I would love to get a reading for my cleric, Silas Xavier (He/Him) and his romantic partner, Rudolph van Richten. They were an INCREDIBLY slow burn romance, that happened towards the end of our campaign, and we have continued their relationship post game. They have vacationed to Waterdeep and now have plans of getting married in the next year or so.
Our Van Richten is still very similar to raw, he is hateful, stoic, and a mess. (He does not have the curse from raw though). Silas is very confident (vain), kind (to people he cares about), loves fashion and taking care of himself.
Silas loves Rudolph so incredibly much, and Rudolph returns the sentiment, he is just not as vocal about it.
If you would like to get a peek into a summary of how they happened, (I hope this isn't cringe to send sorry), then here is a write up my partner did for me, as a journal entry from Van Richten.
(https://www.tumblr.com/mxvanrichten/752416461660831744/van-richtens-reflection-on-silas?source=share)
I would like to know if they will get to continue just living their life, being happy and enjoying their freedom, or if there is anything that is going to try and tear them away from each other?
Come in, come in. You have the look of someone who is almost afraid to ask the question, not because you fear the answer, but because the happiness is still new enough that you do not entirely trust it yet. I recognize that look. It is one of the more hopeful things I see at this table, and I see it less often than I would like.
The first card is The Horseman, reversed, and I want you to feel how significant it is that this card has come to you this way. Upright, The Horseman is the disaster itself, the ending that sweeps through and takes everything. Reversed, it is the disaster that did not happen. The catastrophe that passed close enough to touch and left you standing anyway. This card is not describing something that is coming, it is describing something that is already behind you. The Horseman reversed is the reading's way of saying: you have already survived the worst of it, both of you. The hoofbeats have faded. What you are living now, the apartment in Waterdeep, the library, the plans being made for a wedding that neither of them would have believed possible two years ago, that is the other side of the reversed Horseman. That is what it looks like when the disaster turns aside. I do not say this to minimize the scars that remain, because the card does not minimize them either. It simply names, clearly and without hesitation, that the thing which was going to end this before it began did not end it. You are here. He is here. That is the Horseman reversed, and it is no small thing.
Then comes The Swashbuckler, upright, and this card settled onto the table with such particular warmth that I found myself smiling before I could stop it. This is the card of the magnetic and daring soul, the one who moves through the world on their own terms, who draws people into their orbit not through manipulation but through the sheer irresistible force of being genuinely, fully themselves. It is also the card of bonds built through shared danger and deepened by time, of the person who looks at someone prickly and armored against kindness and decides, without being asked and without expecting thanks, to put a blanket around their shoulders and never mention it. This card is you, Silas. And what it is telling you about what lies ahead is that the quality which built this relationship is the same quality that will sustain it. The patience that did not flinch at anger or distance or a man who expressed affection through divulged information and magical protections rather than words, that has not gone anywhere. The Swashbuckler is a card of momentum, of a person who keeps moving forward, and it is promising you that what you have built together carries that same momentum. It does not coast. It does not stagnate. It moves, because you do.
The last card is The Missionary, reversed. This is the one note of caution in an otherwise tender reading, and you deserve to hear it. The Missionary reversed speaks of false prophets, of voices that claim authority they do not possess, of things that wear the face of wisdom or concern and carry none of its substance. In the context of your question, this card is not describing a threat that comes from outside. It is describing something closer, the voice, his or yours, that will at some point insist that this happiness is not real, or not deserved, or not built to last. He spent decades constructing a very convincing argument that he was not fit for this, that the hollow echo inside him was all that remained worth knowing. That argument does not simply dissolve because Barovia ended. The Missionary reversed is warning you that the false prophet in this story is that old and persuasive lie, and that it will occasionally speak with great authority, and that it will be wrong every single time.
What tries to tear you apart is not a person or a returning darkness or some new threat waiting in the road ahead. It is the belief, stubborn and well-worn, that a man like him does not get to keep things like this.
When that voice speaks, and it will, do what you have always done. Put the blanket around his shoulders. Do not announce it. Do not make it a moment. Just be the person who noticed he was cold.
He will find his way back every time. The cards have seen stranger miracles than this one, and they have never seen one more deserved.
Hello! Could you do a reading for my newest character: Talia Duskryn-Brightstar? I play her in a 1x1 game with my wife, where we each play three characters. However, I have not yet gotten to play Talia, as she is a “guest” of Strahd’s. She is in Ravenloft and has struck up a fraught alliance with Anastrasya, head of Strahd’s military. She also has impressed Strahd, at least a little, though I do not know to what end or to what extent, except to say that Strahd may be entertaining the idea of taking her on as a bride, or so the rumors go. Talia is a Divination wizard with a rogue dip and has been in Ravenloft for ten years (according to the Material Plane. Who knows how long it’s “really” been!). She escaped into the Mists to avoid assassination at her sisters’ hands, but in the process has been separated from her husband, Percy, and their daughter, Daphne. Talia does not yet know that Percy is in Barovia with his brother, brother- and sister-in-law, and Daphne’s governess, with whom he has fallen in love in Talia’s absence. The elves are polyamorous, but I can’t help but wonder what the Mists have in store for Talia and Percy upon their reunion and what Talia’s life has been like in these last few years. I want to have something useful to say when I do finally get a chance to play her! Can you offer some insight? If you need more info, please let me know!
Welcome, Talia. Sit down. I imagine you have spent enough time in this valley by now to know that a table like mine is one of the safer places you can find yourself, which is a comfort I offer freely given everything else I suspect you are navigating.
The first card is The Traitor, reversed. The Traitor, when it's upright, is betrayal, the knife from the hand you trusted, the wound that comes from inside the circle rather than outside it. You know something about that already, do you not? Sisters whose hands drove you into the Mists. That is the upright face of this card, and it belongs to what came before. But reversed, The Traitor becomes something else entirely. Comeuppance. Irony. The turn of events where what was done finds its way back to its source. The reversal here is not a promise of your revenge or their punishment, I will not insult your intelligence by framing it that simply. What it's telling you is that the betrayal which shattered your life and sent you into these Mists also shattered something in the people who committed it. Choices like that do not leave the hands that make them clean. The Traitor reversed asks you to consider that the story of what was done to you is not finished turning, and that the irony at the heart of it has not yet fully revealed itself. You fled into the Mists to survive. What you built inside them, the position, the alliances, the decade of navigating one of the most treacherous courts imaginable, that is not nothing. That is the reversal. The women who tried to end you sent you somewhere that has been, in its terrible way, making you into something they could not have anticipated and would not enjoy.
Then comes The Anarchist, upright, and this is the card I want you to hold most carefully because it belongs to what's coming rather than what has passed. This is the card of fundamental change, of beliefs cracked open under pressure, of the person who discovers that the convictions they carried into a situation cannot survive contact with what they find there. It is not a gentle card, but it is an honest one. The reunion this card is heralding is not going to be a restoration of what was. Ten years in Barovia changes a person in ways that cannot be explained to someone who has not been here, and ten years of separation changes the people left behind in ways that run just as deep. The Anarchist is telling you that when you find your way back to Percy and to Daphne, the meeting will test every belief you carry about what your family is, what your marriage means, and what love is allowed to look like after this much time and this much distance. That testing will be real and it will be painful in places and it will also, if you let it, produce something truer and more durable than what existed before. The Anarchist does not destroy for cruelty's sake. It destroys what cannot hold the weight of what is actually true. What survives that is worth having.
I will say this plainly, because the cards are being plain with me and you deserve the same courtesy: there are things waiting for you in that reunion that you do not know yet. Things that will require the beliefs you carry about love and loyalty and what ten years of absence means to bend rather than break. Whether they bend or break will depend entirely on whether you can meet what you find with the same clear eyes you would bring to any other reading. You are a diviner, Talia. You know that fate is not altered by refusing to look at it. Only by understanding it.
And last, The Trader, reversed. Fair exchange turned treacherous, the balance tipped, someone paying more than they agreed to for something they thought they understood the cost of. This card is sitting at the end of your reading like a quiet hand on your arm, and I want to be careful about how I name what it is pointing at. The arrangements you have made inside these castle walls, the alliance with Anastrasya, the careful cultivation of whatever impression you have made on Strahd, these have kept you alive and positioned and relatively intact for a decade in a place that destroys people far less capable than you. The Trader reversed is not condemning those arrangements. It is asking you to look honestly at what they have cost and what you may still be asked to pay. There is a version of this where the price you have been spending quietly in this castle, in attention and performance and the particular exhausting labor of existing as a valuable but not yet safe piece on someone else's board, has been slowly accumulating interest. The Trader reversed asks: do you know the full sum? Do you know what would be demanded if Strahd's rumored interest resolves itself into something more formal? And perhaps most importantly: what is the line between what you have already paid and what you are not willing to spend?
The road back to Percy and to Daphne is real, Talia. The cards have seen stranger things find their way home than a wizard who has spent ten years learning exactly how dangerous she can be when she has to.
Go carefully. And keep the ledger in your own hands.
Hi again :) I see the card openings are back, but Iolite doesn't have questions (none for the cards at least), but a new friend might: Vasilka
A woman who has existed for only a few months, and only been out of the abbey for a couple of weeks. She's fully aware of her purpose, that she "was made to meet him". She doesn't know details, but knows she's a piece on the board of a game that has clearly been played longer than she can imagine. But interestingly enough, it seems she is simply...not in play. She has not met Strahd, even when in his castle, he ignored her and left her as an obstacle for the party to entertain themselves with. She's simply been following a ragtag group of people, unharmed by and punching every monster in their way whilst her party takes the hits, and feels them. Oddly free of the Mists and the cycle, but directionless. I think her question (asked in Sign) would be:
If I'm no longer a piece on the board, what awaits me? What does my future hold beyond this place?
Please, come in. Sit wherever is comfortable. I will not rush you. I find I must take a moment before I begin, simply because I am not certain I have read for someone quite like you before.
But first I want you to hear this, before anything else: the fact that you are asking this question at all is not a small thing. Pieces do not ask what they are for. Only people do.
The first card is The Dictator. I will not pretend it is a comfortable card, because it's not, and you deserve honesty more than comfort. This is the card of power wielded through fear and violence, of systems built to keep people in their designated places and punish those who stray. It is the card of the world you were made inside, the abbey, the purpose assigned to you before you had a self to assign it to. The Dictator names all of that, and it names it correctly. What was done in making you, in shaping you for a specific end without your knowledge or consent, that belongs to this card entirely. But here is what I need you to understand about why it has appeared in a reading about your future rather than your past: The Dictator is also the card that reveals what is wrong with a system by its very presence. It does not appear to endorse what it describes. It appears to name it, so that you can see it clearly, so that you can understand the shape of the thing you have walked out of. You are not on that board anymore, Vasilka. The Dictator is showing you the board from the outside, so you understand what you have left behind.
Then comes The Paladin, which is the card of chosen purpose, of a code of honor built from the inside out rather than imposed from without. It speaks of those who look at the world and decide, with full knowledge of its cruelty and its cost, what they will stand for and what they will stand against. You have already been living this card, even without knowing its name. You walk with a ragtag group of people who bleed for one another, and you put yourself between them and the things that would harm them. Not because you were made to. Not because anyone assigned you to that role. Because something in you decided that this was what you were going to do with the hands and the strength and the presence you have been given. The Paladin says that is not a small thing. That is the beginning of a self built on a foundation that cannot be taken away, because you laid it yourself. The card is not telling you what your purpose is, it is telling you that you already know how to find one, because you have already begun.
And last, The Wizard. Mystery, the unknown, the vast and uncharted territory of everything that has not yet been discovered or understood. This card is the one that opens the door, and it opens it very wide. You have existed for only a few months. You have seen monsters and you have seen the Mists and you have learned that you are strong enough to stand in the middle of both and remain yourself. But the Wizard is telling you that the world is incomprehensibly larger than any of that, and that you have, against all reasonable expectation, the rest of your life to explore it. The mysteries this card names are not threats, they are invitations. Every question you do not yet know how to ask, every place you have not yet seen, every kind of person you have not yet met, the Wizard is gesturing at all of it and saying: this is what awaits you. Not a board. Not a square. Not a purpose someone else decided on before you could speak for yourself. The open and largely unexplored question of what a person like you might become, given enough time and enough road.
What awaits you beyond this place? The cards are saying: everything. With all the chaos and difficulty and wonder that word contains, everything. More importantly, not even the cards are going to give you a direct answer, because what awaits you is someone not telling you what to do or who you are, not even me.
Go find out what that means. The road is longer than you know, and it belongs entirely to you.
Lord hello I am back again with Natalie for a second reading - we went from 60k words to 120k with another 100k words of writing side sessions planned before the finale. I'm suffering. From after last time there is apparently a planned wedding (wherein the catfished player is going to get his heart shattered, we love to see it) and such. Anyways, let me add some extra details for Nat - when she first came to the castle, it was because she wiggled her way into making a pact with Strahd. Got tossed to Rahadin to be… trained, and slowly rose up in the ranks. As she did, she started cleaning the castle bit by bit and trying to return it to something of proper grandeur that suited Strahd more than the decay brought about by his full depression-induced apathy. She'd even do paperwork in his stead because if towns get wiped out from a famine or some shit, that's less food for Strahd too. Gotta get his blood from somewhere.
Recently, he's actually gotten back into doing paperwork himself and making things look presentable. She has, just like your last reading suggested, influenced a lot of things by just being her own person and not letting the despair or misery of Barovia make her give up. So, all this said, Natalie has a question.
"Everything I do is for his sake, and I've noticed his changes - but am I changing him for the better? By any definition of better, I suppose."
Natalie. You have come back. I confess I am glad, although a bit surprised to see you still alive, given your unique circumstances. Last time I told you to stay whole. To stay Natalie first, and everything else second. You have been doing that. The cards can tell.
Now. The question you are asking is whether you are changing him for the better. It is a brave question, because it contains within it the possibility that the answer is no, and you asked it anyway. That is its own kind of answer, and not a small one.
The first card is The Myrmidon, upright. This is the card of great reversals, of the triumph that should not have been possible, of fate turning on its heel and going somewhere no one predicted. It is the underdog's card, the card of the thing that shifts when all the weight of history and momentum said it would not. The Myrmidon is not describing a small or incremental change. It is describing something seismic, something that moves against the established current of centuries. Strahd von Zarovich doing his own paperwork again is not a minor detail, Natalie. A man who had given the running of his own domain over to apathy, who had let the machinery of his power rust and decay around him because nothing felt worth the effort, that man picking up the work again is the Myrmidon in motion. You asked if you are changing him for the better. The first card says: yes, and in ways that were not supposed to be possible anymore.
Then comes The Priest, upright. Enlightenment. A higher purpose. The devotion that gives shape and meaning to everything built around it. This card is not describing him. It is describing you, and the mechanism by which everything you have done has had the effect it has. You did not set out to fix him. You set out to do the work, to clean what was dirty, to manage what was neglected, to keep the castle functioning because a functioning castle served your purposes and his. You followed a system of values that had nothing to do with reforming a centuries-old vampire and everything to do with simply refusing to let things fall apart around you. That refusal, that quiet and consistent devotion to the work itself rather than to any grand redemptive project, is precisely what the Priest is naming. The great irony of your situation is that you changed him most effectively by not trying to change him at all. You just kept being Natalie. You kept bringing order and competence and presence into spaces that had forgotten what those things felt like. And something in him, after long enough, began to respond. The Priest says: the higher purpose you have been serving, even when you could not have named it as such, has been doing its work all along.
And last, The Charlatan, reversed. Now this is the card I want to sit with longest, because it is the most layered of the three. Upright, the Charlatan names those who profess to believe one thing while believing another, those who wear a face that is not their own. You know something about that, of course. You have been wearing a face for a party of people who trust you, and that is a truth that exists alongside everything else in this reading without canceling any of it out. But the card has come reversed, and reversed it names something altogether different. Long forgotten friends. An ally among enemies. A source of support that was not expected to be there. I want you to consider something carefully. Who in that castle has been quietly, consistently making space for what you have been building? Not celebrating it. Not acknowledging it openly. But not obstructing it either, moving around it, accommodating it, allowing it to continue in ways that were not strictly required. The Charlatan reversed is pointing at someone whose cooperation you may have been taking for granted, or whose investment in what you have built you may not have fully recognized. This card is not a warning, it is an invitation to look sideways at the people around you and notice who has been on your side in ways they would never say plainly.
So. Are you changing him for the better?
The Myrmidon says the reversal is already happening. The Priest says it is happening because of who you are rather than anything you strategically designed. And the Charlatan reversed says you have not been doing it alone, even if it has felt that way.
By any definition of better, the cards say yes. A man who is present again, who does the work of his own domain again, who has allowed someone to matter to him again after centuries of the alternative, that is better. It is not simple. It is not without cost, to either of you. But, you asked the question honestly and the cards have answered it honestly.
You are changing him. Keep being Natalie. It is, against all reasonable odds, exactly enough.
[Thank you for doing this! We always dearly love these readings. If you get the chance, here's one for Anastrasya Karelova. If you feel like you need a bit more context on Anastrasya's outward thoughts on this newcomer, the tail end of chapter 18 of Weightless might serve you well.]
Anastrasya steps into Prianna's presence with haughty incousciance, but you can clearly see raw fear behind those bright eyes. Lightly, too casually, she tells Prianna of the newcomer to castle Ravenloft, 'another one of hers', and performative disdain drips from her fangs. A newcomer, another damn incarnation kept in the castle. He hasn't turned her, but he will turn her-- right? Surely he will. The wedding is in two days.
She could not wait. She needs to know, she was only just pulled out of the crypts, from that frigid embrace, to prepare for the wedding. She thought she had more time before she would be forced to endure that freezing, starving slumber once again, but now Strahd has another toy to play with. Perhaps even one to marry, if he is not thwarted as he always is. What she needs to know, desperately, is how to deal with this newcomer in such a way that will keep her out of the crypts. She doesn't care how. She can't go back.
Anastrasya. Sit down. You do not have to keep your chin up quite so high in here. I have seen this before, and so have you, and we are both old enough to dispense with the performance.
You have my sympathy, for whatever that is worth, which is perhaps not much but is at least genuine.
Now. The cards.
The first is The Beggar, and I will not soften what it names. This is the card of fortune shifting without warning, of a woman who was warm yesterday and is not certain of warmth tomorrow. You felt this the moment you heard she was here. That lurch, that cold drop in the stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. The Beggar does not shame you for feeling it, it simply asks that you see your situation with clear. Your position has changed. The newcomer's presence has changed it. That is simply true, and the woman who acknowledges true things is already better placed than the one who keeps insisting otherwise.
Then comes The Bishop, reversed, and this is where the cards begin to offer you something more useful than commiseration. Upright, The Bishop is code and structure, the rigid architecture of loyalty and hierarchy. Reversed it is everything that happens in the spaces between the formal arrangements. The quiet hallways, the shared glances, the plans that are laid not in audience chambers but in rooms where only the right people are present. The Bishop reversed is not warning you away from scheming. It would be a waste of breath anyway, and we both know it. What it is telling you is that the most important thing happening in that castle right now is not the newcomer herself. It is what is being shaped around her, in precisely the kinds of moments she does not yet have access to and you do. You have history there, Anastrasya. You have alliances that were forged through things this woman has not lived yet and may not survive long enough to understand. The Bishop reversed is pointing at that with considerable intention. The answer to your question is not in how you face her. It is in what is quietly built before she has finished finding her footing.
And last, The Artifact, reversed. This is the one I want you to sit with, even though it is the one you will most want to set aside. The Artifact reversed names something that appeared to be of tremendous importance and turns out not to be what it seemed. The thing that looks like the problem is not the problem. She is not the problem, Anastrasya, and I say that not to be kind but because the cards are insisting on it... and I have learned not to argue with them on this particular point. She is the latest face on a very old wound. The wound itself is the thing that sends you back to the cold, and that wound has nothing to do with her specifically and everything to do with the fact that he will always, always turn his face toward that particular light when it appears. No amount of outmaneuvering her changes that. You cannot scheme your way around a curse that has been running longer than either of us has been dead.
What you can do, and what the cards are nudging you toward rather firmly, is stop building your survival entirely on a foundation that turns with his attention. That is the Artifact. That belief, that his favor is the only warmth available and must be competed for or lost, that is the false object the card is asking you to put down.
You know where the actual warmth in that castle lives. You have known for longer than you have admitted. The Bishop reversed is pointing at it directly.
Go back to the other brides. Not to strategize against her, but to have a different conversation entirely, one that is long overdue. The three of you have been content to be taken down from the shelf when wanted and put away when not, and that arrangement has never once protected any of you from the cold. Rahadin does not have to go to the crypts... do you understand what I am saying to you? The castle runs on more than his desire. It runs on loyalty, on competence, on people who have made themselves so woven into its workings that removing them would cost more than keeping them. That is the model. That is what the Bishop reversed is urging you toward.
Decide together what the three of you will build and manage and own within those walls. Not as decorations, and not as rewards he grants himself on a whim. As women with specific and irreplaceable functions that the castle genuinely cannot afford to lose. That conversation, held seriously and followed through on with the same intelligence all three of you clearly possess, is worth more than any scheme aimed at this newcomer.
She is temporary. She is always temporary. Make yourselves permanent instead.
The wheel will keep turning, my dear. The only question worth asking is whether you intend to keep standing underneath it, or whether you are finally ready to step to the side and let it turn without you.
Backstory: Gertruda has evolved beyond her position as a house guest in castle Ravenloft. She has studied to become a cleric of light to bring sunshine back to Barovia. Despite the watchful eyes of Strahd, she has done her best to restore the castle gardens, join Rahadin in the kitchen, and even introduce grand balls back to the people of the land. She also has alas been bitten by a werewolf during her adventures of grandeur and whimsy. She knows she is no Tatyanna, but once to show her love for Strahd and Barovia in any little way she can.
Question: Could Gertruda's love for Strahd help alleiviate the pain from his curse?
Ah. Come in, little one. Sit down. I have been expecting someone like you, though I confess I didn't expect you to look quite so unafraid.
You have asked me whether your love can ease his pain, and that is perhaps the most human question anyone can bring to this table. I will answer it as honestly as the cards allow, and I ask only that you extend me the same honesty in return. You already suspect the answer is complicated, and that's why you came.
The first card is The Artifact. A high card, and one that demands to be taken seriously. It speaks of an object of immense and irreplaceable importance, something that must be obtained, or protected, or destroyed, something around which the entire shape of a story bends. In a reading about love, this card is telling you something you may not wish to hear plainly but which I think some quiet part of you already knows. You are not the first. The albeit one-sided love that cursed this valley became the Artifact. It became the fixed point around which everything else has been breaking ever since. The card is not saying your love is false or worthless, it's saying that love in this place has a way of becoming something to be obtained, or protected, or destroyed. And that the one who loves most freely is rarely the one who decides which of those three it becomes.
Then comes The Innocent, reversed. Hidden strength. The card is not describing a girl who wandered into a castle and got lucky. It is describing someone who has been quietly, methodically building something inside walls that have swallowed far stronger people whole. You restored a garden, dear. You brought music back into rooms that had forgotten it. You stood in a kitchen beside a man who has made a life's work of cruelty and you made something warm. That is not innocence, that is a particular kind of power that does not announce itself, and the cards have noticed. The Innocent reversed does not say your strength will save you. It says it is there, real and growing, and that it has likely surprised people who believed they understood exactly what you were.
And last, The Merchant. Commerce, rare commodities, the exchange of things of value. But also, and I will not soften this, deceitful or dangerous business transactions. The Merchant does not deal in cruelty for its own sake. The Merchant simply understands that everything has a price, and that the most dangerous exchanges are the ones where one party does not yet know what they are spending. Your love is a rare thing in this valley, Gertruda. Genuine, freely given, asking nothing in the shape of power or escape or salvation, and that makes it extraordinarily valuable. That also makes it extraordinarily vulnerable to being spent in ways you did not agree to. The Merchant asks you to look clearly at the transaction that is already underway. What has your presence in that castle cost you so far? What has it cost him? And who, in the end, is keeping the ledger?
Can your love alleviate the pain of his curse? The cards believe it already has, in small and flickering ways. The garden, the music, the warmth of a kitchen that smelled like something other than stone and grief. These things are not nothing. In a place where hope has been extinct for centuries, they are almost miraculous. But alleviate is a gentle word for what you are truly asking.
His curse is not a wound that love can close. It is an Artifact. It is the fixed, terrible center of everything this land has become. The Merchant is warning you that the valley will take whatever you offer and call it payment toward a debt that has no bottom.
Love him if you must, the cards do not tell you not to. But love him with your eyes open, and know the difference between a hand that accepts warmth and a hand that consumes it. The strength the Innocent reversed has found in you is real. Do not let it be spent on a transaction you never agreed to make.
The garden, though... keep tending the garden. That part is only yours.
Hello! I would love a reading for my character Nadja Brishen (any pronouns).
He's a vistana hexblade warlock with the Raven Queen as patreon (in our game she has dominion over memories and dreams, it's relevant because she has mentioned to Nadja that is through dreams that she returns memories to the ones that belong, hinting cycles and reincarnation, especially in Barovia.)
The reason Nadja traveled to Barovia was to retrieve an important heirloom to his caravan, Madam Luba's tarokka. Nadja does not know the true power but the importance for his family is enough to keep venturing even as things have gotten more dangerous in the valley.
Among the things that have happened to him is that she bonded with the ghost of an old ancestor of the Martikov who lost memories and there seems to be hints that recovering those could be important to figure out exactly what happened to the valley: why is it so corrupted, who had been the most harmed and more questions Nadja's party are struggling to find information about.
The other less pleasant thing is that traveling south to the wizard of the wine, the party saw corrupted flora and fauna and found a cave filled with corruption (imagine rotten stuff and generally disgusting things). Basically on an impuse Nadja stuck his pact blade onto the center of the cave which ended up having a "bond" with some eldritch entity that has been corrupting Nadja's mind and also gave the blade sentience.
So now Nadja is haunted by eldritch visions and is trying to get to the bottom of it while slowly going more insane. He really wants to keep gathering information just how he's been doing constantly throughout the campaign but I'm afraid he'll end up losing himself in the process.
Should he continue the research? Get to the bottom of it? Or should he give up and find another way to fight the corruption?
Welcome, Nadja. Sit close. The candle does not have long, and neither, I think, does your patience for pleasantries.
You have come with a practical question wearing the clothes of a practical person, and yet everything about what you have described to me is anything but practical. A blade driven into the heart of something that should not have been touched. A ghost with missing memories. A deck that has been calling your family home like a tide pulling at the shore. You are not a person who stumbled into this situation, dear one. You walked toward it with open eyes and an open hand, and the question you are asking me now is really a much older question in new clothing. It is not should I continue, it is how much of myself am I willing to spend.
The first is The Evoker, reversed. In its true face, this card is uncontrolled power, magic devouring the hand that wields it, the great yearning that consumes rather than creates. Reversed, it becomes something rarer and more demanding. It is the return from the edge. Sanity reasserting itself not through surrender but through resistance, the moment a person recognizes the current pulling them under and chooses, with whatever strength remains, to swim sideways rather than down. The Evoker reversed is not telling you that you are safe, it is telling you that the part of you capable of pulling back still exists. That is not a small thing, Nadja. The visions have not taken everything yet. There is still a self in there doing the looking, and that self knows the difference between illumination and consumption, even when the two are beginning to look uncomfortably alike. This card is not permission to press forward, it is a reminder that the ability to stop is still yours, and it will not remain yours indefinitely.
Then comes The Illusionist, upright, and I confess it settled onto the table with a weight I did not expect. This is the card of grand deception, of things wearing shapes that do not belong to them, of the saboteur who has been in the room the entire time smiling at you with borrowed teeth. In the context of your question, this card is not pointing outward. It is not naming your enemies or the corruption in the cave or even the entity that has wound itself through your blade. It is pointing at the research itself. The Illusionist warns that the path you are on has been presenting itself as a quest for truth, and perhaps it began that way, but something in the architecture of it has shifted. The answers you are chasing have started to serve something other than you. The deeper you go, the more the shape of the investigation begins to resemble not a scholar uncovering secrets but a door being slowly opened from the other side. Ask yourself, Nadja, and answer honestly: who is doing the researching? Are you still the one asking the questions, or have you become the question being asked?
The last card is The Avenger, and it has come reversed. Upright it is righteous pursuit, the long road toward justice, the refusal to let great evil go unanswered. Reversed, it is the cautionary shadow of that same devotion. A hopeless battle. Bravery that has crossed the line into foolishness, not because the cause is unworthy, but because the fighter has stopped counting the cost. The Avenger reversed does not tell you the corruption cannot be fought. It tells you that fighting it the way you have been fighting it, alone, blade first, mind last, is a form of bravery that will spend you completely before the battle is decided. There is no glory in being emptied out for a truth that cannot use you once you are gone.
So. Should you continue the research?
The cards are not saying abandon it. The ghost still carries memories that matter. The tarokka still waits. The valley's wounds are real and the answers you are reaching for may yet prove to be exactly what they appear. But what the Tarokka is saying, with some urgency, is that the method must change before the mind does. The Evoker reversed is handing you a thread back to yourself. The Illusionist is warning you that the thing wearing the face of curiosity may not be curiosity anymore. And The Avenger reversed is asking you, gently but without softness, whether the bravery you are performing is truly in service of the people you love, or whether it has become its own kind of running away.
The Raven Queen returns memories to those they belong to through dreams, you said. Then perhaps the answer is not to dig harder but to be still enough to receive what is already trying to find you. The blade has a voice now. You do not have to listen to every word it says.
Ask box is open again, thank you for all the prompting to do so, and sorry it took me so long to get it going! I'll be accepting these from March 16 - March 19th, and will answer them as I'm able!
HOW TO DO THIS: Include name/pronouns of your character, and include any backstory/info on them you wish to include. If you've gotten a reading for this character before, just say so, and you'll only need to include any new information (I can look back at the other submissions!).
And most importantly: Include your question, as they would ask it.
I read the cards in-character, as Prianna. If it's a truly stupid question, she'll likely respond in a more sassy way, but won't be too mean I promise. You'll receive a photo of your tarokka spread, plus the reading itself, similar to the example below:
THIS IS FREE, I DO NOT CHARGE FOR THIS! So send your little guys in and let's see what the cards can do.
