Dutchess Morwen of Daggorford invited the adventures to eat. As they make their way to the town, they see and meet one another. Paelius, a half orc, is informed by his sister that he needs a shirt. He then manages to steal one that is slightly too small but puts it on anyways. He then is told he should have paid for it and puts some coin down. The merchant looks down at the coin and up at him and his shirt and just figured an orc was being an orc. Harex, a human bard sings everyone a song as they walk. Mara and Maxillos walk silently. They arrive and are seated with the Dutchess. While eating she expresses concern about some children that have gone missing west of town. The adventurers go and check with the guards about the case. Meeting a drunk named Geoffery Longbrew, they realized that no work has been done on the investigation. Geoffery in fact doesn’t care about the kids that have been gone. Upon further interrogation, Geoffery admitted that the kid’s parents tormented him as a kid and he wanted to pay them back by sending them to a creepy abandoned church northwest of town.
Geoffery was going to turn himself into the supervisor when the party decided to take him with them. Reluctantly, he goes along. As they begin to travel, fog starts to surround them and get so thick that they couldn’t see. When it breaks away, they realize that the trees and the path ahead of them wasn’t the path that they were on. They stand around to discuss this when they begin to hear a wolf howl in the distance. The adventurers look up as they hear a ravel land on a nearby branch. They decide to keep walking down the path. Upon reaching a set of worn out gates, Thelari recognizes them from her studies as belonging to the country of Barovia. She askes Geoffery about this and Geoffery doesn’t recognize where they are. Thelari and Harex both determined that he was telling the truth. For better, or worse, they were no longer in Faerun.
At this Thelari prays to Labelas Enoreth about what they should do. Labelas tells her to continue on her journey but Labelas can’t tell what is going to happen but that their journey is important. As they continue down the road Thelari also notices the scent of death. She follows it to its source and finds a decomposing body on the side of the road with a note in his hand from Burgonmaster Kolyan Indirovich that his adopted daughter Ireena Kolyana has been bitten by a vampire. This vampire has been a curse on their land for over 400 years.
This unnerves the adventurers and they continue coming along to a town, the Village of Barovia, about midnight. Upon reaching the town they hear a sobbing piercing through the night. The town is in disarray and unkempt. They go in and find the tavern, The Blood of the Vine. There Harex tries to sing for a place to stay but the barkeep said that his crowd is dwindled and wouldn’t take him up on his offer. Thelari and Mara begin to speak to 3 Vistani women sitting around a table. They were not interested at first but when Thelari shows them a locket of her father, they recognize him and invite them to sit there and talk. They suggest that the adventurers go to the Vistani camp west of town and speak with Madam Eva. They also tell the barkeep that since Thelari is half Vistani, they will be good for their word of playing and singing later in the inn and they could stay for free that night. Maxillos and Paelius engage in a riveting arm wrestling contest. Suprisingly, Maxillos won even though the barbarian began to pour his rage into the contest.
Just before retiring they are approached by Ismark Kolyanovich who realizes these are brave adventurers asking them to come see him in the burgonmaster’s house tomorrow morning. He needs help protecting his sister. The adventurers decide to retire for the night.
After breaking their fast the next morning, they decide to walk down the street towards the sound of the sobbing and the house of Ismark. Down the road Mara begins to talk to a young girl named Alexi. Alexi expressed no emotion other than fear. When she wasn’t afraid, she was blank in expression. She talked about her mother was in the marketplace and her father was working at the mill.
Harex spoke to a boy named Sergei. Unlike Alexi, Sergei was quite happy and willing to talk to Harex. He spoke about his father working in the fields and his mother inside cooking. Harex knocked on the door and spoke to his mother who identified herself as Fatima. She did not invite the adventurers in but spoke to them at the door. She told them about the devil Strahd and about his curse upon this land.
The adventurers left and went to the house of Mad Mary wailing over her daughter Gertruda running away. She was very protective but has no idea where her daughter is. The adventurers promise they will try to find her and they go off toward the burgonmaster’s house.
There an alburn haired young woman answers the door and she identifies herself as Ireena Kolyana. They convince her that they are not with Strahd and she allowed them inside. Inside, Ireena tells them that Strahd has come inside and bitten her twice and becaues of that no one in the village wants anything to do with her. Wolves and horrible creatures risen from the dead have attacked the house for the past week until their father died. After he died, their attacks stopped.
The adventurers ask Ismark and Ireena about Ireena’s biological family since she was adopted. Ireena then gets more quiet and says that she can’t remember. They found her wondering near a stream when she was 7. The adventurers test her to see if she was a vampire but Maxillos concludes that she is not.
Ismark and Ireena ask the adventurers to help them bury their father as they have not been able to do so do to wanting to keep Ireena safe. The adventurers agree to go and head north to the church. Paelius and Thelari agree to go into the church to get the priest. They walk in and hear him praying.
A piercing scream rises out of the floorboards.