Session 14 — All Is Not Well

Where we stopped: Inside the Reformation Center, face to face with the elven twins Ilimir and Ivalice. They have refused the new burgomistress’s order to stop their work. Combat is about to begin; initiative will be rolled afresh next session.

The big changes: Vargas Vallakovich and Fiona Wachter are dead. Ireena is acting as Vallaki’s new burgomistress, with Father Lucian’s support and Izek accepting her authority. Victor escaped, but we found his account of what he did to Stella. Strahd visited the square in person. The bones interfere with his surveillance; they did not prevent him entering town.

The festival chooses a third course

The Festival of the Blazing Sun resumed in the rain, with both rival leaders expecting us to support them. We had not agreed on a plan. The crowd could be swayed towards the Baron, Lady Wachter, us, or outright anarchy.

Lily’s first attempt at public speaking was painfully sincere: everyone was good people, and it was important to do the right thing. It did not win anyone over. Drew did better by calling on Nikolai and Karl Wachter to tell the square what they had found in their mother’s bedroom. The brothers publicly acknowledged that she had kept their dead father there for years and withdrew their support. That decision would save their lives later.

Sirius unfurled his angelic wings and presented himself as a servant of the Morning Lord. Osric called on Father Lucian to confirm that there really had been vampires in Vallaki. Lucian testified publicly, contradicting the Baron’s account of masked agitators.

The Baron used the letter we had handed over as evidence against Wachter. When he tried to have Lucian treated as a seditionist, we appealed to Izek’s own memories of the church attack. Sirius’s appeal made him hold the guards back. Meanwhile, a cry that the guards had stabbed someone was undercut when Ernst was spotted hiding a bloody dagger in his boot. Later, he also shouted that we had robbed a hospital.

Lily found a better use for her talents by vaulting towards the stage and impressing the crowd. Drew challenged the claim that the attackers had merely been people in masks: the witnesses had seen how the vampires burned and died.

The Baron cannot lie, but he can refuse to answer

Sirius cast Zone of Truth over the platform. The Baron failed his save; Izek resisted the spell. Asked by Osric why his son was absent from a supposedly mandatory festival, the Baron could not offer a convincing answer. The spell did not cure his certainty that he was perfect.

A stone flew towards the Baron, and Sirius raised his shield to protect him. We were opposing his rule without encouraging the crowd to attack indiscriminately.

Lily pressed him about the letter: did it mention him, and did the devil want him to remain burgomaster? He admitted it mentioned him, but refused to read it aloud or directly answer the second question. The letter’s complete text was not read into this session’s recording.

With the crowd now overwhelmingly on our side, we proposed Ireena as a new leader, supported by Father Lucian. Sirius denounced the Reformation Center and the failures of both existing leaders. Lucian cautiously endorsed Ireena. She looked thoroughly overwhelmed by the proposal.

“All is not well in Vallaki!” went up from our side. Both rivals insisted the town belonged to them. The crowd turned on both, and the confrontation became a fight.

Winning the square costs lives

Izek grabbed Sirius with his demonic arm and attacked him. Sirius blocked the axe, but remained held. The image of a demonic hand gripping a flying angel did the old government no favours.

Wachter’s raven revealed itself as an unusually tough imp. Clancy kicked it with radiant force; its attempted attack on Fëanor missed. Wachter drew a rapier and backed towards a building. The Baron ordered Izek to kill Sirius.

Fëanor cast Laeral’s Silver Lance, lining up the imp, Izek, and Vargas while sparing people between them. The imp and Baron failed their saves; Izek succeeded. The lance dealt 16 force damage on a failed save. Vargas died. Lydia continued staring and smiling beside the bloodshed.

Lily was struck by a guard, used Uncanny Dodge, then missed her own attack and disengaged towards the crowd. She was reluctant to kill the guards. Clancy and Drew’s force ballista helped wear down the imp; Osric finished it with repeated sword strikes and Action Surge. Wachter cried out about her “compact” when it fell.

Sirius chose persuasion over retaliation. Still in Izek’s grasp, he tried to hug him and appealed to his wish to protect Vallaki. After using Honeyed Words to reroll, he got 25. The nearby crowd held back at the sight of them. Izek ordered the guards to hold. He admitted he did not know what to do without instructions and that putting the Baron’s son in charge felt wrong.

Across the square, a mob had knocked Wachter down. She called out that she surrendered. We did not stop the crowd. It trampled her to death. The fighting ended and Izek released Sirius.

Nikolai and Karl survived because they had publicly disavowed their mother. They were devastated. Ernst disappeared and could not be found afterwards.

Strahd comes to see for himself

A cloud of bats descended around Strahd on a burning, flying horse. Most of the crowd became glassy-eyed under his influence. Ireena was affected too.

He said the restored bones had interfered with his usual means of watching the town, forcing him to visit. He treated the uprising as entertainment: Vallaki’s misery had become predictable, and we had made it interesting again. He did not object to the idea of Ireena becoming burgomistress.

Sirius met this with increasingly dangerous politeness, repeatedly getting Strahd’s title wrong and suggesting he might enjoy a good ball in Waterdeep or Neverwinter. Strahd eventually made it clear that his pleasant mood was no protection.

His warning: the bones hinder his agents and his ability to act or watch here, but do not stop him entering personally. His arrival demonstrated the limit of our supposed safety. He also claimed to be unharmed by anything and immortal; those are his claims, not something we tested.

Strahd seized a civilian, fed, and dropped the person dead. Lily’s thrown knife missed. Sirius attempted a protective spell, but there was no successful rescue. Strahd left us to clean up, telling us to leave town and keep being interesting: “Do not be boring.”

Sirius sent the shaken crowd home and invited them to church the next morning.

A government, a grieving family, and an empty attic

We apologised to the Wachter brothers and promised help for Stella. Wine was also promised, despite the Blue Water Inn running short. The Wizard of Wines remains an intended destination; we did not visit it.

Izek said he served the office of burgomaster and accepted the new burgomistress’s authority. He agreed to have guards seal off the Reformation Center, though he was reluctant to send them against its twins. Father Lucian took Lydia to the church. He mentioned an abbey near Krezk, where a powerful holy figure was said to heal bodies and minds. That is a lead, not a confirmed cure for Lydia or Stella.

At the burgomaster’s mansion, Ireena authorised us to borrow the framed map and ordered guards to take it down. Izek led us to Victor’s attic, though he could not remember having walked those stairs before. He kicked the door open.

Victor was gone. Fëanor identified the cooling marks on the floor as an unusual, apparently single-use teleportation circle. It was damaged, no longer functional, and untraceable by what we learned there. We have no destination for him.

A book in the room described Victor’s abuse of Stella. After an initial accidental memory spell, he realised he could experiment on her and erase her memory afterwards. He repeated the process until it broke her. This is the evidence we found; earlier speculation about whether he might have been forced into it did not survive reading his account.

Elsewhere in the mansion we found Udo Lukovich, chained in a room. He said the Baron had selected him from the Reformation intake to vent his anger on. We freed him. Searching the office produced no further useful documents; we did not loot Ireena’s new household.

The Reformation Center

Izek described Ilimir and Ivalice as elven outsiders who had entered the Baron’s service roughly thirty years earlier. They used magic to change minds and had their own guards, whose independence he now doubted. He estimated the Center usually held about two dozen prisoners; we have not counted or freed them.

Ireena explicitly ordered us to dismantle the Center and get its prisoners out. She stayed to organise the town, with guards protecting her. We offered to arrange delivery of a message to her brother, Ismark, using our contacts. Delivery has not happened on-mic.

Izek accompanied us inside. Two courtroom guards failed to recognise him and drew their weapons. At his request, we avoided killing them. Fëanor used Sleep; both guards failed their subsequent saves, and Lily tied them up. They remain alive and bound.

We found an office with an oversized chair, an extended cot, and decades of intake and treatment logs. Izek said he had no memory of the place. Lydia’s name was not found in the logbook searched; that does not settle what happened to her. The desk contained 23 gp, 16 cp, and one potion of healing. The potion was explicitly taken; taking the coins was not recorded. Drew spent a spell slot to recreate Clover after the earlier cannon had expired.

The next room held the twins, sitting in armchairs. Told to stop by order of the new burgomistress, they challenged our authority and called the change of government a coup. They called Strahd a monster, but defended their own work as “making them think right” and “cleaning their heads.”

They refused to stand down. One remarked that this would be annoying to clean up. That is where the session ended.

Next-session checklist

• Deal with the twins and free the prisoners. Henrik was arrested last session and has not yet been found or rescued.
• Remember the two bound courtroom guards. They are alive, not cleared out as defeated enemies.
• Keep Ireena’s government safe. Izek recognises her authority; Lucian is supporting her. Formal induction and lasting arrangements remain unfinished.
• Find Victor. His journal supplies evidence; his destination is unknown. Ernst is also missing.
• Follow up on Lydia and Stella. Lucian’s Krezk lead may help, but neither has been healed.
• Keep the bones secure. They have real protective value, with limits Strahd has now demonstrated.
• Carry forward the older leads: the Wizard of Wines, the lake/Bluto, the Druid Priestess’ Tome and scrolls from Wachterhaus, and Fëanor’s missing memories. None was resolved here.

Record based on the Session 14 recording. Spellings are standardised for readability; the full transcript remains verbatim. In-game plans, NPC claims, and completed actions are distinguished above.