Henrik van der Voort

In Vallaki, a whim of strange propulsion guided your path to the abode of eternal rest, the workshop of Henrik van der Voort—the reclusive and aged artisan of coffins. The Coffin Maker's Shop, a place as brooding as the ovations for the deceased it furnished, called to you with a somber siren song. Upon breaching the realm where the scent of timber melted with the incense of mourning rites and the sharp tang of varnish, instantly, a murmur floated up from the bowels of the building, disrupting the stillness. Henrik was not alone, it seemed, and conferred with visitors unseen in the shrouded hollows beneath the earth. Barely had the echo of the clandestine discourse reached your ears when the carpenter of caskets emerged from his subterranean council. His visage was etched with irritation and the impatience of one interrupted. His hoarse inquiry, borne on a voice as low and weary as the ground that would someday enshroud his apathetic frame, was devoid of warmth: "How can I help you?" His tone was gravelled with the disinterest of a hermit disturbed; this was not the welcome of a merchant seeking commerce but of a man vexed by a greater, darker allure that lay beyond the mere peddling of his wooden wares. The stench of spirituous liquors clung to him like a widow's grief, intermingling sickly sweet with the organic alchemy of varnish, and, carried on the undercurrent, the earthy stench of grave soil. The attire of Henrik van der Voort, once perhaps a palette of somber dignity, now bore the damning evidence of recent oil—or misdeed. Here a dusting of soil, dark and rich as the fields of Barovia after rain; there, unsettling stains resembling the vital ichor of life, blood.