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Children began vanishing from towns across the Northern Plains. Eventually, the Spire sent a special guard inspector to help with the search. She rallied a posse of adventurers who joined her in her search for clues.
At first, suspicion centered on the Vistani who have recently come to the Inn. Townsfolk reported seeing children lured to their music and dancing.
Under harsh questioning, Madame Eva said that her people would never harm children - but admitted they had run from Barovia to escape from the domain's Vampire Lord. The Vampire Lord cannot truly be destroyed; he always returns. And every generation, the Vampire demands the most beautiful young woman of the Vistani to serve as his bride, she told adventurers.
He always kills or abandons her, and never turns her.
Madame Eva said she was an abandoned bride of the Vampire who lost her best years to darkness. She feared she has brought darkness to others for trying to spare the Vampire's latest choice, Andalia, from a similar fate. But the Vampire only abducts girls. For centuries, always girls.
It seemed the Vistani and the Vampire had little to do with the children's disappearances.
When all clues seemed to dry up, a survivor suddenly appeared - a stick-thin boy covered in bruises and mumbling about axes and cannibalism.
The boy finally pointed the search party to the woods west of South Dairein. There, the party found a mad lumberjack standing near a beaten girl.
Before anyone could utter a word, the battlerager Rastensol struck down the lumberjack. The girl, frightened by the violence, lashed out, and was also felled by Rastensol.
Nobody knows why the lumberjack did what he did. Motive, along with the question of whether other survivors were trapped somewhere, or whether there were remains to bury, remained a mystery.
The search party then erupted in violence and chaos as Rastensol realized he stood beside a mage. The inspector, horrified by the scene before her, tore off her badge and quit her job in law enforcement.
The vanishings appeared to be non-supernatural. But a troubling secret has been revealed. What will come of the Vistani and those around them?
Tune in next week...
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