Session 2 - Chapter 1
RAILROADED
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Arianna said to a passing woman. “I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the village of Barovia.”
The woman glared at them with thinly veiled enmity. “What, do the devil’s minions come out in daylight now? I think you know all about the problems up in Barovia.”
Arianna and Gerrit exchanged a look. “I don’t understand,” Gerrit said cautiously. “We…”
“Just don’t be plaguing us, here, with your mischief. Move along or I’ll alert the constable.” The woman stalked away.
Arianna shook her head and watched the woman storm off. “What do you think that was about? Look, all around us, others are glaring at us.” It was true- people were giving them the sideways glance as they went about their business.
A young boy with a candied fish on a stick said “It was because you came in on a boat that was trailing mist I think.” He took a lick of his fish. “People were saying they didn’t like your mist, I think it was the mist. I think they didn’t like your mist. Yeah.” He grinned.
“Our… mist? The spells we used to escape the pirate ship?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know but this one lady said a bad word about your mist and spat on the ground.” The boy laughed and walked away.
The adventurers were about to move on when a dwarf was thrown out of the Sorrowful Cup tavern. He came stumbling backward out of the saloon-style doors and tripped over Arianna’s panther Jade. His arms pinwheeled as he toppled over. In an instant Jade was on him, pinning him to the ground and growling low in her throat. “Sit,” he mumbled up into the cat’s snarling face.
Gerrit and Arianna helped the dwarf to his feet while laughter came from the tavern. “Thank you,” the dwarf said into his chest as he stood. “That was less than dignified.”
Arianna brushed him off. “Are you alright? What happened?”
“I don’t even know. Superstitious townfolk don’t know how to treat a stranger. All I did was ask how to get to Barovia and several large apelike goons took to muscling me out of their bar.”
“You’re going to Barovia?” Gerrit asked.
“Yep. I’m joining an adventuring group that’s already establishing themselves there. Big problems up in Barovia, so I hear.”
“What a coinky-dink, we’re going ourselves.”
“Huh.” The dwarf thought for a moment. “What’s a coinky-dink?”
Gerrit ignored that. “Care to travel together for a while?"
A voice from the tavern shouted something about
let’s go get those mist-using monsters and maybe that dwarf too, followed by drunken cheers of encouragement.
“Sounds good,” the dwarf said as he started hustling for the crossroads. “Name’s Crickbourn.”
The road east out of Palervale was a rutted dirt road lined with thin underbrush and dark evergreen trees. The wind blew through the treetops and across the party’s backs. Leaves skipped along the road beneath the sky and the elf, the halfling, the dwarf and the panther walked for hours toward Barovia.
The sun began to set and the forest took on a sinister cast. The trees were dark shapes moving by them in the gloaming as they walked. A dim mist had begun to build on the ground and over lateral distance, adding to the melancholy flavor of the scenery. The crescent moon was climbing in the dusk sky.
Arianna shivered and wrapped her cloak around her shoulders.
The sun’s light was almost entirely gone when a noise came from up the road. The party stopped in the road and listened. Horses’ hooves and the turn of wheels. Through the trees, a red light could just be seen on the curving road ahead, coming closer.
Crickbourn licked his lips, looked around and darted into the underbrush. Gerrit turned to him. “What are you doing?”
“Uh. Hiding.” The dwarf hunched his shoulders behind a tree, partly from embarrassment.
Gerrit and Arianna stood on the side of the road and watched. The mist of the road was lit with a reddish light. A carriage came around the corner. It was led by two pitch black Vistani stallions wearing equally black blinders, bridles, and jutting feather headdresses. The carriage was an ornate, enclosed space with burgundy curtains. A red-glassed lantern hung from each front corner of the carriage. Somewhere off in the far distance, a wolf howled.
No one was driving the horses.
The carriage stopped on the road by the heroes and the horses stamped the ground. The door to the carriage opened. The inside was empty and lined with comfortable looking red silk cushions.
“That’s… creepy,” Gerrit said.
Crickbourn was peering out from behind his tree. “Are we supposed to get in?”
“I don’t think I want to get in that,” Arianna said, shaking her head.
“Um. Move on horsies. Get along now.” Gerrit waved his hands westward, trying to get the horses to move. They ignored him.
Arianna stepped up to the horses. “I think I can get them to go away.” She pushed aside one horse’s blinders and looked into its eyes, speaking softly, trying to establish a connection. She stopped and looked closely for a moment, then with a start jumped back from the horse. She clutched her robe around her and her face was aghast.
“What?” Crickbourn asked. “What’s wrong?”
“The eyes,” Arianna said. “They’re made of glass. They’re painted glass, like taxidermists use. Someone took out its eyes.”
Gerrit gasped. “Vennia preserve us. Did it listen, at least?”
“I don’t even know if they’re alive. I don’t want to try again.”
The howl came again from the woods- only this time, there were two wolves baying to the moon. They sounded closer. Crickbourn quickly ran back to the road from his place behind the tree.
“We should just keep walking,” Gerrit said. “How much further can it be to Barovia? We’re almost there, I think.” He looked up the road and was astonished to see that the thin mist they’d been walking through was now a thick fog that obscured the distance. Their vision only saw maybe a hundred feet into the mist. The trees were now mere shapes, gray against gray. “The fog is getting thicker.”
“It is,” Crickbourn said. “Maybe we should get in.”
“Nonsense, it’s only fog.” Gerrit walked up the road cautiously. The others watched him almost disappear into the mist.
In the mist, Gerrit was struck by something, and he couldn’t put a finger on it at all. In a moment it came to him- it was silent in the mist. No wind, no birds, no whisper of leaves in the trees. Barely his own footsteps beneath him, barely his own breathing. It was silent as the grave.
The further he walked, the more the fog thickened. Before long he couldn’t see his own hand at arm’s length before him. He turned back to the carriage and the others.
Arianna watched him melt from the fog on the road and saw a hunched shape following him, just over his shoulder. She called out “Gerrit, behind you!” The halfling quickly rolled to a kneel, facing the way he’d come. There was nothing there. He waited for a moment then rejoined the others.
“That fog’s too thick,” Gerrit said. “It plays tricks on you. I don’t think we should walk through it.”
“What are we going to do?” Crickbourn asked.
“I think we should camp here tonight.”
“We could get in the carriage. No mist in there.” The dwarf clearly was clutching to his sanity, surrounded as he was by mist-shrouded wilderness. His eyes bugged as he looked around.
Arianna said “I’d rather camp than get in that thing. Traveling will be better by daylight.”
The door to the carriage swung shut with a click. The horses began to trot off, west, into the mists. The red light faded and the heroes were alone in the road in the thick fog.
The howling came again and Crickbourn jumped. “That was close. Maybe five hundred feet off. How many did that sound like?”
“At least three,” Gerrit said. “And from different angles. They’re surrounding us.”
Jade was looking around, nearly panicked. Arianna petted her and said “They’re big. They’re also baying in a certain pattern… which means they’re hunting.”
“Damn,” Gerrit said. “Maybe we should have gotten in the carriage after all. This is bad.”
“We should climb a tree,” Crickbourn said. The others agreed before he was even done voicing the idea. They all climbed up the nearest tree. From here the ground was completely covered in mist.
The howls came from every direction. This time there were no fewer than six of the bestial voices, maybe a hundred feet away from the tree and circling.
Then, the red light began to dimly bloom again from the west. “The carriage!” Crickbourn cried. “It’s coming back!” The horses, seemingly undeterred by the wolves in the fog all around them, pulled up and stopped on the road.
Crickbourn said “I’m going, wherever that thing is headed has got to be safer than this.” He crawled out over the branch towards the roof of the carriage and slipped. He fell to the ground with a thud. More frightened than hurt, he scrambled to his feet and leaped into the carriage. He readied himself to close the door quickly if he saw a wolf and shouted “Are you coming? If so, hurry!”
Gerrit, Arianna and Jade ran out over the limb and landed on the roof with a thunk.
Something dark and obscured by mist circled the carriage from its place on the ground. “Immense,” Arianna murmured. “It’s fifteen feet long from nose to tailtip.” Another passed by it, circling in the opposite direction. The horses paid them no attention, and they ignored the horses in turn.
The heroes swung down into the cab of the carriage, and Jade jumped to the ground and then in. Crickbourn shut the door just as something lunged, rocking the carriage on its axles. Claws raked the wood of the door and the horses began moving. After all that silence, the movement of the wheels and the rocking of the cabin was a welcome change.
They settled back on the pillows and let the carriage take them wherever it would.
Coming up
CASTLE RAVENLOFT
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