“Pinkie!! Pinkie, are you alright?!”

“Dashie, Twilight, save me!!”

Rainbow Dash made for the hidden door by the bookshelf and attempted to break it open.

Roll for Strength
Nat 1
As she tried to pry open the door, a book fell from the shelf and dropped to her feet, hitting a toe.

“YEOWCH!” Rainbow screamed in pain as she fell on the floor (prone on the ground).

“Rainbow!” Twilight rushed from the shelves to her fallen friend, “Are you okay?”

“Don’t mind me,” snarled Rainbow while she clutched her stubbed toe, “I’ll be fine, save Pinkie!”

Pinkie’s terrified cries were heard from their side as Twilight slammed a fist on the shelves, knocking on the wooden wall. “Pinkie, back away from the door! I’m going to blast it open.”

Roll for Perception
16
Although still in considerable pain that she has never felt before, Rainbow noticed the red book with a black spine that Twilight pulled over just before Pinkie fell into the hidden room.

“Twilight, wait! The book you pulled earlier, I think it’s the secret switch to open the door!”

Turning back to where Rainbow pointed out, Twilight called out to the halfling bard, “Pinkie, hold on! We’re going to get you out!” and rushed for the book. As she pulled the switch the bookshelf opened, Pinkie projected out of the hidden room to the closest body she could see; which so happens to be Rainbow and slammed onto her, grabbing the aasimar with her bone crushing embrace.

“Ow!! Pinkie I’m in enough pain as it is! Could you let go-”

Rainbow stopped as she was interrupted by Pinkie’s distress. The prismatic haired aasimar sat there, caught off guard from her small friend’s trembling form. Pinkie for her part, gripped onto Rainbow’s tunic like her life depended on it, likened to a foal clinging on to their mother after a nightmare.

“I want to go home,” Pinkie whimpered in her sobbing, “I just want to go home. Everything here is just too dark and gloomy and frowny. There’s no parties or cakes or singing or laughing. And everything here is just dead! I don’t want to die here! I don’t want to die here!”

As Rainbow tried to process as to where this was coming from, inside the hidden room she noticed what remains of a human skeleton in leather armour, sitting on the floor of the room’s corner.

“Shh. It’s okay, Pinks,” Rainbow cooed while she stroked Pinkie’s partially deflated poofy hair to comfort her, “It’s just a skeleton, it’s not going to hurt you. You’re not going to die here, okay? We’re not going to die here.”

“What’s happening here? Are you alright darling?”

Rainbow Dash looked up at Rarity who led the rest of the party running towards their panicked screams.

“We’re okay. Pinkie just got trapped into a room with a skeleton inside,” Rainbow pointed at the hidden room, continuing to comfort the pink-haired halfling.

“Oh, you poor thing!” Fluttershy threw herself to Pinkie and gave her a comforting hug, “You must have been more scared than the rest of us.” She sniffled, tears formed on the corner of her eyes as she brushed the halfling's hair, “We should have been with you sooner. We should have known-”

The Equestrians, apart from Twilight and Applejack, followed into the cuddle pile, offering what comfort they could muster to a distressed Pinkie Pie. While Applejack gave her distant cousin a comforting pat on the shoulder, Twilight approached the secret room cautiously.

From the entrance she noticed scrolls and pellbooks of sorts on top of bookshelves surrounding the skeleton that was hunched over a heavy wooden chest at the far end of the room. Approaching the bones, she noticed three darts lodged into the leather armour and a sealed letter clutched in the skeleton’s left hand. Tracing where the darts came from, she noticed a trap on the wall where it may have come from and noted it was no longer a threat.

Grimacing from what she was about to do, Twilight cautiously reached into the corpse’s left hand to retrieve the letter. Crackling from the bones caused the princess to wince as she slowly dislodged the letter in its hand. Letting out a sigh of relief, Twilight dusted herself off and rejoined the rest of her friends.

“Girls, Spike. I found this in the skeleton’s hand. A letter of sorts,” she produced the letter to them while she studied the peculiar seal’s symbol of a raven over a kite shield with a familiar castle engraved on its head.

“What does it say, Sugarcube?” asked Applejack.

Twilight unsealed the letter and skimmed through its contents. Her blood ran cold as she turned to her friends with an aghast expression of horror as she read aloud;

“My most pathetic servant,

I allow you and your pathetic band of miscreants
to exist in my land only for my own amusement. I am
not your messiah, and have not come to lead you on a
path to immortality.

Continue your farcical rituals and have your meals
of flesh. Carve my visage every stone you see. Sire
as many bastards as you wish. I care not. You are all
worms writhing in my earth, and I shall not save you
from your wretchedness. I much prefer you as you
are.

Your dread lord and master,

Strahd von Zarovich”

A pregnant silence loomed above the party as they processed the letter’s meaning. Everyone’s mind ran a mile a minute with the content’s implications.

“Twilight,” Rainbow broke the silence, giving her friend a look of worry, “What does that letter supposed to mean?”

Roll for a Wisdom Saving Throw
3
Twilight, unable to satiate her pathological need for knowledge, turns back to the bookshelf in the secret room and begins rummaging through a few pages of the first book she took.

Roll for Arcana
25
The book contains the subject of eternal life and rituals to steal the life force of others through means such as bloodletting, magical spells, and cannibalism.

The book she was holding falls to the ground with a loud thud. All eyes, including Pinkie's, turned to Twilight as the princess’ face blanched in a mix of horror, disgust and utter sickness.

“Twilight? Darling, you look sick. Are you alright?”

Roll for Constitution Saving Throw
9
Running past her friends, Twilight burst for the closest window, blast it open with a Firebolt and wretched chunks out the window.

“TWILIGHT!” Breaking from the cuddle pile, the rest of them made for their leader as she emptied out her stomach.

“Cursed,” Twilight coughed out, “This whole family’s cursed! Along with everyone else who followed them! Sweet Celestia, they’re monsters!”

“What do you mean Twilight?” asked Spike worriedly.

Twilight spat out remains of her lunch from her mouth before hesitantly muttering, “Cannibals. These people are cannibals.”

And like a switch being flipped on, the room erupted with gasps and protests.

Author's Note

Sadly that was where I ended when I realized that it is taking most of the focus from what I wanted to present. Maybe I could find a way to squeeze that story arc in for the future but for the time being I needed to cut it out from the plot.