The Tragedy of the Sons of Queen Ravenovia

Every villain needs an origin story. In my Curse of Strahd campaign, the vampire is Karrn the Conqueror of ancient Eberron - the human that first dreamed of a united kingdom on the continent of Khorvaire in Eberron. Robbed of the opportunity to fulfill that dream in life, he hungers to return and claim the crown over the five nations.

I wrote this fable to set the tone for my players and to bind their characters together in shared knowledge. I also intended it to humanize the big bad evil guy, and in humanizing him to make his evil even more terrifying. 

L

ong, long ago, on a faraway island in the Eastern Seas, a young king assumed the throne by pronouncing the solemn the oath of his ancestors: “By blood and the soil, I am the land.”

Soon, he soon took for his bride a young lady of unsurpassed beauty and grace. Though their bond was true, after long years, she had not yet born him a royal heir. As time wore on, her shame grew.

One autumn day, she ran out into the twilight and lifted up a prayer, but the stars only sparkled in stony silence. However, another, older power was listening, heard her, and breathed her name from the dark hollow of a twisted old Hawthorn tree.

“Three sons for thee,” whispered the darkness.

“But, what of their fates,” she asked.

Chill and faint as the mists, it replied, “Spill three beads of blood… Speak three words of fate… Three sons for thee.”

“At what price,” she asked, now wary but hopeful.

“Bought by blood, paid by blood,” slithered the voice.

Dubious but at her wits’ end, she thought to herself: “I can best a silly old tree stump – not that it could keep any such bargain anyway.”

And, so, she picked a Holly leaf and pricked the tip of her ring finger. Closing her eyes, she stretched her arm into the pitch-black heart of the tree. The grey mists clung to her as she pressed out the drops of noble blood…

“Ambition.” Drip.

“Purity.” Drip.

“Luck.” Drip.

B efore long, the queen’s belly grew full and round with child. Come spring, she bore her king the first of three handsome sons.

The first son led a campaign to unite the nations of men. The second, beneficent and true, took priestly vows. And, the third knew nothing but good fortune.

Thus, with the kingdom’s fate assured, the queen grew happy, forgot her shame, and, in time, even forgot her bargain in the misty night.

M eanwhile, the first brother conquered a prosperous valley, and raised thereupon a magnificent castle befitting his father’s throne. The pious second brother, anxious to spread his faith’s teachings, hastened there, whilst the third brother fell unusually ill, and remained behind.

Soon, thereafter, the king and queen set sail for their new land. But a terrible storm set upon them, and a great wave heaved the mighty ship to and fro, bringing its mighty oak boom down and smashing into the king. As the queen watched helplessly, his battered body slipped into the sea.

Safely ashore, she bestowed her lost husband’s crown upon her first-born son in deepest sorrow: “By blood and the soil, now, you are the king.”

So it was that blood was first paid unto the dark.

I n time, a village maid of unsurpassed kindness and generosity stirred the heart of the second brother. Despite his vows, he fell in love with her and determined to marry her. Afraid that breaking priestly vows would surely bring divine wrath upon his kingdom, the first brother forbade the union.

But when the first brother met this maiden, she became the first to conquer his heart - utterly and irrevocably. As the wedding approached, the first brother grew desperate with longing. And, so he rode out in the autumn twilight and uttered heartfelt prayers to the stars. But they again remained stone silent and serene.

Now, his mother might have warned him about the older, colder power that did hear his plea, and that whispered a dark bargain to him in the mist. She might have told her first-born that its price would be paid in blood. But, she was not there, and her son was ambitious and aflame in first love’s ardor.

U pon sealing this dread bargain, and as lightning shattered the dark night and thunderheads trampled the stars, the first brother raged back to his castle with terrible resolve. Wordlessly, he tracked down his brother and plunged a dagger into his chest. Observing the ritual that the voice had commanded, he cut out the heart and drank the warm blood that still pulsed from inside.

Their mother, awakened by darkest dreams, happened upon her sons then, glistening crimson with the mark of murder. It is said that her laments echoed across the entire kingdom even to the shores of the Eastern Sea. Unable to look away, eyes staring wide and her heart broken, death took her.

And, so it was that blood was paid unto the dark.

At that moment, the young maiden, startled from her chamber by the tumult, came upon the first brother feeding on the corpse of her betrothed. In agony and tears, she fled, followed close behind by him, protesting his love with blood-stained lips.

She ran to the castle’s highest tower, tore herself from his arms and thereupon fell into the yawning chasm below. As she plummeted to her death and her body shattered upon the rocks, an impenetrable mist descended around the valley, sealing it off from the world. And, no one ever heard nor saw the cursed realm again.

And, so it was that blood was paid unto the dark.

E ven as the valley vanished, the third brother recovered from his long and puzzling illness. A humble man, he assumed the crown with a heavy brow: “By justice and compassion, I am the king.”

And, now, the third brother neither left his kingdom’s fate to the gods, nor distracted his people with senseless wars. Rather, he ruled his ancestral lands long and well, passing away in peace at the end of his natural days.

~ The End ~ Link to PDF.

A Dread Mist: Session Five

A Dread Mist: Episode Five

Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
             - W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”

Silence settled on the manor like sackcloth. Warm blood pulsed slower and slower through the grey hair of the burgomaster. As his heart died, the hilts of the daggers embedded in his back ceased pulsing. Ismark gaped. Ireena sighed.

Outside, skeletal archers un-nocked their bows. Wolves at the perimeter padded softly into the dark. At the very edge of the light a great black beast of a wolf with a harsh white slash of fur over his right eye. He watched you knowingly for a moment, before turning away and fading into the night.

As the mansion burned, you had your first moments of peace, since this whole nightmare began. In the flickering light, Ireena gave you an old map of the valley. Karrn recently took down the gallows at the crossroads in order to make a new road leading to some project atop Mount Ghakis. The mill whose deed you now have, Old Bonegrinder, sits along the road to Vallaki, where the refugees are headed.

As Adoril slipped into sleep, his belly full of Granny Sophie’s dream pasties, his dreams filled with the warmest memories of his childhood. He awoke with a singular thought: “Another! I must have another!”

Dawn the red and purple hue of a fresh bruise crept over the broken village. Atop a cliff-face far above the town glowered Castle Ravenloft, a poisonous looking fire raging from one spire. A long tendril of smoke the color of infected pus snaked into the sky. Beneath, the bell tower of a small wooden church kept watch, warm light flickering from within. At Ireena’s behest, you agreed to lay her father’s corpse to rest in the graveyard of the town he loved.

On the way, an empty shop called “Tengrave’s Mercantile” reminded you of the spectral bard you met a few days ago near the waterfall. He had cursed his father become murderer as “a backwards knave by the name of Tengrave.”

As you approached the church, you spot Father Donnelly emerging from a cellar and shakily locking the doors behind him. Inside, the priest knelt at the altar praying in a language none of you understood. Frustrated with his evasiveness despite obvious distress, you used thaumaturgy to present Shera as diving. Alas, the din drew the attention of a creature in the undercroft that cried out for blood.

The monster turned out to be the priest’s adopted son, Doru. Inspired by his father’s teachings about liberation, the young man had joined the Mad Mage’s revolt against Karrn. Father Donnelly thought his son dead, but he came back – hungry. After days of hearing his son wracked by starvation, the priest chose fed his son from his own neck.

While you debated how to deal with the creature, Doru broke through the undercroft doors. Hoping to sate his thirst, Shera exposed her own jugular offering herself. With frenzied bloodlust, Doru tore into her. He ignored blows and spells to feast, until the frigid blast of Zenbis’ dragon breath and a undulating bolt of chaotic fire awoke fear in his eyes. With Shera still in his grasp Doru fled up the side of the church, where a well-placed arrow knocked him down. Shera, barely clinging to life, called forth the radiant power of the goddess Suun on Doru, utterly destroying him.

Safe, Shera slid down the bell tower rope until her feet touched the hastily-tied noose that Father Donnelly used to take his own life during the fray. Then a man on a charcoal horse erupted from amidst a cloud of fire in the sky above the church.

A Dread Mist: Episode Four

A Dread Mist: Episode Four

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
            - Warsan Shire, “Home”

Whirring and humming with obscure energy, the metal gnome introduced itself to you as “Picklick Teenynozzle.” You accepted his offer to heal your wounds with no small amount of trepidation, given his strange interest in Shera’s pads and misunderstanding of where ears are supposed to be. However, it all turned out well. The clack-clack-clack of hoofs on the riverbank startled you, and “Pick” as he wanted to be called bid you farewell. Before he left steaming into the forest, he let you know he could be found again just by walking into the woods and following the yellow moss.

Delron and Adoril concealed themselves among the trees as the party prepared to do battle with whatever approached. But when an old crone, clad in vibrantly colored wraps emerged on the trail, accompanied by four silent horsemen, she casually spotted them and with a hearty chortle greeted you all: “At last, children, you are here! And just at the right moment, of course.” Oddly, Scritch was nowhere to be found. She introduced herself as Madam Eva and asked if you would help her prepare to banish Death House.

Your trust of her grew with her uncanny knowledge of each of your lives and hearts. With magical powers unlike anything you’d encountered she grappled the evil mansion and cast it from existence – though she said it would eventually return, bound here by the tortured souls within.

You accompanied her to her camp, following the river as it became a deep ravine – a thin smudge of a bridge far overhead. Before long, the river opened to a lake. A small camp of lively folk seated around a bonfire, singing and making merry. Inside her tent around a cloth covered table were exactly five human-sized and one gnome-sized (with a step ladder) seats. Shera asked for her assistance reassembling the shattered orb from the chamber of shadows in Death House, but the object was best left alone, although she took a portion for safekeeping. Then, asking Adoril for the deck of fortune cards – a “Tarokka Deck” as she called it – she offered to reveal your fates.

“Karrn,” the words scratching like dry parchment from her lips, “was never been a soft man, but he has saved this land from many a threat and shepherded his people through their unending imprisonment. But of late, he has fallen under a dangerous influence. The shepherd is driving his flock over a cliff. He must now be stopped.”

The cards she laid before you told of a tome penned by the hand of Karrn himself containing secret knowledge, a holy symbol of hope, and a blade of pure daylight. They spoke too of an enemy of his, who could become an ally of yours. Finally, they told of a place where Karrn would always be found.

This card is the rope that binds timber and stone. The enemy of thy enemy is no fair friend, but a potent tool against the devil. Win him over! I see a minstrel with a diminutive companion aping tricks to hide his secrets. 

This card is hope. It is fragile, engulfed by his menace. Protect it. The treasure lies in a dragon’s house, in the hands of a corrupted champion of a once-proud order. He keeps a lonely vigil, but has forgotten his charge, knowing only hatred. Stoke or extinguish – you will find the thing you seek.

This is a card is strength and power. A blade of daylight hidden in a kingdom of night. Claim it! Beyond amber doors, guarded by the amber man, lies a mountain of fool’s gold. Buried therein waits the true treasure you seek.

Your enemy is a creature of darkness, whose powers are beyond mortality. Behold, he is here! In the depths of Barovia’s darkness, in the one place to which he must return but where he can never find rest.

This card is the past, from the mouth of the devil Karrn himself. His truth -- seek it! I see a wizard's tower perched at the edge of a lake like a middle finger. His name and his servant will guide you to what you seek.

She then beseeched you to make haste to the village of Little Barovia, “although they do not deserve your aid, they desperately need it.”

You followed the wagon-wheel rutted trail through the woods to a crossroads. Atop a pole, a wooden sign with “Little Barovia” carved deeply into it pointed left. While to the right hung signs for “Castle Ravenloft,” “Vallaki,” “Krezk,” Argynvosthold,” and “Wizard of Wines.” Broken in half on the ground, was another sign that read “Berez.”

Strewn along the roadside lay clothing, boxes, broken carts, and household goods of all descriptions. Before long a stream of muddy, harried, and heavily burdened townsfolk appeared from the left. One explained that their home of Little Barovia was under attack by an enraged Karrn, before hurrying on her way.

From the other direction, a plump old woman came along, pushing a small trolley and selling “Dream Pasties.” A couple with an infant child purchased two and let the woman coddle the child while they went to eat on the side of the road. She called herself “Granny Sophie,” and through means fair and foul you acquired several of her treats.

Just then, a crash and gurgling scream erupted from the side of the road. The two refugees who had gone to the side of the road were being eaten by an enormous troll. Years of study gave Damakos a flash of insight that the beast might be weak to acid and fire. And, so, amid curling tendrils of acrid smoke and flame, Shera crushed the beast’s head.

At that moment, a striking young woman with auburn hair galloped up on a horse with five guardsmen. Introducing herself as Ireena, the daughter of the Burgomaster of Little Barovia, she thanked you for saving the townsfolk. Noting your skills, she asked you to help move her elderly father safely, freeing up the town guard to accompany the remaining refugees. You agreed and raced onward as the sun slipped lower on the horizon.

Approaching the village, you first spotted pillars of smoke rose high in the evening sky. Broken doors, shattered windows, timbers and battered (eaten?!) bodies in the streets – what had once been a quaint village was in ruins.

Along the way, Ireena checked on a distraught woman named Mary who refused to leave her home in case her daughter, Gertruda, who had run away several nights ago returned. Lancelot, in fact, is Gertruda’s dog. With Mary’s blessing you took him with you in hopes of reuniting the two.

Arriving at the Burgomaster’s clawed and barricaded mansion, you met Ireena’s wizened father and boastful older brother Ismark. It was her brother’s foolish desire for glory that convinced him to join the Mad Mage in revolt against Castle Ravenloft. This failed rebellion precipitated Karrn’s destruction of the village. Thus far, they’ve managed to fight off Karrn’s minions, but each night the attackers increase. Since moving the old man so close to nightfall would be dangerous, you holed up in Ireena’s bedroom and laid a trap.

As darkness gripped the house, you could glimpse wolves patrolling outside at a distance. Brutal blows wracked the front door. Shambling corpses broke through, and Shera raced up the stairs, tossing ball bearings in her wake. Lured to follow her, the rotting zombies stumbled on the trap, before finding their purchase and slouching up the stairs.

Your ambush cut the creatures down, scattering twitching pieces of gore in the hallway. A tremendous calamity of blows at the kitchen door signaled the arrival of another foe. Meanwhile, Damakos’ magic injured a wolf on the perimeter, but it stood its ground. The distinct whoosh-thump of a handful of arrows striking the building reverberated in the cramped room. Then, the kitchen door shattered from a feral bludgeoning. A horrifying creature of dead bodies stitched together erupted into the bedroom.

Your weapons beat mercilessly on the creature, but it was an inexplicable explosion of magical power from Damakos that finally annihilated the monstrosity. Only then did you realize the house was aflame. Delron grabbed the Burgomaster from his hiding place in the closet hoping to carry him to safety. At that moment, a phalanx of ensorcelled daggers took flight from near the wolves and leapt through the window, plunging into the back of the burgomaster.

A Dread Mist: Session Three

A Dread Mist: Session Three

Lofty timbers, the walls around are bare, echoing to our laughter as though the dead were there...
Quaff a cup to the dead already, hooray for the next to die..
                                -Bram Stoker, “Dracula”

Guided by the ghosts of Rose and Thorn, the neglected children of Gustav and Elisabeth Durst, you found yourselves at the bottom of a cramped twisting stairwell deep beneath the manor home. Staring into the airless dark ahead, you return to the main house above – completeness is indeed the better part of valor.

Following a steady plink of water drops, led you to an upstairs bedroom moldy and empty. A curious Zenbis peered into the bathing tub and was assaulted by a decaying woman’s corpse from above – only to have it pass harmlessly like an echo.

In the Durst’s master suite – once ornate and festooned with images of their beloved windmill, but now choked with cobwebs and dust, you found a filigreed jewelry box that yielded a few long-forgotten possessions: three gold rings and a pendant necklace. A letter from Lady Durst, described her intent to perform a ceremony without Lord Durst present upon an innocent subject related to the harlot who had cared for her own children.

The manor’s magnificent dining hall divulged a sumptuous feast, but only the tableware drew your interested and ended up in your possession. Your inspection of the nearby larder produced a paltry clutch of old nuts and curious jerky – a snack for a later hunger.

Buoyed by a new atmosphere of quiescence, you pulled open the hidden door and descended into the tight musty maw of the secret stairs leading below. Cold and haunting chanting of hollow voices echoed and grew as you descended.

Stepping into the basement black, you found six crypts – empty except for swarms of biting centipedes. Inside sarcophagi labeled Rosevalda and Thornwald, you put the bones of the children to rest at last. Their spirits at peace, their ghostly forms abandoned you in the dank underground. The remaining nameplates read Gustav, Elisabeth, and Walter.

Your torchlight sunk into the shadows of the squalid dorms where the Durst cult’s initiates must’ve slinked away to suffer sleep undoubtedly troubled by their troubling deeds. When Delron passed too close to a foul smelling well the bloated hands of undead ghouls reached out and sought to drag you to your doom. Gibbering madly “Beautiful! Nothing can hurt us! We are perfect!” you ended their unlife with sword and bow.

Other than a deck of fortune telling cards, the cult’s only entertainment seemed to be keeping a logbook replete with pages upon pages of entries detailing the torture and death of their victims. Inside a pouch made of human skin you found a handful of gemstones. In one alcove, a silvered sword was hidden underneath rotting bedsheets.

A behemoth spider its body teeming with hungry spiderlings attacked you in the vile basement larder. More ghouls assaulted you from hiding places in the hallways. Down a slime-slick stairway the chanting beckoned and forewarned.

Ahead, the chill pallid light from a shimmering orb drew you into the next room. Skeletons chained mercilessly to the wall were forever forced to stare at the orb, held high in the hand of a statue of a handsome, cruel man – a faithful marble wolf at his side. Astonished, you watched as your own shadows cast in the light of the orb peeled from the very walls and attacked. In hard combat you annihilated the shades and smashed the shimmering orb.

Deeper in the dungeon you met the Dursts – bursting from the earthen walls of their secret subterranean den, long yellow claws and lifeless eyes snarling and bloodthirsty. Putting the foul beasts to the sword, you claimed a spellbook, a magical cloak, thieves’ tools, and a handful of other items obviously looted from the cult’s victims – many, it seems, were adventurers not unlike yourselves.

No choices left, you descend another dark stone stairway into the deafening cacophony of chanting voices. A gaping reliquary greeted you, but the interminable intonations drew you to a nearby portcullis keeping you from a enormous chamber filled with dark spectral figures rhythmically swaying in front of a blood stained altar above inky black water. Voices crashing in relentless waves on your ears, their words are now clear: “He is the Ancient. He is the Land. By blood and soil.”

Unable to lift the portcullis from the outside you uncovered a secret passage through the nearby cells where sacrifices were held prior to use.

While the rest of you prepared for battle, Zenbis charged into the room, leapt onto the dais, and let loose a thunderwave. The blast dissipated the ghostly cultists, but awakened a shambling mound of foul carrion and bones in an alcove. It congeals into an enormous, teeming mass of rotting flesh, clattering bones, and decay.

As the party battled the creature, it engulfed Shera. Inside the beast, with arrows and magic thudding against it, she found a swaddled infant imprisoned by pulsing tendrils of filth. Blow by blow she snapped each one, spewing gore and bile. But, when she broke the last one, the creature erupted in a towering cascade of decay and fell still.

Durst Manor, though, now denied the sacrifice of the party, shuddered in rage. Stone, brick, and timber cracked and snapped in hatred. You raced to exit and burst out of the structure onto the mud outside at last.

As you caught your breath, a little mechanical creature unlike anything you’d ever seen picked up a beam of wood on the ground nearby. With a whirr, it planted the sign firmly in the ground: “Death House! Do Not Speak to The Children!”

A Dread Mist: Session Two

A Dread Mist: Episode Two

The deed is done. And it comes anon:
True to the roll of the clock-faced moon,
True to the ring of the spheric chime,
True to the cosmic rhythm and rime,
Every point, as it first fell out,
Will come and go in the fearsome bout.
See! palsied with horror from garret to core,
The house cannot shut its gaping door.
                                   -George MacDonald

Expectantly, you learned the faces of the Durst family suspended on the wall of the foyer of their old manor house. Before entering the main hall, you cast to the floor their windmill-emblazoned family crest.

The foyer doors gave way to a large main hall with a magnificent marble staircase spiraling up into obscurity. As you got a fire going in the gaping maw of the fireplace, you heard harpsicord music lilting clumsily down from above. You started up the stairs, but an uncanny gust of wind erupted out of nowhere to extinguish all your lights. Then the scraping noises began at the room behind you.

Shera opened the door, dashing to the side, as a great black force pulled Zenbis into the room. He fought a foul-smelling beast with flashing teeth and red eyes, while the party struggled to break down the door. When at last you broke through, you found Zenbis standing over a shredded taxidermy wolf.

You acquired three crossbows from inside a locked cabinet and a cask of "Purple Grapesmash No. 3" wine. When the stuffed wolves move behind your backs, you quickly put them all to the knife. Satisfied with the massacre of the mounts, you proceeded up the marble staircase into the dark.

Hearing the sounds of labored breathing and a woman in pain, you opened the door to what appeared to be the servants' quarters -- barren of everything but neatly pressed uniforms hanging mutely in a cabinet. Reaching for one of the uniforms triggered a vision for Shera. Blood soaked the bottom of the bed, a woman's cries echoed in her head, and throes of childbirth consumed her.

Moving on you entered the manor's library and encountered a downy owlbear cub with a beak like a sailor trapped in a circle of salt. Damakos offered to free the fella if it became his feathered familiar, and a deal was struck.

Scritch revealed a bookcase hiding a secret library and a previous visitor's skeletal remains. You discovered letter from Karrn von Zarovich berating the Dursts and accusing them of luring people to their deaths on a hidden altar in their basement. You claimed a lodestone from a rock collection, deeds to Durst Manor and a Windmill, a will, and sheet music as well as three spell scrolls.

Harpsichord playing then drew you to the house's conservatory. Underneath a table you befriended a terrified dog named Lancelot. Surprising even himself, Zenbis masterfully played the sheet music from the library and summoned a ghostly promenade overseen by the grim-faced Dursts. As the last notes faded, a door opened above.

Following the sound you arrived at end of the great marble staircase and were attacked by an animated suit of armor. You encountered a spectral nursemaid keeping watch over an empty cradle. Shera drew her wrath and you slew the spirit. You also found a bag of holding stuffed with skeletons.

After blasting the hidden stairwell with an eldritch warning shot, you ascended the stairs to the attic where you found the remains and met the ghosts of Rose and Thorn Durst. You tried to exit the house to put the children to rest, but the house itself prevented you from escaping.

With no other choice, you asked the children to lead you down to the basement. In the attic, they reluctantly showed you a hidden spiral staircase draped in cobwebs. Down into the dusty depths you descend...

A Dread Mist: Session One

A Dread Mist: Session One

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
                        -Robert Frost

About a tenday from Sharnn, you met a Vistani caravan leader named Stanimir who told you an ancient tale about a prince his people saved from death. He asked your help in lifting a curse that afflicts the prince. and kept him trapped in his kingdom.

Before you could find out more, a pack of wolves attacked. You leapt into action, but the beasts stole a child, still in swaddling rags and raced off into the fog-enshrouded forest.

Through skill and daring, you managed to chase down the wolves, just as they were giving the child to a sallow-faced elfin man. When he saw you he ordered the wolves to attack, mounted a horse that glowed like cold embers, and disappeared in a cloud of soot and brimstone.

You slew the wolves, only to discover that in the fog and the dark, you’d lost your way. Among the unfamiliar trees, you befriended a squirrel and found a lodestone that seemed to appear at just the right moment.

Without many options, you made camp, but ne of you, unfortunately, fell asleep during the night. The morning found you next to a cliff that hadn't been there before.

In the distance you heard a waterfall and followed the wall in that direction. Before long you came upon a young bard perched atop a wall built into the cliff face.

The bard told you the tale of being murdered by his own father -- “a knave by the name of Tengrave” – and his later resurrection by his new father, a man he called Karrn. Summoning skeletons from the earth, he attacked.

Successfully destroying these undead, you uncovered the bard’s remains behind the wall as well as a signet ring with the letter “T” inscribed on it. You also found a magical lute pick that plays an ancient melody that only the person holding it can hear. You buried the bard's bones nearby and performed a ceremony, that seemed to put his troubled spirit to rest.

Following the rumble of the waterfall again, you came upon a river that you followed until a storm started to brew. Flashes of lightning revealed an old manor house at the edge of the forest with two young children waving from a lantern-lit porch.

The children told you that the was a monster in the house and pleaded with you to help save their little brother, Walter, who was stuck in their bedroom upstairs. Bravely overcoming your trepidation about whether the childrens' tale was truthful, you opened the rusted gate and stepped into the darkened foyer of the decaying manor house.