Cutting the Deck
In the shadowy seclusion of her boudoir, Gabrielle Aderre drew a veil across her face and inhaled the heavy perfume cast by stunted candles on the table before her. Reaching down, she pulled open a small, hidden drawer and withdrew a worn wooden box. Reflexively, her left hand formed a sign to ward off evil, while her right opened the box and took out a faded deck of cards, placing it on the table. Her hand briefly visited the jade amulets around her neck, invoking their magic to shield her from the dark, invisible powers that moved around the domains unhindered and unseen.
With the smallest finger of her right hand, shaking ever so slightly, Gabrielle touched the tarokka deck and whispered her son's name. "Malocchio."
Fighting an urge to look at the first card, she placed it face down on the table. Slowly, with the calm dread that preceded every reading, Gabrielle shuffled the remaining tarokka, sensing the flow of time and place as the painted cards danced with their neighbors. She stared into the yellow flame of the candle.
Life is a web, her mother Isabella once told her. Pull the right thread and you can see the center. Pull on the wrong string and you will be trapped and devoured. For the web is not yours. It belongs to the spider.
A shuffled deck stood waiting on the table. Gabrielle dealt four cards face down around the focus to form a minor cross: the simplest pattern for the most straightforward answers.
Clearing her mind, Gabrielle turned over the focus and stared at... the Beast. Alarmed but not surprised, she flipped over the card to the left, representing the past: the Ghost. Below, in the position of opposition, Gabrielle's fingers revealed the Three of Swords, the Soldier, representing warfare and conflict. Above, in the pivot of alliances, Gabrielle overturned the Seven of Coins, the Thief, symbolic of acquisition. Finally, she barely paused over the card to the right, the point of the rising sun, the path to her son's future. The Mists.
Gabrielle braced herself for the pain that would come, but when the Sight blinded her eyes, she was still unprepared for its intensity. Stifling a scream, the witch fell to the stone floor, her chair clattering beside her. Only a full blooded Vistana may invoke the most powerful tarokka with impunity, and Gabrielle Aderre was only part Vistani. She thrashed uncontrollably on the floor while the vision of her son ran its course.
And in the soft shadows of her boudoir, a small child laughed.
For the Dungeon Master
Welcome to Invidia, where Vistani curses unfold to their terrible fruition. As the Dungeon Master, there are a few things you should prepare before running this adventure. The goal of any RAVENLOFT scenario is to establish a mood of mounting fear and dread in the players. By familiarizing yourself with the adventure beforehand, you can devote more time during play to describing the details of sight, sound, and smell that will help bring a gothic horror setting to life for your players.
The module's major antagonists play changing roles as the plot evolves, but their basic background and game statistics remain generally constant. This information is summarized in Chapter XIII: "Dramatis Personae." You may find it convenient to photocopy these pages and keep them readily accessible during play.
This module assumes that you, as the Dungeon Master, have access to the DUNGEON MASTER® Guide (DMG), the Player's Handbook (PHB), and either the two basic appendices of the Monstrous Compendium (MC1-2) or the Monstrous Manual (MM). We also assume that you have access to the campaign setting. Either the old Realm of Terror or the new Ravenloft boxed sets will suffice: this adventure can be incorporated into any gothic horror campaign setting. Finally, "The Evil Eye" has been designed to accompany Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani. While enough detail has been included so that VR's Vistani will not be necessary to play the adventure, a few encounters will have greater depth if you have access to that resource.
To a lesser extent, the adventure also includes a number of ghosts, apparitions, and other monsters that are fully detailed in Van Richten's Guide to Ghosts and the RAVENLOFT appendices to the Monstrous Compendium. Though details about these creatures have been included in the adventure, feel free to substitute other monsters and creatures if these resources are not readily available.
Adventure Background
As a young girl, Gabrielle Aderre was warned by her mother Isabella to never have children:
"A man, a babe, a home - these things can never be for you, Gabrielle, for tragedy will be the only result." For many years, while the bitter pair wandered the wilds of Ravenloft, Gabrielle pressed her mother for details about her future and her mysterious father, though Isabella forbade it. Gabrielle learned nothing more until she turned 19, on the eve of her mother's death.
While traveling in Arkandale (a domain that dissolved during the Grand Conjunction), Isabella allowed Gabrielle to set the warding circle around their camp. They had argued that day, and (as usual) Gabrielle had lost. Tired and seething with anger, Gabrielle wove the protective charms too hastily, and by the light of a rising moon, a werewolf stormed into camp through the imperfect wardings.
Before Isabella could ready an assault, the creature knocked her down and ripped open a huge gash in her leg with its jaws. Crawling frantically away, Isabella fixed the werewolf with her evil eye, blasting the creature with the full force of her hate and malice. The lycanthrope fell dazed to the ground while Isabella's enchantment seized him. As the blood pulsed out of her gashed leg, Isabella called to Gabrielle for help, but the cruel daughter saw only a window of opportunity.
"Tell me about my father," Gabrielle bargained, "and 1 will save your life."
Isabella was furious. "The charm will not hold the wolf for long! His strength will return, and he will kill us both!"
But Gabrielle would not be swayed, and as Isabella's vision began to blur, she told her daughter vaguely about her past. Isabella's voice was calm and strong in the cool night air.
"1 was captured as a child and sold as a slave in Falkovnia. My master was a sadistic monster. For amusement each night he would gather a group of slaves and impale them before his castle. Their dying screams would mingle with the chamber music and polite dinner conversation. But because of my beauty and Vistani gifts, he refused to kill me. Many nights I wished he had. Years later, when I finally escaped, 1 was two months pregnant with you.
"1 have told you enough of your father. Bring my potions before the wolf kills us both."
Gabrielle was stunned. For years she had fantasized about her mysterious father, and her romantic dream was shattered. She stumbled away from Isabella into the vardo, packing her mother's prized tarokka and potions in a sack. The wolf still convulsed in its enfeebled state, helplessly charmed by the evil eye. Gabrielle returned to her mother's pool of blood. By then she had made up her mind.
"I don't believe your lies, Mother. I'm leaving to find my father."
As Gabrielle fled into the darkness, her mother's pleading voice slowly faded and the screams began. Suddenly, Isabella's voice rang out close by through the gathering mists. "The Mists take you, traitor. May you know your child's betrayal and realize too late the depths of its evil!" Then the Mists closed around Gabrielle, and she was gone.
The Mists brought Gabrielle to Invidia, which at the time was ruled by a werewolf lord named Bakholis. The werewolf's retainers captured Gabrielle and brought her to Castle Loupet for an audience. Proud and overconfident, Bakholis sought to enslave Gabrielle, but the witch managed to enfeeble the darklord with her evil eye, exactly as Isabella had struck down the werewolf in Arkandale. Thinking she was successfully averting her mother's curse, Gabrielle pulled out a silver-edged dagger and slit Bakholis' throat while he was still helpless. Instead of assuring her freedom, Gabrielle thereby became the new lord of Invidia, forever imprisoned within the domain and prevented from seeking out her unknown father.
Years passed and bitter Gabrielle slowly became accustomed to her imprisonment. She took many lovers from the small town of Korinna in her domain, but the passage of time could not erase her mother's curse from memory. Gabrielle was careful to use the medicinal arts thought by her mother to prevent her from becoming pregnant. She treated her lovers with disdain, enslaving them with her evil eye and discarding them when she eventually grew tired or bored, but none were able to comfort her terrible loneliness.
Then, one day, a dark traveler appeared at the gates of Castle Loupet. From the moment he locked eyes with Gabrielle in the great hall, her iron-hard heart melted under his hypnotic gaze. She soon invited the handsome stranger into her boudoir.
Before mounting the stairs to Gabrielle's private chambers, they were confronted by Matton, the lover Gabrielle had just replaced. Secretly a wolfwere, Matton was the only one of Gabrielle's lovers who felt genuine effection for, having never been enslaved by her evil eye (although the witch had never realized this). Now, hurt and jealous, Matton transformed into a wolf and hurled himself at the stranger. The gentleman caught the wolfwere and hurled him to the ground with stunning, superhuman strength. Gabrielle, meanwhile, overcame her shock and paralyzed her former lover with the evil eye. At the strangers suggestion, they left Matton paralyzed and convulsing in the great hall as they climbed to Gabrielle's private chambers.
In the privacy of her boudoir, Gabrielle succumbed completely to the strangers fiendish charms. And when the handsome gentleman disrobed, she thought it hardly unusual to see a pair of black, bat-like wings unfolding into a canopy of darkness. Gabrielle welcomed the incubus into her embrace.
"You will remember me only as the handsome gentleman," the stranger said afterward, once she had stopped screaming. The fiend's voice carried the weight of compulsion. And then he was gone.
The Dukkar
Among Vistani legends, there is the tale of a beast known only as the Dukkar, a name whose meaning has been lost in the aeonic swirl of time. According to this apocalyptic tale, the Dukkar brings about the destruction of the entire Vistani people. Not every Vistana knows of this legend, but for ages a tribe known as the Zarovan have been watching and waiting for the Dukkar's appearance.
The Dukkar is none other than the monstrous issue of a union between Gabrielle and an incubus. Gabrielle named her son Malocchio, after the strangers evil eye (for surely that was what robbed her of reason). Reassuring her vague recollections a "handsome gentleman," Malocchio was born appearing human, except for a slight defect: a sixth finger on hand. In all other respects, Malocchio appeared to be a regular baby.
Despite his cherubic appearance, which was a small comfort to Gabrielle while recovering from her three days of excruciating hard labor, it was quickly apparent the Malocchio was not a normal child. Most obviously, the child was growing much too quickly to be normal. By the time Gabrielle had recovered from childbirth, Malocchio was already walking and talking. And as the boy grew, his fiendish nature became increasingly apparent. When he thought no one was looking, he would cause flocks of birds around the castle to fly into walls. He would call wolves from the forest and command them to attack villagers for his amusement. However, not all of Malocchio's cruelties went unnoticed by his mother.
Once Gabrielle's suspicions were aroused, she used Eva's Tarokka Deck to perform a reading on her son, with the results described in the introduction to this chapter. When the adventure begins, Gabrielle knows the full range of her son's evil powers - through she does not want to believe his true identity - and she has begun a scheme to use Malocchio in her own selfish plans. Her hope is that through her son, she will finally be able to strike directly at the hated Vistani who have shunned her.
Attributes of the Vistani
IThroughout this adventure the heroes interact with Vistani who can read the tarokka or cast the evil eye. Both attributes are fully detailed in the RAVENLOFT Campaign Setting and Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani, so only an overview will be given here.
The Tarokka
Unlike several other modules that have involved the Vistani, the tarokka does not advance the plot in the adventure (though you, as the DM, may wish to make it seem as though the tarokka has an effect). For this scenario, the cards are merely "window dressing." You can use the tarokka to guide confused heroes who are seeking advice, or you can "stack the deck" to duplicate Qabrielle's earlier reading.
Many players find the tarokka highly entertaining, and a few cryptic readings can heighten the mood and atmosphere of a gaming session considerably when the techniques and advice offered in the RAVENLOFT box are followed. However, you should be careful not to overuse the tarokka during the adventure. If the heroes come to expect fortune telling from every Vistana they meet to help direct their travels, it replaces initiative with your heavy-handed directing.
Should the heroes come to rely too heavily on the tarokka or starts taking it for granted, you should feel free to have Vistani seers refuse to perform readings for them. The party begins the adventure with a potent curse. For this reason alone, most Vistani will avoid telling their future (few cursed individuals will have beneficial readings, and bad readings are bad for business). Even if heroes offer generous payments, the seer will not use tarokka, but will read palms or tea leaves. These situations are much faster to role-play.
The Evil Eye
This mysterious, deadly power is one of the Vistani's most feared attributes. It includes a wide range of salient abilities that defy convenient characterization and vary widely from Vistana to Vistana, as detailed in Part Four of Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani.
While the manifestation of the evil eye may vary from individual to individual, it is triggered by a similar act of will (or so the Vistani claim). A Vistana wishing to inflict the evil eye on a victim need only focus his anger, hatred, jealousy, envy and focus the negative emotion with his (or her) eyes. The evil eye can affect people, animals, monsters, and even possessions. There is no limit to the number of times a Vistana use the evil eye in a day.
The victim of a Vistana's evil eye is entitled to an evil eye check (i.e., a saving throw vs. paralyzation) to resist its effects. The evil eye check is subject to the bonuses on Table 1. Because of their belief and fear, all Vistani are more susceptible to its power than giorgio.
Evil Eye Amulets
These minor magical items provide a bonus to the evil eye check by virtue of the victim's belief in their power. If the victim does not believe in the amulet or the evil eye, it provides no bonus. Beneficial amulets provide a +1 to +4 bonus on the saving throw, whereas cursed amulets provide a -1 to -4 penalty.
Table 1. Evil Eye Check Modifiers
| Modifier |
|
Condition |
| +1 |
|
Victim successfully saved against the evil eye from the Vistana |
| -1 |
|
Victim previously failed a save against the evil eye from the same Vistana, or witnesses an ally who failed a save against the evil eye
|
| -2 |
|
Victim is a Vistana |
| -4 |
|
First use of the evil eye against a victim by a Vistana |
| None |
|
The victim is a goirgio. |
| -4 to +4 |
|
Victim owns evil eye amulet |
Fear & Horror Checks
Fear and horror checks are always optional. If one is called for, you may decide to allow the players a few moments to decide upon a reaction. If the character's reaction shows good role-playing of fear and/or horror, then you may allow that adventurer to skip the check. If a character acts nonchalant or cavalier in the face of a horrific scene, then apply the check.
Any player who does a good job of role playing may be able to play the entire adventure without making fear or horror check. If the player does not do a good job of role-playing, then the dice must make his decisions for him. He must make fear, horror, and evil eye checks and suffer the consequences for them.
