Through the Mists

Session 14: Darkon Remembers

At a glance

Summary

Darian Corvrick led the travelers deeper into Castle Avernus, past two silent guards and into a library whose thin, unmarked volumes seemed numerous enough to contain every life in Darkon. At its center, the headless ghost Elzarath wrote ceaselessly in an enormous index while his severed head flew free to answer the visitors’ questions. When Carver peered into that index, the first name he saw was Firan Zal’honan. The name meant nothing to the party at the time.

Rage asked for his own name.

Elzarath led him below and drew out a single pamphlet. Its pages held Rage’s thoughts from the day he entered Darkon—the words of a stranger who knew he had come from somewhere else. Rage remembered none of them. At the back of the record, a magical feather continued writing the party’s present deeds as they occurred, while every attempt to add mundane ink vanished from the page.

Ignatius then requested the record of Darian Corvrick. Elzarath searched and found nothing.

“My name is erased,” Darian said, and laughed.

Rage reads his forgotten thoughts while Carver studies the immense index and the headless ghost Elzarath writes behind them.

The castle held Rage’s forgotten thoughts and continued writing what came next. View image record.

The tour continued through a vast chamber dominated by a cracked cylinder. Small doors covered its walls like the faces of a mausoleum, each bearing a name and dates worn by time. Pure conjuration magic saturated the floor. Beyond it, Darian left the party to enter a throne room built for giants.

A mouldering colossus waited there beneath a crude iron crown. It rose laughing from an immense throne, poisonous decay rolling from its body. Ignatius bound it in grasping roots; Carver and Chip washed it in acid and flame; Rage met its charge with his greataxe. When the creature finally fell, the throne room died with it. Metal rusted, masonry crumbled, and the extravagant hall contracted around the party until only a much smaller, ruined chamber remained. Whether the grandeur had been illusion, conjuration, or some stranger layer of the castle’s reality was impossible to say.

Ignatius strikes the crowned giant as its magnificent throne room rusts and collapses into a smaller ruin.

The room died with its king. View image record.

Dinner awaited them in another chamber, though the gathering obeyed neither ordinary time nor ordinary presence. A great raven, a red-robed vampire, and a towering ghost occupied the table, shifting among chairs while their voices overlapped through fractured moments.

The raven spoke for Ebb, Azalin’s former shadow-dragon mount and the new master of the King’s Ravens. Darkon was collapsing, it warned. Freedom lay in flight through the Dark Delvers.

The vampire, Allaric Van Stradleheim, offered dominion instead. The Eternal Order was failing. The Kargatane should seize the moment, destroy its enemies, and carry its advance next to Il Aluk.

The ghost, Irik Zal’honan, offered neither escape nor conquest. He offered discovery. Darkon remembered, he told them, but it did not obey.

The strain of the encounter broke Rage. Terror drove him to his knees and held him there, helpless. Ignatius and Carver nevertheless made their choice: they pledged themselves to Irik’s path and the pursuit of truth.

Irik, Allaric, and Ebb's raven offer competing futures while Rage kneels in terror and Ignatius and Carver choose truth.

Escape, conquest, or truth: three futures waited across one impossible table. View image record.

Allaric departed amid a cloud of bats. The raven flew through the window, and the ravens outside Castle Avernus rose screaming into the night. Irik remained. He urged the party to seek Strahd von Zarovich, who knew the secrets of Azalin’s ritual and the red star. To reach Barovia, they should find someone or something called Snowmane near Martira Bay, where passage by sea might be found. Before vanishing, Irik offered one more temptation: something valuable waited on the sixth floor of the main tower.

The castle refused them a direct ascent. An invisible barrier blocked the way above the third-floor Conjuration Room, and Carver’s attempt to mend the damaged runes drew transmutation energy from somewhere else in the ruin. An adjoining stair carried the party into a strangely pristine bedchamber, where a trapdoor slammed shut beneath them. Ooru, still below on the spiral stair, reopened it just before his companions resorted to a Boom Stick.

Carver prepares a Boom Stick just as Ooru opens the trapped room's floor hatch from below.

Ooru opened the trapdoor just before Carver opened it another way. View image record.

Their alternate route led not upward, but into horror.

The chamber beyond was a slaughterhouse assembled from human remains. Bodies had been cut apart and sewn into new arrangements. Ignatius and Carver recoiled, overcome by the sight, as a towering flesh-built abomination dragged itself upright. Four lesser corpses answered its command and swarmed the room.

Rage planted himself before the giant and hacked into its stitched bulk. Ignatius fought through his revulsion to strike and to keep Rage standing. Carver turned claw, spell, and cannon against the dead while the lesser bodies closed around him. At last Chip’s fire and force tore through the abomination, and the creatures fell.

Chip pours spectral flame across a towering flesh-built abomination while Rage, Ignatius, and Carver battle among its corpse servants.

The dead had been cut apart and taught to rise together. View image record.

The party stood amid the wreckage, alive, deeper within Castle Avernus, and changed by what it had shown them. Somewhere above waited the sixth floor. Somewhere beyond the Mists waited Strahd. Behind them, a book continued writing every choice they made.

Key events

  1. Rage found his personal Book of Names record and read thoughts from his forgotten arrival in Darkon.
  2. Carver saw Firan Zal’honan as the first name in the castle’s enormous index.
  3. A magical feather recorded the party’s actions in real time, while mundane ink could not alter the record.
  4. Elzarath found no record for Darian, who claimed his name had been erased.
  5. The party destroyed a crowned giant whose death revealed the throne room’s smaller, ruined state.
  6. Ebb, Allaric, and Irik offered three competing futures for Darkon: escape, conquest, and truth.
  7. Ignatius and Carver pledged themselves to Irik’s path.
  8. Irik directed the party toward Strahd in Barovia and Snowmane near Martira Bay.
  9. An invisible barrier prevented access above the third floor of the main tower.
  10. Ooru freed the party from a trapped fifth-floor room before a Boom Stick was used.
  11. The party destroyed a flesh-built abomination and its four lesser corpses.
  12. The party reached level 4.

Decisions and consequences

  • Ignatius and Carver chose Irik’s path of discovery.
    • They rejected both Ebb’s call to flee and Allaric’s invitation to seize Darkon through the Kargatane.
  • The party accepted Irik’s direction toward Barovia.
    • Strahd is now their clearest lead concerning Azalin’s ritual and the red star.
  • The party pursued Irik’s hint about the sixth floor.
    • The direct path remains sealed, and their search carried them into the slaughterhouse instead.
  • The party warned Ooru before detonating a Boom Stick.
    • Ooru opened the trapdoor in time; no explosive was consumed.

People

  • Elzarath: Headless ghostly scribe who tends the Library of Names.
  • Darian Corvrick: Kargat vampire whose name has been erased from the castle’s records.
  • Ebb: Shadow dragon represented by a raven and leader of the King’s Ravens.
  • Allaric Van Stradleheim: Vampire who urged the party to help the Kargatane seize Darkon.
  • Irik Zal’honan: Ghostly advocate of truth whose path Ignatius and Carver chose.
  • Snowmane: Unmet contact near Martira Bay who may provide sea passage through the Mists.

Places

Clues and lore

  • Rage’s own record provides the strongest evidence yet that he entered Darkon from elsewhere and lost the memory.
  • The Book of Names records events as they happen and cannot be altered with ordinary ink.
  • A person can apparently be erased from the Book of Names, though the meaning and method remain unknown.
  • Ebb now commands the King’s Ravens in Azalin’s absence.
  • The Dark Delvers may know a route out of collapsing Darkon.
  • Irik believes Strahd understands Azalin’s ritual and the red star.
  • Snowmane may offer sea passage between domains.
  • The castle contains unstable layers of illusion, conjuration, time, or reality.

Story threads

Rewards, losses, and character changes

  • The party reached level 4; specific build choices remain to be recorded next session.
  • Rage suffered a lingering terror response during the dinner encounter.
  • The party retained all three Boom Sticks.
  • No specific treasure was recorded after either battle.

Memorable moments

  • Rage read thoughts he had written but could not remember thinking.
  • Darian laughed after the archive declared that no record of his name existed.
  • A magnificent throne room rotted and shrank around the party as its crowned master died.
  • Three voices offered three different Darkons across a dinner table fractured by time.
  • Ooru opened the trapdoor moments before his companions blasted it apart.
  • Chip’s magic brought down a giant assembled from the dead.

Open questions

  • Who erased Darian’s name, and what does erasure mean?
  • What exactly sustains the Book of Names and its ever-writing records?
  • Who is Firan Zal’honan, and why was his name the first one Carver saw?
  • Was the throne room an illusion, conjuration, displaced reality, or something else?
  • How physically present were the dinner guests amid the temporal distortions?
  • What do Ignatius and Carver’s pledges to Irik require?
  • What route do the Dark Delvers know out of Darkon?
  • What does Strahd know about Azalin’s ritual and the red star?
  • Is Snowmane a person, a vessel, or something stranger?
  • What waits on the sixth floor, and how can the barrier be crossed?
  • What purpose did the slaughterhouse serve?

Next session

  • Immediate situation: The party and Ooru stand in the slaughterhouse after destroying its flesh-built inhabitants.
  • Likely goals: Recover from the battle, record level 4 choices, find another route to the sixth floor, and decide how to pursue Irik’s path toward Snowmane and Barovia.

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