This is a history of my Advanced Dungeons and Dragons character, Fiona, and her adventures and misadventures as seen through her eyes. Glad to have you visiting.
 ALL MATERIAL IN THIS FILE IS UNDER COPYRIGHT BY ARIEL GOLD
Fiona
 What do I say about my past? What does it matter? The present is ever so much more interesting.
My name is Fiona, although often I go by Fion, or Finn, or however folk choose to mispronounce it. I am a priestess of T'liel, and serve Her as well as I can. She is goddess of all things fine and goodly. I am a bard as well, because music pleases Her, and I live my life in accordance with Her will and pleasure. My best is small in her sight, I am sure, but she honors me with one of her gifts: I can be myself as either a male or female. After all, it facilitates lovemaking, which is a fine and goodly thing, and pleases her.
I go about business as a bard, taking music from town to town, healing those who need, loving those I choose. It might be lonely between towns, but for Aodhan, my cat. Or perhaps I am his elf, I'm not really sure, as he weighs almost half of what I do and is really a quite intelligent travel companion. My life goes on in a normal fashion, with seldom anything of great interest or moment to cause distress. Usually. Believe me, I'm much happier when such is the case.
But . . . there had to be a but, didn't there? But one day I was traveling from the town where I'd been plying my services to the next town on, to see if they would employ me there, when a heavy mist came up. It had been overcast for several days, so I wasn't too surprised. I slogged through it, glad I was male at the moment--my body keeps itself slightly warmer in that form. (Not to mention it makes traveling between towns considerably neater). The mist was moving fast, though, and very shortly it was too thick to see through. I was just about to sit where I was and wait until it cleared, not wanting to get lost, when something that felt vaguely like a human hand brushed my left arm. An alarming moan issued from that direction. I stepped away, one hand going to my sword and the other to my symbol of T'liel.
The mist cleared, then, and I had a nasty feeling I was not going to reach my destination any time soon. I was standing on a muddy dirt road much like the one I'd been on before the mists came up, and Aodhan was still with me, looking miserable as a wet cat, for obvious reasons. But nowhere in Erdol is there a village called Barovia, which is what the sign above the rusted gate I faced called this town. I turned around and saw a heavy wood behind much. It looked like the one I'd been walking in, except that something about it was subtly wrong, in a way I couldn't quite name. A full moon shone overhead--unlike either of the ones I would have expected. I turned back to the village and saw no sign of people moving around it, although the coming dusk might have had something to do with that. There were mountains in the distance, and a castle perched atop one.
A clap of thunder startled me out of my frantic search for orientation. I checked the road again, this time noticing that I was one of rather a large group of people doing the same thing. One who might have looked human save for hot pink hair and a tail was dressed in a leather bikini and asking what level of the Abyss this was. A tall man with black hair and purple eyes in plate armor looked very angry, asking "Where the fuck is Spark?!" A figure shorter than I am was silent under its cloak, and its face was shadowed so that all I could see of it was the silver hands peaking out of the sleeves. A--something--twelve feet tall with brown hair and brown eyes looked female and studied the scene calmly. A human woman with long black hair and blue eyes was looking around much as I was, and startled as I did when a pack of wolves howled, sounding entirely too close for my comfort. I heard a small screech and what looked to be a miniature green dragon with blue wings flitted from near us up to a tree.
None of us knew why we were there, and none of us had any inclination to spend the night in the middle of that odd forest, so we started toward the village. On the way I found out that the woman was Maeryn and the man in armor was Anthony and the creature with the pink hair was a demon. I think I got a name for the one with silver hands--he turned out to be male, vaguely elven-looking, and his hair was silver as well as his skin--but I don't remember it. Of all things, the dragon-thing flew with us and spoke to us--much too fast, actually. It was Firelily. It dropped to the ground and turned into a three foot tall woman with read head, red eyes, and skin that was slightly blue. She seemed very afraid of everything and held Maeryn's hand tightly.
By the time we reached the village it was totally dark. There were no lights on in any of the houses . . . but when we turned back the way we'd come, we saw lights from the forest. Since the village seemed totally closed up, we headed toward them. We reached a clearing in the forest and saw a swan-shaped building there. The light issued from the swan's eyes and some windows. The doors were incredibly beaten up . . . and most of the marks looked like they'd been scratched there by human-type fingers. We knocked on the doors. One of the nearest windows opened a little and then closed again, quickly. The doors opened, then, and an older man gestured us in, telling us to hurry.
The place turned out to be a temple, of what god I did not know. There were stacks of wood piled by the windows, many of which had been shattered. The man--the priest, actually--handed us hammers and nails and told us to start helping to board up the windows. We did, not knowing what was coming but not thinking it could be much of anything good. We could hear bones grinding and animal sounds from without the temple. There were wolves howling around us as we finished the task. Then we began hearing scratches on the walls. From upstairs the sound of breaking glass came. The priest rapidly explained that this was a temple to Lythander, the morning lord. I'd never head of him, but was more than ready to help the priest, considering Lythander seems to have a special problem with undead. I was even more willing when the giant creature began squeezing the bats which had flown in through the broken upstairs window and they turned to mist.
We heard a cry for help from outside. A woman's voice. But we couldn't open the door, no matter how genuine it might be. The priest went to the center of the room, keeping watch on all the windows, and prepared to try to turn the creatures should they get in. I joined him, praying under my breath. Then boards began popping off the windows. I ran to help hammer them back on. The priest said that this happened at least once a week, and had for all the time he'd been here. Twenty years.
A hand broke through a crack in the window I was boarding and I panicked. I ran back to the center of the room with the priest and prayed a little less under my breath and a little more on top of it. I could still hear the woman screaming outside the door. It was hours before the scratching stopped and we heard the things outside shuffle away. Some idiot, I don't remember who and I don't think I want to, opened the door to make sure they were gone. I ran to help get it shut again, catching a glimpse outside of a woman still twitching. The silver one thought we should bring her in, she might still be alive. Fortunately, the rest of the group agreed with me in that she was dead. We got the door closed and bolted. The priest lay down on a pew and tried to sleep.
If he felt it was safe to sleep now and he'd been doing this for twenty years, I was inclined to take his word for it. I went to where I'd dropped my pack. Aodhan was curled up next to it. I poked him awake, lay down with my head on my pack, asked him to wake me up in four hours, and fell asleep. There was rain and thunder all night. The next morning, the priest started unlocking everything and went out, looking not at all worried. I checked outside. It was still cloudy, but everything looked much better in the light, although everything remained slightly wrong.
The group of us who had arrived last night left the temple and headed into town. All the people here were small and dark, in both skin and hair. We were getting very strange looks and mutters in a language I didn't understand. We found a small inn--the only one in town. The innkeeper didn't speak our language. Fortunately, being a bard has its advantages. I told him with gestures that I'd be willing to play for a meal. He scowled, but nodded, so I started playing. The pink-haired demon-thing pulled an instrument I didn't recognize off her back and started playing harmony. The priest of Lythander showed up, then. He saw us playing and said that some special performers would be arriving later today. I asked him if he spoke the language here. He did, and said it was Barovian and the place was indeed Barovia. I got him to tell me how to ask for a room in Barovian.
Food came, then. After I ate, I asked about the rooms and learned that they were five gold a person a night. Of course, when one of the small, dark folk went up to a room not long after, he only handed over a single gold piece. Such is the way with outsiders in a small town. I went back to asking the priest about Barovia--like how one went about leaving. He told me that we needed an antidote to the poison mists surrounding the place and that we could only get that from the Vistanti, the gypsies who would be performing later in the day.
When we heard the Vistanti coming I packed up my lute--politeness among performers--and went out to see. Five wagons had parked themselves in the middle of town, and I do mean parked themselves, for none of them had drivers. Two people looking much like those in the town came out of each wagon, making nine women and a man, altogether. They were beautifully costumed and began setting up small stages in front of their wagons. When they were set up, I checked and saw that the total of the entertainments were a fortune teller with tarot cards, a show of magic tricks, singing--a song which sounded mournful--, dancing--which seemed to go with the singing--, and a puppet show--marionettes, actually--which seemed timed to go with the music as well. I watched the puppet show. It told a tale of a hero in fine armor and a woman a woman with black hair and blue eyes, probably his wife. The hero mistreated his wife. Then a puppet of an older man dressed in black came on stage and killed the hero. The woman ran off the edge of a cliff, killing herself.
On that cheerful note, all the shows stopped. I went up to the man, who was one of the puppeteers, and complimented the performance. He actually spoke common, and he told me that the story was partly true. I had to wonder which parts. Then I asked him if he had any idea how we might leave Barovia. He said we needed to go see Straud, the lord of this place, who lived in the castle we had seen in the mountains. It was best we go see him just about at sunset, for he was generally very busy during the day itself.
I went back into the in and continued playing. I got another meal in the afternoon. The man in armor, Anthony, tried to pay for a meal, but the innkeeper wouldn't take his money. I couldn't see what type it was, but it didn't look to be silver, gold, or copper, so I'm not surprised. I told him he could have some of mine. We talked a bit and I found out that he was a knight of Takesis. Takesis was a goddess of chromatic dragons. I got the impression she was one of the goodly goddesses, although I couldn't find out from him exactly what, other than chromatic dragons, were her interests.
A couple hours before sunset all of us outsiders started out for Lord Straud's castle.
Read the player's notes for Fiona's story.
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last updated on February 17, 1997
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