The party’s own record of Roger’s terrible story, a town’s worth of gossip, one night of honest sleep, and a morning at the orphanage that ended with a demon in a locket and a groundskeeper who swears he never touched any bones. All will be well.
Roger’s tale, in full
We bought the wine. He drank it. And then the last of the old Mistwalkers told us how his story ended, so that ours might not.
Forty-five years ago, Roger was a pit fighter out of Waterdeep. His band came through the mists just as we did — a demonic wolf-thing at the crossing and everything — got a mixed welcome, got dealt a battered set of cards he threw on our table with contempt. “I had a destiny once. Turns out destiny’s a crock of shit.”
They did well, at first. They worked out that their gift of knowledge lay in Krezk, at a great glowing pool behind the walls, kept by some mighty priest of the abbey. And then, halfway there, a creature stepped out of the woods: half raven, half man, a beak as long as your arm. It said — and he remembers the words — “Greetings, friend. I come in peace.”
They had learned in the village of Barovia that everything lies and everything kills. So they struck first, all at once, silver and magic, and slew it where it stood. And the woods filled with the sound of hundreds of ravens crying out in anguish.
From that day, the land itself turned its back. Krezk had been forewarned about them. The winery in the south drove them off at a distance of miles. A whisper network ran ahead of them everywhere, naming them a bad sort — two enemies now, Strahd’s monsters and the people. Weeks of nothing, until Strahd himself appeared in the village street, declared them boring, and — as incentive — slaughtered every other soul standing in it. The village lads insisted on marching on the castle. At its gates stood not Strahd but his emissary — what Roger now knows was a dusk elf — who told them they were a disappointment, that this was too early, that they had not gathered enough strength, and killed every one of them. Except Roger. Roger was spared to carry a message to the next ones through the mists:
“Don’t be boring.”
Strahd then rode out on a fiery steed and decimated Krezk and the village of Barovia — hundreds dead — as punishment for the sins of the Mistwalkers. Vallaki alone was spared, Roger thinks because of the church. Think about what that means for the bones, and keep it to yourselves.
He will not come with us. He is done, and after that story he has more than earned the right. His parting advice, twice given: don’t kill the ravens.
Two readings, side by side
We compared his cards to ours. The first three — the three gifts — match. The differences are the ones that matter:
- His destined ally was the raven. Ours is the hunter of hunters. Roger’s band murdered their destined ally on the road and never knew it. That is the day he says 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.
- Krezk’s glowing pool is exactly our own first card — “high water aglow with the light of the sun, hidden beneath the walls of men.” Roger’s band confirmed the place with their own legwork. The gift of knowledge is at Krezk. Best lead we hold.
One of our own still carries a raven’s feather and a great affinity for the birds — Roger had a trinket of his own once. He burned it. “My destiny’s over.”
The gazetteer of a well town
Roger’s gossip, for the file: the old burgomaster ruled through fear for years and then died suddenly fifteen years ago — not ill, just dead — and his son took over without visible grief. Districts: the square (gallows standing, stocks always stocked); the Workyard (paper mill and lumberyard — now we know where the flyers come from); the Guard district, holding a smithy and the Reformation Centre, which people enter as themselves and leave wrong — fake smiles, forgotten family members, an endless supply of “all is well.” The north district for the well-to-do, farm plots where Roger works, and a proper shopping district, the only real one in Barovia.
Names to remember: Izek, captain of the guard — a huge man with a monstrous red right arm like something grafted from a demon, and a temperament to match. Do not cross him. The lakes to the north are haunted — four years now, a wailing woman, fishermen ensorcelled into walking into the water and drowning. The fishing industry is dead. (Lake’s haunted.) And outside the walls, camped near the Vistani: the dusk elves — a dying people, all men, because Strahd killed every one of their women.
The wine must flow
Danika Martikov, our landlady, on being asked whether any good needed doing: the family’s latest wine shipment is several days late, and that never happens. And here is the thing we did not know — the Martikovs own the winery in the south. The one that ran Roger’s band off. “Our family wine keeps this entire bubble afloat.”
If our travels take us west and south — and Krezk is west and south — we are asked, informally and without commission, to look in on the winery. She filled in the blanks on Sirius’s map herself. Her advice for Krezk: insular folk who may want us to prove ourselves or provide some service before the gates open — though the family wine, naturally, gets in everywhere.
One more observation, recorded without conclusion: when the death of the raven-man came up at the bar, Danika winced. She was not happy the subject was raised. The Martikovs and the ravens keep ending up in the same sentences.
The bard who says his name
The brightly colored minstrel — his wax jar reads “Riptarvo’s Finest Wax,” so Riptarvo he is until corrected — has the most splendiferous mustache in Barovia and a very strange relationship with the law. He said “Strahd” out loud, in a public taproom, twice, with the air of a man remarking on the weather. “The laws are for the little people.”
What he gave us, between twirls: the Reformation Centre runs on dark magics, he believes — stay out. And, more carefully: stories of ancient bargains — fey creatures who once held power in this land, tied to the land — and of that power being usurped. When one of us leaned in and said that what was stolen by He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named could be reclaimed, he looked up very sharply indeed: “That is a very astute thing to say, sir.” He also noted, unprompted, that we seem recently empowered — that “those entwined in fate” grow strong quickly. His advice, if we want the universe’s assistance: prove yourselves a bit more.
Then he announced he was tired and retired with the words “I shall watch you with great interest.” Minute-taker’s assessment, shared by the table: that was no mere bard.
The Wachter boys
The two rowdy lads are Karl and Nikolai, sons of Lady Wachter — the noblewoman rich enough to say almost-critical things about the Baron and survive it, who runs a book club and outreach for the people. Roger trusts her not an inch (“no one stays that powerful without being rotten”). Her manservant carts the boys home each night, often literally.
Wine loosened them. Their sister Stella was betrothed to the Baron’s son Victor about three years ago — and then Stella was driven mad. The Baron calls it a pre-existing nervous condition. Her brothers say Victor did something to her — “dark sorceled her” — and she has been shut in her room at home ever since, no wedding, no funeral. They intend revenge, eventually, once they get themselves together. For anything serious: “talk to Mother.” She receives.
Lily, day six: free
Recorded with more relief than we know how to spell: Lily asked to be tied to the bed one more night — Sirius beside her as ever, Drew’s alarm on the door and rigged so that Lily herself would trip it. And in the morning: nothing. No hour of madness. No craving. The magic is simply gone — six days of iron will and it broke before she did. What remains is exhaustion, one fake-pie test passed with flying colors, and the ordinary human horror of knowing what was in them. She apologized for stealing. She was told, with love, that it would cost her a hand next time. Recovery proceeds.
Ireena spent the night in our room — the church, as some of us know and she does not, is not currently in a position to protect anyone.
The orphanage
Six days now to the Festival of the Blazing Sun. After breakfast we went for Milivoj — and found the orphanage in crisis before we ever knocked. The eldest girl (sixteen, competent, holding the fort) took us for the help the headmistress had gone out to find, and we did not entirely correct her.
Milivoj is not our thief. Milivoj is a victim. The groundskeeper — a huge, kind young man of about twenty-five, raised in that orphanage, who tells the children stories and is officially cool — has been sickening for a month and lies unrousable, three days past collapse. Our medicine and our arcana agree, and detect magic confirmed it: this is no illness. It is a curse, necromantic, and healing magic slides straight off it. His room held three sets of clothes, twenty gold of unexplained money, and nothing else.
And more, from the children and then from Headmistress Claudia (stern, exhausted, holding twenty children together with no funds — we started badly and ended allies): three boys — Lazlo, Hans, and Franz — ran away about a week ago. Milivoj, sick as he was, was so worried that he came into some money from somewhere and hired two hunters — pelt-traders who pass through the Blue Water — to go find them. They are out searching now. Where does a groundskeeper with three shirts find hunter-hiring money? Underline that question.
And one month ago, a new boy arrived: Felix. Found beside his stabbed parents, covered in their blood, entirely unharmed, with no explanation. Since then: other children with bruises, terror in the halls, and a boy named Cedric pushed out a window to his death. The three runaways, Claudia thinks, ran from him. Felix now lives confined in the padlocked attic.
Mostly Felix
Claudia had confiscated Felix’s effects. Among them, glowing to Fëanor’s detect magic with abjuration: a rusted oval locket on an old chain, an X scratched into its lid, the magic itself all that holds the battered thing together. Inside, an inscription in what we believe is Celestial, which — in the finest tradition of this party — not one of us reads. One of us opened it. (For science. Nothing visibly happened. Hold that thought.)
Upstairs, every bedpost carried a faint necromantic rune — Infernal, reading “Mine.” Scratch it out and the magic dies. The children have been set to work defacing their own beds, which they will enjoy.
In the attic: a small boy, whittling, with a large kitchen knife, as the light from the window dimmed of its own accord. Sirius greeted him warmly and asked his name. The answer: “I’m Mostly Felix.”
The rest of Felix was pleased to chat — villains do love describing their plans. It had been at work on the middle floor — on Milivoj — and it was, it said, too late: “Milivoj will soon be mine.” This boy’s body was too tiny; it wanted the more muscly specimen downstairs. And it felt safe telling us, because — correctly — “you’re not going to hurt this boy.”
Drew slipped away mid-conversation to have Milivoj tied to his bed. The thing noticed, sighed “do I have to do this early?” — and a black, putrid smoke poured out of Felix, the boy slumped, and a shadow demon unfolded in the attic: solid black claws, a grinning face full of razor teeth. “Out of my way.”
The fight, and the locket
For the record of arms: our steel — even silvered, even Lily’s finest nat-20 sneak work — passed through the thing like it was mostly rumor. It slid through floors. It slid into Drew — a possession, her own shadow boiling — and made her run for Milivoj with an “I’m sorry” that none of us will forget, before abandoning her on the ground floor to terrify twenty children instead. Drew, un-demoned, did the two most important things of the day: screamed the children out to the garden and put Clover back on the field — rebuilt, beeping, pulsing shielding energy over everyone in reach.
It tried the same possession trick on Sirius and met the Protection from Evil and Good he had cast on himself at the foot of the stairs. The demon’s actual words: “What the fuck are you?” — “I am an angel, sent from the celestial realms to end you unless you repent.” — “Never.” Osric vaulted a banister to bar its way and paid for it: the thing reached into his chest and pulled out a quarter of his life, and fattened on it, visibly.
What worked was the light. Fëanor’s guiding bolt tore it to wispy tatters; Sirius’s blade, channel-divinity-bright with radiant power, ate through it where a longsword couldn’t; and the open locket pulled at the demon like a current. The final radiant blow shredded it into smoke — and the smoke poured into the locket, and Sirius snapped it shut.
What we now understand (good rolls, plus a certain angelic intuition): the locket is the demon’s anchor to this plane — and its prison. Destroy the locket and the demon goes free, but elsewhere. It cannot escape unless someone opens the lid. Which someone did, this morning, in an office, for science. We will be more careful. Working plan: it goes somewhere warded and secret — Father Lucian’s problem-cupboard grows by one — and we tell no one. Felix, demon-free and breathing, sleeps in the attic. We promised we’d be back for him.
The man who woke up
And then, mid-aftermath: Milivoj woke. The curse, it seems, broke with its master in the box. He came stumbling into a hallway full of armed strangers, evacuated orphans, and residual demon smoke, and we — perhaps not at our gentlest — demanded to know, no lies, right now, what he did with some bones.
His answer: “I didn’t touch any bones. What are you talking about?”
He remembers his month. He seems genuinely baffled. And so the working theory of the last two days — sick groundskeeper, stolen bones, one tidy villain — is now in pieces on the orphanage floor, because it turns out multiple unrelated bad things can be happening at once. The interrogation was still in progress when these minutes closed.
Where we stand
- At the orphanage, mid-conversation with a newly awake Milivoj. Ireena at the inn. Level 4. Lily’s curse is broken (exhaustion still working its way out). Clover rebuilt and operational. Osric down a quarter from a demon’s hand in his chest.
- The locket: shadow demon inside, lid shut. It cannot get out unless opened; destroying it frees the demon onto another plane. Celestial inscription still unread. Disposition undecided — leading plan is Father Lucian, warded, secret.
- The bones of St. Andral are still missing and our only suspect just plausibly denied everything. Open threads: where Milivoj’s hunter-hiring money came from; who did take the bones; six days to the mandatory festival.
- Jobs: find the bones; find Lazlo, Hans, and Franz (two hunters already out — ask at the Blue Water who they are); check the Martikov winery (shipment days late; Danika’s map in hand; route west via Krezk, ~a week); the haunted lake north (wailing woman, mind-magic drownings); Blinsky toy for Aragal (+20 gp); the windmill rescue (Radu captive, Vasha scouting); the festival, attendance mandatory.
- Leads: the gift of knowledge is at Krezk — the glowing pool beneath the walls, confirmed twice over (our card, Roger’s legwork); a powerful priest holds the abbey there; entry may require proving ourselves — or arriving with Martikov wine. Lady Wachter receives visitors (book club, outreach); her daughter Stella was driven mad by the Baron’s son Victor. The bard “Riptarvo” is watching us with great interest.
- Standing rules, amended: all is well; don’t say his name in the streets; don’t get reformed; and above all — don’t kill the ravens.
Questions on our minds
- If not Milivoj, who took the bones? He asked Yeska the question, the bones vanished four days later, and he denies it to a wall of armed adults without blinking. Is he innocent, enchanted, or lying? And where did his sudden money come from?
- Who cursed Milivoj, and why him? The demon wanted his body — was the sickness the demon’s claim-staking, and is anyone else marked? The bedposts said “Mine.”
- Who was Felix before the demon — and who stabbed his parents?
- What is the bard? He mocks the name-law, knows usurped fey powers by their stories, spotted our fate-blessing on sight, and watches us with great interest. Ally, examiner, or something worse?
- The Martikovs and the ravens: Danika winced at the raven-man’s death. Urwin’s family wine “keeps the bubble afloat.” How deep does that family go?
- Roger’s band died for striking first at a friend. Our reading gives us the hunter of hunters as our destined ally. When they step out of the woods — will we know them?
- Six days to the Festival of the Blazing Sun. What actually happens at one?