Freaks & Facades - Session Two: The Ravens Loft Inn

     Welcome all!  All you fiends and friends who have crawled out of the Mists tonight!  

    This is our story recap of Session Two of Freaks & Facades: The Ravens Loft Inn!

    Each of our Freaks escaped their individual brushes 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, also unknown.  

    But the winds outside the Ravens Loft Inn are howling; strange energies are gathering, watching our beloved Freaks.  Let us see what happens as the Freaks begin to mingle!

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

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.

*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 on this dark, misty night.  By their traditions, 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, cards of divination casting, 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 human child dressed 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 (gnomish whiskey for the scholar and a fancy raspberry liquor for the gravedigger).  Solange and Channa have an understanding about their mutual want of understanding.
• The others pile up food on their plates, with Fenri being the most 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.  Their accommodations this night are dependent on what her withered hands draw from that enigmatic black deck...
• Schrodinger and Solange recognize the women of the Inn appear to be Vistani, part of a broad culture of nomadic human peoples throughout the Core.  Their tasque, or specific subculture of values and skills, is unknown.
• The cards stacked before the withered crone appears to be a tarokka deck.  The deck of archetypes and symbols used by the Vistani to divine the future for others…  It is taboo for a reader to read their own future...
• 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 unearth a hand from beneath her heavy covers.  The old woman, 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.  Upon the single-card reading, 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 party's 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 of the Ravens Loft Inn 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 (Sixth and Seventh), rooms for readings no one among the party received...  Schrödinger investigates…
• Pryrrish enters her Second Floor/Swords room.  
• There is an enormous pool of sticky, red 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!  
• 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…  
• Symbols such as a Marionette, an Angel, a Hangman...  Dread symbols, of the Fortuna Magna within the cards.  But the scientist is not familiar with their meanings...
• 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!  Just beyond the glass lies an autumnal field outside of a pastoral village, sheep grazing among several of their own lying dead… But he's seven stories high, how can this be?
• He goes down a floor, finding the Maiden sweeping the stairway.  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 examination 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 blood-spattered floor, walls and ceiling concerns her, and she alone 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 the freshly used 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 to hear this, 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, but upon turning back the room is ordinary and clean of all blood…  He's moderately disappointed.
• Solange takes the Matron to her room on the fourth floor; it’s clean as well.  
• Channa hears this, 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, nearly serpentine binding.  Both struggling hard against their living restraints!
• 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 electrified runecarvings!  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!
• Schrödinger 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.  Sensing a change in in the air, not uncomfortably.  
• 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, those conscious and not, fall through this downy shadowscape.  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, dreadfully conscious, bear witness to the horror that pulls in its limitless dark wings and raises its horrible head!
• They will wish they hadn’t seen 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 collapse upon the great entity’s beak snapping shut upon them all!

    Freaks & Facades will continue in Session Three - The Misty Morning!

    Thank you for reading!  We hope you love our beloved Freaks as much as we do!

Love, 

Aboleth Eye