Death House, Finale
10th Moon, 735
Barovia
The adventurers made their way to the dungeon beneath the house.
The dungeon was carved out of earth, clay, and rock. Centuries-old human footprints in the earthen floor led every which way.
The group found several empty chambers suggestive of people having willingly stayed in the dungeon, while some, based on the empty cells, shackles, and torture devices, indicated many were brought into the dungeon against their will.
From the moment they arrived in the dungeon, the group heard an eerie, incessant chant echoing throughout. It was impossible to gauge where the sound was coming from.
The group came upon several crypts that had been hewn from the earth. Each crypt was sealed with a stone slab bearing the names of the family members: Gustav Durst, Elisabeth Durst, the children Rosavelda (Rose) and Thornboldt (Thorn). The wooden coffins within were all empty. Later, they discovered another crypt, also empty. The name, Walter Durst, was carved upon the crypt’s cold stone slab.
After some time wandering through the maze-like dungeon, the adventurers entered a large chamber. The chanting everyone had been hearing suddenly stopped as the group entered the room.
The smooth masonry walls provided excellent acoustics. Featureless stone pillars supported the ceiling, and a breach in the west wall led to a dark cave heaped with refuse. Murky water covered most of the floor. Stairs led up to dry stone ledges that hugged the walls. In the middle of the room, more stairs rose to form an octagonal dais that also rose above the water. Rusty chains with shackles dangled from the ceiling directly above a stone altar mounted on the dais. The altar was carved with hideous depictions of grasping ghouls and was stained with dry blood.
As the group made their way to the altar, the chanting rose once more as thirteen dark apparitions appeared on the ledges overlooking the room. Each one resembled a black-robed figure holding a torch, but the torch’s fire was black and seemed to draw light into it. Where faces should have been, complete voids of darkness gazed out from beneath dark hoods instead.
“One must die!” the apparitions chanted together, over and over. “One must die! One must die!”
Edmont, Luca, Ziri, and Skyler suddenly found themselves elsewhere as if forced into a dream; a nightmarish dream they could only hope to awaken from.
In the dream, the four saw themselves as invited people who would later become members of a sinister cult whose goal was to summon the dark power tied to the land of Barovia. What they witnessed were secrets of familial betrayal, a dark sacrifice, and the cause of Rose and Thorn’s death.
It seemed Gustav Durst and his wife, Elisabeth Durst, had practiced the dark arts. Through seduction and indoctrination, they expanded their cult to include a small yet nefarious circle of friends. When word got out, the rest of the village turned a blind eye to the house and the nightly debaucheries happening within it. From this Gustav sired a boy with Alanna, a servant who was forced to join one of the debaucheries. The child would later be named Walter, whom Elisabeth dispised.
The cult grew in number and tried to summon malevolent extraplanar entities with no success. The cultists also preyed on visitors, sacrificed them in bizarre rituals, and hosted morbid banquets to feast on their corpses. When nothing came of these ritualized murders, the cultists’ activities became thinly disguised excuses to indulge their lurid fantasies. The ranks of the cult thinned as members began to lose interest in the debacle.
But then a dark force appeared during one of their rituals in which they sacrificed Walter, the bastard child, whom Elisabeth tore from the arms of Alanna. Elisabeth had the servant stabbed to death by other cultists, her body wrapped in a white sheet and placed in a footlocker in the house’s storage room. Gustav did nothing to stop Elisabeth as she placed the wailing infant upon the altar. For safety, Gustav locked both Rose and Thorn in their room. The room would soon serve as the children’s tomb. Trapped and unable to get out, they eventually starved to death.
Back in the sacrificial chamber, the cultists regarded the presence as a messiah sent to them by the Dark Powers. Drawn to the presence like moths to a flame, they pledged their devotion for a promise of immortality, but the presence turned them away, deeming the cult and its leaders unworthy of its attention.
In response, the powerful presence slaughtered the cultists. It then turned Gustav, Elisabeth, and the lead cultist into ghasts cursed to haunt the dungeons under the house for eternity.
Edmont, Luca, Ziri, and Skyler, who were also present, were suddenly attacked by the ghasts. Although severely wounded in the battle, the group slew the ghasts. In a moment of redemption before she died, Elisabeth Durst begged Edmont to kill Walter.
Suddenly drawn back to the present, yet inexplicably still wounded from the fight against the ghasts, the four adventurers told Ahroheim and Dundoly to flee, just as the apparitions yelled, “You deny us a sacrifice? Then we call for the Decayer, awaken!”
In the far corner of the room in the naturally formed alcove, the water began to bubble as red-stained flesh began to pierce the water’s surface. One arm reached out and grabbed part of the wall and another grabbed the opposite side. Dozens more arms began to pull this massive form out of its hole, its large gaping mouth stretching across the entire body visible dripping with blood and yellow ooze. Faces melded with other bodies with looks of terror as . their arms flailed, eyes pierced with pain. As the lumbering monstrosity barrelled towards the adventurers, it cried out as a child would when scared and in horrible pain.
“It’s Walter!” Edmont yelled back to the group. “We have to kill him!”
“We can’t!” Ziri said. “We’re hurt, and that thing is too powerful. We need to run!”
Ahroheim, frozen in place by sight of the monstrosity before him, was nearly impaled by one of Walter’s arms made of an entire bony cadaver.
Heeding Ziri’s words, the group ran through the dungeon, with Walter in pursuit. Narrow corridors didn’t stop Walter who simply broke through walls, causing the dungeon behind to collapse as he chased the fleeing adventurers.
At one point Luca was struck by a slashing scythe blade where a door used to be. She tried to ignore the pain as she fought to keep up with her new companions.
Dundolyn, who was still holding the creepy doll he seemed to be obsessed with, led the group as they made their way to the secret stairwell and back upstairs.
However, Walter was right behind them!
The thing that was the baby Watler chased them up the narrow secret stairwell, its enormous body squeezing through the cramped space.
Near the top, Luca tripped and fell on the stairs. She screamed as a long bloody arm tried to grab her leg. Ahroheim suddenly appeared above her. The elf helped Luca up as they both ran up the stairs with Walter still in pursuit.
The group emerged into the storage room on the house’s third story only to discover the room and the rest of the house was on fire! Smoke began to fill the room and hallways, making it difficult to see and breathe.
The adventurers ran through the thick smoke, avoiding the licking flames which threatened to burn them all alive.
When they finally reached the main hall after taking the red marbled stairs down, the fire was burning everything. Suddenly, the main stairway fell down with a large crash.
Fortunately, everyone had made it down the marble stairs!
The smoke was thick but they were able to see light down a hallway. Beyond, they could see the door which led out of the house.
But the door was blocked!
Rose and Thorn, the two children who led them all into the house now prevented them from trying to leave.
“You will not leave!” the two children yelled in unison. “You will stay here forever!”
Skyler, the dragonborn cleric of Bahamut, ran as fast as he could. With a quick prayer to his deity, he barreled his way through Rose and Thorn who dissolved into smoke, leaving the way out open to his friends who quickly followed behind the cleric.
After running out of the burning house, the group found themselves spread out on the front lawn of the house. They looked up to hear the house screaming as it broke down, burning to the ground. Red streaks pierced the purple sky.
Suddenly, hands rose up from the rubble.
It was Walter!
But before Walter could pull himself out, he was quickly buried by the rubble falling down all around him.
As the fire burned away, the sky slowly went back to its normal Barovian gray. Nothing was left of the house save a bunch of broken wood and stone in a large pile.
The adventurers had survived Death House!
“Where’s the doll?” Dundolyn asked. He looked around searching for it.
Ahroheim, who was sitting up, saw–or rather thought he saw–what appeared to be a figure walking down the cobbled street away from the house. The figure wore a white dress similar to the doll Dundolyn carried throughout the house. Before he could say anything the figure was swallowed up by the thick fog.
The group tried to console Dundolyn who acted as though he had just lost a friend.
“Don’t worry, Dundolyn,” Edmont said. “It was just a doll.”
“Edmont’s right,” Skyler said. “It was just a doll.”
“It’s nearly dawn,” Ahroheim said. “We better head back to the manor now that we have our friend Ziri back.”
Everyone agreed and left the yard. They looked back at the still smoldering pile that was once a house; house that had tried to kill them all.
“I’m glad that’s over with,” Luca whispered as he took his last look before turning back to join his new adventuring companions.
***
Sometime in the future…
Three adventurers, who had recently lost their way in a fog-shrouded part of Darken Wood after defeating a small band of goblin bandits, found themselves following a gravel road that led to a village barely visible through the thick mist.
They didn’t even know a village existed inside the forest. It certainly wasn’t on the map they had.
“Are you sure we’re not lost?” Carden Deepspeaker asked. The Thoradin dwarf was beginning to show his irritation for Rhanga Tethersmeet who clearly could not read a map to save his kender hide.
A soft whimpering drew their attention toward a pair of children standing in the middle of an otherwise lifeless street.
“Let’s ask them,” Canolglid Baeron, a Solamnic Knight said. She moved towards the children and got down on one knee when she reached them. “What is the matter, little ones? Why are you crying? Where are your parents?”
The girl looked to be about ten. The boy, clearly her brother, looked to be a few years younger. He was clutching a stuffed doll that resembled a skeleton.
“There’s a monster in our house!” the girl said trying not to talk above a whisper as if she was afraid someone might hear her.
“Where is your house?” Canolglid said.
She pointed to a house that had materialized out of the fog. It was a tall brick house that had seen better days. Its windows were dark. It had a gated portico on the ground floor, and the rusty gate was slightly ajar, as if ready to welcome anyone who would enter.
Dramatis Personae
Ahroheim (Male High Elf Sorcerer)
Dundolyn (Male Halfling Rogue)
Edmont Patch (Male Human Rogue)
Luca Featherbone (Male Tabaxi Wizard)
Skyler Kiltrin (Male Dragonborn Cleric of Bahamut)
Ziri Basha (Female Half-elf Druid)
by Anthony Jones
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