Who: The Baron’s son. Per his father: a perfect, devout young man who studies the good book in the attic.
Per our evidence: something that takes memory out of people’s heads, cleanly, and leaves them content about it.
Status: Never seen by any of us — including, functionally, the one of us who met him.
The missing half hour (Session 10)
The Baron allowed exactly one of us upstairs. Sirius went, escorted by Izek. Thirty-five minutes later he came back down, pleasant as ever, reporting a nice four-or-five-minute chat of no particular interest.
It took the rest of us most of the walk across town to establish what Sirius genuinely does not understand is alarming: he cannot recall Victor’s face — thinks Victor may have been “facing away the whole time.” He cannot recall the room having furniture. He compared the memory to “when you remember you were talking to someone in a dream and then you wake up.” He walked downstairs mid-sentence. His considered medical opinion was leftover wine.
Someone went into our paladin’s head, took half an hour out of it, and left him smiling about it.
Why it matters
Stella Wachter has been like that for three years. Her mother hired us to find proof of what Victor did to her (The House of Wachter); the Baron hired us against her mother; and somewhere between those two commissions we walked our own paladin into the attic and collected a live sample. We think we just met the thing that broke Stella. It reads scripture, and its father calls it perfect.
The nice boy, boy height (Session 13)
Fëanor came back from the state’s custody missing two days. His last clear memory is walking into a room to ask a man about nails — and then: “I met a nice boy… boy height. Very boy-like.” We know that boy. Enough of us have now been upstairs in the Baron’s house to have a rule about it. That makes three: Stella’s three years, Sirius’s half hour, Fëanor’s two days.
And the secret is no longer a secret. At the festival, from the fountain’s lip, to every soul in Vallaki: “the Baron’s son abused Stella.” His mother’s enemy said it; the crowd heard it; the rain did not wash it away. Whatever else today decides, Victor Vallakovich’s name is now in the town’s mouth — and his father, who calls him perfect, was standing right there.
Appears in: S8 (by name), S10 · S13 (the two days; the accusation). See also: The Baron of Vallaki, The House of Wachter, Stella Wachter, Quests & Threads.