Entering the forest--Barovia
General Summary
We opened with a flashback to a moment during Rose's first month studying with Emyr. He told her to try to hide and cover her tracks, and he would track her. When she went to hide, she heard a bleating sound across the river in the part of the forest that Emyr had told her never to go to; she looked across the river and saw a fawn, thrashing in pain, its entire foot severed by a bear trap. Being Rose at her most young and naive, she ignored Emyr's instructions and crossed the river to help the fawn. When she was about halfway across, she heard a muted sound behind her, and when she turned, she saw Emyr crossing the river; he was clearly shouting at the top of his lungs, but all she could hear was a distant, muffled noise. He grabbed hold of her and dragged her back to the opposite bank, looking angrier than she had ever seen him before or would ever see him again (well, up until this point, anyway) and shouting at the fawn in Sylvan. The fawn stood up on its hind legs, suddenly unhurt, and grinned at them with a mouthful of needle-like teeth; then it disappeared, and a fox tail vanished into the underbrush.
Rose was in a panic, and Emyr apologized for not telling her why she wasn't supposed to cross the river. He explained that the forest on the other side belonged to a powerful and evil fey creature, and that if she crossed into his land he wouldn't be able to protect her. He then told her "you have a tender heart, child, but there are creatures in the forest that feed on tender flesh."
Jumping back to the present, Rose and Vanya went into the forest. It was too quiet; there were birds singing and animals moving, but not as many as there should have been. While it wasn't as horrifically blighted as it had been in Rose's nightmare, several trees that had been healthy a few months ago were rotting away now. Rose couldn't see any pattern to which trees were rotted and which weren't, or to where the rot had begun--with some, it seemed to have started at a certain branch, whereas others had decay radiating from the trunk and still others seemed to be festering from the inside out. A few trees had had their bark peeled away (IMPORTANT SIDEBAR--I don't know if I made this clear in the description at the time, but the peeled-away bark seemed separate from the rot--some rotting trees didn't have their bark peeled, and some otherwise healthy trees did), and some had words carved into them in druidic, including one that looked like it had been carved at around the same time that Emyr had sent the letter:
Dammit, Rose, I told you not to come back.
Rose noticed a rabbit sitting under the tree, compulsively cleaning itself; it had licked itself in the same spot so many times that the fur had worn away, leaving a bald patch covered with sores. Its body was also latticed with horrible scars. Rose picked it up, and it didn't protest at all to being handled; it just kept washing. She cast cure light wounds to no avail. Vanya knew there were some kinds of magical spells creatures that could cause scarring that needed complex magic to heal (aka heal or regeneration) and that certain attacks that went deep into the body or spirit could cause scarring as well (aka ability damage/drain or level drain).
At this point, you decided that having Julien here was a terrible idea, because this disease might be airborne and he might be able to catch it. You took him and the rabbit back to Krezk and left them with Ilya, who was a little uncertain at the idea of taking care of a kid but did have a spare room. (Julien, for his part, looked extremely unimpressed with Ilya.) You also checked in with Ilya and found out that he was doing pretty well for himself; Casimir had been giving him pointers on the business end of things, and some of the other silversmiths who had known and respected his father had been helping him as well. Vanya had the idea of sending a letter of introduction to Vincente Travatello, because a posh Borcan contract would be wealth beyond Ilya's wildest dreams.
As you said goodbye to Julien, he got a distant look on his face and warned Rose that there were creatures in the forest that fed on tender flesh.
You stopped by to see Casimir, who was delighted to see you, and asked him to help Ilya with Julien. (Vanya asked him to teach Julien how to use an ax, which Rose was clearly not in love with.) You also asked him about Emyr's woods, and he spat, saying that his men had gone there to cut down trees once and had been driven away by an unnatural storm; he knew better than to go back to witch woods when there were other trees to be had. Rose, figuring Emyr had been reacting predictably to lumberjacks coming to his forest, was amused by this. You asked if they'd been back recently and seen anything odd, but Casimir repeated that he valued his life too much to go back to a forest that was bewitched.
You two, on the other hand, went straight back to the forest that was bewitched, and Rose had another flashback!
On the morning Rose left, she came out to find Emyr preparing all the ingredients for potion brewing, clearly having mentally picked her next feat out for her already. Rose thanked him for everything he'd taught her but said that she had to go and find a way to cure her father, and she truly thought she could do that now, and she never would have been able to do it without Emyr, and she and her father would come back and visit him all the time, and OH MY GOSH THE DRAMATIC IRONY IS KILLING ME. Emyr's face was slowly falling the entire time she told him this; he asked if there was anything he could do to dissuade her, and she said no, but maybe she'd come back someday. That perked him up a little. He said that the laws of hospitality demanded that he not keep an unwilling guest, but that if she ever wanted to come back, the forest was her home as far as he was concerned. Rose tried to do some of his overly formal farewell ritual gestures, and he did them back with perfect precision and a definite air of pleased amusement. She felt him watching the entire time that she left.
And back to the present!
You arrived back at Emyr's forest and found a badger, horribly scarred like the rabbit, that was lying on the ground staring at nothing. Rose cast speak with animals and it answered her questions in an apathetic monotone, not recognizing her until she introduced herself and not particularly caring once it did recognize her. It said that Emyr had been spending a lot of time in the trees lately, and that he was different at night. It was completely unconcerned about how much everything had changed. As you left, a pair of carrion crows descended on it and started eating it alive, which also didn't seem to bother it.
Rose flew around as an eagle for a while, trying to find Emyr. She occasionally caught sight of a thrush out of the corner of her eye, which she knew was a form he used when he was being stealthy, but he didn't approach her. She did find another message for her, about a week or two fresher than the first:
Rose, I am not a man who begs, but I am begging you to leave.
Mystified at why he was staying hidden, she made camp with Vanya. Vanya theorized that if Emyr had some kind of tie to the land, maybe he was sick in some way and it was infecting the land, or maybe the land was sick and it was infecting him.
In the night, Rose heard a raccoon screeching in pain and terror, which was the first time she'd heard an animal displaying any kind of strong emotion. She woke Vanya and they ran in the direction of the sound, which faded to a dull whimper as they approached. They found Emyr standing over a scarred, empty-eyed raccoon--but Emyr himself was hideously scarred, as though someone had tortured him at length and savored every moment of it. He looked at Rose in horror and screamed for you to run. You ran, and as you did, a wall of thorns sprang up between you and him.
Character(s) interacted with
Related Reports
Previous session--Leaving Borca--Borca
Next session--@inves
Touching on some of the foreshadowing from Nightmares--Borca
Report Date
13 Jan 2022
Primary Location
Secondary Location
Related Characters
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Comments