Rose & Thorn †

Who

Rosavalda and Thornboldt Durst, the two smiling children in the family portrait at Death House.

Where

Buried together in the woods beside the road, where the house used to be.

Status

Dead long before we came. At rest now, we believe.

First met

Session 2, in the locked attic room. Last seen in Session 3, at their own graveside.

Rose and Thorn were the first people in Barovia to ask us for anything, and the first promise we kept here. Their mother locked them in the attic and never came back. They were still there, waiting, when we opened the door. Drew promised to bury them somewhere nice, and she did.

The attic room

The iron key from the study desk opened a locked door at the top of the house. Inside were two small beds with lumps under the covers, toys on the floor and a dollhouse. Sirius lifted a cover with his sword and found a child's bones. "Let's pretend those are chicken bones," he suggested. Then Drew knelt to look at the toys, and a boy appeared: "Don't touch my toys. Don't touch them." Sirius left the room. A girl put herself between Drew and her brother: "Don't touch him. Stay back." Drew asked if she was Rosavalda. "I'm Rose."

Rose took Drew aside and told her plainly:

"Look. We're not silly. I know what we are. We were locked in here. It got very hungry. And then we were no longer hungry."

The monster in the basement, she said, was "our family. They did some bad things." Mama had been bringing bad sorts into the house who did magics. And when Osric asked about the baby in the nursery downstairs:

"He's our half-brother. Mama is very unhappy about it. She was talking before she locked us in here about using him. We screamed. We said no. But we think she took him into the basement. She said something about innocence and sacrifice. I don't think she did anything good with him."

What she asked, and what we promised

"Lady adventurer, I would ask you, bury our bones. We need to be released. Just take our bones with you when you leave and bury them. Set us free."

Drew asked whether they would like one bag or two. Rose thought that very insensitive, and added a condition: "If you hurt him, I will haunt you till your dying days." Drew said that seemed fair. She wrapped Thorn's bones with a toy soldier and Rose's with a doll, while Thorn watched her like a hawk and decided it was all right. Then she promised: "As long as we don't all die here horribly, I promise that I will bury you somewhere nice." And they were gone.

They left us one more gift. "The dollhouse, it's very accurate. We made sure that it was accurate. It might help you." It showed every secret door and the hidden stair from the attic to the cellars, and we copied it into a map.

Keeping it

Down in the family crypts their coffins were empty. We asked whether they wanted to be buried there, and a small voice answered from nowhere: "Not here. This is an evil place. Nothing good happens here. We don't want to stay in the house."

So we carried them out, with the maid's bones as well, and when the mist closed behind us and the house was gone, we buried the three of them in the woods beside the road. The children and the maid appeared one last time while we did it.

"Thank you. You have defeated a great evil, although a greater evil still stays here. May the Morning Lord protect you, and may you stay out of the sight of the devil, Strahd."

It was the first time anyone said his name to us. None of us knew the right words to lay them to rest, and someone pointed out that they seemed to manage well enough by themselves.

What we still don't know

• What was their mother's ritual for? The cult's chamber had done whatever it was meant to do, long before we arrived. See The Durst Household.
• The greater evil that "still stays here": we know his name now.