Who: The last survivor of the last band the mists ever carried into Barovia — ~45 years ago, in what everyone still just calls the bad times. Once a pit fighter out of Waterdeep. Forty years a farmhand inside Vallaki’s walls.
Where: His corner table at The Blue Water Inn, Vallaki. He has more than earned it.
Status: Done. He will not come with us — “I had a destiny once. Turns out destiny’s a crock of shit.” — and after that story, nobody asked twice.
First seen: Session 7, white as a sheet. The tale told: Session 8, over the wine we bought.
His story, as he told it
His band came through the mists exactly as we did — the crossing, the cards, the promised gifts, the destined ally. They did well at first: they worked out that their gift of knowledge lay at a great glowing pool behind the walls of Krezk, kept by a mighty priest of the abbey.
And then, on the road, a creature stepped out of the trees — half raven, half man, a beak as long as your arm — and said: “Greetings, friend. I come in peace.” They had learned that everything in Barovia lies. They struck first — silver and magic, all at once — and slew it where it stood. Hundreds of ravens screamed in the woods.
From that day the land turned its back: doors forewarned against them, the southern winery hostile at a distance of miles, a whisper network running ahead of them everywhere. Weeks of nothing — until the devil himself appeared in a village street, pronounced them boring, and slaughtered every other soul standing in it as incentive. The village lads marched on the castle; at its gates a grey emissary — “what I now know as a dusk elf” — called them a very disappointing bunch — too early, not enough strength — and killed every one of them. Except Roger, spared to carry a message to whoever came next:
“Don’t be boring.”
Then the devil rode out on a fiery steed and decimated Krezk and the village — hundreds dead, for the Mistwalkers’ sins. Vallaki alone was spared. Roger thinks it was the church that saved this town. Think carefully about what that means, and say nothing.
The cards on the table
He kept his band’s five fate-cards, wrapped in oilcloth, all these years — “I don’t know why I held on to them.” We compared. The first three match ours exactly. The differences:
- His ally card was the raven. Ours is the hunter of hunters. His band murdered their destined ally on the road and never knew it. That, he says, is the day they lost.
- His final card was the artifact; ours is the tomb of the only man he ever envied. Different roads to the same devil.
He had a trinket of his own once, like our heirlooms. He burned it. “My destiny’s over.”
The standing orders
- Don’t be boring. The devil kills what bores him, and the innocent nearest to it.
- Don’t kill the ravens. Given twice. He would not elaborate. We intend to comply.
- “Buy the wine again some other night.” One story per glass. He’s a well, not a wiki.
Open questions
Who — what — was the raven-man? Why did Danika wince when it came up?Answered, Session 10, both at once: the raven-man was a wereraven of The Ravens of Barovia — Great Uncle Frederick, to be precise, of the family that runs our inn. Roger’s band murdered their destined ally and their landlady’s great-uncle in one stroke. Don’t kill the ravens was never advice. It was a eulogy.- If Vallaki was spared for its church… what happens to a Vallaki whose church has lost its bones? (Session 10 sharpened this one horribly: the bones shielded the whole city. Past tense. See Quests & Threads.)
- What else has he seen from that corner table in forty years?
Appears in: S7 · S8. See also: The Reading (his cards beside ours) · the current set of Mistwalkers · Urwin Martikov.