Nightmares--Borca
General Summary
[Getting into more detail than usual here because you never know when all these portentous portents will pay off. Also because I had a freaking blast with this session and want it preserved for posterity. As with all session reports, let me know if I'm forgetting anything.]
Rose, after running from Julien/her father, found herself in the forest where she'd been trained. All of the trees were blighted in some way--some only had a few diseased spots here and there, while others were rotted almost to nothing. Their trunks were carved with words in druidic:
I told you not to come back I told you not to come back Rose I told you not to come back run run run Rose run Rose run Rose run Rose run run run run run...
As Rose went further into the forest, she could see that her mentor was leaving clear tracks, and that the growth in his footprints was as blighted as the trees. The words carved on the trees were changing as she went deeper into the forest:
I told you not to come back I told you not to come back come back come back Rose come back come back help me help me Rose help me Rose help me help me help me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me...
As Rose stared around in bewildered horror, she heard someone laughing deeper in the forest. She followed the sound of the laughter and found Madam Fortuna lying on the ground, vivisected, in exactly the same position as the chicken whose entrails Julien had read. Instead of blood or organs, there were eyes pouring out of her wound, swiveling around to look at Rose as Madam Fortuna laughed uncontrollably.
"I tried to warn you," she cackled. "I tried to warn you to kill it. I used to think I had the Sight, but now, now I see everything. But its father sees even more. I wonder if he brought you together on purpose, to feed each other's worst selves in the dark like ortolans, until he comes to devour you..."
Rose tried to clear the eyeballs off of Fortuna, sobbing for them to leave her alone, but Fortuna told her that it was her fault--Fortuna had tried to warn Rose about The Dukkar, but Rose hadn't listened, and Fortuna had been forced to take matters into her own hands. Rose apologized that this had happened to Fortuna, then used a knife to put her out of her misery. Eyes bubbled out of the wound instead of blood, and both Fortuna and the eyes went still.
At that point, Rose heard Julien crying. She followed the sound of the crying and found him standing in the woods, about five years old, saying that he'd dreamed he'd hurt her. By now, the penny had dropped, and Rose knew this was a dream. She knelt down in front of Julien, still holding the knife, and said that she'd always cherish the time she spent with him at this age but she knew this wasn't real. She showed dream-Julien the knife and said that she knew now that she'd do whatever she had to do to protect him and keep him from falling to the darkness. He looked at her in confusion and said that she'd already left him, changing into her father as he did. "He made me hurt you, and then you left me to him."
Rose apologized fervently and said that she hadn't wanted to leave him, but she had to live, and she wouldn't have been able to help Julien or to come back and save him if she hadn't lived, but she was coming back for him now. Her father, leaking black ichor from his eyes, said it was too late for that; the The Dark Man had filled every part of him and there was nothing of him left inside. Rose held him, but she knew how dream logic worked and had a pretty good idea that if her dream-father was saying that the Dark Man was inside him, then the Dark Man was going to come out at some point.
[By the way, before things get from poignant to sinister, can I just say that this scene was everything I wanted it to be and more and I had SO MANY feels?]
Her father smirked, shifting into the Dark Man, and said that if she'd wanted to see him, all she had to do was ask. Rose asked contemptuously if he would have come running, and he said that her desire had that effect on him. He also said that this was her dream and he wasn't even real, just a figment of her imagination, so clearly some part of her wanted him here; Rose said that it was only because her mind knew she'd have to deal with him eventually, and that all she felt for him was disgust. He asked if there was anything she wanted to do since there were no consequences. Rose asked, outraged and disgusted, if that was supposed to tempt her--"the only reason I might ever give into you is because of the consequences if I don't"--and he played the "maybe you're the horny one" card by pointing out that he hadn't asked if she wanted to sleep with him, just what she wanted to do--kill him, restore the forest, what. Rose said that all she wanted was for him to be out of her life.
[It occurred to me as I was writing this that this part has the exact energy of Angelica Schuyler and an evil Aaron Burr. "You disgust me." "Oh, so you've discussed me?"]
Rose said the one thing she didn't understand was why she was seeing the blighted forest with the words carved into the trees--everything else was playing on one of her anxieties in a pretty straightforward way, but she didn't have any context for what had happened to her mentor. The Dark Man said that glass urchin venom sometimes caused prophetic visions, and just because this was a dream didn't mean it wasn't real. [Why? Because I had the idea of hopping you up on shiver after you went to the menagerie and I'd introduced Chekhov's glass urchins but not Chekhov's dream spiders. In Ravenloft, glass urchins make shiver! And it's not addictive, because no one wants to deal with that! And it's always been that way and I'm absolutely not making it up and you can find the rules for it in Van Richten's Guide to Something Something!] Then Rose woke up in an unfamiliar and very well-appointed room.
Vanya, meanwhile, was having a much less empowering time of it in his dream. Vigo Drakov greeted him with a "welcome home" and asked if Rose would be joining them. Vanya said she wouldn't, and Vigo said that Vanya had already done some work to expand his father's breeding flock, so he supposed he shoudn't get greedy. He said Julien would bring her down later, or maybe Vanya would bring her himself once his father taught Vanya some new songs. Vanya asked if Vigo wanted him to sing, and Vigo said there would be time for that later. Vanya said he'd thought Vigo was his own person with his own agenda, and Vigo pointed out that Vanya was his own person with his own agenda, too, but they all ended up serving the Dark Man in the end--"we're all his children, or lovers, or food; I'm not sure if he sees a difference."
Julien came up to Vanya and hugged him, and Vanya asked him what he was doing down there--the only thing getting Vanya through his death-march to damnation was the hope that maybe he'd save Julien, and if Julien was in the wine cellar, he'd failed. Julien said he had to be there because it was his father's house; Vanya asked if he wanted to go upstairs, and Julien said that he did but that he didn't know if he could. Vanya started to take him upstairs, but Vigo put an arm in front of him and said that Julien could go upstairs, but Vanya couldn't because he'd already made his choice. Julien went to the foot of the stairs but didn't go up because he was too busy watching Vanya.
Vanya didn't know exactly when his clothes had disappeared, but they sure were gone. Vigo leaned close to him and said that the Dark Man couldn't wait to put Vanya through his paces (which was the same thing one of the vampyres had said to him). He held out a handful of birdseed and asked if Vanya wanted some; Vanya said no, but the birdseed was looking more and more delicious the longer he looked at it, and he found himself eating it out of Vigo's hand, knowing the entire time that Julien was watching him. At some point, he felt the shape of the hand change and knew he was taking it from the Dark Man's hand instead. When he'd finished licking up the last seeds, the Dark Man pulled his head back and kissed him.
Vanya asked the Dark Man why he'd made the bargain with him; there must have been dozens of people who had come to the crossroads looking to make a deal and walked away disappointed, and Vanya had just been some random peasant. The words came out as birdsong, but the Dark Man seemed able to understand them just fine. He said that one never knew when an investment would bear fruit; sometimes you went through the trouble of making one and it came to nothing, but other times it paid tremendous dividends, and he'd never dreamed how well Vanya would pay off. He gloated a little about how he would send Vanya back upstairs after teaching him some new songs, and how Vanya would bring him new birds for his flock. Vanya told the Dark Man that he didn't have any power over him because there was no carrot he could dangle in front of him that would possibly work; the one thing that the Dark Man couldn't do was make him hope, because he'd given up on that. The Dark Man kissed him again and told him that he loved how pragmatic he was [oy, the flood of he/him pronouns in this scene is unnecessarily confusing], then started guiding him toward the breeding coop; Vanya couldn't tell whether he was walking or riding on the Dark Man's arm.
When the Dark Man opened the door, there was a little girl sitting on the floor eating birdseed. She looked like Vanya, but had Sofia's coloring. Vanya said that he'd assumed the baby would be a boy, possibly because of Julien; the Dark Man said he was happy that she wasn't because he'd always preferred girls. He remarked that it was simple husbandry--if he owned the hen and the cock, he owned the chick--and that he'd leave them to catch up. Then Vanya woke up.
When you woke, you found yourselves in the same extremely luxe guest room. There was some breakfast set out for you, and you recognized the china pattern from Bianca's garden. You figured out in short order that you'd been drugged, although you didn't know why Bianca hadn't killed you. You had spell components but not weapons (and no Seamus either Vanya didn't have his lute at first, but at one point he glanced at a corner that had been empty a minute ago and saw it sitting there.
You decided to try your original plan of going to the menagerie, seeing if the vampyres had been in on Ludzig's feeding houses, and killing them if they were. The door was locked, but Vanya picked it. He cast Invisibility on Rose and you both rolled absolute killer Stealth checks, so no one saw you sneaking out to the menagerie. We left just as you were about to enter.
Character(s) interacted with
Julien (dream version)
Madam Fortuna (dream version)
Nicolae (dream version)
The Dark Man (dream version(
Vigo Drakov (dream version)
Eleanor Covington (dream version)
Related Reports
Previous session: Menagerie aftermath and trippiness!--Borca
Next session: Escaping Bianca's estate--Borca
Notes
Rose officially went from Innocent to Blessed after this.
Report Date
09 Dec 2021
Primary Location
Related Characters
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