#although I shudder to think what he'd do with Tatyana if he had the genuine article

[tea-with-eleni]

This week in Barovia Darkon....

Compiled from like four maps, including the VRGTR one. I had a proper think, read three of the Ravenloft books that detail information on Darkon/Azalin, read the VRGTR chapter on the topic and discarded most of it, and read part of an AD&D adventure set in Darkon/Barovia and discarded a lot of that, too.

Anyway. A few towns have flipped which side of the river they're on and I'm not 100% sure I have ALL small settlements, but if you want a high resolution map of Darkon for your adventures, hit me up?

But I digress.

This week, my players headed to Tempe Falls and were shocked to find a relatively normal town. Like. Okay, it's boring, but that seemed to be the worst of it. There was way more racial diversity than they're used to (Barovia being almost entirely humans with the odd dusk elf for variety). The innkeeper cheerily sold them four rooms and they settled in to enjoy some decent dwarven alcohol.

(Their was a funny moment when everyone collectively realized that a: they have a TON of gold and jewels from the amber temple and b: they probably can't use the gold because it all has Strahd's face on it and all they know about Darkon is that it went to war with Barovia at some point in the past.)

There were some people in the inn: assorted traders, a clerk who appeared to be staying in town while doing some audits or paperwork or something, and a couple of guard/soldier types with some kind of chain denoting rank as part of their uniform. They also had a chat with a somewhat disoriented sorcerer, one Firan Zal'honen. He claims to have only emerged from the mists himself a few weeks ago. I'm sure he's nothing to worry about. It's fine.

Anyway.

The party traded gold for a carriage and two draft horses, on the grounds that they now have

the cleric

the rogue

the fighter

the artificer

the wizard

the bard

Ireena Kolyana

Ludmilla Vilisevic

Volenta Popofsky

and of those, the wizard, the artificer, and the two vampires have issues with sunlight. Oh, and Darkon has an excess of suns. It's fine.

They then decided that they ought to try and find a larger town. The innkeeper gave them the skinny and said that Corvia is a decently big place, but Il Aluk is an actual city. She also warned them to please, fucking PLEASE follow the laws or else they're likely to end up in a world of trouble. The party did briefly lose their minds when they noticed a piebald raven flying around town that headed back to the inn where they're staying. Again, it's fine.

Then they headed out of the Balinok mountains and into the foothills and the town of Mayvin. It's a gnomish town with a massive clocktower and patent hall; the artificer is delighted.

The local scuttlebut is that something really fucking bad happened in Il Aluk and the golden star in the sky overhead appeared shortly thereafter. So naturally my players are like, "WELL WE GOTTA GO THERE!" They also heard the name "Castle Avernus" and the fighter (originally and quite recently from the Forgotten Realms) started freaking out about Elturel. The players also noticed something really off about the (as yet unnamed) Kargat stationed in Mayvin. I ruled that they have no good way of knowing exactly what the Kargat are, though, since the concept of ghouled mortals is basically nonexistent in DnD. (I saw a sidebar in the Ravenloft Gazetteer and thought it was interesting enough to include it...)

My reading list for this week is the first half of The Neverending Story, because I feel like The Nothing is a decent analogue for what's happening, slowly, to Avernus while Firan is swanning about near the borders.