned, acting the part of a party member once again. “Werewolves. Gerrit and Thendrick got out, but they need our help. Toufghar, can you cut our way through them?”

“You bet I can,” the dim half-orc said with a grin. He stepped to the front and began hacking at the werewolves, who could only attack one at a time here in the tunnel. Arianna crept to the top of the tunnel and fired her bow over his head into the beasts as they fought. After about twelve minutes of hard fighting, the way was clear and every werewolf lay dead. Ashlyn wiped her blade clean and said “That was bracing. Now what was all th…” Arianna pushed by her and began running through the empty field, keeping her head low, looking for tracks. 

Toufghar shrugged. “She’s rude, but she’s all business.” He started to follow her and Ashlyn put a hand on his chest. 

“Wait. Did something about what just happened strike you as odd? Arianna tried to destroy the book and Thendrick resisted. They each seemed to be aware that they were acting against the other. Look, she’s drawn her bow. She’s out for blood. I say we find Thendrick and Gerrit first and get their side of the story before they’re pincushioned.”

“How do we do that?”

“We fly.” Ashlyn held up her holy symbol and closed her eyes in prayer. A bright wash of light bathed them, and when it cleared, a noble griffon stood before them. It was fitted with handmade riding gear emblazoned with the crest of Urso. 

“Nice,” Toufghar said, “But we can’t both fit on that. Saddle’s too small. Dangerous.”

Ashlyn mounted up and the griffon’s wings beat the air. “I ride,” She said. “You get carried.” The half-orc’s cries of refusal did nothing to stop the griffon as it picked him up by his hide armor and began to lift into the night sky above. 




Some time later Gerrit and Thendrick lurched from the Svalich Woods and rested a moment. They leaned on their knees and gasped for breath. They hadn’t heard anything following them, but they’d run until their lungs burned and stitches pinched at their sides. “Madam… Eva’s…” Thendrick gasped. “Just ahead.” So it was. The lights of the gypsy camp could be seen dimly through the trees. They began to move again.

Thendrick stopped. “Wait. Did you hear that?”

Gerrit listened. “Sounds like something’s coming. Not through the woods… through the air.”

“Damn it all,” Thendrick whispered. “I heard the townspeople speak of how Strahd could fly as an enormous bat. I really hope it’s not him.”

“There!” Gerrit pointed to the sky. A dark shape was flying, set against the gray of the cloud cover. It was shaped vaguely like a man with what could have been bat wings. It was coming right for them. Gerrit groaned. 

“Gerrit, Thendrick!” Toufghar called from above. “You gotta try this, it’s really neat!” Ashlyn shushed him and the two Lightbringers joined the other two back on solid ground.

“You scared us to death,” Thendrick said, pulling his collar open rapidly. 

“What in the world’s going on?” Ashyln demanded. “Arianna’s looking for you, and it looks like she’s ready to shoot you.”

“She’s under some kind of enchantment… most likely she’s bound to find the book and destroy it, and if that’s the case, it’s most likely Strahd behind the curse.”

“What? How do you know any of this?”

“I’ll explain it on the way to Madam Eva’s.”




Eva chuckled to herself as she looked at the group. “Times in Barovia, they are not so pleasant, eh? Not so peaceful.”

Thendrick shifted his weight impatiently. “Are you going to help us or not?”

“Yes, of course child. Let me see the book.”

The sorcerer demurred and cleared his throat. “I’d rather keep it in my hands, if you don’t mind.” 

“Hah!” Eva slapped the table, delighted. “You learn to distrust. This is good. This will help. If I can not see the book, though… you must read to me.” She sat back and smiled.

Thendrick took out the book. Its moistened pages were slightly smeared but no less readable. He began to read softly.

_I am the Ancient, I am the Land. My beginnings are lost in the darkness of the past. I was the warrior, I was good and just. I thundered across the land like the wrath of a just god, but the war years and the killing years wore down my soul as the wind wears stone into sand. 

All goodness slipped from my life; I found my youth and strength gone, and all I had left was death. My army settled in the valley of Barovia and took power over the people in the name of a just god, but with none of a god’s grace or justice. 

I called for my family, long unseated from their ancient thrones, and brought them here to settle in Castle Ravenloft. They came with a younger brother of mine, Sergei. He was handsome and youthful. I hated him for both. 

Sergei had plucked from the families of the valley one whose spirit shone above all others: a rare beauty who was called “perfection,” “joy,” and “treasure.” Her name was Tatyana, and I longed for her to be mine. 

I loved her with all my heart. I loved her for her youth. I loved her for her joy. But she spurned me! “Old one” was my name to her — “elder” and “brother” also. Her heart went to Sergei. They were betrothed. The date was set. 

With words, she called me “brother,” but when I looked into her eyes, they reflected another name: “death.” It was the death of the aged that she saw in me. She loved her youth and enjoyed it, but I had squandered mine. 

The death she saw in me turned her from me, and so I came to hate death, my death. My hate is very strong; I would not be called “death” so soon. 

And so I made a pact with Death itself, a pact of blood. On the day of the wedding, I killed Sergei. My pact was sealed with his blood. 

I found Tatyana weeping in the garden east of the chapel. She fled from me. She would not let me explain, and a great anger swelled within me. She had to understand the pact I made for her. I pursued her. Finally, in despair, she flung herself from the walls of Ravenloft, and I watched everything I ever wanted fall from my grasp forever. 

The fall was a thousand feet through the mists. No trace of her was ever found. Not even I know her final fate. 

Arrows from the castle guards pierced me to my soul, but I did not die. Nor did I live. I became undead, forever. 

I have studied much since then. “Vampyr” is my new name. I still lust for life and youth, and I curse the living that took them from me. Even the sun is against me. I fear sun and light the most. But little else can harm me now. Even a stake through my heart does not kill me, though it holds me from movement. But the sword, that cursed sword that Sergei brought! I must dispose of that awful tool! I fear and hate it as much as the sun.

I have learned much, too, about this land of Barovia. Ancient are its ways, ancient beyond the knowledge of the simple folk of the valley. I have walked the ancient ways, secret roads linking three fanes of night, and thus I have become the Land.

Three ancient saints dwelt in this valley long before my coming, and three hidden fanes still give tribute to their memories. I visited the Swamp Fane, the Forest Fane, and the Mountain Fane, and claimed their power for my own. Thus I solidified my grasp on this dim shadow of life.

I made the fanes my own, and I have become the Land. Also I made the fane-servants my own, and they now serve me as once they served the saints of the fanes. 

I have often hunted for Tatyana. I have even felt her within my grasp, yet she escapes. She taunts me! She taunts me! What will it take to bend her love to me?

I now reside far below Ravenloft. I live among the dead and sleep beneath the very stones of this hollow castle of despair. I shall seal shut the walls of the stairs that none may disturb me.​_
Eva stroked her cheek as she thought about this. She was silent for a very long time. Just as Toufghar was about to ask if she was all right, she spoke. 

“These fanes he speaks of… so much becomes clear now. His power is tremendous. It is the land that gives him his greatest protections. You must seek to sever Strahd’s connection to the three fanes… only then will you stand a chance of ending him.”

Ashlyn said “And the first is where we’ll find the coven… the coven on the hill, yes?”

“Yesss,” Eva hissed. “You learn as well, I see. Lysaga Hill.”

“This sword he mentions. Is this the Sunsword?”

“It is.”

“What’s that?” Gerrit asked.

Ashlyn said “It’s a fabled weapon for fighting undead. I’d heard it was in this region, though it’s not my primary reason for coming. I didn’t know Strahd was associated with its creation. More importantly is the revelation of what he is.”

“Yes,” Gerrit said, thinking. “What was it? A vamb… uh…”

“A vampire,” Ashlyn finished for him as she paced slowly. “This is very, very bad.”

“Okay, but what’s a vampire?”

“A vampire, Gerrit, is the prince of the undead world. A bloodsucking fiend with the power to control the minds of men, to turn into bats and wolves and vermin at will. You can only kill one with a stake or direct sunlight… both of which Strahd seems to have found a way around.”

“So we can’t kill him.”

“Not unless we sever his connections to these fanes, it looks like.”

“Then let’s get started.”

“Wait, wait,” Toufghar said. “I can’t believe I’m going to be the voice of reason, but why? Nothing’s keeping us here. A vampilot lord is bad for the people that live in Barovia, but if they don’t like it, they can leave. It’s their problem! This guy only wants us to run around and complete menial tasks. He’s not given us a reason to kill him, and besides, the graveyard nearby is full of would-be heroes who’ve tried.”

The heroes were silent for a time, and Madam Eva spoke again. “This is moot. We haven’t much time until that decision is made for you.”

Ashlyn shook her head. “No. Enough of that. You’re very talented, but the future’s not set in stone.”

“Oh? We shall see. We have very little time until Arianna finds you here, and before you can do aught else, you will have an awkward meeting to sit through.”

“An awkward meeting? What?”

“Never mind, the future’s not set in stone as you say. For now, though, we must deal with Arianna. I will tell you what to do.”




The four Lightbringers stood on the road, not far from the crossroads, waiting. “Look,” Toufghar said, pointing to the south. 

Arianna had emerged from the woods. She had a feral expression on her sweat-smeared face, which was covered with the scratches of passing branches. She stalked towards them, nocking an arrow into her bow as she did. “You. Where is the Tome?” Her voice was a rasp, low and deadly.

“Gone,” Thendrick said, spreading his hands. “Your water spell smeared all the ink and left it unreadable. It practically fell apart in my hands.”

She lowered her bow. “It’s destroyed, then?”

“Oh yes.”

She thought, lowered the bow, raised it, lowered it again. Her addict’s eyes flickered among them. “I don’t believe you.”

Ashlyn held her satchel open. “Take a look then.”

Arianna approached cautiously and looked in. She had only a moment to see that the book was not inside before Gerrit, who’d snuck around behind her, planted a hand on her back and spoke the incantation. Thendrick placed a dew-laden ash branch on her forehead and her eyes went white. She collapsed, sputtering. 

“Easy ‘Anna,” Gerrit said. “Everything’s okay. You were under the control of some kind of spell. You were possessed… driven to find the book and destroy it.” 

She collected herself. “By Vennia, that was awful. I could see it all happening and couldn’t stop myself. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I’m glad I didn’t. Thanks for bringing me back. Oh, I’ll tell you what kind of curse it was, it was that awful S-“

Gerrit quickly covered her mouth. “Whatever it was, it’s over now.” Her telling them Strahd was evil wouldn’t do now, not when they needed to continue to move against him without his knowing they were doing so. He was watching her, always watching, and the Lightbringers needed to play the part of the willing henchmen for the time being. Arianna saw this in Gerrit’s eyes and seemed to understand. She nodded and was silent. 

She stood, brushed herself off, then stopped suddenly, staring over the group’s shoulders. They turned to look. 

The black carriage stood thirty feet away. Its red lanterns lit up the mist. The door was open and the inside was empty, as before. 

It seemed to wait politely.






_*Coming up*_
* AN AWKWARD MEETING*​




.


----------



## Qwernt (Oct 11, 2007)

Wow, a controled party member who did not (yet) kill everyone else in the party?  Wow, wow, wow.  You are getting mellow (or you current players get along too well).


----------



## Richards (Nov 10, 2007)

Please, Doc...it's been almost a month.  Might we have more, sir?  I mean, the black carriage has been waiting so politely and all....

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Nov 11, 2007)

There's more coming, it's just been hard getting together to play- fall being so busy and all. We've had lots of cancellations. We're playing this coming weekend.

There's a whole session I haven't yet written up. Le sigh.


----------



## Palskane (Nov 13, 2007)

I really love this Story Hour, and I believe it will prompt me to seek out others of yours, Doc! 

Thanks, and keep up the good work!


----------



## Yavathol (Nov 16, 2007)

Just read this SH!  Great stuff, very evocative feel 
I'll be waiting eagerly for the next update...


----------



## Qwernt (Nov 29, 2007)

*No, No, No*

Didn't we have this discussion?     Didn't we clarify that we weren't going to allow you to get us addicted and then stop updating?    Please oh Please, drop what ever you are doing that is not writing this story and get back to writing   

(hope all is well, just wanted to let you know you are missed)


----------



## Dr Midnight (Nov 29, 2007)

I was just thinking this last night... I should write up the most recent one. 

We still haven't played, it's been almost two months since playing. Scheduling has been a bitch. This one's teetering on the verge of just ending for lack of a day to play... which is too bad. 

I'll try to bang up some story tonight if I can. And you know I'll wind up not rising to that promise.


----------



## Richards (Nov 30, 2007)

Dr Midnight said:
			
		

> And you know I'll wind up not rising to that promise.



That makes me a sad panda.

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Dec 18, 2007)

_*Session 10 - Chapter 1*_
* AN AWKWARD MEETING*​
“Oh no,” Ashlyn said. “This is very bad.”

“This is phenomenally bad,” Thendrick agreed. 

“We need to plan. We don’t have time. We can’t go.”

Gerrit grabbed Ashlyn by the elbows and shook her, whispering fiercely. “We have to. If we don’t, he’ll know something’s wrong. We don’t know how much he saw of what just happened out at the cave, so keep your head in the game and play your part. For now _we have to stay alive._” 

Arianna sighed and set her shoulders. “Looks like Uncle Strahd wants to have a chat,” she announced with a smile. “Let’s get in.”

As they walked to the carriage, Gerrit handed Arianna something. “Eva said to give you this,” he whispered. 

She looked at it. It was a small glass bulb, filled with maybe half a teaspoon of greenish liquid. A molded lead spider design wrapped around the sphere as if to hold it. “What is it?”

“She didn’t say, except that you should leave it somewhere in the castle.”

They reached the coach and Arianna tucked the bulb away into her belt pouch. The Lightbringers stepped inside and made themselves as comfortable as they could. The carriage began its bizarre ride north through the hills. Overhead, the clouds churned in darkness. The rumbles of thunder could be heard distantly, but no rain fell yet. 




“Uncle Strahd,” Arianna said with a curtsy. “I’m glad you summoned us, we could use a night in fine warm beds.”

They were standing in some sort of grand sitting room on some floor in Castle Ravenloft. The chairs were lavishly cushioned in red velvet. Several well-filled bookshelves lined the room. A fire burned in the hearth, and before it, Strahd stood admiring a painting of a woman. He turned as the Lightbringers entered the room and gestured to the chairs. “Sit.” 

Thendrick cleared his throat, noting with some misery how little light the fire seemed to cast about the room. “Pleased to meet you, sir. I am-“

Strahd’s eye fell on Thendrick and chilled him. “I know who you are. I know who and what you are. I know the things you said of me in the town square. I know more, yet.”

“Uh, yes. An unfortunate misunderstanding, all that.” He sat and squirmed, wishing he were anywhere else. His eyes widened as he looked at the painting over the fireplace and glanced to Arianna. She’d seen it too. The painting on the mantle was a tall portrait, painted in oils. It was a stately woman wearing an evening dress with her dark hair tied up in a noblewoman’s fashion. It was Ireena Kolyana. 

Strahd’s back was to the group as he stared at the painting for a moment longer. He shifted his weight, turned and  faced them. “Where is the Tome?”

Gerrit said “Oh, that. That was destroyed.”

“It was?”

“Yes, we found it in the werewolf den. We gave it a cursory glance, determined that it was the volume you were looking for, and destroyed it.”

“How?”

“Arianna cast a spell of _create water_ over it and it was soaked. The pages were very flimsy and the entire thing just fell to ruin. Those witches really don’t know how to make durable propaganda.” He forced a laugh. Strahd didn’t return it. 

“So where is it?” Strahd asked.

“Hmm?” 

“Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“Where is the Tome.”

Gerrit slapped his thigh. “Oh! Hah. Well, it went to mush, like I said. Completely destroyed.”

“Where is the mush, then?”

“The Tome-mush? We, uh, we dumped the remnants in the Ivlis river.”

“You did.”

“Oh yes. Absolutely.”

Strahd’s eyes were cold. “Why don’t I believe you?”

Ashlyn stood and walked to the painting, admiring it. “This is remarkable. Did you paint it? Who is this?” Strahd didn’t answer her. “It’s amazingly lifelike. I’m telling you, she’s the spitting image of a woman we met in town.  It’s almost…” her eyes narrowed on the painting. She’d found an odd detail. The fire’s light was hitting the raised textures of the brushstrokes and she could swear that the paint was thicker over the woman’s earrings. The style was different as well, almost as if one artist had painted the picture and another had repainted the earrings only. Why? Ashlyn marked it as something to ponder later, when they were out of harm’s way.

“Do not concern yourself with the painting,” Strahd said impatiently. “I’d like to know what really happened at the werewolf den. Spare no detail. Arianna, you may begin.”

Arianna looked around for support. Her friends only looked back at her, unable to offer ideas. “I don’t understand, Gerrit just explained what happened.”

“Gerrit lied and I have forgiven him. Your lies will be more difficult to forgive, Arianna, and we both know why. Tell me what happened. I command it.”

Arianna set her jaw. Immediately Gerrit sensed trouble. Arianna didn’t respond well to veiled threats and commands, and this was no time to be anything but witheringly polite. He glared at her with warning eyes but she didn’t see them. She said “We’ve told you what happened and I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it.”

“I warn you, my niece. You tread on snakes when you speak to me so defiantly.” Arianna said nothing, staring hotly up into the vampire’s eyes. “My control is broken, then. I see. You others, this is your time to prove yourselves. If you refuse to act according to my whims as Arianna has, I will cast you out from my protection.”

The Lightbringers looked at each other, each hoping the other had a quick plan. Finally it was Thendrick who said “We’ve told you what happened.”

Strahd sighed and seemed to deflate, somehow. His face lowered and he turned back to the painting. “A cog that won’t work is one that must be removed from the clock. Very well. Come with me, I have another room I would like to show you.”

Gerrit stood nervously. “Another room?”

“Yes. It’s just out here. Follow me.” He walked out into the hallway and turned right. His cape swirled behind him as he went. 

Toufghar leaned over to the others and whispered. “This is insane, we should leave now and try to make it to Palervale. By noon tomorrow we could be on our way across the ocean, away from here.”

“He could stop us if he wanted to,” Arianna said. “I’ve felt his power.”

Ashlyn said “So why, then, did you talk back to him? Did you not see that that wasn’t terribly smart?”

The elf shrugged. “He commanded me. After being under his control like I was, I’d rather have died than be bent to his orders.” 

“If we can’t flee, what do we do?”

Gerrit walked to the door. “We go see this room he’s showing us, we hope for the best, we stay polite, and we leave. We don’t have much of a choice right now.”

The group stepped out into the hall and walked to the glasshouse rosegarden. 



_*Coming up*_
*GIVING THE DEVIL HIS  DUE*​




.


----------



## Qwernt (Dec 18, 2007)

*Clap, Clap, Clap*

And he saw the Light(bringers update), that it was GOOD.


The suspension builds.  Though I am not sure I would have trusted the Vampire - ie, I don't think I would have gotten back in the carriage.


----------



## Dr Midnight (Dec 19, 2007)

_*Session 10 - Chapter 2*_
*GLASSHOUSE*​

The Lightbringers entered the garden. Its glass-paneled walls and ceiling were held together with delicate ironwork. Blood-red rosebushes grew from seven deep troughs and curled up through lattices to lace outward over the ceiling, slightly obscuring the clouds that growled with lightning beyond. 

The mists had thinned and the view was astounding. To the north and the south, the Svalich woods covered the ground like a dense carpet, ranging away for miles. The valley that made up the peopled region was a swath of open land from the southwest to the east, where the road led back into the mist to Palervale. In the middle was Barovia, a small clutch of houses that seemed to cower together between the forests’ borders. Through it all ran the Ivlis river and the lightning lit it up like a bright silver vein in the earth. 

Strahd stood by the glass, looking over everything. His back was to them. His posture was different. He stood straighter than he had before. “I had such hopes that you would do as you were bid. You had potential.” His voice was also different- it was deeper, raspier. It was no longer the croak of an old man.

The Lightbringers eyed each other. Ashlyn laid her hand on the hilt of her sword. “I’m sure we don’t understand,” she said. 

“You had a part to play. You were to come in, eliminate some of my enemies here and take care of that accursed book, then leave to make things ready for me elsewhere.”

As the heroes listened, Arianna slowly removed the glass bulb from her pouch and dropped it. She caught it on the soft toe of her calfskin boot, then let it roll to the stone floor. It didn’t make enough noise to catch Strahd’s attention. She gently kicked it into the shadows by the wall.

Strahd went on. “I have a lot of work to finish here before I can move on to the next phase of my plan, you see. I took pains bringing you to my land…”

“Excuse me,” Arianna interrupted. “Whose land?”

“Mine.”

“By what right do you call it yours?” The elf’s voice was defiant. Thendrick cringed.

Strahd paused. “I took pains bringing you to my land and arranging for the proper strings to be pulled. I will have to find a new group… one that won’t be crippled by curiosity and bad judgment.

“Your choice was to continue to do my work and eventually become honored lieutenants in my service or to defy me and die. You’ve made your choice, and your lives are now forfeit. The good news is that I’m not going to kill you right away.”

Gerrit’s jaw dropped open. “Wait. What…”

“You’re going to leave. You will keep trundling about the realm, looking for ways and clues to destroy me. I’m going to let you.”

Ashlyn stammered “Wh… why?” It was all she could think of to say.

“I am very, very old, as you now know. My existence is a tedium of repetition.” His voice grew quiet. “Endless echoes of night.” He waved a hand and continued. “Anyway. That the occasional goodhearted adventuring party come to pound a stake into my chest does me good. It helps me to pass the time… gives me something to focus on. It’s a game to play.”

“This is insane,” Toufghar muttered.

“Insane is what it _isn’t_,” laughed the vampire. “I’d have gone mad years ago without the pleasant interruption of adventurers.

“I’m going to give you time to try to kill me your way, and you’ll gladly take the opportunity because you still think you can do it. You’ll… find the Sunsword or some clue in the Tome to bring me down. Well, I say have at it.”

Gerrit began walking back to the door. The others followed. The door swung shut suddenly and the latch clicked. 

“Not just yet,” Strahd said. “Before you leave for the night, I am going to show you why I am the master of Barovia.” He turned from the glasshouse wall and his face was young, cold and pale. His hair was dark and slicked back, silver only at the temples. His eyes were glowing a cloudy scarlet. The tips of fangs lit at the edges of his smile. “Don’t worry, though. For now…” He pointed to Arianna. 

“I’m only going to kill her.” 





_*Coming up*_
*LIGHTNINGROD *​




.


----------



## Qwernt (Dec 19, 2007)

Run to the river, to the river!


BTW, did I miss the part about receiving the green liquid?  (still trying to figure out what that is)


----------



## Richards (Dec 20, 2007)

Woo hoo!  New Lightbringers goodness!

Sadly, because I failed my save vs. bad puns, I have to say: Sucks to be Arianna right now!

Johnathan


----------



## Cutty Sark (Dec 21, 2007)

Thanks for writing up another session. I've always been curious about how people run horror campaigns in 3.5, plus I was a big fan of Silver Quill/Spellforge Keep, so I'm having a blast reading this.


----------



## Richards (Jan 19, 2008)

Please, Doc, what happens next?  We've not had an update _all year!_

Johnathan


----------



## Dr Midnight (Jan 19, 2008)

We still haven't played again, and I don't know if we will again. I think I mentioned that one of us is having family problems and Saturdays are largely getting inconvenient for a few people. Unlucky timing's crippled the campaign. Also, I've been discouraged by a few things in-game. I'm going to make a run at getting things reorganized soon, but I honestly don't think there's much of a shot at this. Waiting until after football season may help (We've got a Patriots fan or two).

So let me spoil the rest for the curious. 

This is an outline of what happens in the next update, which I honestly may never get to. 
SPOILERS.


Spoiler



Strahd begins cutting through the heroes like butter. He's not really trying... this is an exhibition bout. He flings Thendrick out the window and Toufghar rapels down, making a run for it. Ashlyn flies out on her griffon mount and Gerrit and Arianna continue the fight because they've got nowhere to go. Ashlyn catches Thendrick before he splatters and sets him down before wheeling back up to the glasshouse. Inside, Strahd has fixed his eye upon Arianna and approaches her, then begins to drink from her jugular. Gerrit leaps forward and plants the biggest heal spell he can muster on the vampire's back. Strahd snarls in pain and pulls away. Ashlyn is rocketing down from the sky. She calls to her god and lightning strikes her upraised sword. She sweeps the sword through Strahd's neck as she flies by. He collapses into a puddle of mist and melts through the cracks in the floor.



Now for what would happen next.
SPOILERS.


Spoiler



The little metallic spider delivers its payload to the bubbling cauldron of blood, which Strahd uses to scry on Arianna with such ease. It will spoil the batch and make it harder to find her. At this point, they will have a choice- run and try to destroy the fanes whilst hiding all the while, or find their way down through the castle to the crypt to destroy Strahd forever. Either will be nearly impossible, but if Strahd ever confronts them again, he will NOT underestimate them again. He will kill.


----------



## Richards (Jan 20, 2008)

Well, I truly hope you guys get to finish the adventure, but if not, I understand.  These things happen.  And in any case, it's been great reading another Doctor Midnight story hour.

Johnathan


----------

