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barovians2024-10-16 04:50 pm
alliegiance) wrote in barovians2024-10-16 04:50 pm
01 - arriving
HOUSE GUESTS
The world has built up centuries’ worth of stories.
Stories passed with love from parent to child, snug in their beds, their words the only sound that could exist in a world muted beneath thick, soft snowfall. Bawdy songs and outrageous tales scream-sung in taverns. Jokes and anecdotes shared between friends, an unseen piece of one another exchanged. Bits of comfort stolen and divided among a ragged circle, a ring seated in a campfire’s glow as though it exists as the last warmth in a cruel and cold land. Stories you press your hands against for warmth – tug around yourself as you might a comfortable blanket. Stories so dear that you hold them hard against your heart until they leave an imprint. The sort you can’t wait to escape into.
This will be another sort of story.
A dead land. A cold scar of a valley, choking with trees hard and dead and wild, seamed by a single treacherous road. Godless churches, black and cold in the ever-gathering mists. Soil centuries unkissed by both dawn and its Lord. A people hardened by fright, starved by a land that gives to them nothing and takes from them everything. An ancient castle, maze-like and imperious and named by a son for his mother. The deadly lair of a vampire king.
The vampire king.
Here in the valley you stumble your way to, gasping and sick from the poison, live a thousand, thousand miseries. Ruled by their king, from his throne in the castle Ravenloft. He is the ancient, and he is the land.
He is Strahd von Zarovich.
Though you will soon wish otherwise, you now have his attention.
(random.org for your rng pleasure)
Stories passed with love from parent to child, snug in their beds, their words the only sound that could exist in a world muted beneath thick, soft snowfall. Bawdy songs and outrageous tales scream-sung in taverns. Jokes and anecdotes shared between friends, an unseen piece of one another exchanged. Bits of comfort stolen and divided among a ragged circle, a ring seated in a campfire’s glow as though it exists as the last warmth in a cruel and cold land. Stories you press your hands against for warmth – tug around yourself as you might a comfortable blanket. Stories so dear that you hold them hard against your heart until they leave an imprint. The sort you can’t wait to escape into.
This will be another sort of story.
A dead land. A cold scar of a valley, choking with trees hard and dead and wild, seamed by a single treacherous road. Godless churches, black and cold in the ever-gathering mists. Soil centuries unkissed by both dawn and its Lord. A people hardened by fright, starved by a land that gives to them nothing and takes from them everything. An ancient castle, maze-like and imperious and named by a son for his mother. The deadly lair of a vampire king.
The vampire king.
Here in the valley you stumble your way to, gasping and sick from the poison, live a thousand, thousand miseries. Ruled by their king, from his throne in the castle Ravenloft. He is the ancient, and he is the land.
He is Strahd von Zarovich.
Though you will soon wish otherwise, you now have his attention.
(random.org for your rng pleasure)
1. THE VILLAGE BAROVIA
Julien | Joon-gi Han | Gale | Halsin | Reliani
If “run-down” were a place, chances are good that it would look something like the valley’s own castle seat.
It is a ravaged village, lashed together by nothing but the tenuous will of the land’s own master. Barovia Village has no walls, no armored guards.
No protection.
The roads are gouged mud and the people retreat from you like dogs beaten one too many times. Their homes are rotting and bug-eaten wood, and each looks ready to collapse into the mud for good. The priest is too maddened by the state of his son to do anything but pray to a God who will never answer. The only purveyors of goods here are a cutthroat scam artist who has found a number of ways to squeeze blood from a stone, and an old woman tottering a chipped-up cart of meat pies up and down the village’s central artery. The bar is run down and full of drunks trying to wash away some tragedy. The wailing of a mother bereft of her child cuts through the village. The burgomaster is dead, and his children, Ismark and Ireena, are reticent to bury him for the beasts that circle and attack the walls and doors of their home.
Standing imperious and undeniable above this slump of tragedy are the black towers of Castle Ravenloft, clear and sharp even as the mist softens the lands before her. From one of those black spires, a pair of red eyes silently fixes on this very roof.
He watches. And he waits.
It is a ravaged village, lashed together by nothing but the tenuous will of the land’s own master. Barovia Village has no walls, no armored guards.
No protection.
The roads are gouged mud and the people retreat from you like dogs beaten one too many times. Their homes are rotting and bug-eaten wood, and each looks ready to collapse into the mud for good. The priest is too maddened by the state of his son to do anything but pray to a God who will never answer. The only purveyors of goods here are a cutthroat scam artist who has found a number of ways to squeeze blood from a stone, and an old woman tottering a chipped-up cart of meat pies up and down the village’s central artery. The bar is run down and full of drunks trying to wash away some tragedy. The wailing of a mother bereft of her child cuts through the village. The burgomaster is dead, and his children, Ismark and Ireena, are reticent to bury him for the beasts that circle and attack the walls and doors of their home.
Standing imperious and undeniable above this slump of tragedy are the black towers of Castle Ravenloft, clear and sharp even as the mist softens the lands before her. From one of those black spires, a pair of red eyes silently fixes on this very roof.
He watches. And he waits.
2. THE TOWN OF KREZK
The Ghoul | Lozelle | Vasilka | Shadowheart
By virtue of comparison, the town of Krezk must seem like a veritable paradise.
The town is stationed securely at the other end of the valley from far-flung Barovia Village and the valley's castle seat. Built from rock, old and sturdy homes nestled around cobbled roads. The town is nestled in the trees and cliffs, surrounded by wolf-song and fog, but hedged in by a sturdy stone wall. The village's crust of snow has built into a blanket this far north, but the town yet defies the cold. The people here maintain what gardens they can and raise animals for food.
They smile.
But above the village sits a compound to rival Castle Ravenloft. An ancient monastery. The place where, so it's said, the sainted hero Markovia made her first stand against the Beast in the name of the Morninglord, and struck out on a holy crusade against he and his forces of darkness.
She failed, and the monastery closed its doors, standing silent for well over a century. Only a handsome pilgrim found it in him to disturb its rest, demanding the right to reopen the monastery for the good of the people.
That pilgrim is the Abbot, a mysterious figure who still operates the abbey to this day, fighting ailments spiritual and physical alike.
And it is he who will stay the guards and, on the very eve of a frigid and harsh winter, make another demand of the townsfolk who would shut you out to conserve their own supplies - let me take them.
The town is stationed securely at the other end of the valley from far-flung Barovia Village and the valley's castle seat. Built from rock, old and sturdy homes nestled around cobbled roads. The town is nestled in the trees and cliffs, surrounded by wolf-song and fog, but hedged in by a sturdy stone wall. The village's crust of snow has built into a blanket this far north, but the town yet defies the cold. The people here maintain what gardens they can and raise animals for food.
They smile.
But above the village sits a compound to rival Castle Ravenloft. An ancient monastery. The place where, so it's said, the sainted hero Markovia made her first stand against the Beast in the name of the Morninglord, and struck out on a holy crusade against he and his forces of darkness.
She failed, and the monastery closed its doors, standing silent for well over a century. Only a handsome pilgrim found it in him to disturb its rest, demanding the right to reopen the monastery for the good of the people.
That pilgrim is the Abbot, a mysterious figure who still operates the abbey to this day, fighting ailments spiritual and physical alike.
And it is he who will stay the guards and, on the very eve of a frigid and harsh winter, make another demand of the townsfolk who would shut you out to conserve their own supplies - let me take them.
no subject
In an instant, the shot makes sharp impact on her right leg. Ezmerelda is welcomed back to the visible world buckling on her metal knee with a sharp, hot ping singing across the planes of snow. She crunches the eye of her axe through the snow and pushes herself back to her feet.
A shooter - and no mere bowman. She'd had little personal exposure to her teacher's weapon, but she recognizes the force and sound well enough. Spells pass behind her eyes - Magic Circle; she could ward it, but such effort may be in vain. She could not yet be totally sure of what it was, and nor could she be sure that she could force it into close quarters with her. Shield would only guard her against physical harm, and she can't be sure of what this thing would inflict. Lightning Bolt may end things before she has an understanding of the creature she's met - and besides, those components are expensive to the average wanderer through the mist. Best to save the next crystalline rod for something that needs it.
Better, then, to confound its senses; or perhaps, to test if it had senses to confound. To make herself as difficult to hit as she could as she worked out the finer points of its nature.
She acts in the only fashion she's ever known to act; quickly. Wizardry singes through her as Ezmerelda arranges herself in the slivered seconds that follow, murmurs the words into the cold air. Constructs from them three copies of herself out of air to circle her, asserting themselves in mirror exactness to her own movements.
Three copies to eye him down like a hawk as they quickly close the distance through the snow.
no subject
The better question, though, is why she's alone.
As she conjures the mirror images, he takes a step back and exchanges his pistol for the sword sheathed beside it. Though it seems to have lost its luster years ago, the blade has been kept sharp.
"This how you wake everyone up, or am I just special?"