airwalkrr
Adventurer
Mist blanketed the village, smothering the streets and marooning the buildings, forming an archipelago of crumbling masonry in a gray, hopeless sea.
At the village's lonely edge, most structures were abandoned, burnt-out husks. Charcoal was thick on the air, but that choking odor couldn't overpower the underlying, sickly sweet smell of carrion and spoilage. Claw marks raked some of the vacant homes, ominous not merely because of their presence, but because of the five-fingered, handlike shape they suggested.
Farther inward, most buildings survived. Doors were barricaded with tables, broken carts, and smashed furnishings. Windows were shuttered and planked. But had anyone been saved? Silence was thick in the fog-bound streets, as though from cotton stuffed into the ears. Nothing living stirred, nothing breathing walked the streets.
But where the living were absent, the newly dead shambled.
And hunger, too, raw and unstoppable, stalked the village, multiplying with each new corpse that kicked and shuddered its way back toward animation.
A hunger that could never be slaked.
An infection that could never be stemmed.
You have all had the same nightmare, and it has haunted you for a year since. Whether by fate or happenstance, your travels across the Realm of Dread have put you together. Recognizing the commonality of your shared dark dream, you went to visit a wise woman in the domain of Nova Vaasa. She was a Vistana, a fortune-teller who claimed she could tell you the source of your dreams. As she gazed into her crystal ball, her eyes filled with horror. "The devil..." she whispered in a hoarse voice. "You are fated to encounter the devil."
The wise woman refused to tell you any more, except to say that to fulfill your destiny, you must travel to the domain of Barovia. The dreams would not subside, and so you resolved to follow the gypsy's guidance. Within a fortnight, you had passed through the town of Bergovitsa where you joined a caravan of Vistani who promised to guide you through the mists to Barovia, for a price of course. After coming through the mists you found yourself in an ancient land, one that the caliban, Floch, called his old home. Forests of immeasurable age surrounded the Old Svalich Road leading from east to west through Barovia, and mountains of immense size and power towered over you from far away.
You have not traveled far into the domain and are now resting at the Weary Horse Inn, a roadside hostel whose common room hosts patrons from the sparsely populated countryside. You have decided to stay here for the night and discuss your further plans over dinner.
With the dying of daylight, a fog creeps across the land, clutching everything in its clammy grasp. Inside the Weary Horse Inn, though, the fire is warm enough, and if the few patrons are sullen and stare at you boldly, at least the food and drink are good.
For an inn's common room, it's quiet. It holds no more than a handful of commoners. They keep their voices low, and even the clink of their mugs seems subdued as the fog gathers outside. When the door swings open, every head turns to see who has arrived.
This new arrival loudly stamps the mud off his boots in the doorway, then strides confidently over, throwing a letter down on the table in front of you.
"The village of Barovia is in need of heroes," he says in a thick Vistani accent. "You'll do as well as any." Without another word, he turns to leave.
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