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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr Midnight" data-source="post: 3643723" data-attributes="member: 69">Session 3 - Chapter 1 BAROVIA Some text taken or paraphrased from EXPEDITION TO CASTLE RAVENLOFTGerrit was walking up and down the corridors of the  castle, following a voice. The voice was whispering his name insistently, but every time he turned another corner there was no one to be seen- only the whisper of his name coming from the next corner. The voice had kept calling him down stairways and down ladders, down, down, further down. No matter how far he descended there was always another staircase or trap door, and there was always the voice whispering to him from beneath.GerritHe woke up suddenly. Was that the distant sound of glass breaking? He rubbed his head and sat up in the bed in Ravenloft’s guest room. He hadn’t slept well at all. He had kept half-waking, thinking he heard horrible things in the darkness… and that nightmare. It hadn’t been especially   frightening, but the sense of dread was still soaked into the pores of his mind. He eagerly tried to forget it. “Morning,” he said groggily.Arianna came out of her meditation on the chair facing the fireplace. “Good morning. Sleep well?”“Well enough.”“Liar,” the elf said with a smile as she stood up and stretched. “You were tossing and turning all night."Gerrit got out of bed and went about his prayers. The pall of the nightmare still hung on his thoughts- in his mind, his goddess was distant. Cold. She had no face. Arianna interrupted his morning prayer routine. “Gerrit. Gerrit!” “What?”“Crickbourn’s gone.”Gerrit got up and looked to the floor where the dwarf’s bedroll had been lain. His possessions were all gone, but there was a folded note in their place. Gerrit picked it up and read.Friends-Thank you for your hospitality. I’m afraid it’s now my time to go on my way… I have to join others in the battle against the undead around Barovia. I have a spell that will open the deadlock on the door for me, and I’m sorry if I woke you up as I cast it. I’ll leave the door unlocked. Perhaps I’ll see you around. Crickbourn“That’s bizarre, I didn’t even notice him leaving,” Arianna said, scratching her head. “I’m normally pretty alert in the midst of my meditations.”“Quiet dwarf,” Gerrit yawned. “Let’s get moving.”Downstairs, they found no breakfast, no torches lit, and no Count. Only another note, this one written in an elegant hand on a much older piece of yellowed parchment. AriannaIn these times it can be hard to know the right thing to do. I trust that your dedication to your family will guide your hand. The carriage is waiting outside. It will take you to the gates of Barovia.I recommend that you act surreptitiously. By this I mean that it would not be wise to announce that you are a Von Zarovich or that we are aligned in a cause. Rather, act as an outsider with good intent. Counter the filthy lies of the witches where you can, fight the undead, and befriend the good people of Barovia. Their hearts will open to you, I know. Don’t forget to work on locating the despicable “Tome of Strahd” and erasing its lies from the world. My apologies for not attending you this morning, but I have work to do elsewhere… as do you, I think. Good luck today.Your great-uncle, Count Strahd Von  Zarovich “Ahh,” Gerrit sighed. “No breakfast. Looks like trail rations in the carriage. Well, let’s go.”<img src="http://a132.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/74/l_8cb59b0bf1f8084d97818e3453a2be0b.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> In the carriage, Gerrit gnawed unhappily on one of Froffin’s pressed-oat bars. This one was supposedly blueberry flavored. “These things really are unpleasant,” he said through a mouthful of brick-tasting thickness.The carriage began going through its odd motions… tipping backwards, looping oddly, almost seeming to go backwards at one point.Gerrit finished his oat bar and grimaced. He crumpled the paper wrapping and dropped it into his haversack. He looked up at Arianna and found her staring off into space, deep in thought. “Something wrong?”She blinked and smiled, then looked away. “No. I’m just not sure this is what I want. This Strahd gentleman, he seems nice enough but I can’t say I trust him. I get a weird feeling from him, like he’s not who he says he is.”“What would he be playing at, though?” Gerrit asked. “Why would he be looking to use you? You don’t have much money or political power or anything. Also, if he wants to seduce you, he came at you with the wrong angle for that from the start.” He shuddered and Arianna laughed appreciatively.  “I know what you mean, though. This whole thing is weird, and that castle is just outright creepy. We’ve just got to keep our eyes and ears open.”“Yeah, but beyond that, I’m not even certain I want to be heir to this castle or fortune. Money’s nice enough, but what’s that worth? Plus, this area…” She parted the burgundy curtains and looked out. She very quickly shut them. She’d seen something shapeless and unnatural in the fog as it passed. “I wouldn’t want to live here,” she finished.After a time, the carriage stopped and the door opened. They got out onto the road, almost exactly where the horses had picked them up the night before. The carriage moved off and they began walking.Black pools of water stood like dark mirrors about the muddy roadway. A shroud of thick, cold mist spread over the ground. Giant tree trunks stood guard on both sides of the road, their branches clawing at the mists. In every direction the fog grew thicker and the forest seemed more oppressive.“I will say, though,” Arianna admitted, “that despite the oddness of the customs here, I am a bit  enchanted by the quaint old-world architecture and superstitions. The whole region has a… certain flavor that Ortil and the mainland don’t. Does that make sense?”They arrived at a waypoint. Gray in the fog, high stone pillars loomed up from the impenetrable woods on both sides of the road. Huge iron gates hung from the stonework,  dew clinging to their rusting bars. Standing before the pillars were two stone statues of armed guardians with wicked polearms. Their carved heads lay among the weeds at their feet, neatly broken from the stone shoulders.  As they walked towards the gate, it opened with the high, keening sound of iron on iron. They walked through the gate and it closed behind them with a scrape-clang.Gerrit said “That’s not enchanting, that’s just unnerving.”  They walked on. Jade stalked at Arianna’s side, keeping her eyes to the mist, not trusting.Tall shapes loomed from the dense fog, and the muddy ground underfoot gave way to slick, wet cobblestones. A dilapidated wooden sign read “Welcome to the Village of Barovia.” As they grew closer, the shapes resolved into tenements whose windows were boarded, broken, and lightless. Nothing moved nearby, though the fog limited visibility. Faint sounds, as of something groaning, echoed hollowly from somewhere deeper in the settlement.“Oh, I don’t like that,” Arianna said. “Zombie?”“Sounds like it. We’d best be ready.”They walked forward slowly. The streets were choked with mist, limiting vision to only a few dozen feet. The buildings here at the edge of town looked abandoned, burned out, or barricaded. Garbage littered the ground, and a carrion stench assaulted their noses. Ahead, an overturned haycart blocked the street. Gerrit held up his hand, motioning for them to stop. They peered into the mist ahead. Were those shapes, bobbing slowly? The sound of clumsy shuffling could be distantly heard. Arianna clutched at his arm suddenly and gestured down a thin alleyway to their right that ended in a wall. At that wall, a man was facing away from them, swaying on his feet. “Should we talk to him?” Arianna asked.“I’d rather find out of he’s alive, first,” Gerrit said. The man raised his arm. There was a bite on  his wrist that had turned black, and yellowish, jaundiced veins ran from it. The wound leaked clear stuff. He slowly slapped the wall as if looking for a way through. The shapes ahead of them, beyond the haycart, were groaning and walking with stiff limbs. The heads jerked with each step and their was no fluidity to their movement.“Right,” Gerrit whispered. “I’m going to cast a spell on us… I think it would be best, for now, if we weren’t seen. We need to learn more before we just start attacking these things. Do some investigating first.” He began to cast the spell, speaking the words of prayer.The man at the end of the alley slowly turned around. His eyes were glazed and dead, and his lower jaw had been ripped off. His tongue looped and curled stupidly beneath the roof of his mouth and his tunic was stained with old blood and pus. He looked toward where the noise had come from, and saw nothing. He turned back to the wall and kept trying to find a way into it, where the soft pink food was hiding. Invisible to undead, Gerrit, Arianna and Jade slipped up the street.Coming up PAINT THE TOWN DEAD .</blockquote>

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