Who: Priest of St. Andral’s Church in Vallaki. Keeper of the town’s finest building and its worst secret.
Where: St. Andral’s, in the west of Vallaki, with his altar boy Yeska (eight years old, recently instructed in push-ups and confidentiality — in that order).
Status: Ally. Possibly the only wholly good man in Vallaki. Definitely the most trusting.
First met: Session 7, the evening we arrived.
The man
Gentle, unhurried, and kind in a town where kindness is mandatory and therefore suspect — his is the real thing. He greeted five armed strangers as “mistwalkers”, hoped aloud that the rumors about what happens around our kind weren’t true, and welcomed us anyway: “All are welcome here. This is a safe place. Usually.”
It took him roughly one conversation to trust us with everything. We pointed out, gently, how easily he gives his trust to well-armed strangers. He needs a miracle, and we were the nearest thing walking.
The secret (keep it — especially from Ireena)
The church’s relic — the bones of St. Andral, kept in a hidden crypt beneath the altar — were stolen six days before we arrived. The bones sanctified the ground; evil could not cross the threshold. Now it is just a building. Only Lucian and little Yeska knew where they lay. And Yeska, because the man is big and strong and cool, told Milivoj — the groundskeeper with keys to church and orphanage both — after Milivoj came asking, out of nowhere, about secrets hidden in the church. That was ten days ago. The bones vanished four days later.
We searched the crypt with him: dust. Tomorrow we call on Milivoj.
What else he told us
- The stories say the devil has not set foot in Vallaki in two hundred years. The stories were written when the bones were where they belonged.
- Yeska has been sent to confess the whole thing to Lucian properly. Sirius’s parting gift to the boy: the coolest thing one can do is keep a confidence. Too late, but the sentiment stands.
The altar (Session 11)
“Just a building” mattered on the morning of the vampires, and it mattered like this: St. Andral’s an inferno, two vampire spawn inside it — and Father Lucian standing on his own altar with the symbol of the sun raised over his head, holding them at bay with nothing but the strength of what he believes. They cannot close on him. They circle and cringe and cannot close. Yeska came out alive in a guard’s arms. Lucian did not come out at all.
“Friends,” he called to us through the smoke, “there are undead in the Church of St. Andral. All is lost.”
“They won’t be for long,” said Sirius.
He is, as the record stands, prone on his own altar behind his raised symbol — the roof knocked him flat, mid-miracle — having paused only to slap Sanctuary on Lily over her explicit objections (“You will not hurt a child of the Morning Lord”). Possibly the only wholly good man in Vallaki. Definitely the bravest thing any of us saw on a morning full of brave things.
The mace under the altar (Session 12)
Revised assessment: the man we had assumed was entirely made of faith and cardigan burned a vampire to dust with a word of the Morning Lord, then reached under his own altar, produced a mace, and advised the survivors: “Evil creature, get out of this church.” He then bopped one with it.
A vampire announced, mid-fight, “The master wants the priest dead” — a direct order from the devil himself, we note with cold interest — and Father Lucian’s response to being the specific target of Strahd von Zarovich was to wade toward the fight going “This is my church.” Sirius, a literal holy defender of priests, had to pass a persuasion check on our own ally to make him stand back. He lived. The vampires did not.
The church could not be saved. Seventy percent of it is ash. Sirius walked back into the collapsing building — blind at the time — to bring him the sunburst statuette from the altar: “Remember, Father — Lathander lives in our hearts, not in our places.” His answer, holding it: “Thank you, my son. But this church — it was a symbol for so many.”
We needed this (Session 13)
We found him on the steps of his sixty-five-percent-burned, roofless church, holding the little sunburst statuette like it was the last one in the world. And then we gave him back the thing his whole parish was built around: together we rolled the altar aside — it moves on greased wheels; his church kept its own secrets — and laid the bones of St. Andral on the sub-altar in the crypt, respectfully, with his hands on them. And the ground answered. A wave of holy warmth rolled out through the ruin and past it, and for the first time since the fire, that place felt like a sanctuary again.
His whole verdict, delivered with the precision of the truly exhausted: “I’m not gonna say it’s a bit late. But thank you regardless. We needed this.”
We slept in the roofless nave that night, on guard beside him. In the morning the criers said there had never been any vampires, and mandatory festival attendance emptied the town into the square — including, presumably, him, standing somewhere in the rain in sight of his own ash.
Open questions
- Who sent Milivoj asking? (Answered since — the trail runs through Ernst to The House of Wachter; see Quests & Threads.)
Can the church be savedIt could not.Can hallowing be raised over a ruin?It can. It was. We felt it. The new question: who guards the bones while the whole town stands at a mandatory festival? We asked the Ravens. We keep doing the arithmetic anyway.
Appears in: S7 · S9 · S10 · S11 · S12 · S13. See also: St. Andral’s Church.