Session 4 field notes

Our first day in Barovia proper: the gate, the village, the people who wished we'd never come, and the boy in the crypt under the church. We stopped in the middle of that fight.

On the road, and hungry

We woke by the road in the grey woods to a new rule: here you have to eat and drink or suffer for it. Sirius and Fëanor were seven or eight hours hungrier than the rest of us after their walk in the mist, and the house had given us nothing but rot.

Foraging was no use. Even a very good look at the plants and mushrooms turned up nothing any of us recognised. The DM's word for it was "alien". Don't assume we know what's safe to eat here.

Things we worked out about ourselves:

Drew can make water with a spell, ten gallons at a time. With her tinker's tools she can also conjure small things (a bedroll, a candle, a tinderbox, a shovel, a jug, manacles and so on), which vanish when her next long rest ends. Her own verdict, that night: "I've been working on these equations for so long, and it seems like I've finally cracked it. Mainly bedrolls and candles, but you never know."
A water skin holds four pints and a person needs eight a day.

The Gates of Barovia

The road is laid with slate slabs and runs through silent woods. It brought us to a stone gate between two high rocks, flanked by two headless statues, crumbling and unguarded. The engraving, in old but readable Common:

"Welcome to Barovia, the crown jewel in the Strahd empire."

Above it, raised in the stone, was the same sigil we'd seen on the letter in the Durst house. Osric unrolled his banner. It bears the same sigil. It came to him from his Uncle Steven, a farmer and teller of tall tales who picked mushrooms for stew and talked about "some noble blood somewhere on the lines". Osric has never seen the sigil anywhere else and doesn't think he's related to Strahd. Somebody suggested we go and find Great Uncle Strahd.

The gate is plainly a border that ought to be defended, and nobody defends it. It stood open. We walked in.

A few hours on, we came over a rise and saw a village below, and above it, on a pillar of cliff with a bridge across to the mountain, a vast, spiky castle. Villagers saw us coming and scurried indoors. Curtains twitched.

Granny and her pies

The first person to speak to us was an old woman selling from a rickety cart: Granny the Pie-Seller. "Ooh, hello dearies. You're a colourful lot." She said we were carrying the colours of the Durst family, who hadn't been seen for a good while, and that the Durst house "hasn't been seen. It was outside the mists."

She called us mist walkers. There haven't been any for "a couple of decades at least", and when they come, "it often means that Strahd becomes more active".
On the lord in the castle: "The devil he is sometimes referred to as. Of course, he is wise and generous and all that good stuff." The name isn't forbidden, just avoided.
The place is "the village of Barovia, in the valley of Barovia, in the land of Barovia". It grew out of a camp that supplied the castle.
Her pies are a gold each. One pie is two days' food and keeps for sixteen days. What's in them? "Butter, flour, love, protein." Somebody asked whether that meant people, and she was offended. They taste better than anything any of us has eaten at home.
She taught us the one mushroom that's safe to eat, and said she lives "a bit outside the village in a mill" with her sisters.
Sirius tried to read her and rolled a 3.

Two ravens sat very still on a rooftop by the tavern, watching us. "Are we eating raven pies?"

Ismark, at the Blood on the Vine

The tavern went silent when we walked in. One man, alone at a corner table, called us over. He recognised the dog at once: "Lancelot is Mary's dog. He's not been seen for weeks." He is Ismark, and he became burgomaster when his father died, only a day before we arrived. He called us bearers of ill fortune who hadn't yet lost the will to live. Sirius put a gold on the bar for wine and food.

What Ismark told us:

The devil in his castle drinks blood, "the blood of the villagers, and anyone who gets in his way". Asked whether that was a metaphor: "entirely literal". "There isn't any dealing with Strahd. There is only surviving." He never said the word vampire. We did, and our religion checks agreed we'd all heard of such things.
"Although you see no water around you, you are nonetheless marooned. The mists are the bars of our cell, and our jailer is Strahd." People lost in the mist wander for hours or days, and some never come out. There is no way out.
Barovia wasn't always shut in by mist, "but that is tales". The mist is believed to have come with the devil.
Disrespect to Strahd is punished swiftly and fatally. There was once another village that defied him, and now there isn't.
Down the road, a couple of days away, is Vallaki, the main town. Beyond it is Krezk, which has an abbey.
There were mist walkers when he was a boy. His father hid the family away while Strahd "wandered abroad". It is thought to be "a bit of a test".

We showed him our heirlooms. The raven feather is lucky: "Ravens around here, they're very lucky. That is a good omen." Fëanor's stone rang a bell, "old stories about nature", but he couldn't place it. He had nothing to say about the amber. Wolves, like Lily's tooth, are common here and never a good sign. The banner he didn't remark on.

The board says "Dogs welcome. Children must be kept on a leash." The food on it was much cheaper than Granny's, and much duller. The menu is in The Blood on the Vine Menu.

Two favours, and Ireena

Strahd wanted to court Ismark's sister. Their father said no, and "Strahd made it clear that no was not an appropriate answer." He came back every night after that and never let the old man sleep, and the strain killed him. Ismark asked two things of us:

Help carry his father to the churchyard and bury him.
Take his sister to Vallaki. "They have high walls. They have a church, which stories tell is one of the few places in this land Strahd cannot tread."

Osric accepted the escort as "a noble thing, a knightly thing to do", and the rest of us agreed.

Then we met Ireena Kolyanovich, striking and bright, which is exactly the problem: in Barovia liveliness draws Strahd's eye, and red hair is reckoned bad luck too. Sirius got to the front first: "I am Sirius, and I am at your service, my lady." She asked us what the sun looks like. "We do not get the sun around here. I've heard stories." She sat rapt while Drew explained every formula tattooed on her arms, down to the terminal velocity of a sparrow and the one that's there "just because I really like chickens". Her tea is terrible. Drew likes it: it tastes of the water she cleans her tools in, and "it reminds me of home".

Drew called the mists "just another mystery that needs to be solved". Ireena: "We have a devil who lives amongst us. He cannot be stopped." Someone answered that he hasn't been stopped yet. "He is coming for me. We must live with what we can do."

Bildrath's, and the coins

Bildrath greeted us with "Oh. Outsiders", told us our mere existence put his family in danger, and handed us "the outsider special": his price list at four times the marked price. Sirius's first try at charm failed; his second, with Honeyed Words, rolled a 19, and Bildrath came down to a quarter of what he'd asked. The list is in Bildrath's Price List.

We bought tents, backpacks, a bedroll, water skins, rations, whetstones and rope.
We sold a crossbow for 12 gold.
Sirius nearly sold his potion of healing for 10 gold. We talked him out of it. Bildrath: "You will not find a potion of healing in this village for love nor money."
The gold he paid us bears the profile of a gaunt man: the same face as the statue in the Durst basement. Strahd's face is on the money.
Then one of us (the one who'd had the most wine) wondered aloud what would happen in a village with no will to live if someone simply struck the shopkeeper down. Bildrath called for his large nephew ("Periwinkle!" "Yes, Uncle?") and had the speaker put out: "You, outside. That was rude." We said a fond goodbye to Periwinkle.

Mary at the door

At nightfall there was a knock and Ismark told us all to hide. It was Mary, who'd heard he had "mercenaries" in. She hugged Lancelot. Lily told her, proudly: "And we didn't eat him. I spoke to him. He was frightened." Lancelot went home with her.

Her daughter Gertruda is missing: blonde, in her mid-twenties, gone one morning with no note, most likely out looking for the dog. Mary begged us to promise to find her. We wouldn't promise what we couldn't keep, but said we'd do our level best and keep an eye out. She left insisting, "You've promised now. I've heard you promise."

Ismark, afterwards: Gertruda is almost certainly dead. If not, Strahd has her in Castle Ravenloft, or she is with a group of witches in the Ruins of Berez, somewhere to the south, who take in wayward young women. He promised to draw us a map in the morning, and advised us to settle in Vallaki: "It's big enough to absorb you."

The night

No beds, but blankets and space for all, and Drew conjured a bedroll for Sirius, which he called a princely gift. Somebody asked if anyone else was as petrified as they were: "We're never going to see our families again." Someone else (we think Osric) said most of the family he loved had already died. Sirius: the trick is to do some good for the Morning Lord before then.

Lily sat at the window watching a raven in the back garden. It stared back at her.

The pies

Fëanor had eaten a whole pie ("I'm a growing boy"). In the morning Fëanor, Drew and Lily all said they'd had vivid, bright, dreamlike dreams that none of them could remember. Only Lily woke up already eating her pie. "I wake up hungry all the time." The DM told her: "You feel like that is now part of you, for the moment at least." One of us looked her over and thought it all "a bit weird". She also reminded us, firmly, that she is 37: "I'm not a child."

The funeral

Ismark forbade Ireena to come to her own father's funeral, and they argued. ("He is treating me like a doll.") Pressed, he admitted "There is something at the church." The priest, Father Donavich, has a son, Doru, who "was one of the bright ones". Strahd took him. He came back. He is not how he once was. The Father keeps him locked up and has promised the village he has it in hand.

We carried the coffin about a kilometre out of the village to the church. Villagers along the way made a sign that Fëanor recognised as an old, archaic Lathander gesture for the dawn and the sun.

Father Donavich was praying at the altar, dishevelled. He believes the Morning Lord "is still watching over us from behind the clouds". When Fëanor touched his holy symbol and made it shine, he marvelled: he'd heard of miracles, but never seen one. Sirius: our Father can do far more. Fëanor: "He exaggerates." We helped dig the grave, and the Father spoke beautiful rites over the old burgomaster.

Then he asked us to help his son. "By help him, you do not mean kill him. I will not hear any talk of that." Doru "brought something back from that castle. He is hungry in a way that I am struggling to feed." He is kept in a crypt under the church, locked "only as a precaution", because the limits help his self-control.

Ismark would not come down: he has no heir. Donavich unlocked the chained trapdoor, told us to follow him in, said again do not kill him, and stayed upstairs.

Doru

Fëanor spotted him first: a young man of eighteen or nineteen, hanging from the ceiling by his fingertips. Fëanor's divine senses said undead. "I don't think we can kill him. I think he's already dead." Then Doru spoke. "I'm sorry, I'm so hungry."

Fëanor presented his holy symbol and cursed him for a moment.
Sirius lit his sword with Lathander's light. For a second we all saw glowing wings behind him. He swung and missed. "Repent and no harm will come to you."
Doru dropped on Sirius, claws and teeth, and everything glanced off the shield. Sirius: "I'm hungry as well. Do you think we can work this through?"
Osric shoved him flat and held his sword up rather than use it. "Your father's told us not to cause you harm. Please, stop."
Fëanor shouted up for the Father and put Protection from Evil and Good on Osric. Drew tried to outline Doru with faerie fire, and he shook it off. Drew pleaded with him: "Think of your family."
Doru twisted in a way no body should, crawled across the ceiling over our heads, and made for the stairs. Osric caught him with a feint for eighteen. "This guy is tough."
Lily ran up the wall of the stairs with her new climbing legs and grappled him to the floor. He can't move.
Drew ran up to shut the hatch and found Donavich right there. "You didn't prepare us for this." "You said you'd handle it." "You didn't tell us what we had to handle." She pulled the hatch shut and held it, shouting for us all to leave him and go. She would not raise a hand to him.
Sirius asked the table whether Doru was evil. Undead, we agreed, doesn't necessarily mean evil. Then he rolled a critical and smote him for 47 radiant. Doru was still standing. "You tried to bite me, and then you tried to leave. Submit. This is your last warning, fiend. Convince us not to end you."
Doru only crouched and trembled, Lily still latched on. "Please, I'm just so hungry."
Donavich tore the hatch open against Drew with surprising strength. "Leave my… You promised."
Osric lowered his sword and asked what he needed. "Blood. I need your blood. Anyone's blood. I'm so hungry." Osric turned to the Father: "I'm sorry, but he's a vampire, too."

"He's my son."

Where we stand

In the crypt under the village church, on the morning of our second day in Barovia, mid-fight. Lily has Doru pinned at the top of the stairs. Sirius is between him and the door. Drew is at the hatch, and Donavich is holding it open. Osric is at Doru's side with his sword lowered. Fëanor is partway up the stairs. Lily goes first when we pick up.
Doru has taken sixty-five points of damage and is still up, "very hurt", and no longer fighting back.
Promises: bury the old burgomaster (done); take Ireena to Vallaki (accepted); don't kill Doru (Donavich certainly thinks we promised); keep an eye out for Gertruda (Mary thinks we promised that too). Ismark owes us a map.
Lancelot is home with Mary.
We are properly kitted now: tents, packs, bedrolls, water skins, rations, whetstones and rope. We have three potions of healing between us.
Still Level 3.

Questions on our minds

~~What do we do about Doru?~~ Answered, Session 5: we bound him, he confessed to his father, and his father told us to do what we must.
~~What is in Granny's pies?~~ Answered, Session 7: see those notes. You won't like it.
~~Who are Granny's "sisters" at the mill?~~ Answered, Session 6: hags, three of them.
Why does Osric's banner carry the sigil of Strahd's empire?
What do the other heirlooms mean here: the feather, the amber, the stone, the tooth?
~~What happened to the last mist walkers?~~ Answered, Session 8: Roger at the Blue Water Inn is the last of them. The rest died at the castle gates.
How do you stop a vampire? Osric's childhood stories never said.
Is Gertruda somewhere we could reach, or is Ismark right?