Chapter One - The Village of Barovia

In Barovia, the meager sun does not set so much as it is consumed by the mist. Soon all is dark and the party lies down for a long rest among the chirping of crickets and the gentle crackling of the hearth. Shaelyn knows that the March of the Dead will happen soon, an event that she has witnessed every night since birth. You can see it from the windows of the house: the air is tinged with sickly green as a ghostly procession of weary shades lumbers down the streets from the church. These ghosts are all adventurers: doughty warriors with broadswords, woodwise archers with slender bows, dwarves with glittering axes, and wizards with forked beards and flowing robes. Shaelyn knows their destination is Castle Ravenloft, where they will relive their foolhardy challenge of this land's dread master, and then their foolish death in a foreign land by the hand of a tyrant.

The procession is soon gone among the pines at the edge of the village. There an enormous peak juts above the horizon, on which looms a dark and rotting castle where only the dead sleep. The world is pitch dark again, and in the morning the party is rested.