The Swamp Baron: Leonardo Markinswell

[CrazedElkPie]

This journal is in a sorry state. While bound in richly tanned human skin and stamped with gold edging, it is stained with blood and bile and is missing many older pages. More recent entries seem to have been written with a device other than a quill, yet the ink is quite normal.

I've arrived in a land much like my own. Deep forests, wide rivers, and even swampy marshlands that are so new and yet so familiar to me. This land has a name of which I have only recently learned; Barovia. I of course could not learn such from idle conversations as my appearance, let alone what I imagine is the stench according to the man who couldn't stop gagging, prevents such. No, instead I kidnapped a young man who was walking by himself in the mountains. Dragging him into a deep cave by way of my skeletal men, of which now I can summon effortlessly as compared to when I was in Cormyr, I had him tortured until he was ready to talk.

Interestingly enough he too was from Cormyr, claiming to have been brought here by the mists as he calls it. A stupid claim for which I took his hand for. And yet, I too found myself here after running through a misty swamp to elude those bounty hunters… no matter, I stitched his hand back on and pressed him for more details. As I imagined one so weak as him was expiring fast from shock and blood loss. I had his coins removed, a paltry couple hundred coins, and left him to rot. Perhaps in the next life he'll be more forthcoming.

[CrazedElkPie]

There is a solitude in these mountains that is unlike the swamps. We're I still in possession of the flesh on my face and the feeling in what's left I would be quite taken by the feeling. Instead, when I look upon those peaks I look as if I were a falcon in search of prey. After the first man and a lack of a party in search for him I moved on. The cave was defensible but the trouble with walls and burrows is that you are now the trapped prey.

I am no prey.

Loping through the difficult terrain with the same gait i was taught all those decades ago I made good time in arriving at my next perch. The timing was fortuitous, a boon of Tymora while Beshaba smiled upon my victims. A small caravan of men and women wielding longswords and carrying musical instruments, both close at hand, were moving further into the mountains to a place I learned was known as “Kroftburg”. A mining town for rare metals, especially silver, but also quality iron. Something to remember perhaps.

Speaking of remembering, I find the idea of keeping this journal to be vain and self effacing in equal measure. I am proud of my accomplishments as they are mine. But to see them written I remember that I am, or rather was, simply a man. Though I admit that the sudden blossoming of my talents in necromancy are quite pleasing and amusing, it is that which I learned as flesh and blood that make me the predator I am. The hunt for men, the taking of their wives and coin and eventually, their lives. The stalking, the fear, the scent of emptied bladders and evacuated bowels as the fat little worms of men hear me purposely break branches and bones alike like so many….

The writing divulges into maddened ravings and furious scratchings

[CrazedElkPie]

The Caravan, of course. The trouble with being undead is that I know I am of two halves. The impulses and desires of the living flesh are now but enslaved to that of the undead prison of my body. It is a prison that is impenetrable and unyielding. Trapped forever unable to feel, taste, or take pleasure again.

Well, almost unable to.

With sadistic elation I began to stalk the caravan. I would move upwind so that they would smell my rot. I would shove stones from the cliff tops to make them jump at a rockslide. I would even imitate the yowling of the “Crag Cats” as they are called, driving my victims to near panic and constant prayers to some “Morning Lord”.

Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.

The first one I took in the night. Swiftly and without noise I opened their throat and dragged them away, feet flailing in impotence. I had strung this one up further along their friend’s assumed path, opened their stomach with my blade, and awaited the arrival of the others. With the dawn came the caravan and the horror on their faces was sublime. The arguing came next. The casting of blame. Shouting, anger, and one person split off from the others to go back the way they came.

Terrific.

That one would survive. That isn't to say I didn't rob him of his tongue and his coin, however. But he'll live without both for now…