3/14/21 Session 1 - Mysterious Strangers

We begin the campaign! The Duchess Morwen of Daggerford summons us to send us on a mission that her guards couldn’t accomplish. We are to confront and remove a disruptive group of circus folk at the city gates. They seem to have charmed the last group of guards that were sent to chase them away. We confront the circus folk and their leader Stanimir. We resist their arguments and deliver the message that they are no longer welcome. We leave their camp and watch them for 45 minutes to ensure that they begin to pack up. After watching, it is decided that we should get a drink while they finish packing and check on them later. The tavern we go to is The Groggy Baroness where Krimin serves us our grog, where Gerard, a traveler comes in raving about werewolves in the Misty Forest. We agree to help him in the morning after our current business is concluded.
After a few hours we go check in on the circus folk. They appear to be packed and almost ready to move so we head to the Dutchess to report in. She pays us 10g for the job and we adjourn to the tavern to wait for morning.
Morning rolls around, Gorgo  gets goaded into drinking a gallon of milk, then we depart for the Misty Forest with Gerard. After seeing the wolf tracks we decide to continue on, eventually running into mist too thick to travel through. We set up camp and Gerard goes off to collect firewood. When he stops making noise we go looking for him, only to get lost in the mist so we set up camp. During the night we saw things approaching our fire then retreating, including wolves, horses, and horses with riders. In the morning we venture forth looking for the tracks of the beasts we saw during the night, but find only a road. We follow it to a massive gate to an area that none of us know. Unexpectedly, they close themselves after we pass through and we are unable to reopen them.
Further down the road we encounter a corpse with a note stating that something is going down in the town of Barovia. The “mayor’s” daughter has been bitten by a vampire and he pleads that we section Barovia off with wards of good to let it rot. Unheeding, we continue and come upon a town.
Here we encounter Rose and Thorn, two children that have been sitting on their porch for the past hour or two waiting and worrying about their parents (Gustave and Elizabeth Durst) and baby brother (Walter). Their parents had sent them out because there was a monster in the basement. They want us to find out what is happening, so Ryden , being the good hearted man that he is, decides that we will help. On entering the home, we see a ton of fancy stuff, but after closer inspection, the artworks seem to change style from lush nature to odd macabre. What will happen next?! Find out next time on DnD!