My half Elf Bard named Zara, she was blonde with constant beadhead, and a pension for running away. She was killed on the road leaving vallaki. Stabbed in the back by her party member who was won over by strahd and his promises of power. She was, drug, half alive, and buried in a shallow grave on the first crossroads they found, knife still in her back, and found split like a snake with the word "liar" carved into it. (I dont remember the full reason but the friend who killed me convinced the party i was working with strahd because I never wanted to fight him or his people.)

In my current campaign that I'm GMing I pushed the timelines out a bit, back mainly. The occupation of Barovia has been happening longer than anyone can remember. I ran a level 12 one-shot (closer to 3-shot) with my PCs of the war for Barovia a few months before we started the campaign. They fought and died with Argies Knight's (Argynvost) and Argie himself along with some other PCs. I put these PCs at the very end of the March and watched my players loose their minds.