Five strangers, five keepsakes, one very good invention. Current as of Session 13 — at which point all five of us are together again (most of Fëanor, anyway), freshly Level 5, and standing in a rain-soaked town square while every soul in Vallaki waits to hear whose side we’re on. “Current” remains a bold claim.
Roster (all Level 5 — Barovia paid attention to us overnight)
| PC | Player | Ancestry / Class | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drew | Vicky | Khoravar (half-elf) Artificer (Artillerist) | Julkem (village) |
| Fëanor | David | Elf Cleric (Life), Lathander | Waterdeep |
| Lily | Nathan | Gnome Rogue | Daggerford |
| Sirius | Nick | Aasimar Paladin | Waterdeep |
| Osric | Duncan | Human Fighter | Goldenfields |
Old ties: Fëanor and Sirius are both Waterdeep nobility. Sirius knows Fëanor’s family and warms to anyone bearing Lathander’s symbol; Fëanor has admired Sirius (and heard of his drunken training reputation) from afar.
Drusila “Drew” Seedweaver
Tinkerer — builds cannons, prosthetics, security systems. Alchemical tattoos up both arms; carries her tools (including a soldering-iron “dagger”) and a six-faced chronometer pocket watch. The group’s lead investigator, its water supply (ten conjured gallons a day), and its conscience where doomed creatures are concerned — she would not raise a hand to Doru, and no one thought less of her.
Keepsake: an amber-resin pendant mounted on her goggles, runes shifting inside — “supposed to unlock huge secrets of the world.” The only heirloom Barovia hasn’t answered yet.
CLOVER — Combat Laser Ordnance Vehicle for Emergency Enemy Removal. A small, cheerful walking cannon Drew dreamed up for days and then made real mid-wolf-attack: sheet-of-flame ordnance, force blasts, and dispensed “good vibes” that turn out to be very real. Roughly an hour of power. Adorable, for something that incinerates wolves. First build smashed by a hag; mark II rebuilt in Vallaki and better than ever — pulses shielding energy over everyone in reach. Demon-tested. Clover abides.
Level 5: Drew can now make a weapon into an arcane firearm — her own summary, delivered with terrifying joy: “I get a gun.” Second-level spell slots to feed it.
Fëanor Dawnward
Wealthy family’s black sheep and social misfit, deliberately slumming it in plain clothes; a Life cleric of Lathander who insists he isn’t devout, to which the record replies: he turned four ghouls with a raised holy symbol, and he was the only one of us to keep his wits through Strahd’s charm — and to shoot at him. “You are the sun in these lands, Father” (Sirius). He means to truly connect with his god for the first time. We’ll hold him to it.
Keepsake: a round flat stone engraved with a three-pointed star, from his grandmother — “only sentimental value.” Except it glows at the new moon, in a land with no moon, and its symbol rings a Barovian standing stone. See Quests & Threads.
Watch-list (Session 13): returned from state custody minus two days of memory — last recollection: asking a man about nails, then “a nice boy… boy height.” We have a rule about that house now. Level 5: SPIRIT GUARDIANS — the Morninglord finally answers in area-of-effect. On Sirius’s new horse: “When I turned twelve, the Morning Lord gave me a book token.” He is managing his envy.
Lilli-grai “Lily”
Gnome rogue, 3’1”, patched clothes, prized boots, a green ribbon on her right wrist. Raised by her late Great-Grandmother Euphemia. Cautious, kind, anti-wealth-hoarding, speaks with animals — and repeatedly the party’s gentlest hand at terrible moments: she talked us out of giving up on Doru before we’d tried, and it was her rope, offered without aggression, that finally held him.
Keepsake: a lacquered dire-wolf tooth on a cord. Euphemia’s dying words: “the tooth will help keep mending what cannot otherwise be healed.”
Watch-list, retired with honours: the pie affair is over — six days of iron will and the hags’ hook broke before she did. Correction to the record (Session 11): she was never hidden in Wachterhaus’s walls — we had all followed Sirius in; the commendation stands for the sleep-waves regardless. Current status instead: survived a vampire’s fangs at death’s door (one failed save, one furious knight with a potion bottle, one paladin’s glowing hands) and responded by sprinting the length of a burning nave alone, leaning — her words — far too hard into “rogue paladin.” Our hearts have stopped pretending anything.
Session 13 addenda: rolled a thirty on an unlocked door — the master of unlocking — then ate a poison needle from an untrapped-checked chest (order of operations under review) and got up again. Knifed a fiend out of the air. Impersonated a baby so well the enemy’s spymaster shoved her aside twice. Level 5: uncanny dodge + cunning strike.
Sirius
Aasimar paladin of the Morning Lord — noble, oblivious, frequently drunk, faith-not-spells, copes with sunrise by simply not going to bed. Wears the windmill shield and swings the enormous windmill longsword from Death House. Talked Bildrath down to a quarter of his prices; paid the Vistani’s story-price with the embarrassing truth and made it art.
Keepsake: a raven feather from his grandfather (also “Sirius”), given at his coming-of-age — “for good.” Ravens in Barovia are good luck. Worth noting: Sirius cannot remember how he came to be here.
Watch-list: Strahd drank from him. He seems himself — appetite aimed at bacon, not blood — but we are keeping watch. Black pudding is the designated test.
CLANCY (Session 13, Level 5): Sirius greeted the dawn by summoning his new privileges — a gleaming celestial horse, glorious, mud repelling itself from the hooves, the single most conspicuous object in a starving burned town. “When Plan A and Plan B don’t work — Plan C.” The name is Clancy. The town is coping.
Sir Osric Cunningham
Ex-farmer, knighted two weeks before the mists took him (bandits fought, lord’s daughter saved). Stocky, scarred, pierced eyebrow, good with animals, and hits like a landslide — the animated armour, the altar, and the crystal heart of the corpse-mound all came apart under his blade. Wears the Cloak of Protection from the Durst strongbox, and chain mail salvaged from a suit of armour that briefly objected.
Keepsake: a tattered banner with a bird-like design, from his Uncle Steven; probably “nicked,” treasured anyway — and its sigil crowns the Gates of Barovia. “The crown jewel in the Strahd empire.” That thread is pulled in Quests & Threads.
Shared kit & assets (as of Session 13)
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📚 THE DRUID PRIESTESS’ TOME — leathered pages of ritual diagrams, seasons and nature-rites, what little text there is in Druidic, which none of us read. Out of Lady Wachter’s chest, into the bag. Fëanor keeps looking at it sideways; his grandmother’s stone has a symbol that also came off a standing stone. We are pattern-matching and we know it.
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📜 FIVE SCROLLS — from the secret room, beside the bones. Ireena guessed one is Gentle Repose — the spell somebody has been re-casting on Lord Wachter every ten days for ten years. The other four: unread. We carried a dead man’s maintenance schedule out of that house and we intend to find out what else.
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💰 180 electrum + 110 gold — coin bearing the devil’s face, from the same chest. Apparently that’s just what money looks like here.
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⛔ THE LETTER: GONE. We had it. We read it (see Handouts). Izek took it to the Baron. The file notes this so nobody forgets the feeling.
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🧥 COMMONER CLOAKS from the Ravens’ own spy stock — Urwin’s answer to being talked out of despair. Battle-tested by one (1) baby.
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🥬
A basket of beets— DISTRIBUTED. “You get a beet. You get a beet.” The Blue Water’s one-meal-a-week crisis is one basket less dire. The silverware was refused; the beets, we maintain, were different — and we were right. -
✅ Resource status: RESTED-ISH. One night in a roofless church on holy ground, guarding the bones we brought home. Everything is topped up except our nerve, and the festival is working on that.
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🎒 A BAG OF HOLDING — built by Drew, overnight, at an inn, because she was annoyed. The locket went straight in, which improved everyone’s day. The party’s carrying capacity is now a solved problem; the party’s respect for Drew was already at capacity.
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🧛 The benefactor’s kit (“Hunt well those who hunt” — see The Bard): 3 flasks of holy water · 3 wooden stakes · iron mallet · steel mirror · manacles · oil · crowbar — divvied around the party. Already spent from it: the scroll of protection and the necrotic-resistance potion (Sirius, at the Coffin Works — both earned their keep), and one healing potion (into Lily, at death’s door; it rolled the minimum and we are still grateful). Osric’s torch collection now stands at twelve.
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A second silvered shortsword — Drew’s own, silvered overnight, “on the grounds that it would make her feel better.”
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🪪 FIVE WAX-SEALED WRITS of deputyship — “acting under the request of the baron, follow my orders.” No badges (we asked). Opens locks, loosens tongues, and denominates the ransom on our priest. See The Baron of Vallaki.
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⚠️ The rusted locket — oval, X-scratched, Celestial inside, a shadow demon sealed within (Mostly Felix has the rules). It cannot get out unless someone opens the lid. Nobody opens the lid — and as of Session 11 it lives inside the bag of holding, which everyone agrees is where a demon should commute. Destination, per the church’s own counsel: the abbot above Krezk.
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⚒️ A handful of Henrik’s coffin nails — long, custom, curve-as-hammered; lifted from the Vallakovich crypt floor by Drew. Their work is done: Henrik has confessed the whole chain. Kept as a souvenir of solid detective work.
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💰 30 gold from selling the spare heavy crossbow to Celegal’s Bowyer — opening offer 15, haggled up with “we are doing the Baron’s work — that’s not a threat.”
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Ismark’s hand-drawn map of Barovia (see Handouts) — now filled in by Danika’s own hand (Vallaki → Krezk → the winery) — and Fëanor’s rubbing of the menhir symbol, the same winged, third-eyed figure carved on a henge behind a certain windmill, still unexamined.
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The reading — five fates and five personal threads, recorded card-by-card on The Reading — now with Roger’s cards beside ours. And one card only Sirius can read, in his keeping.
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CLOVER, mark II — rebuilt (Session 8) and better: pulses shielding energy over everyone near. First build died to a hag; second build debuted against a demon.
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Rations for six (including Ireena). Zero pies, forever — and as of Session 9, the rope is retired: Lily sleeps untied. Tents, packs, bedrolls, water skins, whetstone, rope (ceremonially unemployed).
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Three potions of healing — Claudia’s two plus the kit’s survivor (one kit potion went into Lily; see above).
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Freshly sharpened edges — Sirius’s and Osric’s swords, Lily’s awl and kitchen knife (the Workyard smith, 2 sp, no questions asked).
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One pristine wolf pelt (lightly charred), still unsold, plus 5 silver 16 copper off the farmstead dead, and one jar of zombie guts (Drew insists).
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Silver crossbow bolts (tested on the shambling dead: useless; presumably vital on werewolves) and a silvered short sword.
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A commission: one Blinsky-original toy for Aragal’s daughter Araba, worth 20 gold over cost, deliverable to the Vistani camp outside Vallaki. The shop is now in walking distance.
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The crystal spell-focus orb from the pale man’s statue, an unread yellow spellbook, alchemist’s fire, a bullseye lantern, thieves’ tools (Lily), and two cult daggers (bone, and bat-skull).
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Assorted Death House valuables — and Lily’s standing warning that selling things from noble estates “ends very badly.”
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Lodging: a six-bed room at The Blue Water Inn, 2 gp/night, door that locks.