🎬Beginning Credits play over: Transylvania 1887
🎬 OPENING CREDITS (In our dreams, perhaps)
Melodic War Productions presents:
— Grimwild: Barovia
🕯️ 0:00–0:08 | Title Reveal
A lit candle flickers in a traveler’s lantern swinging from a rusted pole. A gust extinguishes it.
Glyphs shimmer across the screen like frostbitten veins—a six-pointed sigil crackling with arcane cold.
BAROVIA
The title etches itself across a weathered milestone buried in moss beside the road.
🌲 0:09–0:20 | Old Svalich Road
Wide shots of fog-choked wilderness.
Boot prints vanishing behind the party as the mist closes in.
Ravens burst from leafless trees, scattering like warnings.
A broken signpost reads: “Barovia — 2 miles” before snapping in half.
The gallows stand empty…but not still.
🙍♂️ 0:21–0:33 | The Wanderers
Fog-framed vignettes catch them in motion:
Fleetwood (Richard Armitage) adjusting a blade as he walks, his reflection fractured in a puddle dark as ink.
Clarion (Gwendoline Christie) pressing a glowing handprint onto a sycamore, its bark veins briefly pulsing with light.
Silverleaf (Tatiana Maslany) running a hand along fresh claw marks gouged into an old birch trunk.
Felonious (Ben Whishaw) drawing sigils in the mud with the base of his staff—each one swallowed by the fog moments later.
Greegan (Matt Ryan) tossing a coin skyward at a crossroads; it doesn’t land.
Starring
Richard Armitage as Fleetwood
Gwendoline Christie as Clarion
Tatiana Maslany as Silverleaf
Ben Whishaw as Felonious
Matt Ryan as Greegan
💍 0:46–0:58 | Symbols Beneath the Skin
A signet ring is pulled from beneath a cloak and pressed into the dirt.
Symbols bloom like bruises.
The map redraws itself—not Barovia, but the winding arteries of the Old Svalich Road
Strahd Von Zarovich grins at the camera, the leer of a predator—
as tarot cards flip themselves, one by one, onto a moss-covered stone.
🎵 0:59–1:10 | Final Note
Five silhouettes walk single-file past the Gate Towers.
The gate slams shut, throwing up a shockwave of dust.
The forest ahead moans softly.
A black carriage moves silently thorugh the fog.
Behind them, Barovia vanishes—not forgotten, but watching.
Main Title by Alan Silvestri
EXT. RIVER IVLIS CROSSROADS – NIGHT, AFTER THE LEAVING
Background Music: The Hanged One | Unofficial Curse of Strahd Soundtrack | 1h TTRPG Creepy Background Music | Loop
Silence closes in.
Not empty—watchful.
The mist retreats like a sigh from a bruised lung.
Above, clouds drift, but no moon breaks through.
Just shadow.
Just doubt.
Clarion kneels.
Her hand wrapped around her holy symbol—still scorched, still trembling.
Steam curls faintly from its edges.
Fleetwood exhales sharply, sliding his blade back into its sheath with slow precision.
Not safety. Just restraint.
Greegan slumps against a tree.
His collar damp with sweat.
His eyes haunted—tracking nothing. Or everything.
A beat. Then—
Felonious speaks.
A whisper. Deliberate. Sharp enough to be heard.
FELONIOUS : “Well.” (he wipes rain from his brow, squinting down the road) “I can’t tell if we dodged the Devil—” (his voice softens, tilting toward dread) “Or just got invited deeper into his dining room.”
Silverleaf lets go of Greegan’s shoulder.
Her fingers linger in the air a moment longer than needed.
SILVERLEAF: “We’re still breathing.” (scanning the tree line) “But he smelled us. Each one.” (beat) “Hard to hide when something already memorized your pulse.
Clarion doesn’t respond.
Her gaze fixed on the holy symbol—as if daring it to feel divine again.
Fleetwood glances toward Ireena.
She hasn’t moved. Not fully.
Lips parted.
Not with fear.
Recognition.
Or worse... grief that remembers.
The crossroads remain.
Empty. Echoless.
But somehow—not alone.
EXT. RIVER IVLIS CROSSROADS – NIGHT
The storm breaks—
not with relief, but restraint.
A stifling calm folds over the landscape, the wind dragging behind it a breath barely audible.
At the center of the crossroads, a rickety gallows groans. The rope swings—untouched, unprovoked—like it remembers its weight.
The cart slows, wheels sinking into the mud. The road forks in three, each limb clawing toward a darker unknown.
A weathered signpost stands guard, crooked and beaten:
BAROVIA – the way they've come.
TSER POOL – northwest, swallowed in shadow.
RAVENLOFT / VALLAKI – southwest, backlit by distant lightning.
Across from the gallows, a crumbling graveyard slumps behind moss-smeared stone. Headstones lean like exhausted sentinels—softened by time, clouded by mist.
Silverleaf exhales. Her voice is barely a vibration.
SILVERLEAF (soft, wary): “This calm… isn’t real. This place remembers too much.”
Clarion clutches her holy relic—knuckles pale, breath uneven.
The crossroads doesn’t ask.
It waits.
Fleetwood looks to Ireena. His voice doesn’t echo—it cuts.
FLEETWOOD: “Where now?”
The mist thickens, circling like breath held in an ancient lung.
IREENA: “The Tser Pool. Father trusted the Wise Woman there. We follow that.”
The cart groans, resuming its march into the waiting dark.
As the party rides—
Ireena’s gaze drifts. Not fearful.
Haunted.
Clarion rides beside Fleetwood, her grip on the relic white-hot.
A bone-deep whisper urges her—
Look back.
She does.
The gallows—once empty—now bears a body.
Broad-shouldered. Rusted armor.
Unmoving but unmistakable.
Clarion sees Fleetwood’s face.
Pale. Dead. Hung.
She gasps—sharp, involuntary—
burying her head into Fleetwood’s shoulder, trembling.
He flinches, gripping her.
Fleetwood turns.
The body sways.
Now—just an unfamiliar Barovian.
Clarion shakes, whispering jagged prayer.
Fleetwood’s arm anchors her.
His voice is granite, low and unshaken.
FLEETWOOD: “It’s behind us.”
The cart rolls forward.
And somewhere behind them—
the rope still swings.
EXT. SVALICH WOODS – DAY
The cart turns, wheels groaning against wet earth. Felonious cracks the reins, guiding the team down the winding, mucky trail toward Tser Pool. The pines crowd the path—tall, brooding things, rain sliding from their branches like secrets whispered too close.
Clarion mutters to herself, eyes darting through mist and undergrowth.
CLARION (softly, near frantic): “We have to get out. Back to where gravity works. Where morning means something.”
Fleetwood glances sideways, but keeps quiet.
The party rides in coiled silence, every sense tuned to danger—waiting for Strahd’s next move.
Background Music shifts: Nocturnal Onslaught | Unofficial Curse of Strahd Soundtrack | 1h Battle Music | Loop
Then—
A screech tears through the air.
Jagged.
Too loud.
Too wrong.
SILVERLEAF snaps her head up—eyes locking on a black shape tumbling through the canopy.
Branches whip. Feathers spray. A raven crashes, spinning midair.
Blue-tipped wings.
Silverleaf gasps, her voice raw.
SILVERLEAF : “No...”
She’s already moving, leaping from horseback, cloak flying, boots splattering muck.
She reaches the raven—its body twitching, riddled with dozens of gleaming silver barbs, each one delicate, cruel, intentional.
A familiar pain sinks in.
SILVERLEAF: (low, shaken) “That’s my watcher.”
The others close ranks, weapons half-drawn, eyes scanning the woods.
Nothing moves.
But Felonious doesn’t need proof.
FELONIOUS (flat): “Message received.”
Greegan crouches beside the body, jaw tight. He plucks a bolt from the raven’s flank—inspects the silverwork.
GREEGAN: “Familiar design. Like mine, but not my hand.”
Clarion stops muttering.
Her expression hardens—sharp, analytical.
CLARION: “Then someone wants a fracture. Between us. Or behind us.”
The raven shudders once.
Then stills.
But its head turns—weakly, deliberately—toward the road behind them.
Not the one they took.
The one they avoided.
A breath hangs in the air.
Long enough for dread to settle.
Then—without a word—the party remounts.
Eyes narrowed.
Weapons kept loose in the hand.
And the cart creaks forward.
EXT. TSER TRAIL – DAY
The sky isn’t just overcast.
It’s splitting.
Low thunder rolls, not from the heavens—but from within the forest itself, as if the trees are remembering something ancient and stitched.
Silverleaf crouches low in the muck, cradling the dying raven like a final breath. Its eyes dim. The barbs shimmer cruelly in its bloodied feathers.
A sudden shift.
A screech—high, metallic, and wet.
SILVERLEAF’S breath freezes.
She looks up.
From the canopy descends a horror stitched from nightmares—
A towering bird-like construct of animal skins, twisted burlap, blackwood, and clotted raven feathers. Gears churn behind its wings, slick and sludgy.
Eyes glow violet, dull but watching.
Smaller constructs swarm around it—each no bigger than a crow, but faster, sharper. Their joints click like bones. Their wings sound like paper being shredded.
The giant lands hard.
CRACK!
Talons pulverize roots. The earth moans beneath its weight.
Its wings twitch, winding to full span—
HISS–THUNK.
Barbs fly.
A metallic storm.
Silver needles slice through the air with surgical beauty.
CLARION twists away, barely ducking behind a half-split pine.
Barbs slash her arms and thigh, streaks of crimson on silver plate. She gasps, but doesn’t drop.
FLEETWOOD staggers—one barb embedded in his shoulder, another grazing his cheek. His hand finds his sword, half-drawn, teeth clenched.
SILVERLEAF rolls, blood streaking her cloak as she protects the raven. A barb rips open her forearm, but she’s upright, breath ragged.
The raven is still—alive but fading.
GREEGAN spins mid-step, too late.
Barbs tear his side, another scraping his neck.
He hits the mud, blades already in hand.
FELONIOUS: “"Varask doruun drathir." (raises a palm—arcane light flashes).
Mage armor shimmers—a half-dome of energy.
TINK. TINK-TINK.
Barbs bounce harmlessly, fading into hiss and steam.
The monstrous bird shrieks again.
Not pain. Not rage. Just… programming.
The smaller constructs scatter outward—forming a perimeter.
Click-click. Whirr. Snap.
They settle into the branches, watching.
FELONIOUS (low, grim): “That’s new. I hate new.”
EXT. TSER TRAIL – DAY, THE MONSTER DESCENDS
The forest breathes wrong.
Wind groans through the canopy—trees creaking like bones under strain.
A stitched Strix drops from above.
Burlap wings snap open mid-dive.
Feathered tatters whip past branches. Beneath its frame, arcane machinery grinds—wet gears, twitching pulleys, and copper lines pulsing like veins.
But before the talons meet the soil—
TWANG.
A silver bolt sears across the clearing—
blurred and surgical.
ANGLE: MOSS-SLICK ROCKS
GREEGAN stands low.
Crossbow braced. Breath caught in chest.
Trigger kissed by fingertip.
IMPACT.
The bolt punches under the Strix’s left wing—where rusted plating merges with flayed hide.
CRACK. HISS. SPARK.
Fluid jets from a broken hose. The Strix stutters, claws missing their mark. Smaller constructs scatter mid-dive, formation corrupted.
FELONIOUS (O.S.) : “Nice one!”
But Greegan doesn’t celebrate.
Because it starts—
Caw.
Caw.
CAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW—
The lesser Strix whip upward, forming tight corkscrews overhead. Vocal ports twitch. Jaws split, too wide, too mechanical.
A chorus erupts.
Distorted. Layered. Wrong.
Like a murder of birds mimicking laughter—
inside a copper cathedral filled with broken organs.
Greegan stumbles, eyes wide, hands clutching his ears.
His crossbow falls, forgotten.
GREEGAN (gritting): “Shut. Up.”
The shrieking builds—sharp as needles, chaotic as corrupted hymns.
A living alarm bell.
Synthetic. Jagged. Targeted.
ANGLE: SILVERLEAF mid-roll, cloak tangled in thorns.
She turns, panic blooming.
SILVERLEAF: “They’re isolating him! Disrupting—stay close!”
The monstrous Strix tilts—
not in pain,
but recalibration.
GREEGAN kneels in moss.
Skull clutched.
Breath staggered.
Eyes flickering with fury.
And still—
he’s counting windows.
EXT. TSER TRAIL – DAY
The battlefield churns with wet leaves and torn roots. The fight is spitting, whirling, mud kicked into arcs beneath boots and steel.
Fleetwood charges, cloak streaming like a banner of fury.
Sword raised.
CLANG—SKRRRK!
His blade slams into exposed gears beneath the greater Strix’s warped sternum.
Sparks burst.
Wood splinters.
But the blow bites shallow—blocked by lacquered sinew and taut mechanical weave.
The beast lunges, talons gleaming like butchered glass, aimed for his ribs.
Fleetwood twists, breath ripping through his teeth.
CLAW–CRUNCH!
A tree explodes behind him.
Bark shrapnel litters the clearing.
CLARION roars, divine fire lighting her eyes.
Her mace arcs—
THUD.
Holy steel meets iron-spined shoulder.
A glancing blow.
A mosquito against a crypt door.
The greater Strix doesn’t flinch.
But Silverleaf moves like mist, already sighting targets as three lesser constructs wheel in.
THWIP—THWIP—THWACK.
Three arrows, three kills.
One mid-screech.
One against stone—feathers and straps erupting like gore.
She pivots mid-motion.
Bow half drawn, eyes scanning, calculating.
The greater Strix stutters.
Wings sag.
Gears clatter off-tempo—like a dying music box.
Fleetwood freezes.
Clarion steps closer.
Greegan rises from shadow, dagger glinting in fist.
The Strix lifts a single trembling claw...
FELONIOUS watches.
Unmoved.
His eyes narrow.
Finger glows like a fuse.
FELONIOUS (flat, unimpressed): “Too dramatic. You don’t breathe, birdbrain. Vahdruxis Karanthor!”
FOOM.
His firebolt lands center mass—
Ignites.
WHUFFF.
Flame consumes feathers and resin.
The construct howls—a shriek caught between dying servos and sacrificial screech.
But the lesser Strix do not retreat.
They dive.
A whirl of wings and wire.
Felonious vanishes beneath a storm of beaks and snapping talons, arms shielding his face.
FELONIOUS (muffled, furious): “Hate. Birds. So much.”
EXT. TSER TRAIL – MOMENTS LATER
The shrieking fades—
not gone, just coiled elsewhere.
GREEGAN stumbles from the brush, grime streaked across sweat-slick skin, jaw locked like he’s chewing glass.
The echoes twist behind his eyes like barbed wire.
But the crossbow in his hands? That’s real.
That’s memory.
SILVERLEAF (calling over shoulder): “Still up, shadow man?
GREEGAN (hoarse) “Barely.” (raises bow) “But I still shoot straight.”
TWHIP. TWHIP-TWHIP.
Bolts fly.
One clips a lesser Strix mid-buzz—splinters explode against a root.
Another tears through burlap, unraveling sinew mid-flight.
Two dive together—shrieking in a spiral.
Greegan fires—
CLICK.
Empty.
He drops the crossbow, draws a wrist-pistol bolt, and throws.
It hits—POP.
Clean.
Precise.
He reaches for another—
Snap.
His boot catches on a slick root.
SLAM.
He hits the mud, shoulder-first, crossbow skipping away.
One remaining Strix dives for his throat—
SHFFFT.
An arrow erupts from its chest mid-swoop.
ANGLE: SILVERLEAF, eyes forward, bow still smoking.
She didn’t look. She didn’t need to.
The clearing stills.
Feathers drift.
Smoke breathes.
No more shrieks.
Just breath.
Ragged.
Real.
GREEGAN (From the ground, groaning) “Told you…” (coughs) “Still shoot straight.”
EXT. TSER TRAIL – FIGHT’S WAKE
Background music shifts: Old Svalich Road | Unofficial Curse of Strahd Soundtrack | 1h TTRPG Dark Background Music | Loop
SILVERLEAF crouches, boots soaked, hands trembling.
She folds the raven in her cloak—its feathers dotted red, silver barbs gleaming like poison jewelry.
She draws one—careful.
The bird flinches, breath hisses.
SILVERLEAF: (softly) ““Lóreni enni. Nai úva lan, tuilindar.” Translation: “Stay with me. We’re not done, feather-scout.”
Another barb comes free.
The raven shudders, but trusts.
Its wing hangs broken.
Its breath is shallow.
But its eye still watches her.
Still.
ANGLE: FLEETWOOD, standing back—watching Ireena, not the battlefield.
She grips her scorched blade.
Panting.
Streaked with soot.
Unharmed.
Not a single barb touched her.
No talon reached.
The shrieks didn’t even turn.
FLEETWOOD (quietly): “You fought.” (beat) “But they didn’t touch you.”
IREENA looks up, caught off-guard.
IREENA: “I tried. They just... circled.”
Her blade lowers.
Eyes drift to the ruins of the constructs.
FLEETWOOD: “Have you seen anything like that before?”
A beat.
IREENA : “...No.”
Too fast.
Too blank.
Fleetwood watches her—
as if the mask she wears wasn’t hers to begin with.
Far off, the wind exhales.
And the smoke from the Strix still curls—
not rising, but waiting.
EXT. TSER TRAIL – POST-BATTLE, THE FOREST LISTENS
The clearing exhales smoke.
Charred feathers drift on the air like mourning veils.
No birds sing.
The trees listen.
Fleetwood sheathes his sword slowly, gaze lingering on the broken Strix—its body curled like a fallen idol.
He turns to the others. Urgency tempered by exhaustion.
FLEETWOOD: “We need to find the seeress Ireena spoke of. Before something else finds us.” (beat—he scans the fog) “I don’t want another mouth in this forest learning our names before she does.”
Silverleaf kneels again.
Her cloak soaked, fingers stained.
She cradles the wounded raven, motionless but not yet dead—blood soaking through blue-tipped wings.
She looks to Clarion. Eyes wide, voice low.
SILVERLEAF: “Can you help her?”
Clarion hesitates.
Then steps forward, kneeling beside the bird.
Her holy symbol glows—soft, steady.
A hum rises beneath her palm.
LIGHT pulses.
The raven shudders—once.
Breathing steadies.
But the eyes stay closed.
CLARION: “I’ve stabilized her. But she’s not healing. Not truly.” (beat—she frowns) “The wounds feel... wrong. Not metal. Not beast. As if something was inside the barbs.
Not venom. Something colder.”
Felonious brushes soot from his sleeve, shaking ash like dandruff, muttering just loud enough:
FELONIOUS: “Mechanical birds with toxic payloads. Charming. What’s next—haunted soup?”
Ireena stands in silence.
Her eyes fixed on the raven.
She hasn’t blinked in minutes.
Fleetwood shoulders his pack.
Motion, resolve.
FLEETWOOD: “Then we move. We find the seeress. Now.”
The wind lifts.
The trees rattle—not naturally.
Like laughter caught in dry lungs.
FADE TO BLACK
END CREDITS PLAY OVER: If I Was Your Vampire-Lyrics