The Road West

What

The one road through Barovia. East, the gates we came in by. West, four days of walking to Vallaki, past Tser Pool Encampment and a windmill we should have left alone.

Travelled

All of it, gates to Vallaki, in Sessions 4 to 7.

The Gates of Barovia

The morning after Death House we followed a slate road that nobody seemed to have walked in years, through woods where nothing looked like anything we knew, hungry and looking for the nearest restaurant. After a few hours it brought us to a stone arch between two high rocks, flanked by two headless statues. Crumbling, unguarded and wide open. Carved on it, in old but readable Common: "Welcome to Barovia, the crown jewel in the Strahd empire."

Above the words was the crest from the letter we'd found in Death House. Osric unrolled his family banner, the one that had pulled him through the mist, and it bore the same sigil. His uncle Steven, who gave it to him, used to talk about noble blood somewhere in the line. Somebody asked whether we should go and find Great Uncle Strahd. Osric does not think he is related. See The Reading for what Madam Eva later said about his blood.

The one road

"There is one road," and the village of Barovia is built around it. Ismark gave us four days' rations each, and his advice for the journey: wolves roam, even by day, and "if you manage to dispatch one, the rest usually flee." There are glowing lights that float about. He had heard tell of witches. Most people who meet bad things out here die, and not many stories make it back.

Day one: lights, a stone, and wolves

• The lights that cry for help. From the trees to the right: "Help. Help. Help." Sirius was already striding off to assist when we saw the voice was coming from floating, glowing lights. We remembered Ismark's warning. Ireena, who had barely been outside her brother's house in her life, offered a Barovian saying: "everything dangerous wants to kill you." The lights followed us a while, never leaving the tree line, and faded. Later, feeling brave, we talked about going back and decided we'd catch them on the way back. If anyone real was ever behind that voice, we are sorry.
• The menhir. A three-foot standing stone at the roadside, old and moss-grown, carved with a winged woman with three eyes. Round its base, again and again, is the symbol on Fëanor's heirloom stone, the one his grandmother gave him. It is exactly the same. Our best historian was sure of one thing: nothing like it has ever been shown or talked about in the world we came from. It belongs here. Fëanor took a rubbing on paper from Death House. Then we asked Ireena about the moon. She knows the word from books and has never seen one, any more than the sun. Fëanor's stone glows at the new moon.
• Wolves. Later that day, a flash of grey in the trees and a howl, and seven wolves and two dire wolves came out at us. Drew chose that moment to build a machine she'd been drawing blueprints for since before the mist: a little walking cannon with a flamethrower, which burned one wolf to a crisp. The rest ran, exactly as Ismark said. Nobody on our side was even scratched. Drew named it on the spot: the Combat Laser Ordnance Vehicle for Emergency Enemy Removal, or CLOVER. Osric skinned the wolf (a pristine pelt, apart from the char), because Ireena says they buy pelts in Vallaki. As somebody said, it's very cute for something that just burned a wolf to death.

That evening a side track with cart ruts led to firelight and fiddles. See Tser Pool Encampment.

Day two: Aragal, then the windmill

Hours west of Tser Pool, hoofbeats behind us, and Aragal: a Vistani rider of some influence from the camp outside Vallaki, friendly, handsome (he'll tell you so) and in a hurry. His road advice was brisk: kill wolves, ignore the will-o'-wispies, travel fast. He warned us that Vallaki lets no Vistani in, and asked us to buy a toy from Blinsky's shop in Vallaki for his daughter, for twenty gold over cost. See A Toy for Araba. We asked if he was a hunter of hunters. "That seems a very grand title to give oneself." Then he rode on.

At dusk we reached The Windmill. That page tells the rest.

Day three: the wolf with the roses

The night after the windmill we cremated our pies and learned what was in them. The next day, in the middle of the road in broad daylight, stood a dire wolf: stock-still, facing us, straining against itself like something on an invisible leash, with a bunch of roses in its mouth. It laid them down and left when we told it to. Round the stems was a note with Ireena written on the side: a love letter from the devil, full of his name. See Strahd's Letter to Ireena. The road is his, and he uses it as a postal service.

Talk turned to what saying his name three times might do, and whether he could be lured onto a very small rock in a volcano. Ireena asked what a volcano was, and told us Barovia hasn't got one. Her request, very politely, was that we save the harebrained schemes until she was safe.

The raven, again. That night, watching our camp from a tree: a raven with little tufty feathers, the very same one we'd seen in the village of Barovia, days and miles behind us. It ignored the food we put out. Lily's gift for talking to animals simply didn't connect, the way it doesn't when the thing isn't an animal. Sirius told it we were friends. Ireena said ravens are lucky. It flew off.

Day four: the farmstead

At noon, off to the right of the road, an abandoned farm left to rot. Our record with buildings so far was one for one terrible, so we went in to make it fifty-fifty. Three grey, shambling dead things stood up out of the hay: not the ghouls from Death House. Sirius spread raven-black wings of shadow and all three froze with fear, and we cut them down without a scratch. Drew's notes for the file: plain steel did better than magic, and silver made no difference at all. We found five silver and sixteen coppers, and Drew kept some zombie guts.

When the wings faded, Ireena asked Sirius if he was an angel. "It seems likely that my family interbred with celestial creatures some time ago, yes." She dropped to her knees and thanked the Morninglord. "We're blessed. We can't fail." We reached the walls of Vallaki at dusk.

Open questions

• Who is the winged woman with three eyes, and why does Fëanor's family stone carry her symbol?
• There is an old henge of standing stones behind the windmill that we never got near. Is it the same thing?
• Who, if anyone, is lost in the woods behind those lights?