The Mists Never Forget

It started in Daggerford, at a harvest festival under the tenth full moon. Five strangers followed the mist up a hill to a house that shouldn't have been there. Inside was Death House, a haunted manor that turned out to be a door into Barovia. The party freed two ghost children, destroyed the thing in the crypts, and ran as the house fell into a pit behind them. Two of the five didn't make it out. Corso the bard was taken by the house, and Leona the tiefling barbarian was drained by shadows because she wouldn't leave a ghost child behind.

Then came the Village of Barovia, under siege every night at sunset. The cleric called his goddess's light down into a land that hasn't seen a real dawn in centuries, and the master of the valley marked the whole party for it. The burgomaster was torn apart in his own house. The village priest gave his life to save his son. Strahd's chamberlain, Rahadin, made them an offer: hand over Ireena, the burgomaster's daughter, and the attacks stop. They said no, and Ireena rides with them now.

At the Vistani camp by Tser Pool, Madam Eva read their fortunes and told them the Vistani serve Strahd. A Vistani woman vanished overnight, and the only tracks were a wolf's that turned into a person's. The party went west into the swamps: bullywugs, a drowned village, a fungus ritual that nearly killed their paladin, and a stolen scroll that led them to Baba Lysaga, a witch who lives in a hut carried by a walking tree. They robbed her, and nothing they cast at her worked.

She came for her gem anyway, as a cloud of bats over the Vistani camp. And then a grey wolf walked out of the trees and became Count Strahd von Zarovich. He called the witch mother, made the party a bargain, and left them with more questions than they came with. Now they're on the road back to Barovia, bloodied, with a page torn from someone's notes on how to beat him.