Freaks & Facades - Session One: Vignettes

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    Welcome all, to the first full recap of Freaks & Facades! 

    This is a recap of the very first session, which was a series of individual horror Vignettes that introduced our amazing cast of player characters to each other.   Each a custom horror for the Players to endure-slash-enjoy!

    These are their stories, of how our beloved Freaks were drawn into Ravenloft--a realm tenebrous and strange!  


Warning: this is a horror campaign setting, so bear that in mind before reading.  Possible triggers include: claustrophobia, fire, falling from great heights, animal death, blood mention, buried alive, skeletons, spirits…


We hope you enjoy!  

*starts projector* 


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.  It's the first piece of intelligible insight towards her goal she's gleaned from its pages in years...
  • 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 she walks on this nebulous, sideways path.  Still unsure and shrouded in Mist, but her choices are her own once more.
  • 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, made 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 failed!  Everything he’s worked for, and all the support his parents put into his studies, is not terribly, terribly 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!  The Syndicate has turned the rabble against him with lies for certain!!
  • 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 mist-drenched roof tiles 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.  She prays to her god and the food and drink are purified--mostly scraps and water but she is grateful nonetheless...
  • 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.  Her naivete is cute to them...
  • 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 pitch-covered 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 on the outside?  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 fearfully 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…


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.  
  • Igneous, her familiar of elemental earth (or Iggy for short) 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, including their own conscience.  She must discover what happened to those who partook of the ritual.  
    • First her only friend a year ago...  She thought she had recovered from Destir's disappearance...  
    • But then her mentor just a month ago!  Who knew better and yet still completed this unknown spell without her knowing!
    • This ritual was her friend’s design…  What exactly was his goal in manifesting this elementalist heresy?  
  • She gathers what elements she can.  Grave from a jar her master’s stores.  Blood from her own veins.  Mist flowing down from the upper windows, cascading 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 fire 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 finally then, her concept 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 comforting 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, possibly vaster than a continent or smaller than a windowpane, 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 again and again! 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.  No name upon the ancient stonework.  
    • Something once and very recently alive was dragged into this lonely crypt.…
  • 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 geist-specter.  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!  The earth down here cannot handle the weight of the living.  A Deep Watchman once told her this!!
  • She falls into the depths, true darkness.  With a great sudden smash, 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, her legs barely pushing through as the dust rises to her waist.  Enormous hands of bone (far, far too many bones) rise up to grasp at her!  
    • She pulls against them, rejecting her guiltiest fantasies of when she could join the dead!
  • 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's light filled the tavern hall, crackling and casting amber shadows.  Garlands of dried herbs hung like curtains between the wooden beams and pillars.  Each and every table was groaning under the weight of entire feasts.  Sumptuous dishes from  different realms steamed aromatically.  The Matron 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 catch at the Matron’s hair. She swore at it under her breath. 
  • The large bird landed on the bar.  Beside the Maiden in her indigo headscarf, polishing glasses.  She had been cleaning them in a cheerful daydream until the bird hoarsely 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, a 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 coming out with a bloody beak.  
    • It looked down at the creature who sat before the fireplace in a tall gray chair.…
  • 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.  Nails snipped down to the nubs for her own safety...  
    • 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.  All at once, hair and feather rising on skin, all those of the Inn 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 gloamy 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. A human tavern of some kind...  Somehow existing on that plane of fear and misty shadow...   
    • 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, stones magnetically bound by a slow sentience, helped pull her out completely.
    • Channa Devir was half-blinded by dirt, barely breathing the open air.  Igneous was beside her, she could tell to her immense relief.  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, “Awwaak!  Pick a card, 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 falling from 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!  And now herself, among three Vistani women and a large angry Raven!
    • 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 nibbling at its cupful of entrails.  
  • The Madame was silent still.  Her eyes never strayed from 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...  On this ominous night...  Here, at the Ravens Loft Inn!

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

    Thank you for reading!  We hope our readers enjoy our friendly Freaks as much as we do!


Love, 

Aboleth Eye