Where: A side-track off The Road West, about a day west of the Village of Barovia — cart-ruts to firelight.
Status: We are here. End of travel day one; the party sleeps by the Vistani fires; a stranger is waiting. Session 6 opens here.
The Vistani
After the Village of Barovia, the merriment was almost shocking: fires, fiddles, food, and people who laugh. The Vistani welcomed five armed strangers and a red-haired charge without a flicker of fear, and named their price for hospitality plainly: “the trade of a story.”
Sirius paid it, and paid honestly — the wastrel noble boy of Waterdeep, drunk in the family cellars at thirteen; the heroic grandfather who pressed a raven’s feather into his hand and shipped him off to a boarding school for priests, where they taught him to love the sun. The verdict: “Good story. Good trade.” Food went round. For one hour, Barovia was kind.
What Ismark told us of them: the Vistani can walk the mists — though they can take no one with them — which is where the rumour comes from that they serve Strahd. In Ismark’s experience they have never done anyone wrong, and their camp is safer than a night in the open. So far, so true.
The great tent
At the back of the camp stands a large tent — warm light, and something in it that has been waiting for us to arrive. The flap opened, a large man looked at each of us in turn, and spoke all five of our names.
“You are expected.”
Open questions
- Expected by whom, and since when?
- What do the Vistani know about how — and why — we were brought here?