One of Us Will Die Curse of Strahd Adventure Report 1: The Death House

The following adventure report is a session of Curse of Strahd utilizing the One of Us Will Die System instead of D&D 5E. We will be using this system for the next few sessions as well.

A Vistana coachman crosses the threshold into the mists of Barovia with four adventurers in his wagon. Asha (The Sinner played by Nyx), a young psychic adventurer in search of a cure for her sister whose curse she blames herself for. Dahlia (The Princess played by Dandy), a noblewoman from Daggerfall in search of the same fabled panacea to bring glory to her family. Ivan (The Scorned played by Moomei), a vampire hunter on the trail of the vampire that destroyed his village. Morgwyn (The Monster played by Mary), a neophyte hag on the verge of corruption seeking a way to reverse her full transformation.

Ivan explains how a vampire destroyed his town and how he was left alive as a mercy. Only Dahlia engages with him. Asha, the teenage girl sits quietly waiting for their destination while Morgwyn hides under her cloak. Nobody in the party, at least to her knowledge, is aware that she is a hag. The ride is quiet save for the sound of crows on the tree branches who appear as they are watching the party closely. Morgwyn reaches out to one which lands on her leathery hand. Initially, the bird assumes she is returning to Baba Lysaga’s coven, but learns instead that Morgwyn is an outsider. The bird urges her to seek out Baba Lysaga who will help her and give her what she needs as she will always help someone in her position. When the wagon arrives at the gates to Barovia they remain closed until the Vistana, delivers the password.

“He is the ancient. He is the land.”

The gates open. To pass the time, the Vistana engages with the party, offering to read their fortune. The Tarroka deck shows three blank cards and one with a skull. It’s a strange reading, but the Vistana interprets it to mean that one of the group will die on this journey. Dahlia offers to take care of any burial services and to reach out to their families should that happen, completely unaware that things do not move in and out of Barovia without the lord’s blessing.

The party comes across a trio of children. The child in the middle cries for Lancelot, her lost puppy who wandered into the house down the road. When the party approaches, she tearfully introduces herself as Gertruda. Consoling her are her friends, Rose and Thorn. Upon further inspection Asha uses her psychic powers to deduce that Gertruda is the only child in the group who is still alive as the other two are dead. She manages to telepathically communicate with Rose who informs her of the dilemma. The two ghost children know that the house down the road is dangerous and do not want Gertruda to get hurt. Meaning to help the children, and being a seasoned tracker, Asha heads into the house followed by Dahlia.

Despite experiencing a momentary hallucination of the children recognizing what she is and calling her a ‘hag’, Morgwyn stays behind with them. She even creates a small patch of flowers, which makes Gertruda cry because she’s only seen drawings of flowers as they do not grow in the village of Barovia where she and her mother lives.

The Vistani, whose name they were told was Galen follows them in but not before flashing Ivan, who chose to stay behind and watch the cart, with his long white fangs. In a panic, Ivan gets off the cart and convinces Morgwyn to follow him into the house but the door is locked. Meanwhile inside, the Vistani, Asha and Dahlia hear revelry and laughter coming from the dining room. Curious, he immediately enters the room, closing the door behind him. His laughter joins the rest.

Embarrassed that she entered an inhabited house without permission, Dahlia attempts to leave so she can knock only to bump into Morgwyn and Ivan. The latter warns them both that this house may be full of vampires. Galen was able to enter without an invitation, which normally he would not be able to do if he were such. The residents may be somehow connected to him.

Upstairs, Asha follows the dog’s trail. On the second floor hall, she sees a portrait of the family, Lord and Lady Durst and their children, who she recognizes as Rose and Thorn whom she met outside. A third child is swaddled in the father’s arms that the mother regards with disdain. The sound of a woman in pain comes from one side of the room. Unable to fight battles by herself, she takes the opposite door and finds the dog hiding under a chair.

Following a heated argument over what to do about Galen’s betrayal, they discover the door has been closed behind them and cannot be opened by any means. Morgwyn hears a cry coming from the upper floor and the three head up, completely missing Asha by a few seconds and reaching the servant’s quarters, the source of the screaming gone.

The party regroups with Asha and the puppy, Lancelot and they search the house’s libtary for information on a way out. Morgwyn discovers a book the details the history of her life including her origins, her own mother giving her away to a hag for some dream pastries. The rest of the pages are filled with the word “Hag”. She is only calmed when Asha feeds her a cockroach, originally meant to be a prank. Some insight is provided about Asha’s habit of using bugs in her various pranks ended with her giving her older sister a rather beautiful looking insect (this time to make up for her mischief) only for it to poison her into a deep eternal slumber. Asha and Morgwyn also uncover Lord Durst’s diary detailing the fall of the house, the arrival of a new overlord and the decline of their marriage with the arrival of the mists, making the entire county isolated from the entire world by a thick wall of mist. The diary also speaks of the lady of the house’s descent into madness only exasperated by her husband’s affair with the children’s nanny and the subsequent of the birth of their half-sibling, Walter.

Ivan hears Galen cackling on the upper floor and rushes to the third, up the stairs, through pure rage and spite, evades and destroys a living armor waiting to kill him. Upon arrival at the master bedroom from which he thought he heard the laughing. He sees Lord Durst lying in bed. Fearing that he is a vampire, he beheads the man with his axe only to realize he’d already died. The severed head of Durst begins to mournfully recite his last words, the ones scribbled on the suicide note he wrote addressed to his children.

The vampire hunter learns how Lady Durst, obsessed with regaining youth and beauty, made several human sacrifices with the help of her inner circle which later evolved into a dark cult. He became complicit in her activities out of guilt over his affair. After stating that his wife had turned into a ‘monster’ he bids his children farewell and poisons himself.

Galen, revealing himself in the moonlight to be Mikhail, the very same vampire who destroyed his town. Ivan confronts his nemesis over the event. Mikhail reveals that burning the town brought Ivan to Barovia, which was his goal all along. He speaks of his master, someone greater than he is and that leading him to Strahd von Zarovich is an honor and a gift. With a cackle, he phases through the door towards the rest of the party who are struggling with the same living armor. His laughter turns to coughs when he chokes on a cockroach thrown by Asha much to everyone’s relief.

Dahlia struggles with one of the suits of armor as an enraged Ivan crashes into it full force, casting out the spirit inside of it. Urging him to listen to reason, Dahlia tries to calm his rage only for Ivan to rush off once more into the nursery.

He is immediately shushed by the nursemaid, Margaret who tells him that the child is sleeping. Catching up, the party tries to reason with the ghost, looking for a way out. The ghost is confused, unaware of her death at times, and other times seemingly lucid. From her ramblings, the party learned that Margaret, Lord Durst’s affair partner was dragged into the storage room by the lady and the members of the cult and promptly sacrificed. They learn that the children in the attic may help them.

Upon arrival at the attic, they find the deceased bodies of Rose and Thorn, starved to death after being locked there to protect them from the cult’s activities. A mercy that later turned into a terrifying slow death. Their bones are collected by the party with intent to bury them.

The ghosts appear once more thanking the party, telling them that their gesture was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for them. In return, Rose helps them find a secret passage into the basement through which they can escape.

They head back down. Ivan checks the dining hall to find that nobody is there and the food is untouched, though fresh and seemingly delicious. Just for good measure, he poisons the food with garlic hoping to kill any vampiric residents of the house should they return to eat.

They move through the den towards the basement and see a ledger detailing all those who were killed by the cult in the name of Strahd von Zarovich, who they began to see as a messiah. Along with the book is a letter from Stahd himself rejecting their sacrifices, turning the congregation into ghouls and ghasts. He cruelly tells Lord Durst that he deserves his fate.

In the basement, a wooden effigy of Strahd holding a large glass orb is seen guarding the entrance to the ritual hall. From the hall beyond, chants of “He is the ancient. He is the land.” can be heard faintly. Curious, Asha touches the glass orb, sensing some psychic energy from it. Her mind is immediately transported through the artifact and to Castle Ravenloft. Strahd, who had been watching the party for most of their adventure is impressed that she is the only one of them to directly gaze back at him, admiring her mind and her abilities. He asks her what she would give in exchange for getting her sister back, and she immediately and confidently response that she would give her life. Strahd smiles and gleefully sends her back to Durst Manor. When asked of the experience, Asha merely states that she was contacted by a ‘creepy old guy’.

The party heads into the ritual chamber to see the cult standing in their robes, solid flesh, all undead creatures bound to the area. Their chants begin to morph into something different “One must die!” they chant as Lady Durst prepares to sacrifice a child on the altar. “One must die! One must die!” they continue as Lady Dahlia draws her pistol shooting the head of the cult in the chest as the cult falls down on them. The party draws their weapons and struggles as countless undead draw their knives. They fight through towards the altar and Morgwyn takes the child, and the party prepares to make their escape only for Dahlia to fall in battle, stabbed in the heart by a silver knife.

She falls upon the altar, satisfying the ritual. The ceiling begins to crumble and the house above it deteriorates. They escape through a collapsed part of the basement as the cult and their terrible base of operations is destroyed for good.

Outside, the party does not have time to mourn their fallen comrade. Morgwyn holds the child in her hands as her corruption begins to take hold of her, and she begins to feel the horrific urge to kill and consume the baby in her arms.

Director’s note: Never have I ever until this moment have I had to tell a player “Succeed on this roll or eat a baby.”

Fortunately, Morgwyn is able to fend off the urge. For that moment, she is reminded by some unseen force somewhere out there, or perhaps very deep inside her own heart that she is human. She can choose to be human, and that no corruption will ever completely destroy the humanity that is inside of her.

Asha shares an embrace with a grateful Gertruda, reunited with her puppy, Lancelot, once again showing how well she bonds with others through her connection with animals.

Ivan, axe in hand, cries out for his nemesis, promising that his village will be avenged if it’s the last thing he ever does.

After Gertruda reunites with her mother, she buries the bones of Rose and Thorn next to each other in the graveyard. The moment the children are buried, the house slowly crumbles to dust. In her arms, she carries baby William, to a better life.

Back on the road to Barovia, a black carriage emerges from the dark. The hooded coachman reaches into his bag to hand them an invitation to dine at Castle Ravenloft from Strahd von Zarovich himself.

The adventurers, in search of answers enter the carriage before it disappears once more into the thick fog. 

Fade to black.

10 Years Later

Fade from black.

Four adventurers walk down the road in search of friends and family who disappeared ten years prior. This is the story of these heroes. Welcome to One of Us Will Die – Curse of Strahd.

Reflection from the Director:

The players were required to scrap their character sheets and create new characters, each one entering Barovia in search of someone who went missing for 10 years, which was a massive shock to all of them.

This is the first time I’ve run from a D&D adventure. These adventure report will focus more on the story rather than the game mechanics because I think that One of Us Will Die, and Curse of Strahd by extension are story-centric games. For those of you who have played One of Us Will Die, you will see gameplay elements in these such as Asha hitting her milestones as the Sinner by playing out her nature as an avid prankster. Dahlia as the Princess and Mark by showing how her naivete and overestimation of her own abilities led her to walk into a haunted house and get stabbed by several undead cultists.

If I could do anything differently, I’d be a little more careful with dumping a mechanical plot twist on players. I was rather vague about it coming in and after the reveal I didn’t really make my mind up on whether their characters should be looking for their previous character or another player’s character. We got around to it eventually.

Curse of Strahd is the perfect D&D module to run with One of Us Will Die because the milestone system and the story-focused mechanics really add for so much horror and drama. The players are compelled to develop their characters during the story so it becomes easy to scare their characters with the horrors Death House has to offer. Remember, in a horror RPG, scaring the players isn't what makes it fun, it's letting the players have fun playing characters that are scared, and those tragic backstories and milestones really give you stuff to play with.

I would also have liked to add a bit more combat in this. As a tutorial session, this should introduce characters to the game mechanics, but there was just so much horror and story to enjoy and we only had one night. It’s fine though, I’ll probably have some wolves attack them on the road next session or something.

Please stay in touch with the page for weekly adventure reports! We are going to see if we can get to the end of this adventure where either Strahd or the player characters are defeated!