014_20260618
Notes
In the dining hall there's a table loaded with the most amazing looking food and the table has been set with tableware for us all, but none for Strahd. Strahd remains seated at the organ bench. He invites us to eat but says he has already eaten. He asks us if we have determined whether he is "host or monster" yet. We ask load of questions pretty chaotically and get little answers. Strahd offers to answer one of our main questions and we decide to ask him how he became Strahd von Zarovich the vampire and he says he was searching for power. When asked after Sergej (his previous name) Strahd says he doesn't know who/what we mean. Strahd is still convinced Tatiana/Ireena is his lost lover but does not offer any explanation on how this is possible. When we have eaten what we wanted Strahd says we will soon meet properly and seems to invite us to look around the castle. Then disappears from where he was sitting. We think it was an illusion that had been talking to us all this time. As he disappears, all the candles are blown out by a sudden wind and we hear the creaking of doors and portcullises closing.
We decide to look around the castle, starting up the large central staircase. Upstairs: In one of the hallways we get spooked by Strahd seemingly leaping at us from the rafters. After a bit we notice he doesn't attack and we see it's just a mannequin dressed to look like Strahd. In a small room stuffed with books an older man is scribbling on a seemingly endless scroll, though he has run out of ink and nothing is actually being written. He gets annoyed when we talk to him and rings a bell. As we try to leave we encounter some skeletons that attack us. We scare them off and run downstairs. Downstairs: We enter the castle's chapel. Lua notices two undead on the balcony above. One cloaked unmoving figure is draped over the altar on one side of the chapel. As Anton approaches the figure he notices it is dead, though the cause of death is unclear.