The Dark Powers

Deep down inside all of us, we have what is commonly called a soul. A collection of all of the energy that we share and take in across our lives, forming a coalescence of memory, feeling, and id. Souls are, for the most part, what make us, us. Normally, through a mortal's lifespan, they will nurture... or hinder... their soul, until their body lacks the ability to maintain it. And then they will lose it, and it will move to the great beyond, where multiple gods and demons will protect, use, or just simply ignore it. In the worst case, it will not go anywhere. The soul will stick around, and haunt or harm those it feels are responsible for it's plight of existing. This is how it works. This is the great machine that the gods determined worked. This is the purpose of life as we know it.

That is not Barovia.

Barovia is a bubble. A cursed snow globe of pain and despair who's machinations were built eons ago for a purpose only known by a few. Many guess, a few get close, only one or two really know the whole story. A cursed country that exists on the Demiplane of Dread, a plane of being that many wizards and sorceror's know of, in the way that one might know the location of a radioactive spill. If you are really wanting to go there, it is for research or vile purposes.

In this bubble, the cycle as we know it does not exist. Where in the Material Plane, the cycle is pretty much a line with rare instances of people getting to go around for another lap. In Barovia, it could appear to be an almost perfect circle. Constant cycles of death and rebirth stretching for a thousand years. Endless amounts of pain and despair seep into the souls, like a crock pot full of misery. And when these souls are marinated to perfection, they just... vanish. Some wonder if they escape. Nobody truly feels that they do.

In a dusty temple covered in snow, a dusty lich sits with his dusty books. He stares into the distance, waiting for something that even he does not know exists. His precious grey matter drips from a wedge that is missing from his skull, an old wound that cannot heal due to his life decisions. An old wound that stops his precious brain from working. Stops him from working. A tragedy lost to time, because work is the reason a wizard becomes a lich.

So he sits and waits. For his body to turn to dust? For help? Who knows. He simply waits because that is all he can do. All the answers in the world. All the answers anybody could ever want or need. Locked inside his head like water in a colander. What is staining his robes? The secret of eternal life? The name of his first dog? The face of his lover? The way out of this trap of a reality? Unless it can get put back in, it might as well be his lunch for all the good it does him.

Open in his lap, conveniently safe from the black drippings that stain his robe, is an open book. The book he was reading. The last book he ever read. On a dusty, faded page covered in cobwebs, in magical red ink that shines as bright as the day it was written, is a poem.

*Oh, My Friends of Secrets, our job is finally comes to its end.*

*For we are but a few now, that we cannot pretend.*

*Under the Dark, behind the lies, 21 prisoners do abide.*

*Prisons of gold, Prisoners behind amber. Inside, their evil we did hide.*

*The Spider, The Snake, The Keys, and The Swarm,*

*The Hound, The Chains, The Bones, and the Sword*

*The Fish, The King Maker, The Storm , and the Scar*

*The Eye, The Rock, The Void, and the Undying Star*

***The Queen above All**, mistress of hate.*

***The King from Below,** keeper of fate.*

***The Inevitable, Death**, for in the end, she cannot be defeated,*

***The Priceless Blood**,  who finally succeeded.*

Twenty-one prisoners. All guilty of crimes against the greater good. Most guilty of actual crimes that have actual names, like genocide. Each raging against their chains in their own way, metaphorical spoons against the brick wall chipping away at the cells their long dead wardens left them in. They have time. They have sustenance. But none would spit on a key or a helping hand. Or a deal.

Outside, the wind howls, the snow falls, and time continues to drag on from one minute to the next as four adventurers make their way to their next point in the plot.