The sun shone over Barovia with scarcely enough strength to give the road a shadow. Beyond the eastern gates, the valley lay washed in gray, its scattered roofs trailing smoke into a colorless sky. High above the village, Castle Ravenloft rose from the cliffs. Elora remembered that height. Even at this distance, looking up at it brought back the sensation of falling.
They had come through the painting in Veyr’s tower seeking something they had missed. Now, with the village ahead and the familiar road beneath their feet, it seemed possible that they might find it. Barovia had kept its oppressive stillness. The same dim daylight lay across the valley, and the castle waited where it always had.
Then Elora looked toward the outskirts of the village.
“The house is gone.”
Thorn had already slowed. He remembered its position well enough to feel the wrongness of the empty space. The house had been there when they first entered Barovia, though they had encountered it long before that, on an island during their voyage toward Chult. There had been children inside. Ghost children, and beneath the house, caves where a cult’s horrors had outlived its worshippers. They had fought something there, survived it, and returned to their ship. By morning, the hill had stood empty.
Finding the same house in Barovia had been disturbing enough. Its absence now gave them little comfort.
“Before or after?” Thorn murmured. Elora glanced at him. “Our last visit. Do we know?”
They did not. For a moment he considered the crown, the visions, the strange crossings into events that should have been beyond their reach. But the crown remained with Veyr. They had stepped through his painting, and the road underfoot felt solid enough. Ahead of them, a villager crossed between houses without looking their way. Whatever this was, they would have to learn its rules by living through it.
They entered the village beneath the gaze of shuttered windows. Smoke rose from chimneys. Here and there someone walked the street, tending to an errand with the subdued haste of a person who disliked being outside. The square, the shop, the tavern, all were familiar. The burgomaster’s mansion lay farther south.
“Let’s try the tavern first,” Thorn said. “We might learn something over a pint.”
It was a sensible suggestion. Elora followed him inside.
Arik stood behind the bar. A few patrons occupied the room. Three women sat together near the door, and a man sat alone at a table. Thorn stopped just beyond the threshold. He knew this arrangement: the women near the entrance, the solitary man, the people at the bar. Memory settled over the room with such precision that, for an instant, he waited for someone to repeat words he ought to remember.
The man at the table was Ismark.
Elora looked from him to the others. They had noticed it too. She approached his table.
“Do we look familiar to you?”
Ismark lifted his head. He studied her, then glanced at her companions, his eyes narrowing with the effort of placing faces.
“I don’t believe so.”
“Have we met before?”
Again he looked. “No.”
Elora felt the answer more keenly than she expected. She had known this man. They had spoken of his family, stood in his home, taken on a duty that grief had left him unable to perform alone. None of it showed in his face.
“How is your sister?”
His uncertainty sharpened into suspicion. “She’s been troubled. How do you know about my sister? You aren’t from the village.”
“Is she in danger?” Thorn asked.
Ismark hesitated, but the question touched something more urgent than his distrust. He leaned toward them and lowered his voice. “Strahd’s minions come every night. We’ve boarded the house, done what we can. I want to get her away from here.”
“Where?”
“Vallaki. She might be safer there.”
It was a long journey, and Ismark had found too few people willing to undertake it. He could not risk the road without help. He spoke of the attacks with the exhaustion of someone who had counted too many nights by the sounds beyond a barricaded door.
“I don’t know why he’s so fixated on her.”
Elora did. Or she remembered knowing. Irina’s face had resembled that of Strahd’s dead wife. The resemblance had drawn his attention, and his intentions had become clearer during their time in the castle. Yet here was her brother, asking for help as though those discoveries still lay ahead.
Thorn rested a hand against the edge of the table. “And the house on the outskirts? The haunted one?”
Ismark gave him a wary look. “Some say the house itself is a ghost. Sometimes it’s there. Sometimes it isn’t.”
That explained its absence as well as anything in Barovia could. It did nothing to explain why Ismark sat at the same table with the same troubles, looking at them as strangers.
When they drew aside to speak, Thorn kept his voice low. “It’s as though we’ve arrived when we did before.”
“We’re assuming that,” Elora said.
“Everything is the same.”
“Almost.”
He looked toward the door, remembering the vacant place where the house should have stood. They had expected to revisit Barovia. Thorn had imagined finding the consequences of their actions, some sign that the things they had done here had endured. Instead, they faced the same plea for help.
Veyr’s painting troubled him more with every passing moment. The crown had drawn them into the past. Now Veyr had sent them somewhere that behaved much the same way, without the crown at all. Were they walking through memory? Had they crossed through time? Their own recollections offered less certainty than he wanted. They had fled Barovia with the mists consuming the land behind them, riding for their lives. They had never remained to see what became of the village.
Elora thought of the island house again. They had escaped that place too. They remembered the monster they had defeated, but what had happened to the children? What had their victory actually changed? Survival had carried them onward before they could find out.
“Last time, we went to the castle,” she said. “This time we could help her get to Vallaki.”
Thorn considered the familiar room, the familiar man waiting at its solitary table. “That would be a change.”
They returned to Ismark.
“We’d like to help your sister,” Elora told him.
Relief broke through his guarded expression so quickly that she felt ashamed of how much of the conversation she had spent thinking about time. Whatever had brought them here, his fear was immediate. He rose and asked them to follow.
One of the mansion’s iron gates lay torn from its hinges. Weeds crowded the neglected grounds, and boards covered the windows. Great scratches scored the walls and shutters. Here and there, blackened patches marked places where fire had licked the building. Ismark had described the attacks quietly. The house gave a less restrained account.
As they approached, Elora tried to summon her memory of entering it before, and something slipped. She knew she had been here. That knowledge remained firm, yet the rooms she expected to remember withdrew from her. She reached for details and found only impressions, as elusive as the last fragments of a dream after waking. Beside her, Thorn looked at the mansion with an unease that mirrored her own. The tavern had been almost painfully exact. Here, familiarity was dissolving.
Ismark led them through a damaged door. Inside, furniture and other heavy objects stood ready to be dragged back into place when the household barricaded itself for the night. A coffin rested on a table, and an elderly man lay within it.
“My father,” Ismark said. “The attacks were too much for his heart.”
Elora looked at the still face, and a faint recollection stirred. She could not hold it long enough to be certain of its shape.
Irina greeted her brother and looked toward the people he had brought home.
“They’ve offered to help,” he told her. “To take you somewhere safe.”
Her attention moved to the coffin. “I’m not leaving until Father has been taken to the church and properly buried.”
There was no room for persuasion in her voice, and Elora understood. Whatever waited on the road, whatever watched from Ravenloft, this was a duty Irina could still insist upon. Her father lay in the house he had failed to keep safe, and she would see him cared for before she abandoned it.
“He died three days ago,” Irina said.
She told them something else. Since his death, the attacks had stopped. For the first time in weeks, the household had passed nights without creatures trying to break through the walls.
Thorn glanced toward the scored door. The timing suggested a connection, but gave him no way to understand it. Had the man’s death accomplished something Strahd wanted? Had the attacks ceased for a reason they had yet to uncover?
Irina’s high collar concealed her neck. Elora remembered marks there. She remembered what they had learned of Strahd’s visits, of his desire to claim Irina, and Irina’s own failure to recall what had happened to her. She could see no evidence of it now.
There were older gaps in Irina’s history as well. The burgomaster had found her as a small child beside the road in the eastern woods. He had brought her home and raised her as his daughter. She remembered nothing of where she had come from, and her resemblance to Strahd’s wife remained unexplained. Thorn and Elora exchanged quiet conjectures, searching for some possible kinship that might account for it, but neither found an answer they trusted. Irina stood beside the coffin, and their theories did little to help her.
“We’ll take him to the church,” Elora said.
She thought Irina would wish to accompany them. Ismark objected at once. “It’s too dangerous. She shouldn’t leave the house until we’re ready to leave the village.”
Irina protested, and the weariness in both their voices made it plain that this argument had worn a familiar course. At last she agreed to stay. She asked only to know that her father had received a proper burial. Afterward, she would go with them. The village offered her little reason to remain. Its people had begun to fear her, to blame her for the curse they believed she had brought among them. Elora heard the hurt beneath Irina’s practical acceptance of that fact.
They would come back for her. First, they lifted the coffin.
Castle Ravenloft loomed above the churchyard. From below, its cliffs seemed steeper than memory allowed. Elora looked up and recalled the window, the desperate escape, the drop beneath them. That memory had lost none of its force. Yet she could not remember where they had buried the burgomaster. The church looked familiar. So did the cemetery. Somewhere among these graves, she ought to have remembered standing.
A wail came from within the church. She stopped. That, too, she remembered.
The sound rose and fell, carrying through the building before dwindling into silence. They brought the coffin onto the church grounds and went to find the priest. Inside, overturned pews lay among broken furnishings. Dirt covered the floor. Candles and fallen candelabras remained where they had been knocked aside. Something violent had happened here, and no one had found the will to put it right.
The priest prayed in the sanctuary. He looked up when they approached. They explained whose body they had brought, and he agreed to help with the burial. His manner was quiet, almost automatic. He led them outside and indicated a place in the cemetery.
Another cry sounded behind them. The priest continued speaking.
Thorn watched his face. The man had heard it. His reaction was slight, but unmistakable, a tightening that passed through him before he resumed the task at hand. Even while he attended to the burial arrangements, his thoughts seemed fixed elsewhere.
When the wailing came again, Elora asked him about it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The denial sat awkwardly between them. A yell broke from the church, and the priest flinched. No one hurried to fill the silence afterward. Elora waited until he could no longer pretend they had heard nothing.
“About a year ago,” he said at last, “a wizard came to the village.”
The man had promised to free them from Strahd. He had gathered villagers and led them up to the castle.
“My son went with him.”
The priest looked toward Ravenloft. From the churchyard, the castle was impossible to avoid. The villagers had not returned. Neither had the wizard. Then, some weeks later, his son had come home at night.
“He was changed.”
The words cost him an effort. He described the attack, how the boy had tried to turn on him, how he had survived it. By daylight his son had seemed weaker. The priest had confined him beneath the church. Since then, he had prayed.
Elora looked back toward the ruined sanctuary. The neglect made a terrible kind of sense now. Day after day, the priest had tended a church with his son crying beneath its floor. He had continued to say his prayers, knowing exactly what he would hear when he paused to listen.
“Strahd may have bitten him,” she said.
Thorn listened to the next cry. One voice, a man’s, worn raw by misery. “Can we break whatever was done to him?”
Elora considered the magic she could call upon. Ordinary healing would offer little against such a change. This would require something deeper, a restoration strong enough to reach the harm beneath the body’s wounds. She believed she could try.
Thorn nodded. “I’ll come behind you.”
They went down to the basement.
The door was barred and locked. Beyond it, the cries continued until they opened it. Then they stopped.
Elora peered into the darkness, and something rushed toward her. A gaunt face emerged, mouth open, teeth too long. The young man’s hunger had reduced him to a frantic movement toward the living. He scarcely seemed to see whom he was attacking.
“I’m so hungry.”
His voice was worse at this distance. He lunged, but weakness betrayed him. They checked his rush without difficulty, holding him long enough for Elora to reach him. She laid her hand upon him and called the restoring magic forth. For a moment, he strained against them. Then his strength left him, and he slumped to the floor.
Elora knelt beside him. His mouth had fallen open, and she watched the fangs recede. The terrible points shortened until ordinary teeth remained. His face was still hollow. Whatever the magic had broken, it had not erased the long confinement or the suffering that had consumed him. He lay motionless for a few breaths. Then his eyelids fluttered. He looked at Elora, then beyond her, trying to make sense of the strangers gathered around him.
“Who are you?”
She stayed close while he struggled to rise.
“Where’s my father?”
“We can take you to him.”
They helped him from the basement. At the sight of his son, the priest seemed unable to move. Then he crossed the space between them and embraced him. The young man leaned into his father’s arms. Confusion lingered in his face, and he looked scarcely able to stand, but his eyes followed what was happening around him. He understood the embrace. He knew the man who held him.
Elora stepped back. For a little while, they let father and son remain together.
The church was quiet.
When the young man could speak, they asked what had happened at the castle. He remembered believing the wizard. The stranger had seemed powerful. He had told them Strahd could be defeated, that the village could free itself, and the young man had gone with the others because he believed they could succeed. They had entered the castle grounds and forced the door. Inside, darkness waited.
“It seemed empty,” he said.
They had begun searching the rooms. Then people vanished, one by one. Something took them before their companions could save them. The young man struggled to describe it, and Elora could see him returning to those passages in memory, trying again to understand where the people beside him had gone. Eventually, the creature had come for him.
“A man. A horrible man.”
He did not know whether it had been Strahd himself. He remembered being seized, remembered that something had been done to him. Afterward, his recollections lost their order: wandering, hunger, coming to the church and finding someone there.
“I tried to feed,” he said.
His father remained beside him. The young man lowered his gaze. “He overpowered me. After that, I remember the dark. Being in the dark for so long.” He looked at Elora. “Until I saw you.”
She let him rest before asking about the wizard. “What was his name?”
He searched for it. The effort showed in the furrow of his brow. “I don’t know that he gave one. I don’t remember.”
Elora described Veyr. The young man listened, then shook his head. “No. I don’t think that was him.”
Thorn described Strahd. Recognition came at once. “Yes. That was the creature. The one who attacked me.”
The distinction mattered. Strahd had taken him in the castle. Someone else had persuaded him to go there. He knew nothing of what had happened to the other villagers. His father could add only that none of the others had returned, and no one had seen the wizard since.
Thorn listened to the young man’s account again in his thoughts. The stranger’s arrival, the sudden conviction that victory was possible, the willingness to follow him into Ravenloft. And now, the difficulty remembering the man who had inspired it all. An enchantment might explain that fervor. It might also explain why so little remained of the enchanter.
The possibility unsettled Elora. The villagers might have marched willingly, caught by a promise they desperately wanted to believe. Or someone might have taken even that choice from them. The young man’s uncertainty gave her no way to decide, but the gaps in his memory felt deliberate enough to pursue. They had not learned any of this before.
Outside, Irina still waited in the battered mansion. Her father’s burial remained their charge, and beyond it lay the road to Vallaki. Above the church, Ravenloft stood unchanged in the weak daylight.
Elora looked toward the basement door. She could remember the wailing from their earlier visit. She could remember turning their attention toward the castle. This time, they had stayed long enough to ask.
The priest kept one hand on his son’s shoulder while the young man tried once more to recall the wizard’s name. Elora waited with them, listening.
The session began with a recap of the party’s experiences at Strixhaven. Elora had put on the crown, fallen unconscious into the water, and been pulled out by her companions. While experiencing the crown’s vision, she witnessed the battle involving the party’s other selves, apparently taking place at Strixhaven approximately 800 years in the past. In that earlier battle, Elora saw Bob fall and cast a spell to resurrect him. Maledurk arose, followed by Tempest, and the fight was concluded. Elora then emerged from the crown’s experience. Afterward, the party returned to Veyr’s tower and discussed what they had learned. They concluded that revisiting events or places from their past might help them understand what was happening to them. They chose to return to Barovia, where they could seek Strahd and investigate people or places they had not pursued during their previous visit. The previous session had ended with the adventurers stepping through a painting on the wall of Veyr’s tower and emerging in Barovia. They resumed their journey on the eastern road, already beyond the familiar gate, with the village of Barovia visible ahead across the valley. The party recognized the road from their earlier arrival, when they had found themselves riding horses after being in the middle of a dinosaur race. Strahd’s castle stood in the distance on the high cliffs north-northwest of the village. Elora confirmed that this was the same castle they had explored before. Barovia looked and felt much as they remembered. Colors were muted, the atmosphere was oppressive, and the daylight seemed weaker than it should have been despite the sun being out. As the adventurers approached the village, they made History checks, with two results of 15 called out. Elora and Thorn noticed that a familiar house was missing from the outskirts of town. Maledurk was not specifically described as noticing its absence. The missing building was the haunted house the party had originally explored on an island during their voyage from Waterdeep to Port Nyanzaru. It had stood on a hill, and their exploration had involved ghost children. When they later first visited Barovia, they had recognized the same house near the village but had not entered it again. The GM distinguished that haunted house from both the burgomaster’s home and Strahd’s castle. Elora’s recollection of escaping through a window above a cliff concerned the castle, rather than the house on the island. Thorn initially asked whether they were seeing Barovia through another crown vision. The GM clarified that they had actually teleported there. When Thorn asked whether their arrival was before or after their previous defeat of Strahd, the timing remained uncertain. Entering the village, the party recognized the main square, a tavern, a store, and the burgomaster’s mansion farther south. Smoke rose from chimneys, and occasional residents appeared in the streets, but the village was quiet and sparsely populated outdoors. Thorn proposed visiting the tavern before approaching the mansion. He wanted to gather local information over a drink, particularly about the missing house and whether the village was experiencing trouble. Inside the tavern, the adventurers found the familiar barkeep, Arik, working behind the bar. Three women sat together at a table near the door, a man sat alone at another table, and a few other patrons occupied the bar. After making Insight checks, the party experienced a strong sense of déjà vu. The tavern did not merely look familiar; its patrons appeared to be the same people occupying the same places as during the adventurers’ first visit. The lone man was Ismark, the burgomaster’s son. The party remembered that he had previously told them about his sister and the troubles surrounding her. Thorn wondered whether they had gone back in time to just before their earlier adventure, or whether they were beginning the same sequence of events again. Elora approached Ismark and asked whether the adventurers looked familiar or whether he had met them before. He studied them, squinted, and replied that he did not believe so. Elora then asked about his sister. Ismark was surprised that strangers knew about her. He said that she had been troubled, but questioned how they knew of her when he did not recognize them and they were clearly not local residents. When Thorn asked about the trouble, Ismark lowered his voice and explained that Strahd’s minions had been attacking every night. He and his sister had boarded up their home to protect themselves. He wanted to get her out of the village and take her to Vallaki, where he hoped she would be safer. Vallaki was shown on the regional map near the southern shore of a lake, a considerable journey from the village. Asked why he had not already taken his sister there, Ismark explained that he had been unable to gather enough people to support them on the dangerous trip. Ismark did not understand why Strahd was so fixated on his sister. The party recognized this as the same situation they had encountered previously and recalled that she looked almost identical to Strahd’s deceased wife. Thorn asked Ismark about the missing haunted house. Ismark described it as an odd, haunted place that sometimes appeared and sometimes did not. Some residents believed that the house itself was a ghost. The party reviewed what they remembered of their original exploration of the house. Strahd had not been there, but they had found notes and other indications referring to him before they had enough context to understand those references. Their recollections of crypts were clarified as belonging to the castle. Beneath the haunted house, they had instead encountered a cult and a monster in caves. They had fought the monster, survived, left the house, and returned to their ship. By the following morning, the house was no longer visible on the hill. Thorn considered the possibility that Veyr had transported them through time as well as between locations. The party retained memories of their earlier adventures, but Ismark did not recognize them, his sister was again in danger, and the circumstances closely resembled their first arrival. Elora stressed that traveling into the past was still an assumption based on what they were observing. They might have arrived before their previous visit or at approximately the same point at which it had begun. Thorn compared their present experience with the crown’s visions of past events. He noted that they had left the crown with Veyr, yet now seemed to be encountering another earlier situation. He questioned what Veyr’s ability to send them there might mean and whether they were experiencing a memory or actual time travel. Thorn expected that a later visit might reveal the consequences of their earlier actions, such as rescued people or changes in the village. The GM reminded the party that they had fled Barovia in haste while the mists seemed to be consuming the land. They therefore did not know what condition Barovia had been in after their departure. Elora recalled riding as fast as possible through the mists to escape. The GM confirmed that the present village nevertheless seemed to follow the same pattern as before, almost as though the party had not yet been there. Elora proposed making different choices this time. Rather than going to the castle as they had previously, the party could try escorting Ismark’s sister to Vallaki and see what followed from that change. Before deciding, Elora revisited their memories of the haunted house. The party had escaped and defeated the monster beneath it, but they did not know what had become of the ghost children or what lasting effects their actions had produced. At the time, the house had seemed to be a side encounter unrelated to their main quest. The adventurers discussed whether to investigate the house again or help Ismark’s sister. Thorn observed that they could choose to confront Strahd and would have some knowledge from their earlier experience. Elora instead offered Ismark their help in rescuing his sister, and Thorn agreed. Ismark thanked the party and led them to the burgomaster’s mansion. The building looked worn and neglected. An iron fence surrounded the grounds, but one gate had been torn from its hinges and lay nearby, and weeds covered the property. The mansion’s windows were boarded shut. Large scratches marked the walls and window coverings, as though a huge animal had clawed at them. Scorch marks also showed that the building had been exposed to fire. Elora connected the damage with the attempts by Strahd’s minions to get inside. As the party approached the mansion, their memories of it began to fade. They still knew that they had visited before, but could no longer clearly remember the experience. Ismark brought them through a damaged, scratched door. Inside, they saw objects used to barricade the entrance, moved aside during the day so that the occupants could enter and leave. A coffin containing an elderly man stood inside the house. Ismark explained that his father, the burgomaster, had recently died. The strain of the repeated nightly attacks had apparently become too much for his heart. Elora recognized elements of the scene, but the party’s recollections now felt dreamlike. Ismark introduced them to his sister, Ireena, and explained that the adventurers had come to help bring her to safety. Ireena refused to leave until her father had been taken to the church and given a proper burial. The party recalled having helped with his burial during their earlier visit. The GM reminded them that their previous trip to the church had led to their flight up to the castle. The church stood near the base of the cliffs beneath it. Ireena added that her father had died three days earlier. Since his death, the attacks on the mansion had stopped. The last couple of nights had been the first peaceful nights in weeks. Thorn wondered whether the burgomaster’s death was connected to the attacks ending. He considered several possible roles the father might have had in the situation, but no explanation for the connection was established. Elora recalled that Ireena resembled Strahd’s wife and suggested that his minions might have been trying to capture her for that reason. The party remembered learning in the castle that Strahd had bitten Ireena and appeared to be trying to turn her into his vampire bride. Ireena had not remembered being bitten. During the present conversation, her dress covered her neck, preventing the adventurers from seeing whether she currently bore any bite marks. Elora proposed arranging the burial and then taking Ireena to Vallaki. Thorn emphasized that Ireena should accompany them willingly. Ireena agreed that leaving was best and said she would go once her father had been buried. Ireena explained that the villagers had become afraid of her because they believed she had brought a curse upon the village. She was willing to leave, but wanted assurance that her father had first been properly cared for. The party recalled the priest at the church and the wailing they had heard there during their earlier visit. They had previously taken the coffin to the church cemetery during the day and arranged the burial. They did not recall Ireena or Ismark accompanying them, and they had gone directly to the castle afterward. Elora suggested that Ireena would want to attend her father’s burial. Ismark objected that it was too dangerous for her to leave the mansion before they were ready to depart the village altogether. Ireena protested briefly, but the siblings had evidently argued about the matter before. She agreed to remain in the house, provided that she could be certain her father had been taken care of. The party also recalled that Ireena was the burgomaster’s adopted daughter. He had found her as a small child beside the road in the forest through which the adventurers had entered Barovia. She remembered neither that event nor where she had come from, and the party had previously found no information explaining her origins. Thorn wondered whether Ireena could be Strahd’s offspring, given her unexplained background and resemblance to his wife. Elora suggested that Ireena and Strahd’s wife might be twins. Neither possibility was confirmed. When the discussion returned to leaving, the GM clarified that the coffin was still on a table in the mansion and had not yet been buried during this visit. Thorn agreed that they should carry out the burial as promised. The adventurers brought the coffin to the church and cemetery. As they approached, they again heard wailing from within the church. Castle Ravenloft stood on the cliffs above them, reminding them of their earlier escape through a castle window and their fall down the cliffs. Although the church looked familiar and the party clearly remembered the castle, they could not recall where they had buried the burgomaster during their earlier visit. Elora proposed having someone fetch the priest while the others brought the coffin into the cemetery. Thorn agreed that they should consult him for permission and guidance about a burial site. Inside the church, they found the priest in the sanctuary, apparently praying. Wailing echoed through the building intermittently, but its source was not immediately apparent. The chapel was in disarray. Pews were overturned and broken, the floor was dirty, and candles and candelabras had been knocked over. The damage suggested that some kind of struggle had taken place. After hearing why the adventurers had come, the priest agreed to help and led them outside to indicate a burial location. The GM suggested that Elora might have magic capable of digging the grave quickly, but no particular excavation spell was selected or described. During their conversation with the priest, the adventurers made further Insight checks. They noticed that the cries clearly troubled him even though he tried to ignore them. He seemed distracted, unusually quiet, and only partly attentive to the task of helping them. Elora asked where the wailing was coming from. The priest initially denied knowing what she meant, but another cry caused a visible reaction. He then began explaining what had happened to his son. Approximately a year earlier, a wizard had come to the village promising to free its people from Strahd. He had led villagers to the castle, and the priest’s son had joined them. Most of those who went were never seen again, and the wizard had also disappeared. The priest’s son returned one night, perhaps a couple of weeks after the expedition. He had changed and tried to attack his father. The priest survived the attack and noticed that his son seemed weaker during the day. The priest had locked his son in the church basement and had been praying for a way to help him. The party established that the cries sounded like a single male voice, consistent with the son being their source. Elora suggested that Strahd might have bitten the young man and turned him into some form of vampire. Thorn considered vampirism or possession and noted how long the son appeared to have been confined. Thorn asked whether anyone had a spell that could break an enchantment. Helping the son might allow them to learn more about what had happened, as well as helping someone in distress. Elora mentioned Cure Wounds but observed that it addressed physical injuries. After considering her available magic, the GM indicated that Greater Restoration might help. Elora decided to go downstairs and cast it, with Thorn creeping down behind her. The basement door was barred and locked. Once it was opened, the adventurers found darkness beyond it. The wailing briefly stopped, and then the priest’s son rushed toward them, saying that he was hungry. The young man had visible fangs and appeared very weak. The adventurers were powerful enough to slow his approach without difficulty, allowing Elora to cast Greater Restoration on him. After the spell, the priest’s son slumped to the floor. His fangs receded into ordinary teeth. He remained gaunt and weak, but his eyes soon opened, and he looked around and asked who the adventurers were and where his father was. The party explained and brought him to his father. The priest was overjoyed and embraced him. Although the son remained confused, exhausted, and physically weak, he appeared to have regained his senses. Elora asked what had happened at the castle. The son explained that a powerful man had convinced the villagers that they could defeat Strahd and free themselves from his curse. He had believed that promise and joined the expedition. The villagers reached the castle grounds, forced open a door, and entered. The interior was dark and initially seemed empty. As they moved through the castle, members of the group began disappearing. Something snatched them away one by one. Eventually, a horrifying man or monster seized the priest’s son and did something to him. At first, the son could not say whether his attacker had been Strahd himself. His memories after the attack were dreamlike. He remembered wandering while hungry, returning to the church, and trying to feed on a man who overpowered him. He then remembered a long period spent in darkness, lasting until he encountered the adventurers. His account described his father as the man he had tried to feed upon during that confused state. Elora asked for the name of the wizard who had led the villagers to the castle. The son could not remember it and was unsure whether the man had ever given a name. Elora suggested describing Veyr to see whether he matched the mysterious wizard. After hearing the description, the son said that he did not think Veyr was the man who had led them. Thorn then suggested describing Strahd. The son recognized that description as the creature who had attacked him in the castle. Strahd was identified as his attacker, separate from the wizard who had recruited the villagers. The son did not know what had happened to the others in the expedition. The priest said that the other villagers had not returned and that no one had seen the wizard since the attack on the castle. From the son’s description of the recruitment, the party could recognize signs that the wizard might have magically compelled the villagers to accompany him. Their participation might not have been entirely voluntary, and their difficulty remembering the wizard could also have been intentional. The wizard’s identity remained unknown. Elora expressed interest in finding out who he was, and the group confirmed that they had not learned this account during their previous visit to Barovia. The session ended after the priest’s son had been restored and questioned. The adventurers had agreed to help Ireena reach Vallaki after her father’s burial, but had not yet begun that journey. Their next actions were left for the following session.Session Notes