Field notes

A black day and a strange road: the end of the boy in the crypt, a guest at Ismark's door, the first of Clover, and a camp where a stranger already knew our names. Nathan was away, so the table ran Lily.

Doru, at the last

Nobody picked the fight back up. Lily had sent word ahead of what she'd say, and it set the tone: "Don't make his father watch us give up trying to help him before we've even tried." With Drew's help and a lot of care (a loop of rope first so no one had to hold him bare-handed, eye contact, "It's okay. We're here to help"), she got his wrists tied, and we lashed him to one of the crypt's supports. He was not coming loose.

Father Donavich was furious with us: we'd promised not to kill his son. Fëanor told him straight that his son was already dead. "He absolutely will not get better. It's not a flesh wound or a mild cold." Sirius backed him: "This is a man, a priest of Lathander. Do listen to him. He knows what he's doing, despite having some strange ideas about the economy." The Father agreed to come down and hear the boy for himself.

Doru told him everything.

"The devil, he caught me. I was out. He took me. He drank from me and made me drink from him, and now he gave me instructions. I felt as those instructions were given, each one became a fetter on my mind. It became the truth I must do."

Strahd sent him home and told him he was free to feed on anyone he wished. "I do not think I am in the Morninglord's light anymore. Please, Father, I think these people speak true. I'm so hungry."

The Father turned away weeping, said "Do what you must", and fled up the stairs.

We asked Doru for his own leave. He wanted to give it ("This is not me"), but he couldn't: "Strahd instructed me I could not, through action or inaction, cause myself to become destroyed. I cannot let you do this, no matter what I feel." Fëanor used Toll the Dead, which Sirius found "very loud and raw" for a mercy. Doru began to struggle, and Fëanor, Sirius and Osric finished it. Drew and Lily went upstairs rather than watch.

He didn't bleed or fall. He crumbled to dust. Nothing natural happens to a body like that; in the stories, that never happens to good things.

Upstairs the Father was on his knees at the altar, praying furiously. Drew crouched beside him: "I'm not a religious person, and I'm not going to pretend I know what you're going through, but I think you both made the right choice." One of us knelt and prayed with him until it was clear he needed to be alone with his god.

Ismark's map, and Ismark's confession

Ismark had waited outside the church and spent the time drawing us a map. He wasn't surprised to hear Doru had had to be put down. "People come back wrong in a variety of ways."

What's on Ismark's Map (the scale is hopeless; it's an aide-mémoire):

• Vallaki, four days' travel in all, longer than we'd thought. It's the best bet for Ireena's safety. Strahd is said not to go in, and there's a church there that old lore says he may not tread.
• The Vistani camp at Tser Pool, about a day away, marked "pool". Safer than camping alone.
• A winery somewhere south of Krezk. Barovians drink wine, or watered wine if they're working: "Wine is kind of vital."
• The castle. "I've put it where it is on the map, but that's not as an indication of where to go. That's an indication of where not to go."

On the Vistani: they can travel through the mists, though they can't take anyone with them, which is where the rumour comes from that they work for Strahd. They've never done Ismark wrong. They take in travellers and break bread with them.

Back at the house, Ireena came in dragging her brother by the arm. "I will not travel under false pretenses with people. Ismark, tell them what you told me." He had known what was in the crypt and sent us in anyway. "I could not put Ireena in your care without knowing that you could handle yourselves. I apologize, but I needed to know that you were strong enough to protect her. And now I am assured." Drew told him we could have done without the emotional damage.

"You will learn not to trust people in Barovia."

What he knows about the turned: "Occasionally, people are turned into them by Strahd. Only occasionally. Mostly people who are loved, just to torment us." They come back stronger and faster and do whatever Strahd tells them, without fail.

Ireena offered to let us off the job. Sirius: "I think you're pretty, and I'd be delighted to travel with you." We're still taking her.

Introductions, and an evening almost like peace

We did introductions properly at last. Ireena is Ireena Kolyanovich, "the sister of the Burgomaster now". Fëanor was "very, very annoyed at the moment". Drew said she came from a family of farmers and prefers making things with her hands, then conjured a bedroll out of nothing ("That's magical"). Sirius introduced himself as Sirius Black, Paladin of Lathander, here to save this realm from the demon Strahd. Ireena: "Lathander, who's that?" Here they only know the Morninglord. Sirius's trick for greeting every dawn, he explained, is simply not going to bed. Osric, farmer, knighted a couple of weeks ago by the local lord, is "trying to live up to the expectations".

Ireena asked what sunlight through trees looks like. She has only read about the sun and the moon in books. Then she took us to the Blood on the Vine, which is named that, she says, because when the threat hangs over everything you have to make light of it or go mad.

• Fëanor had his first drink ever, and admitted he was feeling quite hopeless. Sirius: "You are the sun in these lands, Father." Fëanor: "I need to connect with my God for the first time."
• Drew promised us a turret. "You'll know it when you see it." Bad vibes for the wolves and vampires, good vibes for us.
• Ireena on dire wolves: "If you've seen them from up close, you're probably dead."
• The tavern empties at twilight, and the barkeep gave us significant looks. "If you can hold it in your hands, feel free to take it away. But don't take a plate." We took the flagons home and promised to bring them back tomorrow. We didn't.

The visitor

It was barely dark when someone knocked. Ismark told us to hide, opened the door, and a moment later called up in a voice gone strange and dreamy: "Everyone come out. It's fine."

One by one we looked at the man in the hall and one by one we simply knew he was our friend, the best of the best. The DM's word was "friend-shaped". Osric went down to say hello. Fëanor alone kept his head long enough to cast a spell and see the truth: all of us were enchanted. "You are all charmed. Why would I lie about this?" We smiled at him. Sirius, to his credit, asked what we should do. "Stay here and pray." "Okay."

The visitor came up the stairs. Fëanor was waiting with a bolt of divine light, and missed. The man laughed, delighted: "Ah, it is good to see some backbone in some fresh blood." Then Fëanor loved him too. When he walked back down, the house seemed to shake with every step.

He gathered us in the hall and told us who he was: Strahd, ruler of these lands, rightful lord.

"I am this land, and this land is me."

• A little bird had told him there were fresh visitors from outside.
• "One of my pups managed to grab you, it seems. You did it some small damage, but it will recover, and I have others. I bear you no ill will."
• He relishes the thought of us "bringing some spice". It has been decades since he had any fun like it.
• As guests, we should offer our lord a token of fealty. He pointed at Sirius: "Offer me your blood." Sirius, charmed to the gills: "That sounds like an entirely reasonable idea." Strahd took him by the hair and bit him, not deeply. It hurt him and cut into his strength until he rested.
• "Remember this when tomorrow you feel more like yourselves. I own this place. You may have your fun, but I get what I want. Feel free to try and stop me, to do what you outsiders usually do, but I shall just enjoy it." Then: "Farewell."

He left, and we stood about agreeing he'd been a lovely fellow, a bit forward with the biting. Somebody wished we'd asked him how to get home. Ireena came out of hiding and sent us to bed: "This happened to my father as well. This will wear off."

The morning after

The charm was gone at waking, and in its place was horror. "I thought you were just sad and drunk," one of us told Fëanor. "I told you," he said.

• Sirius: "I've got the Blood of Angels running through me. Barely scratched." His strength came back overnight.
• The vampire tests. Fingernails: fine. Would he climb the wall? He'd rather have a slightly charred bacon and egg roll. We don't know whether it's the bite that turns you or drinking his blood back, as Doru did. Sirius promised to tell us if blood ever starts to seem like a good idea. Black pudding is the official test, and Ismark says Vallaki is the only place in Barovia with the spices to make it.
• There was no bacon in the house today. Barovia has little land and almost no spices. The Vistani trade goods in from outside, rarely.
• Lily's pie again: she woke and ate one without a word. That's twice.

Ismark's parting counsel: "He is the devil. He is all-powerful. There's nothing we can do. If he turns his eyes to you, you just kneel down and take it." Sirius: "We're going to kill him in a bit." The last mist walkers, Ismark said, came a couple of decades ago, and said much the same. He asked us to get Ireena safe first and not take her on any "extracurriculars". We agreed, and agreed we need to get stronger before we meet Strahd again.

• "For your own sanity, stop thinking of that. You can't leave Barovia. This is your home now." One of us: "I will see the light of the Morning Lord again with my eyes." Ismark: "We'll see how long that opinion lasts."
• Road advice: wolves roam even by day and don't much fear people. "If you manage to dispatch one, the rest usually flee. So, try and focus fire." There are glowing lights, and there are witches.
• He packed rations for all of us and Ireena. Sirius told him about the Burgomaster, a late-night burger place in Waterdeep; Ismark means to try the idea. "The secret is in the sauce."
• Ireena set off with a pack and a song: "I've always thought there must be more than this provincial life."

The road

The lights. From the woods on the right, a voice: "Help. Help. Help." Sirius was about to stride off into the trees to help when a sharp pair of eyes saw what was calling: floating, glowing lights. "It's trying to trick you." He thanked us for stopping him. We didn't follow. The lights never left the treeline; they followed us a while and faded. Ireena: "There's a saying in Barovia, everything dangerous wants to kill you." Later, with Clover's vim in us, we talked about going back and decided against it. We said we'd catch them on the way back.

The menhir. A three-foot standing stone by the road, old and mossy, carved with a winged woman with three eyes, and ringed around its base with the exact symbol on Fëanor's heirloom stone. He held them side by side. One of us knows enough history to say that neither the symbol nor the woman has ever been shown or spoken of in the world we come from. They belong to Barovia. Fëanor took a rubbing.

The heirloom tally, as we stood there: Osric's banner carries the sigil of Strahd's house. Sirius has seen ravens. Fëanor's stone matches the menhir, and he told us it glows at the new moon, in a land where we've seen no moon at all. Lily's tooth is a dire wolf's tooth. Drew's amber necklace, with its strange engravings inside, "apparently unlocks secrets and all sorts, but that could've just been Nana. Nana did like a drink." It has said nothing yet.

Ireena knows the moon only from books. We described it to her as a dinner plate, then a wheel of cheese, glowing. "Fanciful."

The wolves

Late in the day there was a flash of grey in the trees and a howl, and seven wolves and two dire wolves came out of the woods at us.

• Sirius stayed by Ireena ("I can't leave the lady here"), lit his sword and cut a dire wolf. To the wolf that came at him: "We are not squishy food stuffs. Don't try to eat me. There's rabbits in these forests." The DM: "The wolf is unpersuaded."
• Three wolves went for Osric and couldn't get through his chain mail. He answered one with a riposte for sixteen.
• A wolf's teeth were a hair from Drew's skin when a shimmering barrier of magic stopped them: her first Shield.
• Lily darted in at a dire wolf, missed, and ducked back behind the rocks.
• Fëanor's spiritual weapon bit a dire wolf; his guiding bolt sailed over the other.
• Then Drew reached into a pocket, spun a tool, and a little robot formed out of the parts. It stepped up to the wolf Osric had wounded and filled the air with flame, and the wolf burned to a crisp.

The pack took one look at their dead friend and ran, every one of them, exactly as Ismark said. None of us took a scratch.

The robot is called CLOVER: "This is my combat laser ordinance vehicle for emergency enemy removal, or CLOVER for short." Drew had drawn blueprint after blueprint of it, and in the thick of it, it finally clicked. "Those were the bad vibes. Does anyone need good vibes?" We gathered round and felt tougher at once. Sirius: "It's better than morning coffee." Drew hugged it. It runs for about an hour. "It's very cute for something that just burnt a wolf to death."

Osric skinned the kill with Drew's monster-harvesting tools and her coaching: one pristine wolf pelt, lightly charred. They buy pelts in Vallaki. Fëanor sneezed and blamed Clover, then the pelt.

Tser Pool

Toward evening Osric found cart ruts on a rougher spur off the main road, and Ireena thought this was the way to Tser Pool, though she'd never been. It led to firelight, music and laughter. After the Village of Barovia it was almost shocking. "Oh, guests. Come on, come join the campfire." The price of hospitality: "The trade of a story."

Sirius paid it with the truth. Waterdeep, a family of vineyards, a heroic grandfather and a wastrel father; drinking fine vintage in the street at thirteen; and at fifteen his grandfather pressing a raven's feather into his hand and sending him to a boarding school for priests, where they drilled into him a love of the sun. The Vistani know Faerûn. "Good story. Good trade." There was food and singing.

Then a large man strode out of the big tent at the back.

"What took you, Drusila, Fëanor, Lilli-grai, Osric, Sirius? You are expected."

Every name. We have never seen him before.

Where we stand

• At the Vistani camp at Tser Pool, one day of four into the road to Vallaki, with Ireena in our care. It's evening. Clover has gone.
• Doru is at rest. Father Donavich is alive and grieving.
• Strahd has met us, charmed the whole household, drunk from Sirius, and told us he'll enjoy watching us try.
• Kit: Ismark's map, rations for the road, one charred wolf pelt, Fëanor's rubbing of the menhir, three potions of healing, and a tavern's worth of flagons.
• Still Level 3.

Questions on our minds

• Who is the man in the tent, and how are we expected? Answered, Session 6: he keeps Madam Eva's door, and she had been waiting for us.
• Why is Fëanor's symbol carved on a Barovian standing stone? Who is the winged woman with three eyes? And why does a moon-stone glow in a land with no moon?
• What is Drew's amber waiting for?
• What did Strahd mean by "one of my pups managed to grab you… it will recover"?
• Does the bite turn you, or the drinking back?
• Could anything have been done for Doru? Can the turned ever be saved?
• What is in the pies? Answered, Session 7: see those notes.
• How do we get them out of Lily? Answered, Session 8: tied to a tree, night after night, until the magic let go.