slow burn sacred texts

i was initially inspired by bloodborne. i love castle cainhurst and really wanted to see ravenloft similarly empty and cold. the driverless black carriage that appears long destroyed with dead horses the moment it reaches its destination. npcs going mad. i also love how it starts with dogs and townspeople and werewolves and ends in something cosmic and i think that could work as a one time weird event in barovia

maybe it's the first ripples of what will be the grand conjunction a few years later? idk

i'm setting this sometime after our campaign but in my personal, somewhat different canon that ambiguous enough that it doesn't have to be exactly post CoS. i headcanon that it takes strahd a ~10 years to respawn, and this is all happening around the middle of that period. things were looking up in barovia somewhat once the misty borders weren't completely closed off and there was trade with the surrounding domains, sunlight as well

now there's some weirdness in the area around the castle (and abbey) that's affecting the wildlife, people are going mad or missing etc. (the way the people behind doors in bloodborne get progressively worse as the night goes on)

this is my excuse to put in some fun monsters from grim hollow and other domains instead of the usual barovian creatures. i just want so badly to out a brainsucker vampiric mindflayer in a long, dark hallway where you hear it slurping before you see it. also a wolfwere. mandatory

i contemplated incorporating a sanity mechanic of some sort but i believe my group will lean into the mind affecting effects of the anomaly and roleplay it without any mechanics involved

anyway a dukkar! is going around talking about a soon to be blood moon that will end this Bad Time but might also make things worse if someone doesn't do something about it. i want to put a time limit on this adventure, probably just make it a certain number of long rests instead of bothering with calculating the passage of time

a witch of a halan coven is in barovia village investigating this as well

kaspar dropped by ravenloft to re-cast gentle repose on rahadin's body as usual but felt compelled to cast speak with dead instead and went insane from whatever he heard talk back and is now wandering the castle confused instead of going back to his patients at the abbey

i also wrote up two arak npcs and a hexblood but scrapped them as it would be too much variety for a short linear adventure

i keep thinking maybe the land itself having a nightmare/bad dream? somehow? is that too weird? maybe as a result of strahd regenerating. i want to make a few encounters that are echoes of past and maybe? future? events associated with a place

i still have to figure out how to connect and make sense of the stuff i want to do here and i fear i might not be able to 100% do that until i know the PCs and their wants/goals. there should also be an objective that will achieve something, that isn't just "reach the fog gate and kill the final boss" but i have no idea what

finally i want there to be 2 possible final bosses - if the pcs end it at the castle there will be a vampire/blood themed boss fight of some kind

BUT

if they go to the abbey (via brazier room that is lacking most of the stones and they will have to find the right one in the castle), which is now a makeshift hospital run by kaspar (if they run into him at ravenloft and bring him to his senses he will try to convince them to go to the abbey) there will be a celestial themed boss, i keep thinking about how we killed the abbot and how angryyyyyy he way at the time and how stars collapse into black holes? i love the sunwraith stat block from grim hollow

no strahd or tatyana reincarnation here but their presence/absence will definitely be felt