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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
He pays his ancient glass - and the ruby red token contained within - a thin, sidelong glance. He knows little of this land, and he thinks, less of what plagues it. What he's seen in this short time has shown him shades of it, slanted like sunbeams through trees in the valley's people. Hard-hearted and wary, all. On their toes like spry and frightened cats, ready to jump away at a moment's notice. The only source could be repeated, extended turmoil; the people of this land surely had reason to drink in excess. Godfrey's seen a certain unpleasantness on the Coast, and he's seen this particular shine in certain individuals. He's never seen an entire population afflicted by it.
The reply the stranger gives feels less alike to a proper response and more like an evasion. As though he had seen his words, spied the meaning and mistrust he laced them with, and decided to cover his eyes to it completely. Godfrey would keep his eyes on him.
Where the stranger swallows light, Godfrey beams it - he may as well be the sun itself, for how the people of this place (Barovia?) have averted their eyes at his very presence. Nearly all facets of himself shine as though they'd stored the sun's light for this very purpose, just to expel it here.
And, apparently, it was quite needed.
"What do you mean?" One golden-shelled hand plays around the neck of his glass, as destitute drunks around him lift their heads and begin appraising his impressive carapace, "It is daytime. The sun is surely above us."
Godfrey had hoped that, perhaps, it had merely been kept at a distance by the treacherous mist.
no subject
Joon-gi closes his eyes briefly, drawing in a breath that he does not truly need, and exhales softly. Gaining this stranger's trust will prove challenging, that much is certain. This is no naïve squire, lost and alone, desperate for a guiding hand to lead him out of the darkness.
No, this stranger isn't like those poor fools who have come before—eager little lambs that they were—ripe for the slaughter.
Joon-gi feels those invisible fingers digging painfully into his shoulder; icy claws cutting through his flesh straight to the bone. He can all too easily imagine the hungry look on his brother's face, the skinning back of lips against sharpened teeth.
There is something different about this one, they both know it. Something that burns brighter than the gleaming weapon strapped to his back. A pure and radiant soul that will make him enticing prey for all the dark and creeping things that roam this godforsaken land.
They need to find some means of shielding that light, before it attracts the attention of more powerful predators...
Joon-gi leans back in his seat, the worm-eaten wood creaking precariously with the movement. He crosses his arms loosely, watching as Godfrey idly toys with his glass, perhaps trying to distract from the fact that he will not accept their humble offering. Not yet, at any rate.
"You speak with such confidence, surely a testament to the strength of your own faith in these blighted lands."
He smiles once more, but there is no mirth to the look. His dark eyes have narrowed to sharpened pieces of obsidian, his shrewd gaze cutting straight through the man seated before him.
"But these people can no longer place their faith in that which cannot be seen with their own eyes. The sun was stolen long ago, when the Morninglord abandoned the land and its people. And now you arrive in your holy raiment with that relic strapped to your back, and you wonder why these people cower before you?" He huffs a soft, pitying laugh. "It's because no one has seen the sun in over four hundred years. The light that you bear is too bright for their feeble eyes..."
He leans forward in his seat, trying not to squint against the brightness radiating from Godfrey's weapon. His voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper: "And they are afraid of you."