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Freaks & Facades: Second Arc Update

Greetings ghouls, ghosties, goblins and every thing gnarly and gn-awesome that goes bump in the night! It's your good Dungeon Master @aboleth-eye here. And I am happy to share with you all the news that we are officially back from Freaks & Facades' unintended hiatus between Arcs.

Our group of misaligned but friendly Freaks have gone through quite a lot in their First Arc, being pulled from across planes and dropped in to decadent and devious Dementlieu. It's taken quite a bit of time for us to get here, but the entire First Arc is up for reading on the Freaks & Facades blog here! Check out below the break for all the ways to immerse yourself in some gothic horror and mystery ttrpg fun!

Read up on our adventures with our Campaign Index! Every session, special interlude and more for your free reading pleasure.

Take a look at the amazing First Arc Memes my Players and I made while having a rip-roaring good time!

Listen to what my Players and their Characters thought in our Q&A posts! Players' answers to your questions here, and their in-Character ones here!

Check out the start of the Ravenloft Reading Room, where I share thoughts and inspiration from the Ravenloft Novels and other canon materials!

Lastly, we have our Art Gallery, where officially commissioned and fan-submitted art for the Freaks & Facades adventures will be proudly displayed! Check out our official First Arc Party Portrait displayed now!

There has been so much growth and great reception to this Ravenloft project, and I could not be prouder of the work we've been able to create as a group!

And, as a special update, we are proud to announce that our Second Arc's first session recap JUST DROPPED TODAY!

Take a read for yourselves, but be warned of spooky First Arc spoilers! Check out the Campaign Index for everything in our First Arc first, then give us a read. Or you do you, I'm not the story police. Ha!

Thanks for reading up to this point, and for sticking with us through our First Arc growing pains! We cannot wait to share what our Second Arc will bring!

Love, Aboleth Eye [4/12/24]

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Freaks & Facades Party Portrait!!!

Commissioned Artist: Facundo Nehuén López / @Fackeate

Hey there ghouls and goblins! A secret project that's been in the works for the Freaks & Facades crew has been getting this amazing artwork done!

The was commissioned from the amazing Facundo Nehuén López, an amazing Argentinian artist (who also goes by @Fackeate on Twitter)! They were an inspiring person to work with, bringing our characters to life in mindblowing ways! I highly would work with them again!

Clockwise (starting Top Left): Pryrrish the star elf warlock, Channa the human duskblade (and earth familiar Igneous), Solange the banshee caliban gravedigger, Fenri the halfling cleric, and Schrödinger the human boneblade scientist.

Read more about the party's misadventures in the Dementlieuse countryside here at the Freaks & Facades blog! There's quaint villages, corrupt nobles, dueling, arson, vigilantism and riots, and lots of The Horrors!

I'm so excited to share this with you all! And our Player and Character Q&As are coming this weekend! Stay tuned!

-- Love, @aboleth-eye

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F&F Meme Parade! Arc One Memes Just Dropped!

Want all the gutbusting memes the F&F crew made throughout the First Arc? We just posted all of them on the blog now! Check out our parade of Freaks & Facades memes here!

Hello Freaks & Facades fans!

I know it's been a hot minute since we updated you on the misadventures of our group. The campaign is still ongoing and a lot's happened personally recently. Also, with Tumblr's new layout changes and making it impossible to format my blog posts the way I've been doing, I have been a bit uninspired lately.

However, I have decided for the good of this recap (and for you few followers) to put everything on a new blogspot page from now on! It's been so much easier to format things already, and it's much more user-friendly for reading than my previous blog.

Thank you for understanding. I will be working hard to update this blog with everything written so far (maybe some light-light editing).

With love,

Aboleth Eye

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Hello Freaks & Facades fans!

I know it's been a hot minute since we updated you on the misadventures of our group. The campaign is still ongoing and a lot's happened personally recently. Also, with Tumblr's new layout changes and making it impossible to format my blog posts the way I've been doing, I have been a bit uninspired lately.

However, I have decided for the good of this recap (and for you few followers) to put everything on a new blogspot page from now on! It's been so much easier to format things already, and it's much more user-friendly for reading than my previous blog.

Thank you for understanding. I will be working hard to update this blog with everything written so far (maybe some light-light editing).

With love,

Aboleth Eye

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Happy 2024 friends! The F&F crew have been playing this campaign for over a year now, and we're almost to the end of our first Arc!

Enjoy Session Ten: Get Out of Town! Lots happened since that dramatic party split session, including a terrible accident with a new favorite NPC! So now the group's gotta figure out how to get out the village, retreating for the safety of Port-a-Lucine! But how can they make sure the reign of our current villain suspecting their aims?

And! This session introduced a unique interlude, brought upon by a vision our group's unhappy warlock was "gifted"! Check out The Last Moments of Marie Thibeaux as a special fiction interlude, as part of Aboleth Eye's in-campaign canon! The story does possibly include spoilers if you're not caught up; so why not catch up here!

Session Eleven wraps up our First Arc, and it'll be coming soon now that I'm back in the swing of things! So catch up with the story and be part of our F&F reader family! See who survives into the campaign's Second Arc!! Woot!

-- Aboleth Eye

Hello Freaks & Facades fans!

I know it's been a hot minute since we updated you on the misadventures of our group. The campaign is still ongoing and a lot's happened personally recently. Also, with Tumblr's new layout changes and making it impossible to format my blog posts the way I've been doing, I have been a bit uninspired lately.

However, I have decided for the good of this recap (and for you few followers) to put everything on a new blogspot page from now on! It's been so much easier to format things already, and it's much more user-friendly for reading than my previous blog.

Thank you for understanding. I will be working hard to update this blog with everything written so far (maybe some light-light editing).

With love,

Aboleth Eye

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Hello Friends! Things have escalated to such a degree in-game; for Freaks & Facades is enduring its first major party split! Two endeavors for heroism, both end in ways no one but the Dark Powers expected!! It was supposed to be a fun-slash-distracting day at the races, while the rest of the party was on a heist!

How on earth can the party cope with what happened?!

Session Nine: Chaos and Collisions has just dropped; read on if you dare!! Secrets are unearthed, consequences are made manifest, and the party will not be the same after today!

Catch up with the Freaks & Facades at the link above, it's getting so good y'all! The first False Accusations arc is coming to a close very soon!

Hello Freaks & Facades fans!

I know it's been a hot minute since we updated you on the misadventures of our group. The campaign is still ongoing and a lot's happened personally recently. Also, with Tumblr's new layout changes and making it impossible to format my blog posts the way I've been doing, I have been a bit uninspired lately.

However, I have decided for the good of this recap (and for you few followers) to put everything on a new blogspot page from now on! It's been so much easier to format things already, and it's much more user-friendly for reading than my previous blog.

Thank you for understanding. I will be working hard to update this blog with everything written so far (maybe some light-light editing).

With love,

Aboleth Eye

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F&F: First Arc Q&A!

Hello friends and beloved readers! It's Aboleth-Eye, host and recapper of the amazing Ravenloft campaign Freaks & Facades! And we're doing an In-Character Q&A! Check out the question form here!

If you've somehow missed it, I've been hosting a Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition campaign set in classic Ravenloft for all of 2023. Currently the cast is in the seductive and surreptitious realm of Dementlieu. The player characters, aka the Freaks, are an amazing group of would-be adventurers and have gone through a lot in their first dip into gothic horror adventure! And we've been sharing their exploits and misadventures on a new blog! I started the recaps on this Tumblr a while back, but there were some formatting problems that arose when Tumblr changed how bullet points work. blech...

But we've persevered, and have found a different avenue to share the group's awesome adventures on This New Separate Blog! If you haven't gotten the chance, check out the story here!

And, as the story is coming close to the end of the first arc soon, and is almost caught up to the players in-game, I wanted to do a bunch of fun things once the First Arc (False Accusations) wraps up. So, we'll be posting a bunch of fun things on there and here once the arc recaps finish in December. So We're Planning An In-Character Q&A!

If there's anything you've wanted to ask our Freaks/Player Characters (see here for their bios), or even their Players themselves, send your asks through this new Google Form, or DM us directly at either @aboleth-eye or @freaks-and-facades-ravenloft!

Questions can be put to specific Freaks Characters, about their backstories, abilities, character builds, anything!

You can also ask something of all the Freaks together!

and/or the Players and Host (aka lil' ol' me Aboleth Eye)!

Questions can be made anonymous if you wish! Just keep things PG-13 please!

There is soooo much to talk about with this campaign, and the Freaks each have a lot of thought put into their stories, motivations and relationships. Like all D&D players, we are excited to overshare about our characters and campaign!

Hope to hear from you guys!

Love, Aboleth Eye!

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Hey friends! Freaks & Facades has been going strong for a long while! We've currently got Eight Recaps on the blog as of today 11/11! Catch up on the misadventures of our band of beloved Freaks before we finish the first arc!

Session Eight: A Hard Break just dropped today! It gets super crazy and awesome from here on out, all because my players are amazing!

Happy reading!

Aboleth Eye!

Hello Freaks & Facades fans!

I know it's been a hot minute since we updated you on the misadventures of our group. The campaign is still ongoing and a lot's happened personally recently. Also, with Tumblr's new layout changes and making it impossible to format my blog posts the way I've been doing, I have been a bit uninspired lately.

However, I have decided for the good of this recap (and for you few followers) to put everything on a new blogspot page from now on! It's been so much easier to format things already, and it's much more user-friendly for reading than my previous blog.

Thank you for understanding. I will be working hard to update this blog with everything written so far (maybe some light-light editing).

With love,

Aboleth Eye

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Hello Friends! Just in time for Halloween, it's our spookiest recap ever of the Freaks & Facades Ravenloft campaign! What will our band of beloved Freaks discover within the dark underbelly of this little mountain town!

Session Seven: What Remains has just dropped today! But if you want to read all the spooky sessions that came before, check out the blog link here! New story recaps every other Saturday!

Read on... At your own peril! Happy Spooky Month!

-- Love, @aboleth-eye

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We return to Freaks & Facades, and our beloved Freaks entering the hedonistic and insidious domain of the Dementlieuse gentry! They attempt a heist for clues, survive flagrant flirtation and learn the face of their true enemy. Our group will not forget their Teatime at House Montagne!

Come along and read up on our beloved Freaks' misadventures in the gothic realm of Ravenloft! New recaps will be dropping every other Saturday (or at least attempted lol!

Thanks for reading! -- Love, Aboleth Eye!

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Freaks & Facades has returned (in easily digestible new blog form)! On the Perilous Roads of Dementlieu, our group decides to intervene in the chase for a local vigilante. It is the first time they're revealing all their talents (and what lies beneath their masks), dealing with the ex-Falkovnian Flying Wolves company!

Who survives and who's scarred from this experience? What is the goal behind the nobility-disrupting night rides of Night's Vengeance? And who in this misty forest town is willing to do anything to silence their dissenting voice?

Find out in Freaks & Facades - Session Four: Perilous Roads!

Wanna catch up with the campaign and all the Ravenloft madness? Check out our brand new Campaign Recap Index!

Thanks for reading! - Love, Aboleth Eye

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Everything from this original tumblr blog has been uploaded to this new blog!

With this format I can def start getting these out on a more regular basis! My Players/Freaks and myself would greatly love you all for reading it!

Hello Freaks & Facades fans!

I know it's been a hot minute since we updated you on the misadventures of our group. The campaign is still ongoing and a lot's happened personally recently. Also, with Tumblr's new layout changes and making it impossible to format my blog posts the way I've been doing, I have been a bit uninspired lately.

However, I have decided for the good of this recap (and for you few followers) to put everything on a new blogspot page from now on! It's been so much easier to format things already, and it's much more user-friendly for reading than my previous blog.

Thank you for understanding. I will be working hard to update this blog with everything written so far (maybe some light-light editing).

With love,

Aboleth Eye

[freaks-and-facades-ravenloft]

Hello Freaks & Facades fans!

I know it's been a hot minute since we updated you on the misadventures of our group. The campaign is still ongoing and a lot's happened personally recently. Also, with Tumblr's new layout changes and making it impossible to format my blog posts the way I've been doing, I have been a bit uninspired lately.

However, I have decided for the good of this recap (and for you few followers) to put everything on a new blogspot page from now on! It's been so much easier to format things already, and it's much more user-friendly for reading than my previous blog.

Thank you for understanding. I will be working hard to update this blog with everything written so far (maybe some light-light editing).

With love,

Aboleth Eye

[freaks-and-facades-ravenloft]

Freaks & Facades: Session Three - The Misty Morning

Welcome back, my beloved readers and rapscallions.  This is the recap of Session Three of Freaks & Facades.  Our cast of beloved Freaks has had quite the night.  Quite a dark, dark night indeed...  Check out the past recaps collected on our Index, to learn what our party of Freaks has done to get to this point, (or find them linked at the bottom below the cut).

The Freaks’ time at the Ravens Loft Inn has come to a close, many questions left burning like the ashes of that mysterious tavern’s hearth.  First impressions were made, masks held tight amongst the group of strangers.  The Inn’s strange circumstances placed each of them in a bloodstained room during their stay, their futures read by a comatose Vistani seer.  When night came they found a curtain of darkness and animated furniture attempt to swallow them up!  Many were flung into the darkness unaware; while others struggled to hold the light.  One of our Freaks discovered a new face to the Tavern’s keepers, and willingly chose the darkness!  What does it all mean?

Warning: this is a horror campaign setting, so bear that in mind before reading.  Possible triggers include: bones/bone manipulation, skeletal bodies, transformation body horror etc.

The Freaks are assembled.  In the coming morning light they must decide to either stay together and face the unknown, or let their new situation split them apart!  Let’s see if they survive this first day together in Ravenloft proper!

*starts projector*

Everyone’s sleep is of nothingness.  A terrible blackness swaddling each and every one of them.  They are startled awake all at once, several weakened by this unknowing descent through the Elemental Darkness!  They are inside a cave, damp with the early morning Mist...

Fenri and Schrödinger each remember the Curtain of Feathers swallowing the inn!  But their memories about what befell them all afterwards is unclear and foggy...

Someone notices the weapon Schrödinger has instinctively drawn and alerts the others.  A dagger made from his own bones, extruding from his palm!  Solange instinctively rolls away, fearing the Lamordian is actually an undead--and collides in the stomach with a stalagmite.  Fenri is also a bit startled, as she is a priestess who has faced many undead in the past...

Schrödinger reveals this is his Science, his life’s work: to utilize the body’s skeletal structure beyond simply as a biological framework to build upon.  

Channa has no qualms. She has used blood in her elemental magecraft in the past, why not use the body’s elements for something new?  Despite their misgivings, Solange and Fenri decide to be open-minded (but keeping an eye on the lordling all the same).

Pryrrish is entirely unaware of this briefly tense situation, too focused on her Tome’s current location to care.  Reassuringly, it is still beside her despite this change in scenery...  She has no qualms about Schrödinger’s abilities--she isn’t one who can judge easily.  She uses her swirling eyes to look about the cave.

Fenri goes outside to pray in the dawn’s gentle light!  Solange steps outside as well, keeping the halfling and the rest of the party all within sight.  Pryrrish, Channa and  Schrödinger examine the cave they woke up in...  There’s signs of an unhoused person having slept here recently.  The cave is within a small plateau beside a forested country road; the trees and their autumn foliage are quite familiar to those Solange knows, so they may be in Dementlieu still.  Perhaps merely a single night has passed since she was lost in the Catacombs?

The cavern’s walls are all painted in extremely old squiggles and symbols, depicting tides of Mist, the jagged mountains between and shadowy wolves skulking the woods....  At the center of the ceiling, between the stalactites, is a vaguely prehistoric image of a gray figure dressed in robes.  Holding a shield and a sprig of flowers... 

Pryrrish peeks into her Tome, revealing this must be a figure of Ezra, the Guardian in the Mists, the unknown protector goddess of this realm...  A god unknown to all but Solange and  Schrödinger (but neither are religious for reasons of fashion and rationality).

Channa discovers there’s an ancient set of stairs carved into the back, going up to the top of the plateau...  But Schrödinger begins to talk about witnessing the Matron and Maiden of the Inn revealing themselves as horrible wraiths; and the group is distracted from further investigation by this news...

Fenri gathers her daily reservoir of divine magic, but Pelor is still so far away in her heart.  The Sun above is not the shining hope of the Dawn Father, but an eerie ball of sustaining light and warmth that makes the priestess feel nothing.  Solange watches the priestess’s devotions, bemused.

Schrödinger, after learning of this place’s connection to the Guardian in the Mists, recalls the Mists that swallowed him in the alleys of Ludendorf.  He goes around asking everyone if they also encountered banks of misty clouds.  In truth, they all affirm his suspicions--they were brought together by this unknown force of Mist!

Fenri actively tells of her fiery experience in her homeland, and everyone is quite shocked at how calm and sunny the halfling is about their traumatic experience!  Channa is especially touched, but she hides her emotions from being so open.  

Fenri tells Schrödinger she prayed about how to handle his Science, and she’s concluded he’s not a bad person.  She gives him a hug--awkward because he’s nearly three times her size, as well as it’s exceedingly intimate for a Lamordian to be hugged!  

The group hears a wagon approach, and Solange replaces her disguising veil.  It’s a halfling man driving a large wagon of milk jugs and hay.  He greets the group in low Mordentish, and Fenri in their shared racial language; introducing himself as Terrii of the Jollydell Clan.  Terrii sees the group is quite out of sorts, so he offers to take them on a ride into the nearby town of Campanula--far to the north in Dementlieu.  Terrii Jollydell’s sons pop out from the hay bales in the wagon back, having hidden with crossbows in case the group were bandits.  Fenri makes friends with them, even giving Terrii a Pelorian prayer to help his ailing wife on their homestead.

The halfling boys excitedly talk about local vigilante, named Night’s Vengeance!  A masked rake and friendly scoundrel who has humiliated the local nobility, riding on a pitch black steed through the deep forest roads uncaught for weeks.  He’s crashed noble soirees on horseback, as well as stolen the clothes of an entire noble entourage for the local baron’s son!  

For the latter, Night’s Vengeance unhorsed the carriage, stole Baron Montagne’s son’s infamously bejeweled cloak and abandoned the boy naked in his horseless carriage--in the middle of the woods at night!  The rake then rode through town, standing on the horses  laughing and throwing the cloak’s jewels in the central water fountain of Campanula’s central square.

Campanula is a town surrounded by thick forests, and supposedly wolves prowl the dense foliage and mountains.  The group does some shopping  for supplies and getting their bearings.  

Solange recognizes they are on near the northern border between Dementlieu and Lamordia.  She’s never been away from Port-a-Lucine in all her life, but thankfully it seems no time has passed since her experience in the Catacombs...

Pryrrish (with her swirling sight invocations) helps Schrödinger translate the signs of a halfling greengrocer and helps him pay for apples--he’s never had to buy sundry goods on his own before.  Pryrrish garners some attention for being an elf, and Schrodinger begins to be protective of her.  

They barter at a local stable for a pair of horses and a wagon, meeting a noble’s stableman Vincente Quint.  Vincente is quite average but happily helps negotiate a fair deal with them and the local horsemaster.

The group goes to the town hall to exchange their coins for Dementlieu currency.  Upon approach, they see servants of House Montagne wading through the square’s fountain for any remaining jewels of the baron’s sons.  And speaking of, Lord Isaac Montagne II (Baron Montagne’s son) appears from town hall and immediately insults them as peasants for not moving out of “their better’s way”.  Channa despises nobles but is convinced to step back.

Inside Campanula town hall, they encounter Baron Montagne leaving after speaking with the local magistrate.  A hunting dog perfectly follows him after.  Fenri can sense the baron’s disdain behind his placid, confident smile.  (And she gets the awful thought that as he passed the group, he was learning their scent...  Like the dog obediently beside him would...)

Schrödinger, as a noble scion of Lamordia, is easily able to procure a bank note to exchange his golden gluttons for Dementlieu’s corona gold coins.  But Channa and Pryrrish, who have pooled their Eberronian gold together, are outright rejected by the magistrate for some reason.  

While Pryrrish accompanies Schrödinger in obtaining his money at the bank, Solange, Channa and Fenri head to the local watering hole.  The Howling Wolf Alehouse.

The Howling Wolf is a raucous but warm peasant’s tavern.  Solange, in her dour mourning veils (her hatpin of disguise hiding her caliban nature), gets a large table for the whole party.  

Before the bread basket is even brought out, Fenri sneaks away to the alleyway outside, hoping to pray to Pelor again now that it’s about noontime.  Channa volunteers to find their sunny companion, and the two bond over the strangeness of this land.  Channa hesitantly accepts Fenri’s hug of appreciation.  (She has never been one for many friends before.  Especially not after he vanished...)

Meanwhile, Solange awkwardly sits at the big table.  She overhears the sounds of carousing on the upper floor of the tavern.  According to hearsay, they are The Flying Wolves: a group of ex-Falkovnian refugees hired by Baron Montagne to capture Night’s Vengeance.  They are led by the infamous half-elven spearwoman, the Falconeater...

Pryrrish and Schrödinger easily obtain the Dementlieuse currency.  They have a similar matter-of-factness to the way they talk.  Pryrrish is reminded of her older brother, sadly.  

After an exceedingly good meal at the Alehouse--with Schrödinger taking half a dozen rolls with them--the group obtains their wagon and horses.  They decide to camp somewhere for the night, as the journey to Port-a-Lucine will take at least three days!  And the night is dangerous so far from civilization.

At a small well-used campsite beside a mountain stream, the group prepares to bed down for the night.  It seems the horses instinctually dislike lord  Schrödinger, so it takes Solange and Fenri to direct and care for the animals.

Solange, upon dusk breaking, uses her gravedigger deathchatter ability to send messages at night, to alert any fellow gravedigger or death cleric of her position.  She hopes they will pass the message along to the Order of the Moonlight Vigil...

Just after they prepare their campfire, the sound of beating hooves alerts the party!  Fenri grabs her sling-staff and clutches her holy symbol.  Pryrrish grabs the large Tome at her side, shadowy wisps emerging from its pages about her fingertips.  Channa unwinds her spiked chain and has Iggy the earth familiar burrow underground.  Solange lights her lantern-staff and peers into the darkness of the road.  And Schrödinger twists his bones into a rapier-like weapon, thrumming with green electricity!

A figure in a mask, standing in the saddle and wielding a hand crossbow and rapier, rides out from the darkness and into the moonlight!  The horse he rides is a majestic stallion of pure ebony, breathing heavily as its powerful hooves beat the earth!  

The figure is Night’s Vengeance, though not as cartoonishly evil in his depictions on the many wanted posters in town!  He begs the group to distract those following him!  He rides east, throwing a bag of coins towards them for their trouble!

A group of riders in wolf pelts and swords comes down from the direction the vigilante came.  The Flying Wolves on the hunt!  And leading the pack is the Falconeater, with her spearhead glistening in the moonlight!  A Wolf notices the bag of coins on the ground and the hunters give chase, ignoring the group’s attempt to point them in the wrong direction.

Suddenly, the noble Schrödinger causes his entire body to emerge in a necromantic suit of spiky bone armor!  This upsets Channa and Pryrrish, the latter of whom was right beside him when his transformation occurred!  

Solange creates a magical area of briars upon the road, slowing and harming the horses of the Flying Wolves!  Combat has begun for this group!

Freaks & Facades will continue in Session Four - Perilous Roads!  Click here to read on! [WIP]

Thanks for reading!  We hope you love our friendly freaks as much as we do!

Parts: Zero/Cast, One P1, One P2, Two, Three, Four [WIP]

- Aboleth Eye, 08/06/2023!

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Freaks & Facades: Session Two - The Ravens Loft Inn

Welcome all those who have crawled out of the Mists tonight!  This is the recap of Session Two of Freaks & Facades, all about our players coming together under the roof of the mysterious Ravens Loft Inn!  

Our five strangers each escaped their little brush with horror, and all are now being catered to by the mysterious Innkeepers--the Matron, the Maiden, the Raven and lastly the Madame.  Where this mysterious inn lies is unknown.  Why these five have been brought here by their misadventures, also unknown.  But the winds outside the Ravens Loft Inn are howling, a gathering of energies watching our beloved Freaks.  Let us see what happens as the Freaks begin to mingle!

Warning: this is a horror campaign setting, so bear that in mind before reading.  Possible triggers include: blood and gore, moving shadows/darkness, malevolent dead and dark spirits, bones/bone manipulation, etc.

Now, pull up a chair, fill up your plate and let us feast upon the story starting with our beloved Freaks! It’s quite a long one, so be prepared!  

*starts projector*

We find the five strangers, our beloved Freaks, pulled in to the mysterious Ravens Loft Inn through unusual circumstances.  Pryrrish searching.  Schrödinger fleeing.  Fenri panicking.  Channa sacrificing.  Solange pursuing.  

The Matron and the Maiden welcome the five strangers.  All who find there way to this mysterious inn are to be given food, drink and board for one night.  And according to their rules, each guest must have their tarokka read by the mysterious Madame Xenia--the withered unblinking crone by the fireplace.  Their reading will determine which room and floor each guest shall stay in.  Apparently they don’t have guests often...  When asked where the inn is physically located, the Matron and Maiden are quite vague.

The strangers mingle.  Here’s a brief overview of the Freaks intermingling:

Schrödinger is enthralled by the sight of Pryrrish!  He has never seen an elf before!  What’s her bone structure like?

Pryrrish and Channa recognize they’re both from Eberron.  They even speak Mordentish (Common) with the same idioms and cultural references.

Solange tries to help clean up the dust from her coming through the ceiling, the Matron refutes all help.  So Solange goes to the bar.  Solange’s hatpin of disguise falters a bit and some of the others recognize her inhuman nature.  But they’re fine with her being a caliban? Huh.

Fenri heals Channa’s ritual wound, but her connection to Pelor feels off...  Distant...  

Channa tries to figure out how they all got there, the Matron and Maiden are vague about the inn’s exact location.  There’s obviously some planar travel going on.

Fenri and Schrödinger chat--healing magic is an unknown science to him, and halflings are also quite rare in Lamordia!  At first he thought Fenri was a child in armor.  He asks to examine her bones but she refuses.  Her sunny smile starts to slip a bit.

Channa joins Solange at the bar, each receiving a unique local beverage to their homelands.  Solange and Channa have an understanding about the their mutual want of understanding.

The others pile up food on their plates, with Fenri being ecstatic to feast.  Every table has delicacies from different worlds and domains...

The strangers at the Inn are making a good first impression, despite their strange circumstances and secrets. 

After drinks and plates have been served out, the Matron requests each step before the mysterious Madame Xenia.  The Madame is the true hostess of the Ravens Loft Inn.  Apparently accommodations are given out depending on what the Madame draws from her deck.  Schrodinger and Solange recognize the women of the Inn appear to be Vistani, their tasque unknown.

The deck of cards before the withered crone appears to be a special tarokka deck.  The deck of archetypes and symbols used by the Vistani to divine the future for others...  Though this deck appears unique--with a golden skull staring facelessly on the card backs.

The Matron has the group line up before the old woman, and helps the Madame from beneath her heavy covers.  The Madame, exerting great will just to lift her one free hand, telekinetically lifts a card for each of the travelers.  Upon each card’s face being revealed, the Raven then shouts out its meaning.  Lastly, as the Matron shuffles the deck between patrons, the Maiden at the bar gives out a specific room key for each patron’s read fate.

First is Solange, who knows of the Vistani but never had a chance to meet one in her childhood.  The telekinetically flipped card reveals the Three of Glyphs, the Healer. The reliever of affliction and curses...  Her room is on the Fifth Floor, according to the Maiden.  

Second, bemused by this peasant divination, Schrödinger stands before the crone.  He receives the Five of Stars, the Elementalist.  Supposedly it signifies a mastery of the physical world.  His room is on the Fourth Floor.

Thirdly, the first outlander, Pryrrish, steps up shyly.  The card she receives is the Ten of Swords, the Master of Swords--forger of alliances amongst bloodshed and violence!  Second Floor room.

Next, nudged out of some pondering by the halfling, Channa moves forward.  The card revealed is the Eight of Glyphs, the Hierophant, master of schemes and plots.  Fifth Floor room, like Solange’s.

Lastly, and very worried about the old woman’s declining energies, Fenri’s fate is read.  Hers is the Seven of Coins, the Thief.  A sign that something of value has been lost or stolen...  Her room is on the Third Floor.

As soon as the last card is read, the Raven causes a ruckus, demanding the patrons head up to their rooms right away!  The Matron shoos the naughty bird away, revealing it is the Madame’s ancient familiar.  She sees the concern for the old crone and says not to worry for the Madame--the tarokka has great power for the Vistani, and the body of Raunie Xenia of the Ravens Loft Inn cannot weather it as gracefully as she once did... 

Fenri noticed that as the Madame revealed card after card, anticipation built higher and higher.  Only to come crashing down at Fenri’s last card.  (Does the old woman seek a specific card?)

The visitors start to head upstairs, except for Fenri who decides to have a second trip at the buffet...  The Second Floor has ten doors with different numbers of Swords upon them.  Each floor above is similar--Third has Coins, Fourth has Stars, Fifth has Glyphs.  But above that lie two more floors, which Schrödinger investigates...

Pryrrish enters her Second Floor Swords room.  There is an enormous pool of blood staining the wooden floor!  But the star elf (who has seen far too much in her journey) merely closes the door behind her, places a chair to block it from opening, and falls asleep on the bed...

Channa enters her Fifth Floor Glyphs room.  Uh oh!  Everything in the room is covered in a fine bloodspatter stain!  Her exhaustion kicks in, and she sits on the bed talking to Iggy her elemental familiar.

Solange waits on the Fifth Floor for Schrödinger to investigate the upper floors.

Schrödinger sees the Sixth Floor has twelve doors, each adorned with a unique symbol or archetype...  

The scientist then reaches the Seventh Floor, the top floor.  Only two doors here--a Sun and a Beast doors, staring across the room from one another.  And a large window on the long wall, overlooking a vista that cannot be: an autumnal field outside of a pastoral village, sheep grazing among several of their own lying dead... 

He goes down a floor, finding the Maiden sweeping.  She says his room is on a different floor and politely sweeps him downstairs.  Solange did not see the Maiden pass her by to get there... Wasn’t she on the first floor at the bar?

Schrödinger goes to his Fourth Floor room, finding bloodspatter everywhere!  He gets excited and starts investigating with his personal stash of mortician’s tools.  Whomever left all this blood was given hundreds of small wounds all at once, but where’s the body?  He wants to find it!

Solange enters her Fifth Floor room.  The sight of fresh bloodspatter concerns her, and she rushes downstairs!  She checks up on the others in their rooms.  She passes by Schrödinger on his hands and knees excitedly examining the blood.  Channa through the door says her room is bloody. Pryrrish doesn’t respond!

Fenri is enjoying her second tuck in at the buffet, while the innkeepers begin to tidy up.  The Maiden cleans glasses.  The Matron begins to put up the chairs.  On the mantle, the Raven tips over its cup, blood dripping down to the floor.  And the Madame, in her swaddle of blankets once more, wheezes in her blank, heated exhaustion.

Without warning, Solange runs from the upstairs!  All the rooms have blood in them!  The innkeepers are shocked, as is Fenri.  Solange looks into the Matron’s eyes and believes her when she says she’s never seen bloodshed in the inn since she began working here...

The Matron heads upstairs with Fenri and Solange to see.  Pryrrish keeps her door closed, reading her Tome on the bed and starting to nod off.  They come to Schrödinger’s open room on the third floor.   Schrödinger turns around to their confusion, turning back the room is ordinary and clean of all blood...  

Solange takes the Matron to her room on the fourth floor; it’s clean as well.  Channa opens her door and turns around, showing the room clean in surprise as well.  The Matron worries over her guests.  They must have had a rough time of their journey...

They’ll have to worry in the morning about it.  They’re all so tired...

Fenri offers to stay the night in Solange’s room regardless.

With the guests upstairs in their rooms (or that of a new friend’s), the Ravens Loft Inn starts to finally close down for the night.  The Maiden and Matron start to blow out the lights, one candle at a time.  The Madame squirms in her armchair...  

The first light is blown out.  Unbeknownst to the guests, on the top Seventh Floor  with the two rooms and the window to another world, a curtain of pitch black feathers begins to descend from the ceiling--swallowing the floor entirely!

In each room, as the lights below turn down, the patrons in their tired states start to be ensnared by the animated bedsheets.  Even Channa’s elemental is bagged up!  

Only Fenri and Schrodinger of the unbeknownst party are conscious of this surreptitious, serpentine binding.  Both struggling hard against the restraint!

Another light blown out downstairs.  The curtain of Dark Feathers swallows the strange rooms on the Sixth Floor!

Using his abilities in boneshaping,  Schrödinger extrudes his phalangeal arm bones from his wrist.  Instinctually and unnaturally, he twists them into a small dagger that crackles with innate electricity!  He struggles to cut out of his bindings!

Fenri breaks free of her bonds in Solange’s room on the Fifth Floor!  Pelor’s strength must still be within her!

The Maiden blows out another light.  The two active innkeepers are starting to head towards the Matron and Raven at the fireplace.

Fenri is the only witness of the Fifth Floor being swallowed by the Dark Feathers!  The room loses all shape in the dark and she tumbles endlessly!  Through it all, she evokes a consecration ritual to hopefully protect herself and Solange in the darkness!

Using his abilities in boneshaping, Schrödinger extrudes his phalangeal arm bones and twists them into a rapier that crackles with unnatural electric current!  He struggles to cut out of his bindings.

The Matron snuffs a candle.  The Curtain descends.  

Iggy the earth familiar struggles to waken Channa or escape the bedsheets that bagged it up!  The Fourth Floor and its occupants is swallowed by the Dark Feathers.

Desperately,  Schrödinger cuts through the sheets and leaps out of his Third Floor Room!  Just as the curtain of feathery darkness starts to seep in through the ceiling!  He runs downstairs!

The Maiden finishes cleaning the bar’s cups and takes a candle to the fireplace.  Shadows have grown in the tavern room with every light gone.  She smiles at the roaring fireplace, her lips suddenly pale and cracking like a salt flat.

The Dark Feathers swallow the Third Floor!  Pryrrish is swallowed by the darkness, meditating and bound, unaware in her trance.  The Tome in her lap squirms like a leathery reptile, as if sensing a change in air temperature.  

Schrödinger dashes through, fleeing from the irrational, terrifying phenomenon!  His bone dagger stretches and twists into a full rapier from his wrists!  He may have to puncture his way out of this!

The Matron struts towards the fireplace.  She puts down her broom and blows out a table candle.  She grasps the back of the Madame’s armchair, which shivers from its occupant...  Her voice whispers in the old woman’s ear, all bereft of its husky joviality.

Schrödinger leaps down the stairwell, leaving the Second Floor to be consumed!  Fenri’s unused room vanishes into the feathery shadow!

The tavern First Floor is all shadows, stretching from the flickering light of the roaring fire.  The Raven watches the nightly event with its fathomless red eyes...

Interrupting the final moments,  Schrödinger leaps and lands down at the bottom of the stairs.  He calls for aid, only to find horror before him!

The Maiden and Matron are not as they once appeared.  They are spectral, withered, malevolent!  Lifeless, soulless husks with black and yellow glowing eyes!  Their fingers ending in mere wisps of smoke, like their lower halves of their fleshly bodies have become!

The Raven flaps its wings and caws out for him to flee for his life!  This all would have been done with so much the quicker if he’d simply stayed in bed!

Utterly alone and frightened before the spectral innkeepers,  Schrödinger chooses to instead rush back up the stairs.  Straight into the descending Dark Feather curtain!

The wraith Matron takes the old Madame’s pathetically weak hand in her dead one.  She calls back to the fleeing Schrödinger, hoping he enjoyed his stay...  The Madame’s pitiful weeping was never heard by any of the latest patrons of her prison...

The Maiden, gleefully horrible with her cracking smile, leans forward and blows out the fireplace.  In a single, chilling breath.  And the curtain descends.  

The Ravens Loft Inn and all those within.  Swallowed.  Shrouded in soft, impenetrable darkness!

The Freaks, both conscious and not, fall through the darkness.  All solid ground vanished, nothing but a memory as they spin and tumble in unconscious nightmare and conscious fear!  Even Fenri’s radiant consecrating light does not penetrate this darkness!

Darkness.... 

Endless....

Fathomless.  

Forevermore... 

When suddenly, the Darkness itself retracts.  Only Schrödinger and Fenri conscious to see the horror that pulls in its limitless dark wings and raise its horrible head!

They will wish they hadn’t bore witness to such a thing...  In time...

A Dark Raven, greater in size than a single horizon could contain, extends its wings and opens its red eyes.  From its titanic throat comes out a silent but bonerattling call!  

The dreamers feel this horrific sound in their dreams, each swallowed by darkness and feelings of helplessness!

The Freaks are pulled into this red maw of dark, unending hunger!  Down the throat of this thing greater and older than any god or demon!  And all goes dark!  Minds conscious and unconscious shut down upon the great entity’s beak snapping shut upon them!

Freaks & Facades will continue in Session Three - The Misty Morning!  Click here to read on! 

Thanks for reading!  We hope you love our friendly freaks as much as we do!

Parts: Zero/Cast, One P1, One P2, Two, Three, Four [tbd]

- Aboleth Eye, 06/16/2023!

[freaks-and-facades-ravenloft]

Freaks & Facades: Session One - Vignettes Part Two

Welcome to Part Two of the Session One Vignettes for Freaks & Facades!  If you haven’t read Part One, we recommend you do so you get the full cast!

Our cast of player characters have begun to be drawn into the Mists of Ravenloft, but there’s still two remaining: Channa and Solange!  And where do each of our friendly freaks find themselves at the end of their vignette?  Read on to find out more!

Warning: this is a horror campaign setting, so bear that in mind before reading.  Possible triggers for these vignettes: animal death, fire, blood, buried alive, claustrophobia, falling...

Enjoy at your own peril!  Bwahaha!  And thank you for reading! *starts projector* - Aboleth Eye

Channa Devir

The grounds of the University of Wynarm-Arcanix are Misty and dark.  In the abandoned laboratory of a missing professor, Channa Devir is doing something profane.  Her familiar of elemental earth Igneous brings her the forbidden tome she needs.  Stolen from the hands of the ongoing inquiry.  With this dark knowledge she begins to assemble the Perversions of the Four Elements.

Channa hasn’t slept, her mind racing.  A boon to one ignoring everything their own conscience.  She must discover what happened to those who partook of the ritual.  First her only friend a year ago, and then her mentor just a month ago!  This ritual was her friend’s design...  What had he done in this perversion of the elements?  

She gathers what elements she can.  Grave from her master’s stores.  Blood from her own veins.  Mist flowing down the bricks to carpet the laboratory.  Power is gathering.  And so are the sounds in the square.  

A pounding at the door.  Her teachers.  Her colleagues.  Her protectors.  The pounding at the door grows greater and greater as Channa descends deeper into her pursuit of the profane elements.  

All she need do now is create the Pyre.  A small cage, doused in oil.  An innocent rat squeaking piteously inside...  Can she damn this creature to torment for her dark purpose?

The room thrums with energy, making her dizzy.  Channa stares at the match in her wounded hand, doubt pounding at her mind like the pounding at the laboratory door.  But it only takes a single flick of the wrist, the decision made...  The rat is consumed in barely a second.  The Pyre roars with the scream of the tiny helpless animal...  The Pyre’s crackling delight in the scream echoes, joining the pounding at the door...  Joining the viscous bubbling of her Blood...  The eerie stillness of the Grave...  The surreptitious murmurings of the Mist...  

The room is nothing but a terrible pulse--the walls shake, Channa’s body vibrates at a frequency foreign to this world...  A crack in the air appears above the profane circle.  A tear in the fabric of existence, the elements of Channa’s reality negated by her Elemental Perversion.  The slip opens like a smile, revealing a bottomless maw of spiraling darkness and rows upon rows of reality-tearing teeth...  

This maw of the Elemental Dark inhales Channa’s body atom by atom, rendering her into the four profane elements...  Until only the concept of Channa Devir herself stands before the Maw, and then is pulled through...

The world vanishes in an instant.  Before a new reality finds a place for Channa.  The exhausted, terrified mage is suddenly immersed in heavy darkness on all sides.  Loamy earth and detritus fills her mouth, stuffs her nostrils, presses against her eyes...  She hears nothing, sees nothing...  She is buried in darkness.  Her body unmade and then displaced somewhere deep beneath graven earth... 

Is this her punishment?  Did something go wrong in the ritual?  Is this what her mentor and best friend both suffered for their hubris?  Is she suspended in graven earth alongside them? 

Channa feels a tug in the earthen hell, the familiar hand of her earth elemental perhaps?  Channa, choking on earth and soil, pushes forward through the endless earth to follow this tugging.  She has to Know!

A solid object, unseen, impedes her path.  The unseen stony limb vanishes, abandons her at this obstacle...   Does freedom lie beyond it, or merely the deepest bedrock?  

Channa gathers all her strength, all her fear, all her undying need to Know!  She punches through the obstacle, light and air blind her senses!  She pulls herself up, gasping and choking!  Her ears are stuffed with earth, there’s a murmuring voice...

Solange Therese Charron

The night is dark and Misty, the moon is shrouded.  A lone member of St. Leonburg’s Order of the Moonlight Vigil patrols the graves, lantern swinging and veils swishing in the night breeze...  Solange murmurs to herself.  To something unseen, something close to her heart, or merely attached to it...  Solange is on patrol tonight, to preserve the serenity of those buried here.  It’s what the odious nobles of Port-a-Lucine demand.

The clouds shift, and Solange feels a tug upon her golden eyes.  A mausoleum is open...  The stone doors pushed outwards, from within.  Fresh blood upon the ground.  Something once alive was dragged into this lonely crypt.  No name upon the ancient stonework...

Solange knows she should not investigate alone.  But she is compelled to preserve life, to save those stolen by the grave.  She ignores the pull of Maman and peers into the crypt.

A statue of Ezra, Guardian of the Mists, sits within the mausoleum.  A comforting figure to many, but so out of fashion these days.  Beneath the statue lies stone steps.  Into the Catacombs of St. Leonburg’s.  Where only the Deep Watchmen may tread.  

The bloody trail, handprints of desperation upon the bone-inlaid walls, leads down into the depths...  Despite knowing the risks, Solange descends, against the Moonlit Vigil’s tenets and her own sense.  The lantern light casts dark shadows from every femur and skull inlaid into the ancient labyrinth. 

Suddenly, Solange hears the sounds of running.  From the ceiling, a voice echoes in her mind, she’s running out of time...  Solange follows the unseen spectre.  She follows the bloody mess further into the Catacombs, she attempts to leap across a chasm in a descending staircase...  She makes it across.

But the stones crumble beneath her feet...  She falls into the depths, true darkness.  She lands on a dune of bone fragments and dust...  In a subterranean desert of the crumbled dead.  White centipedes skitter from her light.  The dark is endless beyond the closest dunes.  Solange cannot see the hole she fell through...  She must get out of here!

Solange marches through the dunes.  Maman points something out to her after a time.  The dunes behind her are shifting position...  And great tidal wave of bone dust is rising.  A tsunami of choking remnants, headings towards the tiny gravekeeper... She runs!  

The desert of bone slows her down, barely pushing through as the dust rises to her waist.  Enormous hands of bone (too many bones) rise up to grasp at her!  Eventually, inevitably Solange is caught by the wave!  She is soon submerged in the shifting grains of bone,  Answers to her past, to her connection with the dead; all will be forgotten.  Solange will never be found.  Did she ever exist?

Suddenly Solange is falling into bright light, landing hard on something solid and rolling off to the floor.  She is covered in bone dust, choking on it in her lungs and nose.  She hears a voice and opens her golden eyes...

The Innkeepers

The fire filled the tavern hall, crackling and casting amber shadows.  Garlands of dried herbs hung like curtains between the tavern beams and pillars.  Each and every table was groaning under the weight of entire feats, steaming sumptuous dishes from many different realms.  The Matron expertly swept the floor.  It had been a long time since they had had patrons of the Inn and she was looking forward to it.  The Raven flew from the upper stairwell, failing to swipe at the Matron’s hair.  

The large bird landed on the bar, where the Maiden in her indigo headscarf was polishing glasses.  She had been doing them in a cheerful daydream until the bird croaked at her and tipped over a glass.  She shooed the bird away, and it flapped away.  The Maiden rolled her eyes petulantly and began to tidy.

The Raven, the geometric sunburst pendant swinging around its neck, landed on its mantlepiece perch.  The Raven dipped its face in the silver cup close by, nibbling something and came out with a bloody beak.  It looked down at the creature who sat before the fireplace in a tall gray chair.  The Madame...

Legs smothered by quilts and blankets, too weak to even shed a single layer; the Madame’s gray eyes stared at nothing.  Her skin was draped on her skeleton like velvet that once fit.  Her gnarled, yellow-nailed hands shook like leaves in a gale.  An unconscious thrum of gathering energy was the only thing giving the wispy-haired crone any animation of her digits.

On a small table before the Madame’s seat, a black enamel box sat.  Suddenly, all those of the Inn suddenly heard the painted cards within shiver and rattle.  Their heads snapped to attention, looking at one another.  Save for the Madame, the pitiful wretch.  She had no strength to even turn her head or shift her eyes...

Suddenly! the front door burst open by a great Misty wind.  A cloaked figure was thrust in by the terrible gale!  All of the inn watched the panting figure, the silver dagger in her hands glistening.  The Matron welcomed their first guest of the night, commenting on the blustery night.

Pryrrish Norfaer looked up, shocked by the scene she had stumbled into.  The Raven stared down the newcomer and croaked out, “Pick a card!  Awk!!”

Before Pryrrish could respond, a great tumbling noise came from the upstairs.  Down the stairwell, a man fell head over heels again and again, red hair wild as he tumbled.  He continued rolling until colliding with a table, shifting the Lamordian spread on it slightly.  A hastily packed valise tumbled down afterwards.  

Ludwig Hössler Schrödinger quickly righted himself and apologized for his unorthodox entrance, speaking in Lamordian.  No one responded.  The Matron asked, in Mordentish, if he was alright.  He changed languages, trying not to give in to his confusion.   Just as the young lordling spotted the other outsider--an elf of all things!--the Raven croaked out, “Don’t dillydally, boy, and pick a card!  Awk.”

As the Raven spat out the words, a great noise came from the chimney.  Something small and golden tumbled down from the fireplace, sending a cloud of ashes and dying embers as it collided softly with the Madame’s pile of blankets.  A golden haired halfling uncurled herself and shook off the embers, confused.

Fenri Sunwillow spotted the old woman she’d collided with and immediately began to fret and bombard everyone with apologies  The Matron soothed her worries, for Madame Xenia had plenty of padding to protect her.  The halfling still fretted, and struggled to fathom what had occurred to her.  Startling her from above, the Raven flapped and shouted, “Pick a card, awk awk awk!!!”

A great sound of splintering wood came from beside the Maiden at her bar.  A dirty, bandaged hand had burst through the floorboards!  Pushing herself through the wood and dirt, a disheveled and exhausted woman pulled herself through the earth.   A creature of elemental earth helped pull her out completely.

Channa Devir was half-blinded by dirt, barely breathing the open air.  Igneous was beside her, she could tell.  The Maiden offered her a glass of water, unperturbed by her entrance, and Channa graciously took it.  As she slowly sipped and spat out dirt, the Raven hopped up and down on its perch.  It shouted out to the half-deafened mage, “Pick a card, awk awk awk!!!”

Just as the mage began to breathe more easily, something burst through the ceiling above the tavern!  A cascade of white dust and a figure in mourning veils created a massive hole!  The figure slammed into a table and rolled off!  The Matron ran over... To sweep up and give the veiled person a handkerchief.  The veils shimmered, the disguise shimmered, revealing the figure’s strange golden eyes.

Solange Therese Charron was stunned by her ordeal, but she spoke in accented Mordentish an apology.  As she wiped off the dust of the catacomb desert of bone, she looked around confused.  An elf!  A man in ugly/unfashionable Lamordian attire!  A halfling in shining armor!  A woman choking down water, covered in dirt!  

The Raven had had enough!  It shouted out to all the visitors, shaking the beams of the inn with its hoarse voice: “Pick a card!  Awk!  Pick now!  Pick now!”  It wanted this to be over and done with!

Six strangers, each a victim of some unnatural circumstances, looked to one another.  The Matron swept up as if this was completely normal.  The Maiden leaned over the bar and gave a flirty wink.  The Raven, exhausted by its outburst, went back to eating the cupful of entrails.  

The Madame was silent.  Her eyes never left the fireplace, the waving flames dancing in her vacant expression.

On the table before the crone, the box of her cards shifted and squirmed unseen.  They were eager to be used this ominous night at the Ravens Loft Inn!

Freaks & Facades will continue in Session Two - The Ravens Loft Inn!  Click here to read on! 

Thanks for reading!  We hope you love our friendly freaks as much as we do!

Parts: Zero/Cast, One P1, One P2, Two, Three, Four [tbd]

- Aboleth Eye, 05/20/2023!

[freaks-and-facades-ravenloft]

Freaks & Facades: Session One - Vignettes Part One

Welcome all to the first full recap of Freaks & Facades, a D&D 3e/3.5 campaign that has drawn strangers from across the Planes for reasons tenebrous and strange.  

We will be splitting this story into several smaller posts to keep you, our lucky reader, from being overwhelmed at the start.  This is a recap of the first session, a series of Horror Vignettes that introduced our amazing cast of characters and drew them together.  

These are the individual horror stories of how Pryrrish, Schrödinger and Fenri were drawn into Ravenloft by the Mists!

Warning: this is a horror campaign setting, so bear that in mind before reading.  Possible triggers for these first vignettes: claustrophobia, fire, falling...

We hope you enjoy!  *starts projector* - Aboleth Eye

Pryrrish Norfaer

Pryrrish wanders the Mournland, the magical wasteland of what was once Cyre.  She is guided on her quest by the Tome she carries, a massive book of dark symbols only she can read.  She is searching for a long-lost subterranean prison beneath the dead city of Making.  Supposedly it was where the rulers of Cyre imprisoned and studied outsiders, and the Tome draws her towards the lost prison.

She finds the prison entrance and enters the misty darkness.  But Pryrrish finds nothing but dungeon-cleaning oozes and empty cells...  Until she spots a cloaked figure down a hallway.  It runs from her down into the dark depths of the prison, and Pryrrish follows!  

It leads her down a spiraling stairway, deep into the earth.  The elf swallows her fear of tight spaces and runs down.  Down, down, down.  Into darkness and rising Mists...  Always the figure ahead is just around the corner...  How deep has she gone?

Pryrrish turns around, struggling to find her step as the Mists swallow her augmented vision.  She hears footsteps from above and watches a shadowy afterimage pass her by; a translucent silhouette of herself.  

She begins to panic, the stairwell never ends!  The mists are impossible to see through.  She couldn’t read the Tome at her side even if she wanted to, she has nothing to guide her except her instincts. But everything is murky and opaque!  And then she finds the curved wall, her only support on this endless stair, has also become unsure.  Pryrrish could pass through it towards... What?

Pryrrish, surrounded on all sides by the Mists, decides to risk this new unknown path rather than be trapped forever on a downward spiral.  She pushes through, defying the physical limits she knows should be present, and walks on a sideways path.  Still unsure and shrouded in Mist, but her own decision.

This new path is murky as the spiral, but now Pryrrish knows she’s not alone.  Sounds of scraping reptilian claws.  Flapping knife-edged feathers.  Snarling maws that drool at the sight of her exhausted flesh.  She hears so much around her in the endless bank of Mist, finding the strength to run forward.  But the sounds keep pace.  She runs and runs, dagger in hand, clutching her Tome!  There’s suddenly a doorway, of purest light that defies the Mists and Elemental Dark surrounding her!  

She rushes inside!  The doorway slams behind her...

Ludwig Hössler Schrödinger

Young lord Schrödinger needs to leave Ludendorf tonight!  His endeavor to share his experiments with the so-called Syndicate of Enlightened Minds has put all he’s worked for, and all the support his parents put into his studies, at risk.  His first time in Lamordia’s biggest city, strolling in with luggage for a prolonged stay, is now ending with him jamming everything vital in a single valise.  He hears the mob coming down the street to his hotel, the fools and deniers of true science with their pitchforks and torches!

Betraying his height and build, Schrödinger miraculously leaps from his hotel window to the rooftops across the street.  But unfortunately, such a sight has easily caught the mob’s attention.  They fire upon him as he dashes away on the roofs of Ludendorf.  He poorly slides down a drainpipe to an alley entryway, rushing into the misted corridors.  If he can reach the next street over he can lose the mob and leave the city!  He must return to Schwartzsteinburg, his home, and to the open arms of his beloved parents.  They understand him, they will protect him as they always have...

But the alleys of Ludendorf confuse the nobleman scientist.  The Mist spills out from every corridor and sewer grate, making it impossible to navigate.  And yet the mob appears to know every turn and twist he takes!  The sounds of their shouts echo through the abandoned alleyways!  The lights of the torches grow brighter and brighter!  Is he fleeing or being herded?  

Schrödinger finds himself finally at a dead end.  No way to jump to the rooftops from here, no doors to break down.  The mob grows louder, closer, more eager to tear him and his life’s work to shreds!  He looks around, begging fortune to smile upon him...  Only an open sewer grate, Mist spilling out like a wellspring, is before him.  Does he dare degrade himself further to trekking through the sewers?  Already humiliated and despised by those who dare to cull the unique and new?

Wounding his pride, Schrödinger leaps into the sewer...

He falls a long time.  Far, far, far too long.  All is darkness and icy fog slashing past him as he falls deeper and deeper into the Misty nothingness.  This defies logic greater than anything.  Will he fall forever, slowly eroded by the Misty winds that make his bones shudder?

No.  Suddenly Schrödinger knows the ground is fast approaching.  He cannot see it, but he knows he will be crushed by the impact.  Him and all he’s pursued, his life’s work; destroyed all the same as if the mob had claimed him!

Staring down at his inevitable demise, bracing for the impact, Schrödinger is thrown once again as a doorway of light opens up!  He sails through it, gravity lurches a completely different direction.

He rolls and rolls against solid wood, tumbling helplessly until he collides with something hard and stable.  His eyes adjust to the light...

Fenri Sunwillow

In the vast city of Greyhawk, Fenri the halfling sits in the loneliest and dirtiest tavern possible.  The food and ale are terrible, the lone minstrel is pitiful and the barkeep is very unfriendly.  Fenri sits alone, all her companions have abandoned her.  But despite this hopeless atmosphere, Fenri Sunwillow has faith that Pelor the Dawnfather will see her through.

Suddenly a group of thugs burst in and begin to spread out through the tavern.  Their leader, a terribly cruel-eyed dwarf with massive iron boots, stomps in and begins to threaten the barkeep for not paying protection money.  Fenri skips over and tries to be the diplomat, offering the thugs and their leader friendship and a chance to use their obvious strength in great adventures.  They laugh at the halfling cleric.

But suddenly the thugs leave, the tavern’s “debts” still unpaid.  They close the door behind them.  Fenri tries to follow but the door is blocked for some reason...  The back is blocked as well.  Panic rising among the two other people in the tavern, Fenri channels the strength of her god to throw a table through a window.  Only to find the thugs outside ready to toss in vials of alchemical fire.

The tavern erupts into terrible green flame!  The dwarf uses a scroll to create a wall of stone before the newly broken window, sealing them all inside to burn with the building!  Fenri looks about, and she realizes tavern’s large fireplace has a chimney big enough to climb up!  With her divine strength she rushes in and climbs!  The sounds of burning agony behind her...

Fenri climbs, green and gray Misty smoke choking her lungs and obscuring her vision.  She climbs higher.  And higher...  The flames are beneath her always, ready to lick at her feet, despite her being unable to see.  Higher and higher she climbs...  Surely the building was not this tall?  But through the acrid smoke Fenri sees nothing but the chimney opening above, never closer.

The climb is getting to her.  Fenri knows the strength of Pelor is only hers for a short time.  She is alone, no sound of those trapped with her climbing up after...  The green and gray fire roars and roars.  The chimney is nothing but gray smoke, her tiny hands clutching desperately at the murky stones...

Time inevitably, and despairingly, catches up to Fenri.  The divine strength of her clerical domain, her faith in Pelor augmenting the strength of her tiny body, suddenly vanishes.  And Fenri falls!  Slowly.  So slowly, the flames beneath her awaiting their morsel...  Regrets and despair weighing the halfling cleric down, the Sun now out of reach...  She looks  to the opening, and realizes it was blocked off by a board this whole time...  

Suddenly, a flash of heat passes her by and Fenri rolls rapidly on  solid ground.  She collides with something large and soft, staying curled up in her armor for a few moments.  Then... she opens her eyes a peek...

Freaks & Facades: Vignettes - Session One will continue in Part Two!  Click here to read on!

Thanks for reading!  We hope you enjoyed these first tales of our friendly freaks as much as we do!

Parts: Zero/Cast, One P1, One P2, Two, Three, Four [tbd]

Aboleth Eye, 05/02/2023!