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Christian Thiefsend, Year 1310
It's been a long time since I've written in this. But I'm glad I have it now. The last two days have been the worst of my life. I was on patrol, heading east along the river and coasting through the grass, when a rolling fog overcame the field. The next thing I realized, I woke up face-down in the dirt, surrounded by landscape I barely recognized, outside a camp of peddlers and mystics. I thought I had lost my way, but as it happens I was beyond right. In a sanctuary to the Morninglord, a familiar presence in an unfamiliar land, a cleric named Heilyn sat me down and revealed a terrible truth. I had not simply lost my way. I had been stolen. Those mists were no less than an evil entity, some unholy deity that domains over its own plane, that snatches and steals the people of Faerun and drops them inside.
I'm now in a land called Barovia, a nation of an impoverished, distrusting people and an encompassing darkness in the night unlike any I've seen before. Standing outside when the sun falls sets my teeth on edge, makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand, and sends a chill up my spine. At least my instinct is not so lost. Roving bands of werebeasts, according to Heilyn, roam the lands and prey on anything they can find. Beneath the sanctuary I took shelter in is a crypt, a place for reverence for the dead, yet it is so deeply cursed that the dead walk and cannot be put to rest. I have yet to even meet a native of this country, yet I feel it well. Barovia is a land of danger.
But my perils, my confusion, it's all nothing to my family. What must they think? My father? My mother? They can only assume I've died. Or worse, that I've run out on them. Abandoned Waterdeep for my own devices. As far as they know, I went out on patrol, yet if what Heilyn told of this land is correct, it's a patrol I will never return from. He tells me that he knows of no magic, no force that can permeate this realm. Nothing that can return me to my home or the family who likely already wonder and worry for me. What nature of evil can this be, so powerful and great in scale that it can take from any realm it pleases?
But perhaps most concerning of all, the gods are like an absent memory now. Like a wrench in the pit of my stomach, I feel nothing from the Vigilant One. Is it possible that he who sees all cannot see me? I refuse to believe that my god has forsaken me, has simply abandoned me to my fate, no. It can only be that the force behind this plane is so great, that the gods are barred from this realm. Helm, who my connection with is strongest, is not the only I have missed. Tyr's steadying gaze encouraging my passing of judgement is gone, a comforting hand from Ilmater in my time of strife is notably missing, the firm presence of Torm as I follow my duties all but evaporated. I feel not their influence, their presence, the confirmation of faith that I have known all my life has completely vanished.
I must not give in to this overpowering sorrow that threatens to wash over me. This is the greatest trial I have ever faced, I must not surrender.