(Forgot to ask before... Can Meepo have resummoned Rat while in the camp?)

Meepo studies the graves...

Investigation:  14

The gallows are a rotting wooden platform set upon four slime covered posts. A rotting set of stairs leads up one side to the platform. On top, two beams crossed by a third form a tall square.  A tattered bit of rope is tied to the center of the upper beam and hangs down, swaying gently. A hole in the center of the platform once had a door covering it, but the remnants of the rotting door now lay in the weeds underneath the platform, the hinges having rotted away.

Meepo looks around the graves. Wooden planks stick out of the ground in 11 spots. The earth is muddy and full of weeds, a few small rocks tossed around the outside of the grave area. the graves are oval and look pretty shallow.  

Mordekai casts Minor Illusion to create the image of a pale human corpse hanging from the noose, strips of flesh dangling loose from it. An utterly gruesome sight, Mordekai is pleased with himself, and waits, watching to see if it attracts any scavengers. 

Mordekai casts his illusion. The corpse, rough dark cloth shirt, and tattered pants is hanging, back towards him.  He's rather pleased with the swollen bare black feet sticking out at the bottom, and then straggly hair is a nice touch.  The corpse slowly rotates until it's facing him. He looks up.  The sightless dead eyes that stare back at him are his own! His face, twisted in gruesome death, but definitely his face....his neck crushed by the rope. 

(As in, Mordekai's actual tiefling face, or the pale human face Mordekai last disguised himself as? Is this place messing with Mordekai's illusion magic?) 

Mordekai's actual tiefling face. 

"Where come from?" Meepo asks Aga and whomever is close by.  Moving towards the gallows he tries to get a better look at the body.

The wood of the gallows creaks under the weight of the body. 

Olin shivers at the gruesome sight. "You see that too, Meepo? I thought this place was playing tricks on me, but maybe it is playing tricks on us all." Olin frowns. "Is it real?"

(Nice touch, I love it! <shudders> )

"That's me. I mean, that was me... And it is me. It was supposed to be an illusion... Of someone else. Something is messing with my illusion. And it seems like more than an illusion, too. I don't like this place." 

"No look like you..."  Meepo says, looking between Mordekai and the body.  he climbs up the steps and stands next to the body, then starts checking it for anything that might look like a raven, or tell who it was.

Olin walks up to Mordekai, peering at him strangely. "This man looks nothing like you. He looks like no one I've ever met. If you think this looks like you then maybe this place is messing with your head, not with your illusions." Looking back at the gallows, "Do you think the tome we seek could be here? It would be nice if something came easily."

Olin says a silent prayer to Silvanus, casting guidance on himself and looks around the gallows and graves, searching. Perception, 21

As you all watch, the rope of the gallows snaps with a loud twang and the body plummets through the hole in the platform, but evaporates as it falls through the gap as if swallowed by a portal.  The gallows is again empty and quiet. 

Olin walks around the grave site.  Small beetles crawl through the rough weeds. A spider climbs up one of the wooden planks that acts as a grave marker.  The place is old and sad and offers no clues up to him. 

"You don't see my face on that corpse? Is it just a pale human face to you? That's what I was going for when I cast the illusion. But is it just an illusion to you, too, or do you actually see a real corpse?"

Edit: As the corpse falls, Mordekai is definitely spooked. "Something is clearly messing with me here. The problem is, whether it's Strahd or the Traveler, I can't tell." 

"Must be illusion..." Meepo says with a shrug, stopping short of the gallows as the body falls and vanishes.  "Gone now..."  He looks around.  "Maybe return town and ask ravens there?"  he suggests, nodding towards the sign for the town they were in the previous day.

Olin nods at Meepo. "I think you may have found the right path. Perhaps someone in town can direct us to any of these locations. We need to find this evil tree growing atop a hill of graves where the ancient dead sleep, but also the mother--she who gave birth to evil, and a nest of ravens for the sword, and the brother of the devil's bride." Olin pulls his cloak a little tighter around himself. "It is a grim list, but our only hope. What do you think they mean? The first seems literal enough, I guess. But 'she who gave birth to evil' would that be the vampire's mother? Or whatever turned him into a vampire, perhaps?" Frowning, "A nest of ravens could be just about anywhere, but maybe the ravens we seek for the first could help us here too. The missing girl, Gertruda, she wouldn't be the devil's bride would she? I would think not, if she's only just gone missing..." Olin trails off in thought.

"A nest of ravens may not necessarily refer to the birds themselves, but maybe an organisation of people who call themselves ravens. Which we'd find out by asking the right questions about any secret or underground organisations in town. Alternatively, 'Ravenloft' itself could easily be the nest of ravens."

Mordekai glances once more at the gallows, frowns, and begins back to the road into town. 

Kane wipes the sweat from his brow and dusts off his cloak. “I suggest we return to town. Perhaps there is another graveyard that we are not aware of. Regardless, I do not like our chances of traveling to Castle Ravenloft unprepared.”

You trudge down the road through the forest, stepping around mud puddles and over fallen logs near the sides. The trees on each side are dark and foreboding. The walk back to Barovia doesn't take as long as you expected it to. Maybe it's that thing where traveling down a road you've been seems less long, or maybe the wagons were a lot slower than you thought. Either way, without seeing a single soul on the road you've traveled back the handful of miles and arrive back at Barovia just after noon. You walk back into the south side of town, getting a bit of a lay of the land.  The handful of you look unhappily towards the burned out husk of the building you'd nearly been killed in as you walk through the town.  The place is quiet. People keep to themselves, eyes averted as they pass you.  Their clothing is oddly styled, as if...from another time.  

There appears to be a large mercantile shop that is open, in addition to the tavern near the center of town. There also seems to be a large church set up on the hill on the north end of town, and a large mansion style house on the south end of town.  Otherwise, the sleep townhomes appear unique, but also largely bland and uninteresting. 

"Unless anyone would like any supplies, may I suggest the tavern?  It's a little early in the day, I know, but I could already do with a drink."

"Tavern good Meepo."  Meepo says, following Mordekai in that direction.  "Good place any..."

“We are here for information, and a tavern is the likeliest place to find it. Lead on.” Kane agrees.