dangerous.
Since my clothing was in shreds thanks to my delayed reaction, I discarded the cloak, outer coat, embroidered vest, and what had once been a very fine black linen shirt. My gold neck chain with the Von Zarovich ruby on its pendant was undamaged. It would take much more than a sword stroke to remove it from my person. My pale torso, still bearing scars I had acquired before my change, would be an easier-to-see target at night, though my personal safety was of little concern to me. I wanted only to make sure the remaining men did not injure themselves when I went for them.
The croft was sealed shut now, with no glimmer of light from any chink in the door or shutters. The men were crouched in the dark, probably tensed and ready for anything. I crept close, braced myself, and gave the brittle wood a mighty kick, then moved to dodge clear.
I did not get that far. Some tangible-at first I thought it an arrow-but unseen force hurled from the opening and caught me squarely, pinning me in place.
The stale air shot forth from my dormant lungs and my legs turned to water. A vast hand seemed to hold me in place an instant, then slammed me flat to the ground. I lay stunned, both by the force of it and the sheer surprise of anything being powerful enough to affect me.
The brigands were chanting. Their deep voices rose and fell in a strange, oddly rhythmic tongue. The words pounded at me like hammer blows. Some kind of spell…
Not a spell… prayer. A plea to one of their alien gods. Whether their deity from beyond the Mists was able to hear them mattered little; their faith alone was strong enough to render me helpless. When swords fail, men turn to their gods, and this lot had the kind of true faith I hadn't faced in a very long time. It battened me down like a hunting hawk, its talons ripping into my shoulders and back. I tried to scrabble free, but was utterly trapped in its grasp.
The leader led the chant, his rasping voice knifing through my skull. I writhed from the pain, the sound alone seemed to burn my flesh. One of the men stepped forward, his sword raised. I saw the faint green glow of magic streaming from its cruel blade. As I had done to his comrade so he would do to me and cut off my head.
Desperate men generally do not think clearly, making them unpredictable and considerably more dangerous. I was desperate enough to blurt out a spell for my defense, the first to pop into my head. Had I been thinking I would have conjured something much less destructive. As it was, a flash of lightning completely obliterated the dark for a long moment and the deafening crack of its passage blotted out the leader's voice. I took that blessed respite to roll clear before the blade came down to deliver me to death.
No need.
By the time my eyes recovered from the flare it was all over except for the smoke, much of which steamed from three charred corpses. I was unharmed, but the three brigands were flat on their backs in three different directions. The leader had been thrown right through the rear wall of the croft.
The bolt had impacted the earth exactly in their midst, leaving a crater a foot deep. The grass was singed away, of course, and the exposed earth had irregular veins of cooling glass running out from the center where the heat had been very great. As for the men… well, the eleven I had would have to suffice for my needs; these fellows were quite beyond any use in the culinary sense. It was probably for the better. The last thing I needed in my dungeons was some wretched holy man working away at me with his foul prayers. I knew his sort: the worse the conditions in which he found himself the greater power he would be able to call forth.
A waste, but not one I would mourn over much. I could still find some use for the dead ones as servants. Once I had recovered a bit and put the proper spells into effect, the whole lot of them could walk themselves to Castle Ravenloft. The living would be compelled down into the dungeons, and the dead to one of my work areas where I could make a proper and permanent change in them so they would be suitable guards.
Their path of travel would take them right through the village of Barovia at the foot of the castle, a sight to cause the population some little stir. By this would they know their lord was keeping the peace in the land and perhaps be better inspired to maintain it themselves.
I put myself in order and retrieved the lot of them to commence the work, being quite recovered now from the chanting attack. Before another hour passed, they were all under my control and slowly marching west, even the one without the head-he carried that in his lifeless hands-and the three with blackened and cracked skin. By dawn they would all be in their proper places, serving me in such a way as they could never have otherwise hoped-or remotely imagined-to achieve.
An excerpt from the private commentary notebooks of Azalin, salvaged and translated by Lord Strahd after the necromancer's disappearance in the year 579. 543 Barovian Calendar, Barovia
Here Von Zarovich exhibits a sampling of his ongoing obsession with the woman Tatyana. She is his blind spot and is certainly something that might be exploited in my intention to supplant him. He has noticed the pattern of her continuing birth, death, and re-birth in his land, so the idea of introducing a false Tatyana at a time inconvenient to him and advantageous to me is worth consideration. The difficulty is finding a substitute convincing enough to deceive him. Though gullible on some points, he is keenly attuned to the workings of magic and sensitive to all manner of spellwork. A simple illusion will not suffice. Something far more subtle is required for such a subterfuge to succeed.
At her loss his wish for his own death, such as it is, should not be given much credence. He acknowledges himself that it is but a temporary, passing state with him. However, it is again a point that may be exploited should the timing be correct. In these short periods he actually allows himself to be vulnerable. An intelligent agent, by taking advantage of the moment, might then dispose of Von Zarovich's troublesome presence altogether.
At this point in time in the writing Von Zarovich did not completely fathom the nature of the plane of existence into which Barovia had slipped. He refers to the misty boundary enclosing his land without really understanding it. I can only assume that he was so distracted by his emotional ties to the woman that his curiosity was atrophied in some way. Again, her distracting influence on him seems to be encompassing. He has many weaknesses, but this one is the most consistent in his nature.
In his overly colorful, self-aggrandizing narrative, he has made scant reference to the Mists, the single most important element that has to do with our mutual imprisonment.
Some one hundred years prior to this incident, so far as I can discern, he made what he called a 'pact with Death' so that he could remove all barriers between himself and this woman, the barriers being a rival for her love (his own brother Sergei) and the annoyance of aging. On the night in question, he was so occupied with the execution of the necessary ritual that he had no inkling of the far reaching consequences of his actions and was completely unaware of them until they had entrenched themselves beyond all chance of removal by his own unassisted hand.
The initial manifestation of his act was the establishment of the Mists themselves. According to the few references he has deigned to share with me (despite their obvious importance to my research) it began in the garden near the castle overlook just prior to the woman flinging herself from its edge. He mentioned that the Mists originally surrounded them moments before while she was having some sort of intense emotional reaction to the death of his brother. We have both come to believe that strong emotions or negative acts may have a powerful connection to the Mists or whatever force may drive or control them-if they are indeed intelligent. From our limited perspective, it is quite impossible to judge either way on the point. Does an insect about to be trod upon consider whether the foot descending upon it is intelligent?
What I can infer with some certainty is that the Mists rose that night-the result of Strahd's murderous lusts-and spread to the borders of Barovia and there remained. No one-himself not excepted-is able to cross through the Mists to leave, and very few are able to enter from the outside.
This sudden isolation of Barovia marks where it entered what I term a demiplane of existence and only under very extraordinary circumstances does anyone slip from the prime plane of the Oerth that I came from and arrive in this one. The brigands he dealt with here are a typical example.
Despite his patchy research habits, Von Zarovich did trouble himself to question the shepherd and shared what he learned with me. The outlanders had come riding through a thick mist which had suddenly arisen shortly before the setting of the moon. Unlike myself, they had been thieves and murderers and were apparently intent on committing more mischief once they got used to their new surroundings. Von Zarovich backtracked their path and
