Ilimir and Ivalice

Ilimir and Ivalice, brother and sister, are elves who offered their services to the Baron about thirty years ago, by Izek's count. They change people's minds with magic ("they have no small magics"), they keep a few guards of their own who "might not be entirely their own selves", and Izek tries to stay out of their building. We opened their door on the evening of the festival with Izek at our backs and told them the new Burgomistress wants it all stopped. They said they work for the Burgomaster, called it a coup, agreed with us that the devil is a monster, and described their work as "making them think right. Cleaning their heads." Their last words were "This is going to be annoying to clean up."

We are standing in their doorway, tired, with initiative about to be rolled. Izek asked us to try not to kill his guards, and so far we haven't. First we stop them. Then we find out what "cleaning" means, and who else in Vallaki has had it done.

Who: Ilimir and Ivalice, brother and sister, elves, and the people who actually run the Reformation Center in Vallaki. They are hard to tell apart.
Where: A room off the corridor behind the Center's courtroom, in a pair of armchairs.
Status: Alive and hostile. We are standing in their doorway.
First met: Session 14, on the new burgomistress's first order.

What we heard before we met them

The Baron spoke of them as if they were a good bakery: "the twins are marvelous at what they do… experts at this sort of encouragement to think in a more righteous way." And, in the same breath, "Either people come out of the Reformation Center thinking more appropriately, or they don't come out at all. I prefer the first one, of course."

Ernst told us what that means from the inside: the tea that addles the mind, the room where you smile or drown in terror, the dark basement for the no-hopers. Roger said people come out wrong. The bard said the Center runs on dark magics. The Baroness smiled beside her husband the whole time, and we have wondered ever since whether she had been in there.

Izek's briefing

After the festival, Izek told us what he knows. They are "elves proper… not dark elves", rare wanderers into Barovia, and "whilst most wanderers end up trying to be all heroic, these two offered their services to the Baron when he was starting up his jolly ways." That was about thirty years ago by his reckoning, very early in the Baron's reign, not long after the old Baron "died in very mysterious circumstances."

"They have various means of changing people's minds. They have no small magics themselves. They have a small cadre of guards who have spent some time in their company, and who I would now suspect might not be entirely their own selves." They keep to the Center and would be "a bit of a hard nut to crack", though he did not think them "super powerful people." The Center usually holds about two dozen prisoners. He did not want to send his guards against them.

Inside the Center

The front doors were not even latched. In the courtroom, two guards by the throne did not recognise Izek ("I don't recognize you. Who are you? You must be bad") and drew on him. They did not look quite in their right minds. Izek asked us to spare them, so Fëanor put them to sleep and Lily tied them up; they are alive, and the knots only tighten when they struggle.

Behind the courtroom, the first door opened on an office: a big desk with an oversized chair, shelves of logbooks going back decades ("aversion therapy tried, successful", over and over), and a cot lengthened with a crate at its foot, for someone very tall. Izek said he had no memory of ever being there. The Baroness's name was not in the logbook we checked.

The next door opened on the twins, sitting in armchairs, chatting.

The conversation

"Hello. I weren't expecting visitors in the lodge today." We told them that by order of the burgomistress they must cease all activities.

"Burgomistress? Has there been an update we haven't been told about?" We told them the Baron was dead. "That's not gonna work for us. We work for the Burgomaster… Who enables us to ply our trade." We explained that there had been a big crowd, it had got a little bit messy, and the Baron had ordered us to die, so we had rather defended ourselves. "That sounds like a coup."

One of us said the Count had not seen it that way. "You talk to the devil." Sirius asked what they thought of him, and whether he just needed a good ball. "I think he's evil." "He, he is a monster." They thought we might have his blessing. We told them he was toying with us like a cat with a mouse.

Then we asked what they think they are doing to people. "We're making them think right. Cleaning their heads." We said, in so many words, to stop that. "You have no authority here. We are doing what is best for Vallaki. We are making sure they think right." One of them sneered that somebody was only the Burgomaster's lackey, and that "we know how to make sure people say whatever we want them to say." We gave them a few seconds to change their tone, or come and hear it from the burgomistress herself.

"This is going to be annoying to clean up."

They were not surprised by us, and we did not catch them off guard. That is where we stand.

What we still don't know

What does "cleaning" actually involve, beyond the tea and the rooms?
How many of the Center's guards are theirs, and how far gone?
What did they do to Izek? There is a bed his size in their building, and he does not remember it. (Our theory, not a fact: somebody has been taking things out of his head for a long time, and the twins are one of our two suspects. The other is the Baron's son.)
Where is Henrik, and the other two dozen?
Does "annoying to clean up" mean us?
We have written down that they are not fighters and that everything they do is aimed at the mind. That is a guess. Nothing has proved it yet.