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The voices of the mages draw Bronria's eyes away from the apparition briefly. The gnome's half-shout makes her physically flinch, though she doesn't try to give him an answer, instead focusing on the scholar. "These creatures are not meant to exist," she says, a trace of colour returning to her cheeks. "If it is allowed to roam free and happens upon someone more helpless than us, it will be our fault."

Feeling a sudden pinch in her armour, she glances down at herself. Her hands are shaking. No, I can't keep talking. Every second gives them an opportunity to talk her down. "We will follow it," she insists, turning to pick up the pace again.
 
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Ordienna looks to the woman, unable to help the scoff. "You want to go after that thing?" The minstrel looks to the others, something not sitting right. "We may sooner be dead than help any other living creature. Think carefully on this."

Her mind is washed with questions, a single word repeating over and over. Run. But her feet will not take her. Will these people go after the thing? Will they even stand a chance? The answer seems an easy no.

"Surely you would not be lead to your death?" Ordienna asks, finding the woman already walking away. The bard rushes to catch up, trying to talk her out of this madness. I am following, perhaps it is my madness as well now. "We know nothing of this thing. This could be a trap. Surely there is a smarter path we could take?"
 
Looking around at the silhouette of trees through the darkness and mist, the scholar scowls. He scowls at himself and his cowardice. He scowls at his companions for wanting to confront the skeletal figure. He scowls at this night, at Daggerford and the Countess, but mostly he scowls at his mind.

It'll be our fault if we die. It is not our fault that this thing is lurking out here, he reasons, but that thought washes away as quickly as it comes and the next worry to come to his mind. His companions, the warrior woman, the minstrel, and his gnomish counterpart are going to leave him behind if he doesn't follow. So he does the only option left to him; he closes his eyes and steels himself from the horrors behind and the terrors to come.

Blowing out a measured breath of air, he strides forward to bring up the rear of the group.
 
The horse and rider continue onwards along the road, responding to neither Bronria's shouts, nor Kellen's telepathic messages, though whether that is by choice, or by lack of ability, you are unsure. Following it for a short distance, and trying to ignore the spectral faces that continue to scream silently at you from the mist caught in the lantern light, you discover that the road reaches the edge of the forest at the crest of a hill. Before you is a large plain, bisected by both the road you are on, and a wide river, which intersect before both disappear into the distance. Despite getting lost in the mists earlier, you know that there is no place like this near Daggerford. Wherever you are, it is a long way from where you started.
Also lying on the road, barely visible in what pitiful moonlight manages to push through the overcast skies, is the shadowy silhouette of a village. No lights shine in the windows, and from this distance, it appears deserted.
At this point, the horse and rider turn off the road, and begin travelling along the treeline. You could continue to follow them, but if you do, it will take you away from the road, and the village.
 
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Bronria grits her teeth and does her best to ignore Ordienna's advice. No matter how rational it sounds, she can't shake the feeling that giving in will make her lose something. So she resigns herself to being pig-headed and stubborn for as long as she can, and hoping that somehow the path ahead will become clear. Until then she keeps her eyes trained on the skeleton's back as she walks, sword re-sheathed for now.

Then the forest starts to thin, and the sight of the village below wrenches Bronria's stomach in a way even the skeletal rider and the faces in the mist did not. "Oh no," she whispers, frantically scanning the horizon for a single point of reference. She'd learned everything she could of the local geography before arriving in Daggerford, had a full fortnight's worth of travel planned out in advance down to the last country road. None of this matches what she remembers.

The sight of the horse and rider leaving the road shakes her out of her daze. "Why did it come here? Where is it going?" she asks aloud, glancing between the darkened village and the creature. With noticeably less conviction than before, she moves to follow it off the road.
 
Crinkling up his nose, Abalister resolves himself to follow, though concern clouds his features at the sight of the ghost town. With no lights or sounds to indicate activity, it is a curious sight, to be sure, but given everything going on about them, it seems more ominous than anything. At that moment, the rider diverges from the road. After a pause, Bronria quips, asking about the skeletal steed and before the scholar can even formulate anything like an answer, she too veers off road.

With an audible sigh and a sidelong glance at both the gnome and the minstrel, Abalister follows dutifully several feet behind the warrior woman.
 
Ordienna feels she's had enough of this. The clear stubbornness of the warrior and the lack of argument from the other two are not helping their chance of survival. Following this close to this... monster, it feels unnatural. The bards feet are begging to run in another direction.

"Lo, he veers from the city." Ordienna sighs, "There is nothing to protect other than ourselves." But this falls on deaf ears, and the bard stops and watches the others continue to follow. "Madness. I've fallen in with lunatics." She utters to herself as she follows behind.
 
Following the horse and rider, you can't help but feel intimidated by the towering trees, whose tops are lost in heavy gray mist, and block out all but a death-gray light. The tree trunks are unnaturally close to one another, and the woods have the silence of a forgotten grave, yet exude the feeling of an unvoiced scream.
You catch the scent of death on the air. The foul stench leads you to notice a human corpse half-buried in the underbrush about fifteen feet from the road. The young man appears to be a commoner. His muddy clothes are torn and raked with claw marks. Crows have been at the body, which is surrounded by the paw prints. The man has obviously been dead for several days. He holds a crumpled envelope, spotted with dried blood, in one hand. The corpse goes unnoticed by the skeletal figures you are following, who step over it as they continue along.
 
Kellen feels himself teetering between the urge to run back into the mists and excitement about discovering this... thing and this place, that don't seem to be from their world. Even further from home now I guess. He actually felt some familiarity with this experience, similar to when he first met Enna. Though I doubt to find her in a place this...dark. Thinking about home reminded him it had been nearly 2 years since he'd been back. He didn't think he knew anybody from his family who had been gone that long. Not often able to keep his thoughts in his head, he mumbled aloud... "They'll be saying I've gone looking for the ladies..."
 
Abalister shoots Kellen a quizzical look as he walks near enough to the gnome to hear the murmur, though he doesn't ask. He glances over his shoulder to regard the minstrel before turning his gaze forward, staring past Bronria at the rider. That's when he sees it. The body. He stops dead in his tracks, several yards short, and raises a hand to point it out, though words seem to have escaped him as readily as his breath has.
 
Fixated on the rider as she is, Bronria doesn't register Ordienna's words or the gnome's, apparently wrapped up in her own thoughts as she hesitantly follows on after the apparition. It's only when the scholar suddenly stops walking that she finally snaps back to reality. "What is it?" she snaps at him, perhaps a little harsher than she'd intended, before following his finger towards the shape beside the road. Her stomach lurches.

"Oh." She finds herself at a loss for anything else to say. Why does this bother you? You've seen corpses before. Seen them tonight, even. But somehow this cold, bird-pecked body stirs different thoughts in her head, bringing to mind memroies of shrieking crows and guttural war cries. Bronria glances at the others' faces, then to the skeleton riding on down the road, then back to the body. New details come to her eye: the man's cheap clothing, his age - younger than her - and the envelope clutched in his hand. After a second's hesitation, she turns off the road and slowly approaches.

"I am sorry," she says, then swallows and reaches for the hand holding the envelope.
 
Ordienna feels she's had about enough of this, when the stench hits her. Holding back a wretch she spots the body, the warrior now kneeling before it. "Dear gods," The bard groans, pain washing over her. "I've seen atrocities in my life, but never such as these. Will this nightmare ever end?"
 
As Bronria grabs the letter, the ravens picking at the corpse flutter about, but don't fly away, and instead stare up at the group quizzically. The corpse has been out here for several days, and the muscles have all stiffened up, but eventually the letter comes loose without tearing. Picking up the letter, you are able to make out more details. The envelope is still sealed, wax imprinted with a stylised letter B. Whoever the intended recipient of the letter is, it seems as though they never received it. Who the recipient is, though, you don't know, for the envelope isn't addressed to anyone.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the mists, hidden within the trees, a wolf howls.
 
Careful not to crush it in her mailed fist, Bronria pulls the envelope free and turns it over, only to find it unaddressed. "...Curious," she says, glancing once more at the path ahead and the skeletal rider as it moves away. Then she turns back to the matter at hand, pulling open the envelope just as the sound of a wolf's howl splits the air. In a moment she's on her feet, clutching her shield tightly while her wide eyes scan the treeline in search of lycanthropes. Could all this have been a trap?

She grits her teeth and forces herself to calm down, to not let the others see her so distressed. Once a modicum of composure has been regained, she reaches inside the envelope, intent on reading the contents aloud. Hearing her own voice might strengthen her will a little.
 
The letter reads:


Hail thee of might and valor:

I, the Burgomeister of Barovia, send you honor - with despair.

My adopted daughter, the fair Ireena Kolyana, has been these past nights bitten by a vampyr. For over four hundred years, this creature has drained the life blood of my people. Now my dear Ireena languishes and dies from an unholy wound caused by this vile beast. He has become too powerful to conquer.

So I say to you, give us up for dead and encircle this land with the symbols of good. Let holy men call upon their power that the devil may be contained within the walls of weeping Barovia. Leave our sorrows to our graves, and save the world from this evil fate of ours.

There is much wealth entrapped in this community. Return for your reward after we are all departed for a better life.

Kolyan Indirovich
Burgomeister
 
Unlike the minstrel, the scholar could not hold back his wretch and he escaped to the underbrush before losing his dinner. Returning once more, wiping the bile from his lips, he looks to the warrior woman, not daring to turn his gaze upon the corpse. Hearing the howl has him turning his attention to the woods and moving closer towards the women, not protectively, but for protection. Gripping his staff tightly, he finally looks back to the missive and his curiosity is piqued. I may be of use yet, Abalister thinks to himself before he moves to Bronria's side. He reads the letter by the light of his staff and mulls it over, his brow furrowed in confusion.

He looks to the minstrel and gnome before Bronria and mentions, "In all my s-studies, I've n-n-never heard of Barovia." He turns to look towards the town, the fear escaping him once more as his brain begins to process things around him. "Where are w-we?" he asks the night.
 
"Like chasing a fox into the badger's den" Kellen said aloud, glancing at the body, and looking away quickly. "This is like a dark version of my time with Enna..." he didn't bother to clarify what that meant. He turned to Abalister not commenting on the vomit - it was clear at this point that while the wizards stomache might betray him easily, his nerve and his intellect had yet to fail him. "I am not as well read as you, but do you think this could be..." He paused, trying to think of the right description, he couldn't recall how, or if, his tutor had ever explained what she did. "A world within our own, but under magical control? Or perhaps we have passed somehow to the land of the gods? I have had an experience with the former, but it was not on nearly so grand a scale, is that even possible?"
 
Ordienna's vision blurs. She hears the others speak but she knows not what they say. What have we gotten ourselves into? What madness led me to believe I would be safe with them?

The warrior woman came into her view, pale face and wide eyes. Vampyrs, lycanthropes, skeletal people and horses, faces in the mists. "What will be done, now?" Ordienna feels the quiver in her voice but she is finding it difficult to care. "We follow a monster and are led here. But is here still on the path of your destination?"

The bard frowns as she processes the letter read to her. "I suppose none of us know this Ireena woman? Nor this... Barovia place it speaks of? So, come, what is our next move? Do we press onwards or return to our original mission?"
 
Listening to Kellen, Abalister shakes his head. The scholar is certain that they have not passed on from their mortal coil, though the pocket plane and demi-plane theory certainly piqued his interest. "No, Kellen. I d-do not b-b-...think that we are dead. Though with a place unknown to th-the cartographers of the Sword Coast, I w-w-would not rule out a demi-plane of sorts." He furrows his brow in thought, raising a hand to his face, a finger tapping pensively against his bottom lip. "I have read of pockets of space where the planes can collide, causing rifts to form. It would be easy enough t-to stumble into one. But th-this does not look like th-the descript-descri...it is not how the Feywild is described."

He pauses, this own words settling into his mind. He is not listening to the bard as she speaks to the warrior, but his own thoughts are turned inward once again. His face blanches, losing what color it had. The Shadowfell! his mind screams at him and his eyes bulge as he searches his surroundings with this new thought in mind, desperately hoping that he is wrong.
 
Bronria's eyes scan the page once more. Though she knows Ordienna is addressing her, she remains mute until she has finished re-reading the letter. Then, almost mechanically, she folds it up, slots it back inside the envelope and puts the envelope in her bag. What the mages have said, in conjunction with what Kolyan Indirovich has written... it is becoming plain to her that this land is cursed, and they have all blundered into it.

She straightens her back and licks her dry lips before replying to the bard. "We have not yet found Lady Morwen's daughter," she says slowly, carefully, "though there is a chance that the lycanthropes who took her are close at hand. We must liberate her. Then we will respect the Burgomeister's wishes and leave this land, so that people more powerful than ourselves may be alerted." Save the world from this evil fate of ours, the letter had read. She can only hope someone will be able to, once they find a way back to Daggerford with the child in tow.
 
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Kellen ponders for a moment, "I cannot say that I am feeling particularly comfortable in this place, but I do wish to see if we can find the girl." He pauses, thinking back to the weeks he would spend far from home as a young gnome, exploring every little bit of his forest. He loved occasionally stumbling on some small relic of the elven kingdom that used to be there. He felt the same kind of exhilaration of discovery here, though tinged with a healthy amount of fear. "I will not lie, I am also quite curious about this place, though I doubt I would be brave enough to venture forwards without you all at my back" He turns towards them with the most gnomish of smiles, pushing down the edge of fear as best he can. The corpse stays well out of his eyesight of course.
 
Frowning as he looks around, Abalister would rather nothing more than to study this place...from afar. Preferably a library back in Daggerford or farther. But, here they were, knee deep in it, with no real way to know how to return from where they came. With a resigned shrug, he looks to the group in turn, finally pausing his gaze at Bronria as he nods, "Onward, I s-s-suppose. To the t-town, then?"
 
Bronria catches the scholar's eye and nods. "Yes. It is as good a place as any to begin." Especially with no visible lycanthrope tracks and no knowledge of this country beyond the letter they just retrieved. She glances over her shoulder once more, recalling the skeletal rider that passed them by and, more recently, the howling of wolves deeper into the woods. Right now, there seems to be nothing around the group but the ravens and the faces in the mist.

For one moment, Bronria feels the loneliness of years adrift on the road grip her heart, threatening to rob her of her senses. She stops rigidly, shuts her eyes, then takes a breath and opens them once again, neutral expression intact. "Come, then," she says, setting off in the direction of the town.
 
As the warrior sets off, the scholar glances to the gnome, then to the minstrel in turn. His brow furrows, reading her face and desires as plainly as his own. Fear. He offers only, "I don't th-think our options at this p-p-point are numerous."

He offers an apologetic shrug, kicks at the grass around his boots, then turns to follow Bronria, his shoulders slumped with the weight of what he percieves as his world.
 
"Come friend, lest we be separated" Kellen says to the newest member of their company. As he walks he swivels his head left and right, both keeping an eye out for danger, and in wonderment at his surroundings.
 
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