[[1493-03-26|<< 26 Ches 1493]] | [[1493-03-28 - Hour 1|Hour 1 >>]] ## Hour 0 Me, Nia, Skoll, and Rictavio woke up in what we're pretty sure is a domain of dread this morning. So that's fucking fantastic. Yesterday went well, at least; Ezmerelda seemed to enjoy the thought and the food. But the deep, dark sleep I fell into last night had nothing to do with anything that me and her got up to after the fact. I'm sure that it had everything to do with the cold, rainy, fog-ridden city that I woke up in. I'm glad she's not here even if I miss her already. With the dark powers being pissed at me and her and everything, the fact that she's not around means that it's probably not our fault that we're stuck in this place. Also, this place just sucks ass, and I don't want her to have to experience it. But, to reiterate: I still miss her. That said, with any luck — which is something that we obviously have an abundance of — we'll be back before she has the chance to worry too much. The four of us present found that we were wearing our adventuring gear. The most notable thing, however, was the color of the place — more specifically, the lack thereof. Except for our eyes, almost everything is monochrome here. Cicero — the bartender of the tavern that we woke up in — was also in black-and-white. He's a serious, scowling man, but he doesn't seem like a malicious one. I never met anyone in Barovia exactly like him, but he definitely reminds me of the place — he's certainly grim enough. I'm pretty confident that it's not Cicero's fault that we woke up face-first on his bar tables. That doesn't mean he was helpful, though; with the way he was talking, I'm mostly convinced that he never leaves his bar. The bar was shadowy and mostly empty; other than us and Cicero and the mangy-looking cat chasing the mangy-looking mouse, there was only one other person in the bar: a handless individual who was beating at the keys of a surprisingly pristine piano. Cicero claimed to not know the name of the handless individual. He also claimed that he doesn't know of a village called Uluvin, and that we're currently in a city called Elysium. Ricatvio's never heard of a domain by that name. I'm trying not to let that particular detail worry me too much. All the signage is in common, at least, but the electricity in the city doesn't exactly ground me — I've only ever experienced it in other domains of dread. There's also the fact that they don't deal in gold here, which is one of the few things that Cicero decided to relay to us. We found out later that people will take trades and silver, of which I have 48 pieces. It figures that silver would be valuable, considering that I never carry a lot on me. I hardly ever need it — and I never thought it'd fuck me over, either. But that's life, I suppose! Before left the bar, we tried to get what little more information out of Cicero we could. He told us that we're not the first people to show up in his bar like we did, but that it's been years since the last. He also said that he needs basil for the house special or something. Lastly, Cicero told us three things: one, it's always raining in Elysium; two, don't rely too heavily on bags of holding (ominous); and three — if we're looking for work, we should head to some place call the "crooked house," which is owned by someone called the duchess. We quickly found that Cicero wasn't lying about the weather. It was miserable outside: pounding rain, high winds, thick fog. Skoll tried to calm things down, and he was able to make it overcast. The rain didn't stop completely, though, and he was exhausted by the time he was done casting the spell. We walked through empty streets, past spired, closely-clustered buildings. Skoll was tired, and wanted to find an inn. Rictavio was quick to agree to the suggestion. Before we found the inn, though, we found a swarm of umbrellas (yes, umbrellas) with teeth, all pursuing an incredibly doomed rat. For some reason, it seemed more grisly than anything I had seen during my time in Barovia. The inn, which we managed to find pretty quickly after we left the fucked up umbrellas to their own fucked up devices, was in disrepair. But it wasn't completely colorless; there was a single working lightbulb in the lobby, bathing the room in orange. There wasn't anyone in the lobby, but when we rang the bell at the counter, a woman showed up. I'm not sure from where. She arrived grumbling about "nuisance customers" and was even less helpful than Cicero. She wouldn't even give out her name; she just told us to call her "the Proprietress." Still, we tipped her. The less enemies we make in this place, the better. There were three room keys available. The Proprietress said that the other keys were either lost or stolen, but that we can use any keys that we find. It was a strange thing to hear, but at least we might have more fucked up inn rooms to explore, I guess? The Proprietress told us that we have to hold on to any *one* key to enter a room, and we found out why that was soon enough. Skoll headed toward the staircase holding the key to room 9; as soon as he stepped on the first stair, he disappeared and was transported to the room. So we have to be touching the person with the key if we aren't holding it ourselves, and we shouldn't carry more than one key, just so that we can avoid the place getting "confused." I hate it here, in case that wasn't obvious. Anyway, I thought it'd be a good idea for us to check out each room together before settling down, so that's what we did. Room nine greeted us with seven big glowing rocks inscribed with runes. Nia was able to figure out that the runes were from the different school of magic; the only one missing was divination. It took us all a minute to notice, but the rocks weren't the only things in the room — there was a second door as well. Nia opened it with mage hand. On the other side, there was a floating staircase. Nia closed the door. We didn't realize until after the fact, but we hadn't been breathing while the door was open. It was like we didn't *need* to breathe, either. I said that we should do our best to ignore the weird staircase. Rictavio agreed. Room seven of the inn wasn't much better. We found a library of sorts; it had a ton of candles, all burning with green flame. The covers of the books in the library — all divination spell books — were also green. There were also notes scattered around the room. All of the notes seemed to mention eyes. A few of them claimed that there's something horrible watching Elysium through reflective surfaces. So, like the clowns were are, Nia looked down at her armor, Skoll looked at his scythe, and I looked at Ewyn. I saw a strange, inky shadow in Ewyn's reflection. It looked like swirling paint, if swirling paint had a jutting, angular torso and jagged claws. It waved at me. I sheathed Ewyn. I'm hoping that it isn't there anymore, but I haven't checked since. The last key led us to room two, a room I like to call the "spider room," on account of the fact that there were a fuckton of spider eggs clustered around the place along with a bunch of research material on the things. There was a scroll in there that claimed that the sky is a giant spider — which, it isn't. I checked. We're resting for now — me and Nia in the library, Skoll and Rictavio in the rock room. And, in an incredibly unsurprising turn of events, Rictavio was awkward about staying with Skoll. I felt bad for Skoll, but not bad enough to offer to room with one of them. So that was my (shitty, shitty) day. I'm exhausted, despite the fact that I've only been awake for what was probably a couple hours. I don't think sleep is going to come easy in any case. I haven't slept without Ezmerelda since I was stuck in Prismeer; and it wasn't easy then, either. Not to mention that this place gives me the creeps in general. But we'll be out of here and with Ezmerelda and the others soon if I have anything to say about it. And I know that I do have something to say about it, because I've been through too many of these shitass domains for anything else to be the case. --- ## Page Tags/Properties **Tags:** #Journal **Category:** [[Journals and Writings.base|Journals and Writings]] **Character:** [[Krue d'Avenir|Krue]] **Campaign:** [[City of Eyes]] **Date ([[Calendar of Harptos|Harptos]]):** 03/27/1493