The party’s own record of the night the mists took us — rooms, people, and finds. Use it to fill the gaps in whatever you scribbled down yourself.
The Party (all Level 2)
| PC | Player | Ancestry / Class | Origin | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drusila “Drew” Seedweaver | Vicky | Khoravar (half-elf) Artificer (Artillerist) | Julkem (village) | Tinkerer — builds cannons, prosthetics, security systems. Alchemical tattoos up both arms. Carries her tools (incl. a soldering-iron “dagger”) and a six-faced chronometer pocket watch. The group’s lead investigator. |
| Fëanor Dawnward | David | Elf Cleric (Life), Lathander | Waterdeep | Wealthy family, black sheep and social misfit with “delusions of heroic grandeur,” deliberately slumming it (dresses plainly). Knows Mage Hand and Fire Bolt. |
| Lilli-grai “Lily” | Nathan | Gnome Rogue | Daggerford | 3’1”, patched clothes, prized boots, a green ribbon on her right wrist. Darkvision. Raised by her late Great-Grandmother Euphemia. Cautious, kind, with an anti-wealth-hoarding streak. Can Speak with Animals. |
| Sirius | Nick | Aasimar Paladin | Waterdeep | Noble, a faith-not-spells warrior who trains at the Church of the Morning Lord (Lathander). Oblivious, frequently drunk. Sunburst amulet; raven-feather cloak pin. |
| Sir Osric Cunningham | Duncan | Human Fighter | Goldenfields | Ex-farmer, freshly knighted (fought bandits, saved a lord’s daughter). Stocky, scarred, pierced eyebrow. Good with animals. |
Old ties: Fëanor and Sirius are both Waterdeep nobility. Sirius knows Fëanor’s family and warms to anyone bearing Lathander’s symbol; Fëanor has admired Sirius (and heard of his drunken training reputation) from afar.
Keepsakes (the things that pulled us here)
- Fëanor — a round flat stone engraved with a three-pointed star, from his grandmother (the only family who cared for him).
- Sirius — a raven feather from his grandfather (also “Sirius”), given at his coming-of-age, meant for one who values duty, faith, and honour.
- Osric — a tattered banner with a bird-like design, from an uncle; probably “nicked,” treasured anyway.
- Lily — a lacquered wolf’s tooth on a cord, from Great-Grandmother Euphemia. Her dying words: “the tooth will help keep mending what cannot otherwise be healed.”
- Drew — an amber-resin pendant (mounted on her goggles) with runes that shift inside; an untranslated family heirloom said to hold a secret no one has unlocked.
Table rules to remember
- Daylight spell: produces light, not sunlight — no effect on creatures that fear the sun.
- Remove Curse: weaker here than you’d expect. It still does something, but may not lift what you hope.
- Ammunition is tracked this campaign — count your bolts and arrows.
- NPCs matter, and some will lie or hold things back. Foreshadowing is fair; you won’t be cheaply tricked.
How it began — converging on the stairs
A warm summer evening, each of us out alone on some small errand:
- Fëanor (Waterdeep) — sent to find a blacksmith for the family horses; drew the short straw.
- Lily (Daggerford) — offering to mend boots for a few coppers.
- Osric (Goldenfields) — carrying a message to the smith about a suit of armour.
- Drew (Julkem) — off to fix an old woman’s clock.
- Sirius (Waterdeep) — headed to his wine bar.
Each of us was overtaken by an unnatural mist and a sharp drop in cold, and our keepsake came alive — the stone rolling away, the feather floating off, the banner streaming out, the tooth and pendant pulling like magnets — leading us to the foot of a flight of stairs that had no business being there. A glow waited at the top.
We met as strangers at the stair-foot in dense, walling mist. Drew’s instruments — a spinning compass, wrong temperature and pressure — insisted this was nowhere any of us had been.
When Sirius and Fëanor tried to walk back into the mist toward home, they wandered for hours; for those who waited at the stairs, only seconds passed. The fog stands like a wall around the grounds, with no way back through it.
So we went up — through an open wrought-iron gate onto wide grounds with a tall, narrow four-storey house and a stone cherub in the garden. The front door swung open on its own at Sirius’s knock.
Death House — what we explored
Entrance hall
- Warm and lantern-lit. A shield hangs on the north wall: a golden windmill on a red field — genuine and battle-ready. Sirius later straps it on.
- The moment all five of us were inside, the door slammed, the fire died, the candles flared, and a verse bled onto the wall in dripping red:
Beneath this dwelling lurks a beast / Who hungers for a bloody feast. / He sleeps until the midnight chime / Then wakes to feed his dark design. / If morsels seek to flee their doom, / Then bring toward his secret room / A gift to soothe his savage mood / But mind the servants of his brood.
- A grandfather clock struck six — leaving us until midnight. Read plainly: find a gift for the beast and bring it to its “secret room,” or be eaten; and beware its “brood.”
Ground floor
- Den (hunter’s den): A stag’s head and three taxidermy wolves (Sirius confirmed it — sawdust inside). Fur chairs, an oak table, and a cask of wine that has turned to vinegar (rotten, not poisoned — Sirius tested it). A longsword over the fireplace: real, sharp steel (not silver), with a windmill carved on the hilt. A locked cabinet (Lily forced it) held heavy, light, and hand crossbows plus 60 bolts — 10 of them silvered, 50 normal. It’s hard to ignore that the house seems to be arming us.
- Dining room: An opulent table set with crystal and silver, and an alpine-dale painting. The carved wall panelling hides twisted faces and lurking wolves for those who look closely. The finery is a lie — silver tarnishes to dust, crystal crumbles, food and wine are rotten, the painting fell to powder when lifted. Only the plain furniture (the chairs) is solid and real.
- Cloak room: Six heavy cloaks in adult and child sizes. Drew piled them by the front door against the cold outside.
- Kitchen + pantry: Tidy. Two sharp knives (usable as daggers). The pantry food looks and smells fine but carries an “off” tang — not safe to eat.
- A hollow wall: Left of the dining room there’s a stretch of wall with no door behind it — there’s clearly more to this house than we’ve found.
- Lily noted the firewood and tinder could be bundled into torches; we stockpiled gear and torches by the front door.
Second floor
- Landing: A marble hearth and a family portrait — a proud man and woman, two smiling children, and a swaddled baby the mother eyes with thinly veiled scorn. Four suits of decorative armour, each holding a real spear; the metal could be worked (about an hour) into two sets of scale mail. We took the four spears.
- Conservatory / music hall: A harpsichord, and beneath it a starving hound whose collar reads “Lancelot.” Lily spoke with him: he’s been trapped and hungry for days, the world gone grey and scentless, and he saw a tall figure he could see straight through. Lancelot is with us now (Lily and Osric mean to keep him safe; we fed him). Fëanor played the harpsichord.
- Study: A mahogany desk, a framed windmill picture, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with a rolling ladder. On the desk: a lit oil lamp, ink, quill, tinderbox, and a letter kit with a wooden seal bearing the Durst family insignia. A drawer held an iron key (Lily has it).
- The books are generic (history, warfare, alchemy) — nothing about the family itself.
- Scrape marks on the floor gave away a hidden mechanism: pulling the book “The Opening of this Door” by Paul Mybook swings the bookshelf aside.
- Behind it: tomes on fiend-summoning and the necromancy of a cult, the Priests of Osybus — but a close look shows the books are fakes, props with no real arcane power.
- At the far end: a heavy iron-footed chest, lid ajar, with a skeleton in leather armour jammed inside. Its poison-dart trap had already been sprung (three darts in the breastplate) — some earlier soul died opening it. Fëanor used Mage Hand to open it safely and draw the skeleton out. Lily took the leather armour (offered it to Fëanor). Inside lay a smaller chest and a letter.
- The smaller chest held: three blank books bound in black leather; three spell scrolls — Bless, Protection from Poison, Spiritual Weapon; the deed to the house; and a signed will. The will, in the hands of Gustav and Elisabeth Durst, leaves the house and all the family’s property to their children, Rosavalda and Thornboldt Durst. It names those two and makes no mention of the baby from the portrait.
- The letter (read in fragments) was addressed to “My most pathetic servant,” from a self-styled dread lord. It spoke of a husband who “took solace in the bosom of another woman, sire of monsters and dread propounder of madness,” referenced a place called Barovia, and was signed “In darkness I endure.”
Where we stand
- The clock: about an hour has passed in the house — roughly five hours until the midnight chime.
- What’s gathered so far: the windmill shield (Sirius), the windmill-hilt longsword, 3 crossbows + 60 bolts (10 silvered), 2 kitchen daggers, the leather armour (Fëanor), the iron key (Lily), the Durst seal + letter kit, an oil lamp, a tinderbox, 6 cloaks, 4 spears, torch materials, and Lancelot the dog. From the small chest: 3 black-leather blank books, 3 scrolls (Bless, Protection from Poison, Spiritual Weapon), the house deed, and the Durst will.
- The armour and spears upstairs could still be forged into two sets of scale mail (about an hour’s work) if we make the time.
Questions on our minds
- What “gift” might soothe the beast — and where is the “secret room” the verse speaks of?
- What lies behind that hollow, doorless wall off the dining room?
- Who was the tall, see-through figure Lancelot watched?
- Why does the will name two children but say nothing of the baby in the portrait?
- Who wrote that cruel letter, and what is “Barovia”?