The Mists Have Taken Us

A Quick Aside

What follows in the in-character Journal for my character in a game of Curse of Strahd. I am trying to write it at normal points in the game. The first two posts can be found at ONE and TWO.

To clarify, the beginning of this Journal takes place at the end of gaming session1 and at some point in session 2. There is not actually a point where I have had a chance to write this entry, but due to the schedule of the game and the schedule of these posts I have to take certain liberties. There was a moment where we spent about an good 30 minutes in a library, and while my character was busy getting into armor, I’m going top pretend he had a moment to jot these notes that follow.

I just wanted to clarify that these posts will NOT line up with whole sessions of play. Nor will I be delivering tons of dialogue and such. These are notes jotted in a book while my character is under stress and fearing death.

Welcome to Ravenloft.

Being the Second Entry in the Journal of Lucian Esophorus

I write this entry in the hopes that if my body is found at least some explanation of my trials will survive. At the present we find ourselves within a cursed home while a storm rages without. Though in my last entry I was talking of traveling to a strange land and merriment in an ill-named bar.

All of that was lost in a single dream.

Nightmares come True.

I no sooner snuffed the candle and put my head back onto the pillow then I was thrust deep into sleep. I welcomed the deep slumber. Hoping for once I wouldn’t have dreams about my family or the mists again.

But after discovering the other six strangers, each carrying a similar trokka card as myself. Realizing that destiny, fate, or a curse had me ensnared, I had no comforts. Almost immediately I found myself deep in dreams.

My bed floated into a forest, wherein wolves howled and children cried. I shivered.

I had fallen asleep wholly dressed an atop the sheets and when I tried to roll over and ignore the dream I fell from my bed and onto the damp forest floor. The dagger I kept beneath my pillow and this journal landed in the grass before my face and my bed faded from view.

The howls and screams drove me to my feet and I searched the fog between the trees. Shadowy shapes moved and I clutched my knife tight. But the shadows gave way and Tate and Isca both stumbled from the fog.

I was not in dream.

Stripped and Left for Dead

Tate was fully dressed and in foul humor, while Isca was in a dressing gown and barefoot like myself. Within minutes the rest of our strange companions tumbled out of the fog in various levels of disarray. Most in various states of half dress and half gear. Only Naamah was the worse off, as he arrived wrapped in only a sheet and cursing about his lost pomade.

Once we were all gathered and aware that this was our new reality, it was pointed out that the fog seemed thickest on three sides of us and that the other shapes in the mist looked like creatures murdering folks.

And obvious trail was before us and we took it with haste.

As we continued the sound of crying children became louder than the animal grunts behind us. And soon we left the woods and stepped out onto a road that led past a singular home. A three-story stone structure with an iron gate over the front door. Two young children huddled at that door staring into the house.

House or Woods or Further down the Road?

We paused for a second. Mist and wolves behind us, foreboding house and crying children before us.

Naamah took away our misgivings. As much as the tiefling has a habit of making himself the center of all attention. A craving to be seen and a braggart’s way of wanting all of the praise. The sight of children in distress changed his entire mien and I saw enough of a change in character to think differently of him.

As I write this passage, he is claiming my discoveries as his own, and enthralling everyone by reading a letter written by a Lord Strahd von Zarovich. It claims the owners of this house were vile cultists. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Durst House

Time grows short.

The children told Naamah that there was a monster in their basement and that they think it ate their parents. They heard a lot of screaming and they ran from the house. They left a baby in the crib upstairs.

That was all most of us needed to hear. But there were also the wolves in the forest and at the same time it started to rain. No one wanted to stand outside in the cold and dark. We entered the house and dropped the iron portcullis over the door to keep the wolves at bay. The children refused to leave the foyer, but they directed us to a closet with robes and a shield on the wall.

We quickly searched the ground floor of the house and found little more than a few knives and other odds and ends to arm ourselves. Naamah helped himself to several stiff brandies and we all started to feel very off.

Too Many Questions:

First, there was door to a basement anywhere on the ground floor (and why would there be a door on any other level?)

Secondly, the kids claimed that only their parents and a baby were in the house, but we found the dinning room table was set for eight.

Third, the children disappeared, but their creepy doll remained behind.

And fourth, the fog had formed a wall right against the portcullis. It was at this point that Jherek announced himself as a holy paladin and declared that the fog was mystical and evil to the core.

With no other choices we decided to try the stairs to the next level and see if we could find the baby.

Second Level

With the children missing, Naamah once again had a shift in character. He was obsessed with finding them and he carried the doll in his pocket and led the charge up the stairs. The rest of us began to theorize that we were in a ghost house and that different events were happening at the same time. The children had disappeared from a room that had no exit that wasn’t observed.

Naamah refused to believe they were just ghosts, or worse that they were illusions that were meant to use our sympathies to trap us in this house. I think I admire his lack of cynicism, though it is unexpected in a man who calls himself Hell’s Bartender.

The second floor had the children’s rooms which gave us clothes for Isca, a music and dance hall that gave us a spectral starving dog (that gave us the theory of ghosts trapped in loops). And a library that provided much more.

Secret Room

It was in the back of one of the aisles of books that I discovered a hidden chamber and, in this room, I found a corpse and a chest.

Within the I discovered the deed to this house, a windmill, a signed will, and the letter I mentioned earlier. I also discovered some deep demonology and necromancy books. The Durst family was wrapped up in some evil stuff.

It was at this point that Naamah realized something was happening without him in the middle of it. He pushed into the small closet behind me and asked me what I had found. I handed him the letter to appease him and then waved to the evil books while pocketing the deeds and will.

Back to the Beginning

Which brings us back to the beginning of this post. I am taking a moment to write these notes in hopes that if anyone discovers my body, they will understand what happened. Naamah is reading the letter from Lord Strahd. While he sounds like an arrogant noble (like they all do) Baron Durst was worse. At least judging from the books I found, and the fact that Strahd said, “sacrificing people in my name does not bring me pleasure or you favor.”

I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s how I read the letter.

Someone managed to find shoes in my size. We’re going up to the next level and I can’t help but notice that the lights in the house seem dimmer, and the levels are getting dirtier the higher we go.

Hopefully I’ll be able to write more in this journal. If not, do not seek the lands of Barovia. Turn away from such stories and never enter the Durst House.