Field notes

Our own record of the night the mist took us: how five strangers met, what the house gave us, and what it was hiding. Use it to fill the gaps in whatever you scribbled down yourself.

Table rules to remember

The DM set these out before we began, and they still hold.

• Daylight makes light, not sunlight. Things that fear the sun won't fear it.
• Remove Curse is weaker here than you'd expect. It still does something, just less than you'd hope.
• Ammunition is tracked. Count your bolts.
• NPCs matter, and some of them will lie or hold things back. The DM won't trick us, and foreshadowing is fair, but people in the world might. Take notes.

Five errands, one staircase

It was a warm, calm summer evening and each of us was out alone on something small.

• Fëanor, in Waterdeep, had drawn the short straw from his elder siblings and been sent by his mother to find a smith for the family horses.
• Lily, in Daggerford, was off to mend boots for a few coppers.
• Osric, in Goldenfields, was walking in from the farm to ask the blacksmith to start on armour fit for a new knight.
• Drew, in Julkem, was on her way to fix the clock of the old lady at the end of her street.
• Sirius, in Waterdeep, was heading for his usual wine bar after training.

Then the cold came down with a mist, and each of our heirlooms moved by itself. Fëanor's star stone fell from his pocket and rolled away, always just out of reach. Lily's wolf's tooth pulled "like a magnet". Osric's banner streamed out of his pack like a windsock. Drew's amber pendant held one steady bearing while her compass lost north. Sirius's raven feather floated off down the street, and he chased it, calling on bystanders to help him catch it. The street was empty.

All five led to the foot of a flight of stairs that none of our towns had ever had. Lily knew it at once: these steps had never been in Daggerford. Drew's instruments said the temperature and air pressure were wrong for anywhere she knew. Her verdict: "Terrifying and exciting."

Sirius and Fëanor tried to walk home. They went into the mist hand in hand ("We're a team"), over cobbles, then grass, then bog, for what felt like hours, and came back to the stairs certain they had walked the right way. For the rest of us they had been gone for seconds. The mist stands round the stairs and the grounds like a wall.

Before anyone climbed, Drew made us all promise that none of us had brought the others here "to kill us or kidnap us". Hands went in. Sirius swore on Lathander and on his honour as a knight. Fëanor tried to read the room, rolled a 1, and announced that he believed everyone.

The house

At the top: an open wrought-iron gate, a winged stone cherub, and a tall, thin, four-storey house standing in a pocket of clear air. Sirius declared it the Bellweathers' summer house. It wasn't, but we now know a great deal about the Bellweathers of Waterdeep, including their badly trained puppy, Rufus, and the two daughters Sirius was once engaged to at the same time. He knocked, and the door swung open by itself.

The foyer and the verse

• A shield hung on the wall: a golden windmill on a red field. Drew judged it genuine, pristine and made for battle. Lily warned that people who take things from nobles end up whipped and hanged; she had known one. Sirius put it back.
• In the main hall a fire was roaring, and a longsword hung over it: sharp, well-tempered steel, not silver.
• The moment all five of us were inside, the front door slammed, the fire died, candles lit themselves, and a verse appeared on the wall in something dripping and red. A grandfather clock struck six.

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.

Sirius took the shield down again and strapped it on for good: "I have finely honed evil sensors. This feels evil to me." Our reading was that we had six hours to find a gift and carry it to the thing's secret room, probably in the basement. Sirius would rather kill it. Lily wanted to stop it happening to anyone else. Sirius offered to go first: "I would gladly give my life to save yours."

The ground floor

• Den. A stag's head, three stuffed wolves (Sirius tried to cut one in half and got sawdust), fur-draped chairs, and a cask of wine. Nobody could test for poison, so Drew suggested the only method she knew, which "can be quite final": Sirius had a big swig. It was vinegar. He definitely didn't swallow any.
• The cabinet. Locked, until Lily forced it with her little dagger tool. Inside: a heavy crossbow, a light crossbow, a hand crossbow and 60 bolts, 10 of them silvered. Drew: "It feels even more like these are here to give us a fighting chance." Fëanor: "They're testing us." Drew added that nobody makes silver bolts for fun; you carry them because something you're fighting doesn't like silver.
• Dining room. A carved mahogany table set with crystal and silver, a painting of an alpine dale, and wall panels carved with deer among trees. Lily looked closer and found twisted faces in the tree trunks and wolves lurking in the leaves. None of the finery is real. The painting fell to dust when Fëanor lifted it, Drew's glass crumbled in her hand, and Sirius's silverware tarnished black and powdered. Only the chairs were solid. Lily: "Nothing quite as it seems."
• Cloak room. Six heavy cloaks in adult and child sizes. Drew piled them by the front door for the cold outside.
• Kitchen and pantry. Two sharp kitchen knives (Lily took one, Drew the other). The pantry food looked and smelled nearly fine, but Drew caught a tang that meant it would taste vile.
• The hollow wall. To the left of the dining room there is space behind the wall and no door into it. Sirius wrecked several candelabra looking for the secret switch, as described in romance novels.
• Torches. Lily worked out that the hearth wood and odds and ends would make torches, given time. The makings went on the pile by the door.

The second floor

• The landing. A marble hearth under a family portrait: a proud man and woman, two smiling children, and a swaddled baby in the father's arm, which the mother regards with thinly veiled scorn. The plaque reads Mr. Gustav and Mrs. Elizabeth Durst, with their two children Thornboldt and Rosavalda. Two children named, three painted. Fëanor, looking at the baby: "I know what it's like to feel like you're not there."
• The armour. Four suits of decorative armour, each holding a real spear. Sirius reckoned an hour's work would turn them into two sets of scale mail. We took the four spears and left the forging for later.
• The conservatory. Dust, drapes, a harpsichord, and under it a hound, rail thin, who crept out to sniff Sirius's hand. His collar says Lancelot. Lily knelt at his eye level and spoke with him: "Trapped. It's been time. Hungry." The world had gone cold, grey and scentless for him. He had seen "a two legs… no smell… I could see behind it, through it. Big folk." Then: "I'll come with you. I stick with you." Osric swore to protect him with his life. Lily: "So will I."
• Fëanor played the harpsichord, passably ("I had lots of lessons, but I hated it"), and Osric thanked him for it "in this hour of darkness". A moment later Fëanor asked, "What if the dog is the gift we have to give to the monster?" Osric answered that he would fight the monster until one of them died, and make space for the dog to leave.

The study and the secret room

• A mahogany desk with a lit oil lamp, ink, quill, a tinderbox and a letter kit whose wooden seal bears the Durst insignia: the windmill again. In the drawer, an iron key, which Lily kept.
• The books are ordinary history, warfare and alchemy. Fëanor looked for a family history, since his own family keeps one. There isn't one.
• Scrape marks on the floor gave away a moving shelf. The switch is a book called The Opening of this Door, by Paul Mybook.
• Behind it: shelves of books on fiend-summoning and the necromancy of a cult called the Priests of Osybus. Drew and Fëanor both saw through them. They are props, with no arcane value at all.
• A heavy chest with iron feet stood with its lid half open and a skeleton in leather armour jammed inside it, three poison darts in its chest. The trap had been sprung long ago, on whoever this was. Fëanor opened it the rest of the way with Mage Hand and hauled the body out rather than touch it. Lily stripped the leather armour for Fëanor and offered Lancelot a femur.
• Inside sat a smaller chest (we went through it properly at the start of the next session): three blank books bound in black leather, three spell scrolls (bless, protection from poison, spiritual weapon), the deed to the house, and a will in which Gustav and Elisabeth leave everything to their children Rosavalda and Thornboldt. It says nothing about a baby.

The letter

With it was a letter on heavy, crested paper, headed Strahd von Zarovich, Lord of Castle Ravenloft, Count of Barovia. It is addressed "My most pathetic servant" and it is cruel. It sneers at the souls bled on a hidden altar and the visitors tortured in a dungeon, and it says: "Your husband took solace in the bosom of another woman, sired a bastard son, and drove you to abandon love for madness." It is signed "Your dread lord and master, Strahd von Zarovich", with the motto In darkness, I endure at the foot. The full letter is in The Letter from Death House.

Drew: "Well, that'll be why they don't like the baby then." Lily: "Nobody who describes themselves as your dread lord is going to be a stand-up guy." None of us had ever heard of Barovia.

Where we stand

• In the secret room behind the study bookcase, around seven in the evening by the house clock, with about five hours to the midnight chime.
• Lancelot is with us.
• The third floor, the attic and the basement are unexplored. The iron key is unused. The armour on the landing is still unforged.
• By the front door: the six cloaks and the torch makings.
• Who holds what: Sirius, the windmill shield. Fëanor, the windmill longsword (Drew handed it over with "just don't stab any of us with it"), the leather armour and probably the light crossbow. Lily, the hand crossbow, 10 plain bolts (she turned down the silver so someone who needed it more could have it), a kitchen knife and the iron key. The heavy crossbow went to one of the knights, we think Osric, with 10 plain and 5 silver bolts. Drew kept the other 30 plain and 5 silver bolts and the second kitchen knife. We have the four spears, the letter, and the small chest's scrolls, deed and will.

Questions on our minds

• What gift will soothe the beast, and where is its secret room? Answered, Session 3: the room is an altar far beneath the house, and the gift it wanted was a life. We refused.
• What is behind the hollow wall off the dining room? Answered, Session 2: a secret wooden spiral stair that runs from the attic to the basement.
• What does the iron key open? Answered, Session 2: the locked children's room in the attic.
• Why does the plaque name two children when three are painted, and why does the will forget the baby? Answered, Session 2: the baby was Rose and Thorn's half-brother, and their mother hated him.
• Who is Strahd von Zarovich, and where is Barovia? Answered, Sessions 3 and 4: the spirits of the house named him as the devil, and Barovia is the land we were brought to.
• Who was the tall, see-through figure Lancelot saw?