A Dark Knight's Tale

Baru explained that the party was from Golarian, which made no sense to Magda,  Ralom and Arvien explained the party had come from Paridon and before that Invidia, Mordent and Markovia.  Magda knew all about those lands and inquired about Markov and his experiments.  "So you are new to Sithicus, perhaps that is why you have your memories" she surmised.

Magda fell into a reverie and explained her own history to the party. She was the sole survivor of a Vistani tribe that roamed the domain of Barovia.  Their oma, Madame Girani, was burned alive in her vardo by Lord Soth.  Count Von Zarovich, vampire lord of Barovia, murdered the rest of the tribe in gruesome fashion, including Magda' brother Andari.
Magda became Lord Soth's unwilling companion and was forced to guide him as he searched for an exit from Barovia.  She at last escaped him in Gundarak.  There she formed a new tribe from Vistani who had survived Lord Gundar's depredations.  This new tribe inadvertently wandered into the newly formed domain of Sithicus and now is trapped here.  In vengeance for her betrayal, Lord Soth refuses to let Magda cross the border and leave his domain.  When she tries, he sings a barrier to stop her.  Magda is searching for a way out of Sithicus and believes there is something wrong with Lord Soth.  The chaos in the land, and the memory loss by the elves, started since anyone had last seen Lord Soth, about 2 months ago.  She know a prophecy handed down from oma to oma since the time of her ancestor, the Vistani hero Kulchek:
     In time, the cudgel shall come forth again, into the light,
     And a new tribe shall rally around it.
     Dirges shall hem them in on every side,
     And sorrowful shall be their song.
     But in the year of destruction, strangers shall come,
     And shall lead the way to salvation through the jaws of the beast.
     Only with their help can the wanderer escape.
     The strangers, too, shall be freed,
     When the black rose blooms.
While Magda recited the prophecy the rook, Shadow, occasionally uttered: "Through," "Dark," and "Lord."  Magda explained that the party were the strangers and since Soth's emblem is the black rose, she concluded that the escape route must lie with Nedragaard Keep.  After some negotiation Magda agreed to accompany the heroes to Nedregaard Keep, with her tribe.  "I can be no use as a guide since I have never set foot in the Keep and I do not know its secrets.  The heroes agreed to help Magda, though they would have to part with Quallan, Hethanna and Rowhen in the morn.
A fine stew was then served, Arvien was especially hungry, while Ralom, ever cautious, made sure the tribe ate from the same pot.  After the meal Magda explained that after she escaped from Lord Soth nearly twenty years ago, she realized  that she must learn more about the man.  She gathered information from Terlarm, a cleric of Gilean who had become trapped in Barovia, about Soth's early history.  The secret journals of Lord Gundar provided additional material.  Apparently Count Strahd von Zarovich had shared with Gundar much of what he learned about Soth from his first seneschal, Caradoc.  She stared into the fire and started to recite.
     There once was a mighty warrior whose jealous passions and neglect of duty led him to lose all that was dear to him -- his love, his life, his very spirit.  His tale is a descent into darkness and evil.
     His name is Lord Soth, and this is his story.
     Long, long ago, Lord Soth was mortal.  Nearly four centuries ago, he fought on the side of good in the distant land of Solamnia.
     In those days, Lord Soth was a Knight of Solamnia.  Through deeds of great daring and chivalry, he earned each of that order's honors -- crown, sword and rose.  He built the mighty Dargaard Keep of rose-red stone, and married the beautiful Lady Gladria of Kalaman.  Proud he was of his wife, though it was duty alone made him wed her. Proud he was of his fortress strong. 
     Pride.  As we Vistani say, "The greater the pride, the father the fall."  And what caused this proud warrior to fall?
     Desire for a woman who was forbidden to him.  Possessing her would make a mockery of his wedding vows.  Possessing him would contradict her own promise to the gods.  But then, as we Vistani say, "The sweetest fruits lie behind the stoutest fence."
     Lady Isolde was her name.  She was an elf maid of Silvanost, traveling with  thirteen other maids to the mighty city of Palanthas.  There she would pledge herself to the god Paladine the Valiant Warrior, father of all good, platinum dragon of the evening sky.
     The maids were beset by bandits and taken prisoner.  There were dozens of the rogues, perhaps even hundreds.  Somehow, they had know just where and when to strike.
     Lord Soth met their leader, a fearsome ogre, in single combat.  He fought the brute in accordance with the rules of fair combat, besting him even thought the ogre resorted to trickery and unfair tactics.  The bandits fled -- and Lady Isolde fell into Lord Soth's arms.  And innocent spark  of love was kindled.  All too soon it became the flame of lust.
     The elf maid had vowed to serve her god but had not yet been sworn a priestess, and so had no formal oath to break.  Lord Soth, however, was bound to his wife by sacred marriage oath.  His vows were binding "until death parts us."  There was only one way to break those vows.
     And so Lord Soth committed the ultimate sin.  He ordered his seneschal, a vain and evil man named Caradoc, to murder Lady Gladria.  What should have been a bed of love was turned into a death bed.  Blood on her bedclothes showed that murder had been done, though her body was never found.
    With unseemly haste -- and without a tear of mourning for his dead wife -- Lord Soth took Lady Isolde to live with him in Dargaard Keep.  His bloody secret seemed safe, but the elf maids who accompanied Isolde had sharp ears and keen eyes.  Somehow, they learned of Lord Soth's crime. Somehow, their gossip reached the ears of the High Knights.
     Called before a council of his peers, Lord Soth was found guilty of murder, adultery and dishonoring the vows of his order.  He was dragged throught the streets of Palanthas in shame and sentenced to death.  The execution would take place the very next day; according to tradition, Soth would die by his own sword.
     But that night, thirteen knights who had remained loyal to Lord Soth rescued him from his prison.  By dark of night they stole away to Dargaard Keep.
     The Knights of Solamnia besieged the keep, demanding that Soth emerge to meet his fate.  They lifted the siege just long enough for Lord Soth to wed Isolde in a joyless, sparsely attended ceremony.
     The siege was a long and harsh one, but Dargaard Keep held.  Just as things were at their darkest, the god Paladine spoke to Lord Soth.  The knight's sins would all be forgiven if he undertook one last, heroic task.  Success would mean Soth's death -- but also bring about his salvation.
     Paladine ordered Lord Soth to journey to the city of Istar, where the Kingpriest of that city was about to demand of the gods the power to eradicate all evil from Krynn.  Unless the priest could be stopped, the gods would retaliate by utterly destroying the city.  Only Soth could prevent this cataclysm.
     Lord Soth set out for Istar.  But he never reached the city.  What stopped him?
     Soth never reached Istar because the fiery hand of jealousy gripped his heart.  One of the elf maids whispered in his ear that Isolde had been unfaithful to him, that the son Isolde had borne was not Soth's own.
     Infuriated, Lord Soth rode home to confront his wife with her imagined crimes.  At the same moment that he raised his mailed fist to her, the Kingpriest of Istar raised his voice to the heavens.  The furious gods hurled a mountain at the city -- and hurled holy fire at Dargaard Keep.
     Even as she was consumed by the flames, Lady Isolde begged her husband to save the life of Peradur, their newborn son.  But Lord Soth turned away.  He lost his wife, his son, his life and his spirit that day.  But something evil lived on inside his empty chest.  And so Lord Soth was reborn as a death knight.  A creature of darkness, a heartless servant of evil.  A mockery of a man, with an icy voice and chilling touch.  A fiend capable of killing with a mere word, of causing wracking pain with a mere glance.  A creature capable of turning the bravest warrior's blood to ice, of burning the holiest priest to cinders with a mere thought.  A creature who bends the shadows to his will and laughs in the face of the gods.
     Together with the dragon highlord Kitiara Uth Matar, Lord Soth served the evil goddess Takhisis, Queen of Darkness, five-headed dragon of the evening sky.  Together, they laid low the glorious city of Palanthas.  Together, thought Lord Soth, they would always remain.
     But Kitiara of the crooked smile died that day, in the Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas.  Her spirit entered the five-headed mirror and was claimed by Takhisis.
     They say that Lord Soth smiled as he gathered up Kitiara's corpse, for he had prepared for this.
     Even as Palanthas fell, Soth's ghostly seneschal Caradoc entered the wastes of the Void, called the Abyss, then entered the Infernal Realm that was home to the Dark Queen.  Reaching the goddess' realm, he raised his medallion of office above his head and called Kitiara's spirit into it.  With this prize, Lord Soth could raise the dragon highlord as one of the living dead.  With Kitiara beside him, the retinue of his keep would be complete.
     But Lord Soth was not to receive Kitiara's spirit.  Caradoc hid the medallion and demanded to be restored to moral life in payment for turning it over to his lord.
     Lord Soth responded as he always did to disloyalty -- with an inflamed passion that burned away all rational thought.  Seeking revenge against his seneschal, he followed Caradoc into the mists not once, but twice.  Once into Barovia, domain of Count Strahd von Zarovich.  A second time, into Sithicus, the land Lord Soth now rules.
     Lord Soth seeks one thing -- and one thing only.  It is the key to his every thought, his every action.
     To return once more to his native land.  He will stop at nothing, spare no one, in his efforts to achieve this goal.
     We, his unwilling servants, pray that one day he will succeed.  For that day will see the end of this long, dark night.
Magda collapsed by her bloodhound after reciting the story and was carried to her vardo by Victor.  The tribe provided blankets for the party to sleep with near the fire.  After hearing this dark and evil tale the party drifted slowly off to sleep, wondering if they would have their common dream again. 
Arvien woke refreshed and relieved in the morning, "Maybe this nightmare is over, Renee seemed to absolve us of their deaths in our last dream."  The remainder of the party was just as relieved and started the day with a new vigor.  The Wanderers were hitching horse to the vardos preparing to trek to Nedregaard Keep which stood in the middle of a great chasm on a pinnacle of land.  The Keep it was said soared into the sky.  On the way to the Keep the party still heard groans in the forest as the land continued to split apart.  Several times they had to make detours around a rift.  At mid morning the Quallan, Hethanna and Rowhen continued to the east as the Wanderers and the party headed to the northwest.  The rifts in the area closer to Nedregaard Keep seemed older, the edges were not as jagged and rough, as if they had occurred earlier.  As they rounded a corner the party saw ahead of them a soaring structure in the middle of a huge and deep chasm.   The main tower was almost beyond sight in the sky and there were dozens of large black birds wheeling through the air and circling the highest reaches.

There was only one way across the chasm to the keep, a wooden drawbridge.  Surrounding the keep was a perimeter wall of at least 40 foot height with towers at six corners.  At the far side of the drawbridge was a portcullis barring entry into the courtyard.  Arvien sent Summergale on a scouting mission over the courtyard while Seglun tied a rope around her waist, gave the other end to Baru and started across the drawbridge at a slow pace.  She found several weak spots in the wood, which she avoided, but as she approached the far end, a plank suddenly gave way.  Seglun fell in up to her armpits which, which along with her arms, kept her from falling all the way through the drawbridge.  While Seglun clambered her way out, Summergale reported that the courtyard was overgrown, with no creature or person seen anywhere.  There were bridges from the towers on the wall to balconies above the lower levels of the keep.  After Seglun was atop the drawbridge she made her way to the far end and tried to squeeze through the bars of the portcullis without success.  Grunyar followed on the bridge and sent Dirk through the portcullis where he was lost in the overgrown weeds.  Drovic turned into a rat, and crawled through the portcullis, and seeing an outbuilding, found the doorway which led into an interior with a mechanism on the wall.  Returning to elvish form, Drovic began cranking the mechanism, which raised the portcullis.  All the party was now inside the curtain wall.  Four doors were obvious on the south and west of the main keep.  Seglun headed for a wooden door, which was slightly ajar.  Looking in she saw straw covering the floor at about a foot deep.  Pegs on the walls held ropes, bridles and other riding gear.  Along one wall were several doors.  Judging by their size and design, they seemed to open onto horse stalls.  On the north wall were two doors leading deeper into the keep.  Grunyar headed to a metal door, adorned with a bas relief rose, which opened to his touch.  Inside a hallway led north with a side passage to the east ten or fifteen feet in.  All was dark and the floor was covered with dust.
Meanwhile Ralom move to the east around the southern exposure.  There he came upon the bottom of a tower which showed spiral stairs going up.  Looking up at the main tower he could now see that there was a exposed stairway curving around the tower on the outside.  The group decided to climb the tower staircase, to the bridge which Summergale had reported.  Reaching the level of the bridge, the tower spiral stairs led higher in the tower, the bridge ended on a balcony, where there was a door and the bottom of a outside stairway leading around the main tower.  Seglun and Varrid headed to the door at which they found no locks, traps or other impediment.  Varrid opened the door which showed an unlit, windowless room adorned with a settee and two tables.  The floor and the furnishings were covered with a deep layer of dust and a moldy smell emanated from the settee.   A door led to the east where Seglun immediately headed.  Varrid searched around the furnishings finding nothing but dust covered rotten moldy cloth.  The door was not trapped or locked so Seglun opened it.  Inside was another dark bedroom, again covered in dust.  The bed reeked of mold and the other furnishings looked as if they had lain empty for decades.  As Seglun looked around she thought she saw some movement around the poster bed but she dismissed it.  Ralom came forward to look for magic and he also saw the shimmering appearance, an apparently beautiful elven woman whose face was twisted into a cruel leer.  Its ragged dress provocatively revealed shapely limbs, and its unkempt hair gave it a wild, tousled look.  Then it was gone as if ethereal.  Suddenly the woman appeared before Ralom and touched him.  The negative energy pain was immense as it ate into Ralom's skin and psyche. As a feeling of terror passed through his body, Ralom turned and fled the room apace.  Seglun moved outside and shut the door as fast as she could.
Meanwhile Grunyar and Baru were eyeing the main tower to determine the paths of the outside stairwells.  There appeared to be at least three different courses circling the tower in a clockwise upward fashion.  Several stories up there appeared to be doors or landings from the stairwell into the tower.  After the rest of the party fled the tower Baru suggested a complete tour on the top of the curtain wall.

DMs Notes:  The party earned 500XP for the night and now have 25061 XP.