Curse of Strahd Solo Run (IC)

[RandomWombat]

As so often is said, it was a dark and stormy night. The sort of night that no amount of praying, nor chests of gold cast into the sea, can appease. The waves churned below, tossing the ship hither and fro, and a man could scarcely see five feet before his eyes - so thick and oppressive the fog upon the water.

Kellon had been hired to guide the ship of a crew of pirate hunters. Rumors had spidered out of ghost ships in the night, manned by beastly creatures not entirely man nor wolf. Such tall tales, Kellon had come to expect out of the fishermen and sailors. But they had seemed so far from the awesome power of nature that he had come to know, so ephemeral next to its booming and swirling anger.

Until this night, he had not known that power can be in silence, as it can be in rage. Nothing in him had sensed its approach, nothing in the weather predicted it. And even as the storm raged around them, there was silence. The stillness of the grave muffling the cries of the sailors. Muffling the cracking of wood as the ship ran aground. Muffling the splash as he hit the water.


How long has it been? Feet sluggish, arms drooping, Kellon finds himself wandering through a dense fog. Its wetness clinging to his face and choking his tongue with a paradoxical dryness. All around him as he walks, he can feel it move, curl, clutch at his arms and legs and shell like spectral hands. "Lost." It whispers. The voice in the mist. "Listen." It worms into his ears, like a parasite. All around him it tingles, with every swirl of the fog, every slither of its currents. "Learn." It tells him, his tired mind, his thoughts dragging through mud and trying to comprehend.

"Wake up."

Ahead, he can feel it before he sees it. The mist clearing. On the other side, an expanse of darkness. Infinite black of the void. For a moment, it seems this is the end of the road. Is this death?


Then his eyes snap open, as he gasps for breath. The sound of running water to his left, his arm lying in its cold current. He is on his chest, lying in the mud of a riverbank. To his right are trees, bushes, thorny thickets and gnarled branches that loom above, jagged like bolts of thunder stretched across a grey and overcast sky.

Across the water to his left... the other bank is unseen. A thick fog is slowly rolling in, advancing across the surface of the water like a thousand serpents crawling through the grass, weaving between and around river stones. The longer he looks at the fog, the more Kellan feels that sluggishness from his dream creep into his bones. The fog is bad. This he knows, instinctively.