CoS 1/Dreams
Dreams of the player characters in Barovia for CoS 1.
Garth
P13 Garth
Sleeping in Goncai's Tower near the southern Vallaki gate (Goncai night 38)
Starting to acclimatise to the nightly horrors of Barovia, with wispy mist tendrils at the edge of your vision at every turn, your sleep is disturbed but not as bad as some nights. The theme of this night is of demonic children, underwater tentacles and a deceitful vampire that lures all your friends to be his friends while he forces you to pretend sleep and your body simply accepts it while your mind screams that everything is a lie.
Suddenly it's all ripped away and you in a familiar field. Your mind immediately recognise it#s your childhood memories meeting aunty Lethie but your body keeps the same dialogues from that night at Radu's waypoint. Lethie seems to cast a fiendish spell on you and the other boy and you see a mix of old visions and a few new; some purely practical of Lethie preparing things or cleaning, all mixed in with the horrors of being locked up and dismembered or seeing your friend slaughtered in front of you, tasting iron as spatter somehow ended up in your mouth after a violent chop with her butcher's knife.
While soul-wrenching, it's blissfully brief. The spectacle is wiped away and replaced by darkness and a gaunt man wearing a pair of gold bracers and the clothes of a rich merchant of Unther. He has dark hair shaped into long, ringleted strands and a pointed goatee.
A gaunt man wearing a pair of gold bracers and the clothes of a rich merchant of Unther appears. He has dark hair shaped into long, ringleted strands and a pointed goatee.
The man seem tired and battered, with several poorly healed, serious cuts across his body and gives you an overall haunted appearance. You hear a dry, hollow chuckle, and he begins to speak.
Young and steadfast son Garth. It is a pleasure to have your admiration, and it gladens me when you choose to use my gifts to mete justice.
Violence repays violence. Evil repays evil. Good repays good. These are my tenets, and I would bring justice and retribution to each according to their actions.
Allowances are excuses set forth to falsely acquit the condemned. Allowances exploit, pervert, and impede the course of justice.
I understand you may have many things you would ask me to answer but my time is brief. I am not actually by your side and you residing in this place of dread hinders my reach.
I will try to keep the nightmares at bay as I did when you were under my cloak in Faerûn, but I will not always succeed.
In my limited visions I can see a dungeon lined with lava-like walls, haunted by many dark vestiges. Let your book-keeping friends find out more about it, for I believe the answer lies therein, but beware of its many untold dangers. Do not venture there unprepared.
I will hear your prayers again now. Write them down and burn the medium. I will provide answers when I can break through these evil barriers, but for just now, I am gladdened to feel your soul and its radiant retribution.
Sleep well, Garth, Maimer of Ceithlenn
The gaunt man is enveloped by darkness, the darkness folds in on itself and you're left in a white void. A strong sensation of rest overtakes you and you lose track of time. The nothingness around you is also enveloping and other than a sense of rest, you have not a single other impression. Your thoughts grind to a halt. A minute, an hour, a day or a year passes. You wake up grateful for your rest as there is a knocking on the front door of Goncai's Tower.
Goncai
P13 Goncai
Sleeping in Goncai's Tower near the southern Vallaki gate (Goncai night 38)
Used to the nightly horrors of Barovia, with wispy mist tendrils at the edge of your vision at every turn, your sleep is disturbed - as it normally is. The theme of this night is of demonic children, underwater tentacles and friendly vampires that you really know are not your friends but you can't stop yourself from having tea with them. At the center is the vampire you were charmed by, pretending to be your friend and your body simply accepts it while your mind screams that everything is a lie.
Suddenly it's all ripped away and you are a child in a field. Your mind immediately recognise it from Garth's childhood memories meeting aunty Lethie but your body keeps the same dialogues from that night at Radu's waypoint. Lethie seems to cast a fiendish spell on you and the other boy and you see a mix of old visions and a few new; some purely practical of Lethie preparing things or cleaning, all mixed in with the horrors of being locked up and dismembered or seeing your friend slaughtered in front of you, tasting iron as spatter somehow ended up in your mouth after a violent chop with her butcher's knife.
While soul-wrenching, it's blissfully brief. The spectacle is wiped away and replaced by darkness and a gaunt man wearing a pair of gold bracers and the clothes of a rich merchant of Unther. He has dark hair shaped into long, ringleted strands and a pointed goatee.
The man seem tired and battered, with several poorly healed, serious cuts across his body and gives you an overall haunted appearance. You hear a dry, hollow chuckle, and he begins to speak. The voice bellows out of his mouth but you can't make out the words. As he is saying something that you can't grasp, you hear in parallel his same voice in his head and he's staring right into your eyes - his mouth still spouting some kind of archaic, maybe divine, phrases. You need to concentrate to filter out that gibberish to understand his words in your head:
Goncai - I am not here to mete retribution upon you or to protect you, though you have my sympathies and you have my blessing to use your own powers to deliver justice upon the wench who ended the lives of your friends. At least I hope you appreciate that I keep you out of my faithful's nightly torment. It is all I can do for now. Maybe we will speak again. Go well.
The gaunt man is enveloped by darkness, the darkness folds in on itself and you're back at a harrowing tea party of vampires drinking blood in tea cups and you involuntarily act as if this is normal while your psyche screams at you to snap out of it. Every now and then, between polite phrases, one of the vampires look at you as if you're the next provider of cup contents for the party.
The dreams come and go and blend in to one another and you wake up grateful for what rest you actually have received as there is a knocking on the door.