Father Lucian

Who

Priest of St. Andral's Church in Vallaki, with his eight-year-old altar boy and chosen successor, Yeska, recently instructed by Sirius in push-ups and in keeping a confidence.

Where

His church, now mostly ash and open to the sky, with the bones of St. Andral restored beneath the altar and the Baroness in his care.

Status

Alive and on our side. He has publicly backed Ireena as burgomistress.

First met

Session 7, the evening we reached Vallaki.

A safe place, usually

He greeted five armed strangers kindly: "I hope the rumors are not true about what happens with mistwalkers, but you would never be blamed. Thank you for visiting the church of St. Andral. All are welcome here. This is a safe place, usually." He took Fëanor aside as a fellow man of the cloth, and within a conversation he had trusted us with everything.

The church's relic, the bones of St. Andral, had kept it hallowed: "Evil cannot tread here. Usually." They lay in a crypt under the altar, and six days before we arrived they had gone. "We are no longer currently holy ground… Evil can tread here if it wills." Only he and little Yeska had known where they were, and he suspected the boy had told someone: "It was meant to be a secret. Boys will be boys." (One of us muttered that this was rich, from a man telling it all to strangers he had just met.) "Right now, we are unsafe. The bones of St. Andral are gone. I need a miracle. You are a miracle."

His only suspect was Milivoj, the groundskeeper, who has the only other keys. Sirius got the rest out of Yeska: the boy had told Milivoj, because Milivoj asked out of nowhere and is "big, and he's strong, and he's cool." Lucian's stories said the devil had not set foot in Vallaki in over two hundred years. He has now. About Ireena sleeping in his pews, he was honest: "Right now, it's just a building." We chose not to tell her.

Believing the best of people

Told that Milivoj had confessed, he sighed like a tired parent: "I suspected as much. He's a good lad at heart. He never did listen at the sermons. Oh, Milivoj." He thought the Wachters were reasonable sorts, and asked us not to tell the lady about the theft. When we came back and told him Lady Wachter's own man had the bones and her pet raven was a fiend, he could not take it in: "She is a light of the community. She does such good works… I don't think Lady Wachter's gonna hurt you. She's, she's, uh, she's Lady Wachter." He offered to keep the demon's locket for us. We said we would think about it once the bones were back. If we vanished, he agreed only that he would give our words "a lot more credence."

The altar

When the vampires came out of the Coffin Works, two of them went straight for his church, and by the time we got there it was burning. A guard carried Yeska out alive. We ran in and found Lucian standing on his own altar with the symbol of the sun raised over his head, holding two vampires at bay by nothing but the strength of what he believes: "The power of the Morninglord compels you… Friends, friends, there are undead in the Church of St. Andral. All is lost." Sirius: "They won't be for long."

He cast Sanctuary on Lily whether she liked it or not ("You will not hurt a child of the Morninglord"). The roof knocked him flat. He got up and burned one of the vampires to dust with a word. Then he reached under the altar, pulled out a mace, and told the rest, "Evil creature, get out of this church." We had assumed he was made entirely of faith and cardigan. He bopped a vampire with it.

One of the vampires said, mid-fight, "The master wants the priest dead." Father Lucian's response to being the devil's particular target was to wade towards the fight: "This is my church." "I don't need defending." Sirius, who is literally a holy defender of priests, had to talk him into standing back and casting from a distance, and it took two tries.

What was left

Most of the church burned. Sirius went back to the altar before the roof came in and brought him out the little sunburst statuette: "Remember, Father, Lathander lives in our hearts, not in our places." Lucian held it and said, "Thank you, my son. But this church, it was a symbol for so many." Sirius promised we would rebuild it stone by stone.

He still could not believe it of Lady Wachter. "So you've said before, but that seems so hard to believe… The vampires I believe, but the Lady Wachter?" We said we thought we had earned some trust. "You have. Thank you for saving me. Thank you."

We needed this

That evening we found him on the steps of his roofless church, holding the statuette as if it were the last one in the world. We showed him the letter we had taken from Lady Wachter's chest, and he read it: "This must be true. I, she—" But bones first. His altar rolls aside on greased wheels to a rough stair and a small stone room below, untouched by the fire, and we laid the bones of St. Andral back on the sub-altar, respectfully, with his hands on them.

A wave of holy warmth rolled out through the ruin, and for the first time since the fire the place felt like a sanctuary. His verdict, with the precision of the truly exhausted: "Thank you, my children… I'm not gonna say it's a bit late, but… thank you regardless. This is, we needed this."

That night he told Sirius and Fëanor, who stayed to guard the bones with him, that he would get architects in to rebuild. "The church is the people and its rituals, not the roof, and never has been." "The roof helps."

He said it out loud

At the festival the town had been told there had never been any vampires in Vallaki. Osric called Father Lucian forward in the rain, and he told the whole square: "I, in my place as priest of the Morninglord, father of the church that you all attend, I attest that, yes, there were vampires in Vallaki not but yesterday." The Baron called it sedition and ordered him taken, and only Izek holding his guards back saved him. He did not take a word of it back.

When Sirius proposed Ireena as burgomistress and asked him to stand up beside her, he did, carefully, looking around him as he spoke: "She seems a good soul at heart… we might need to make sure that things are established a bit more before, but she has my support."

After the square he took Lydia, the Baroness, still smiling, to his church. He also gave us a lead: "there's an abbey near Krezk, which has someone of great priestly might who can do great healings of both the body and minds." A place to ask, not a promise. We have written it down for Lydia, for Stella, and for the two of us who are missing time.

What we owe him

• The bones: found and restored. Kept.
• His church: Sirius promised to rebuild it stone by stone.
• A congregation: Sirius sent the whole square home with an invitation to service at St. Andral's the next morning.
• The locket: we offered to leave it with him once the bones were back. It is still with us, and bound for the abbot.

What we still don't know

• Who guards the bones now, and how far does their protection reach? The devil told us to our faces that they blind him and may stop his agents, but that he can still enter the town.
• Can hallowing be raised over a ruin? Answered, Session 13: it can. We felt it.
• Can the abbey near Krezk heal Lydia?