Cast · Vallaki's guard

Izek

AliveAlly

The Baron's captain, with a demon's arm, who held our paladin by the foot, listened to a hug and a speech, and said 'Hold.' Now he serves the office, and the office is Ireena.

With us inside the Reformation Center, on the burgomistress's orders. He has no memory of the office built for a man his size.

Last seen: The Reformation Center
Belongs to: Vallaki
First met: Session 10
Last seen in: Session 14

What we owe, and what we are doing about it

Deal with the Twins

The elves who run the Reformation Center say they are "cleaning heads", and they will not stop for Ireena.

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.

The Reformation Center since Session 14
Find Victor

The Baron's son. His own book says what he did to Stella, and he left by a door that only opens once.

Victor Vallakovich took half an hour out of Sirius, two days out of Fëanor ("a nice boy, boy height"), and, we think, something out of Izek, who cannot remember ever climbing the stairs to his attic: "Every time I go up there, things seem to change around." He skipped the festival, which nobody was allowed to skip. When we kicked in his door that afternoon, the room was empty apart from his book and a teleportation circle on the floor, still warm. Fëanor read it as single-use, damaged and untraceable. The book is his own account of breaking Stella Wachter, one memory wipe after another, "and that's how he learned how to be a good mind mage."

We have no idea where he went, and no trail to follow. Barovia does not let people out, so he is somewhere in it. Stella, and her brothers, deserve to see him answer for it.

since Session 14
Free the Prisoners

Ireena's first order as burgomistress: empty the Reformation Center. Henrik is somewhere inside.

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.

The Reformation Center since Session 14
Keep Ireena's Government Standing

We said her name in the square. Now the chair has to hold.

The square chose Ireena because Sirius proposed her and Father Lucian, glancing round nervously, said "she has my support". Izek follows her because he serves "the Office of the Burgomaster". She has never governed anything ("I suppose I need to get inducted"), and she is afraid the town will slide into anarchy the moment we turn our backs. Minutes after she was chosen, the devil stood in the same square and called it "not too untenable. She is of the right stock." He also said he has always given her her space, and that he cannot watch us here any more with the bones back in place.

While we are at the Reformation Center she is writing to her brother Ismark, and we promised to get the letter to him; the Morninglord provides. Sirius has told the whole town to come to church in the morning. After that we mean to head west, which means leaving her with Izek, Lucian and a town that has just watched two rulers die.

Vallaki since Session 14

Who: Captain of Vallaki's guard. About eight feet tall, with a small head on a huge frame and a right arm that is wrong: as big as a grown man, wrapped in leather, glowing faintly, and able to burn, grasp and throw. He carries his axe in his left hand. He is right-handed. We have agreed never to discuss why.
Where: Inside the Reformation Center with us, at the twins' door.
Status: Alive, and following Ireena.
First met: Session 10, when he came round a corner and filled the street.

Before we met him

Roger warned us first: a "horrible right arm… like somebody grafted a demon's arm to it… merciless. Do not get on his bad side." Lady Wachter said the Baron had raised him since he was "found with his arm", that he had fire powers, and that "He will not be swayed. He will have to be crushed."

The summons

We were leaving the Workyard when the street emptied. Where there had been one guard to a corner there were suddenly six, eighteen in sight, all carefully not looking at us. Then he came round the corner: "The baron wants to see youse." Sirius asked his name. "The baron wants to see youse now." (It's a long name, we decided.)

He stood silent through our audience with the Baron. When the Baron sent Sirius up to his son's attic alone, it was Izek who took him, on the order "Don't let him in any of the other rooms." At the door on our way out, the Baron remembered one last thing ("Izek, grab that one"), and that was all the ceremony there was to Fëanor becoming the Baron's guest.

"It is impossible"

The morning after the canapé party he was waiting in the Blue Water's taproom: "The baron wants a status report." We told him, truthfully, that we had found six undead in Vallaki. "There are no undead in Vallaki." We had seen them. "It is impossible." What if we brought him evidence? "You literally can't, because it's impossible." A very good speech from one of us got only "It sounds believable to say, but it can't be true." What he wanted was "a piece of paper or something that said Lady Wachter's working with Strahd," by the next morning. When we asked which hand he favoured, he wanted to know whether we found his arm amusing.

We kept Henrik's name from him. A few hours later the impossible undead were loose in the streets.

The church

The back doors of burning St. Andral's burst open, two vampires were flung in to land on the flagstones, and Izek came charging after them, screaming, flame pouring off his arm, with two of his guards behind him. He had caught the escaped spawn in the streets and brought them to us.

The spawn tore out the throats of both his guards in front of him. "Frederick, no." And then, "No, Petru too." The Baron's creature knew his men by name. "I don't know what you are, but you'll pay for that." He took one spawn by the head with his burning hand, told it "I will destroy you, starting with your teeth," and hurled it twenty feet into the flames, where it burned to a crisp. Drew made a show of wrapping him in Clover's protective light, so that he would see it, and it saved him from a falling roof.

Afterwards he stood staring into the fire. One of us read his face and saw a man whose world had cracked: "The baron promised. The baron promised me. This can't happen. This couldn't happen… Evil can't come into Vallaki." We told him we had tried to tell him. When we asked about organising a bucket line to save what was left, he said "Do what you must," and walked away.

Most of him back

That evening, as we restored the bones, he came up the church steps with two guards, towing Fëanor. "A token of friendship, we are re-releasing him into your custody." He snapped off Fëanor's armband: "You can have most of him back." It is the closest thing to a joke we have ever heard from him.

Then the other thing. He read the letter we had taken from Lady Wachter's chest ("Oof. This will help") and thanked us for our help against "those men in masks who came and pretended to be vampires." He said it to our faces, as a memory: "you remember. We were together. The men in very obvious masks were throwing firebombs." He had made his report to the Baron, and the Baron had asked him to go and see his son. He told us the festival was moved to the next day, that Lady Wachter would hang on our testimony, and that Henrik was in the Reformation Center. Then he walked off with the letter, and we were too spent to stop him.

That was when we understood. The man who burned a vampire with his own hand now remembered masked agitators. "It's not what Izek remembers. He remembers different things."

Hold

At the festival, when the Baron called Father Lucian a seditionist and ordered the guards to take him, Sirius appealed to Izek's own memory of the church: "You know what you saw… You are better than this, Izek." Izek told the guards, "Guards, hold still. This doesn't seem right. This doesn't seem right." One of us told him, in front of the whole square, "Your memory has been tampered with, friend, as has mine." He shook off Sirius's Zone of Truth, which means he can lie. We have never caught him doing it.

Then the square turned, and he did what he was made for. His arm reached up and closed on Sirius's foot, ten feet in the air, and the Baron shouted, "Izek, kill him." Fëanor's silver lance went through the Baron and left Izek standing. Sirius, held fast, did not fight. He hugged him, and told him he had seen "a burning passion to save this town" in him, that Vargas had been manipulating him, that "We can do this together with Ireena and this group… Call this off and we will work it through together. You have my word." The crowd nearest them stopped to watch.

"Hold." Then, quieter, the truest thing anyone said all day:

"I don't know what to do. I have always had instruction. The son by rights should be in charge, but that feels wrong."

His guards held. He let Sirius go.

The office

Afterwards: "I serve the Office of the Burgomaster." Would he serve a burgomistress? He would. To Ireena, later: "I am at your command." He left guards with her, and came with us to the Center with none.

He knew Victor was in the attic, and kicked the door in for us, and admitted, "I no, do not remember ever walking these stairs." Every time he goes up there, he said, "things seem to change around." Asked how he felt about someone being in his mind: "I do not like this."

He told us what he knows of the twins, and that he tries to avoid the Center: "I have not really been much in there personally." Inside, the guards by the throne did not recognise him and drew. He asked us, "Try not to kill my guards if at all possible," and we did not. Then we opened an office with an oversized chair and a cot lengthened with a crate, for someone of his height, and asked if it was his bed. "I have no memory of being here."

We hate that we like him. We are fairly sure somebody has been taking things out of his head for a long time.

What we owe him

Sirius's word, given with his arms round him: we will work it through together. And his guards, spared, as he asked.

What we still don't know

What did the Baron promise him, and why did he believe evil could never come into Vallaki?
Who has been in his head: the Baron's son, whose stairs he cannot remember climbing, or the twins, in whose building there is a bed his size that he cannot remember? Perhaps both. That is our theory, not something we know.
Where did the arm come from? Lady Wachter said only that he was found with it.