Henrik the Coffin Maker

Ireena gave the order in the Baron's mansion, on her first afternoon in charge: "Please dismantle the Reformation Center as much as you can. I do not want it to be going on." And: "Empty the hall. I don't want that kind of thing in Vallaki anymore." Izek reckons it holds about two dozen people at a time. One of them should be Henrik the coffin maker, arrested the day before the festival for "harbouring the seditious elements" that came out of his shop. He told us the truth about the bones and the crates when it was dangerous to, and he is in here partly because of what we did next. Udo Lukovich, whom we found chained up in the Baron's mansion, was picked out of this building's intake.

So far we have been through the courtroom and one office, full of logbooks with lines like "aversion therapy tried, successful". Nobody has been let out yet. The two courtroom guards are asleep and tied, and alive, and need remembering on the way out. We keep telling each other there are innocent people in here. Next, once the twins are dealt with: find where the prisoners are kept, count them, and get every one of them home.

Who: Henrik, Vallaki's coffin maker, who lives in his own shop, the Coffin Works, in the production district. Very proud of his special nails, which curve in a particular way as they go into the wood.
Where: In the Reformation Center, as far as we know.
Status: Alive when they took him. Arrested for what came out of his shop.
First met: Session 10, when Lily picked his lock.

The nails

We found a handful of long iron nails on the floor of the Vallakovich crypt, where the stolen bones had been left. Lady Wachter told us which smith to ask, and the smith in the Workyard knew them at a glance: "Oh, you've got Henrik's nails. Henrik takes great pride in his specialized coffin nails. And he's a coffin maker." He opens by appointment, and mostly finds his trade by sitting in the inn listening for who has died. When Drew said that people only need coffins until suddenly they do, the smith told her that was very dark of her.

Next door to the Coffin Works is Celegal's Bowyer, run by a chatty, grey-skinned, long-eared elf, who told us under the writ that something odd had been going on: "He had some coffins delivered to him, which I found very odd. A coffin maker getting a delivery of coffins."

The confession

Nobody answered the door, so Lily picked the lock in front of two guards and the Baron's writ. Henrik slammed it on us ("What the hell are you doing? This is a private residence"). The first thing we did was look at his shoes. Dirty workman's boots. He is not the man with the very nice shoes who paid Milivoj.

Inside he would not say a word: "I'm not saying anything. You can take me to the Reformation for all I care." Sirius's senses found six undead in the room over our heads. We walked Henrik towards the inn, Sirius's charm got nowhere, and then Drew simply levelled with him: the Baron terrifies us too, he is holding one of our friends, and we are only trying not to die and not to kill anyone.

He broke, and took us into a quiet side alley to say it. "I'm being pulled from pillar to post. I've been threatened by Wachter's man, Ernst." Lady Wachter wanted the bones. Hours after Milivoj left them in the crypt, Henrik collected them and handed them to Ernst. "And then she had me in deep." The next day six coffins were delivered to his shop with orders never to open them, and he has not been upstairs since. "I either get killed by them or killed by her or killed by her men."

He is not a rich man and has no friends to stay with ("I'm not very social"), but he slept at the Blue Water that night.

What was upstairs

We went back in the morning with Muriel. There was no paperwork anywhere in the building: no delivery note, no manifest, nothing. There were thirty empty coffins downstairs, and on the stairs an expensive, pristine alarm ward that none of us spotted until it went off. The six were what we had feared: vampire spawn, moved out of the coffins into six person-sized crates, one with a small silver mark on the side. Four went out through the windows into the morning streets. Two stayed and nearly killed Lily, and Muriel destroyed them both. Within the hour St. Andral's was on fire.

Taken

He paid for it. When Izek brought Fëanor back to us, he told us, as though it were good news, that Henrik had been arrested "for harboring the seditious elements" who had only been pretending to be vampires, and sent to the Reformation Center. One of us said we did not think Henrik was part of it. "The seditious elements definitely came from his shop," said Izek. "It has happened. No need to worry yourselves."

We also had the debate about coffin makers that night. "You tell me the last time you met a coffin maker that you thought was a fine, upstanding servant of the Morninglord." "People always die. It's one of the most stable incomes in the village." "Compelling." We know the joke is carrying some guilt.

Where things stand

We kept his name from Izek when it might have mattered, and it did not save him. The Baron who sent him to the Center is dead. Ireena's first order as burgomistress was to empty the place, and we are inside it with Izek now. We have searched one office and met the twins who run it. We have not found Henrik. He has been in there since the night before the festival.

What we still don't know

What has the Center done to him in that time?
Who delivered the coffins, and who set a ward that good on a coffin maker's stairs?
When we find him, will he believe we have come to help?