The Journal of Onet Bynalor
Curse of Strahd - Session 4
Scrawled into the back of an incomplete spell book, following several other pages scribed in a tidy, quick, tight lettering very unlike the elegantly precise hand that formed the forward section.
Mother,
Where do I even begin? Reason would say I begin at the beginning, but finding a vampire spawn hidden beneath a church suddenly feels like the least important part of the things that have happened. Which is telling in and of itself. I should have set ink to paper to put it all down last night, but I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. Wallach sat with me for a time, asked about how I was managing. I didn’t really know what to tell him, or what I shouldn’t. I was thankful for the comfort he offered, truly. But it’s difficult enough to write the things I think and feel to you.
Vampires are real. Can you imagine? Stupid question, given the things you wrote about in your own journals. I never thought Uncle was lying to me, but I don’t think I ever really believed him either. I hated him, because you hated him, and because he hated you. Why did you loath each other so? Was it jealousy between you? He would ramble at length about how awful you were as a match for father, and how useless a mother you would have been if you’d lived long enough to warrant being called one. Foul, bitter things that got worse after father left. And you, the things you wrote about him and his religious fervor were no less bitter and foul, and full of resentment.
Why? Were you really so different from one another? He pulled power from Kelemvor. You pulled your power from some Patron you never even bothered to name. You were both pawns of some greater power. And yet you each hated each other for being pawns. And your master, I have learned, I did not find or call forth to me, but He found me instead. Wallach filled in a few priceless details that you had so kindly left unwritten. I somehow managed to finally attract your Patron. Or, so I think. It is all guess work and conjecture. Was the thing that killed you, and your Patron, even one and the same thing? I don’t know. I thought I did. And I know next nothing about He that found me. Not even His name. Nothing more than whispers in darkness. What did He even say when I asked? I cannot remember now. Something about being of the land. What did that mean?
Many more questions were written, but they are mostly illegible - angrily scratched out until the cramped, hurried lettering was a ruin of botched ink and torn page.
Was I a fool? Am I a fool still? I don’t know. How could you have written so many volumes and told me so little about what I really need to know to survive your legacy? I have so many questions and so few answers! The frustration of it will drive me mad! And yet there have been so many revelations. We have learned so much, and yet so very little.
We have little semblance to the actual meaning of our own cards; outside that they do seem to be rather on the nose for each of us. Caine included. I had my suspicions about him before, but if his card is as exacting as the rest were… He’s cursed, somehow, I’m certain of that much. And what will out, the beast or the man? He’s formidable, but he’s fracturing. The fool wanted to run off into the night after some innocent in danger – at least, according to another card. Who knows if there even is such a person in such a place? A girl, lost and alone and in need of his help. He seems hell bent on believing every word liken to scripture. It is frustrating. He is frustrating. This entire thrice-damned place is frustrating!
If I survive it, and leave it, I will have no love to lose for Barovia once I am gone.
We seem to have a mission now, something to act as our guiding star. We seek s sword that was broken, and need to find it’s blade and hilt and bring them together again. Also, a powerful holy symbol (but of course), that seems to be lost in a fallen house that is guarded by a stone dragon. Along the way we are expected to meet wizards, sleeping princes, rogues, a traitor, and others. All to face a creature of darkness whose powers are beyond mortality.
Our apparently very undead host, Count von Zarovich, is not just lord of this place, but our enemy. Or so says these cards and an old woman. I want to take the deck and throw them into the nearest fire to watch them burn. All this information, all this prattle, not a single demandable word toward anything I care about. Not one for you, your patron, how to defend myself from him, or father and how to find him, if he even yet lives. Nothing. Just as useless as gods and holy men.
Why is it only ever monsters that answer the door when I knock?
