The Ravens of Barovia

Who

Wereravens: ravenkin, one of the two cursed kindreds of this valley. The wolves are the other. The Martikov family, who keep our inn, are Ravens.

Where

The Blue Water Inn is their information hub. Their clan holds the winery south of Krezk.

Status

Allies. Their courier Falkon has gone missing at the winery.

First heard from

Session 9, in a letter on the floor of our locked room.

The Ravens are the closest thing Barovia has to a resistance. They are spies and letter-writers, not soldiers, and they have kept their secret for centuries. They were watching us long before we knew they existed, and Roger's story is what happens to Mistwalkers who don't recognise them. We have a standing order about them: never harm a raven.

Before we knew

There were ravens from the start. Two sat on a roof by the tavern in the village of Barovia, very still, very watchful, and Ismark told us ravens were lucky here. One stared back at us from his garden. On the road to Vallaki a raven joined our camp, looking exactly like the one from the village, and ignored the food we put out. When Lily tried to talk to it the way she talks to animals, nothing connected. "It's not a beast. It's not an animal." Ireena told us ravens were boons.

In Vallaki, Roger told us what his band did to a creature on the road forty-five years ago, "half-raven, half-man," which greeted them in peace and died for it. Barovia turned against them from that day. He told us twice: don't kill the ravens.

The letters

The night we came back from dinner at Wachterhaus, with Sirius shaken to the core by the fiend on Lady Wachter's perch, there was a note on our bedroom floor. The room had been locked. It told us not to take the lady's pet raven as a sign that the Ravens of Barovia supported her. "That being is no true raven." Sirius sat down on the floor with his head in his hands and breathed again.

We wrote back and left it where we had found theirs: "Dear Ravens of Barovia, firstly, might I note how cool your name is?" We thanked them for the lovely penmanship and asked for a meeting. We signed it From us.

The next day, a flutter at the window and a second note:

Trust is hard. Want to prove yourselves.

The reveal

We worked it out: a locked door, a squirrelly landlady, and only one family with keys. We invited Urwin upstairs, and he turned into a wereraven in our bedroom. There are two cursed kindreds in this valley, he told us, the wolfkin and the ravenkin. The raven-man Roger's band killed was his Great Uncle Frederick. They had an agent watching us.

"We are the Ravens of Barovia. We are against the devil. It's very hard to be against the devil in a land where he is almost literally the land. He has basically godlike powers here, but he is not omnipotent. We have still ways to work against him, and we try."

The Vistani say that one day a group of adventurers will come and topple him. There have been seven hundred years of adventurers, and Urwin is not holding his breath. They are information brokers, not fighters, and they are probably, in Urwin's words, the only good group in this whole place: "us and our clan in the winery."

What they told us:

• The bones of St. Andral and the church together cast a hallowing over Vallaki that weakens with distance. While the bones are in place, lesser undead cannot come into the city at all. The devil can come into the city, but never into the church.
• Lady Wachter's house is warded to the nines, and they struggle to get anyone inside. "The inside of her house is a black hole to us."
• Ernst is not a person. He is an appendage.
• They would gather information for us, at some risk to themselves. That offer stands.

And, later that day, from Urwin: "There is more to Barovia than Vallaki. You can just leave."

The active part

Not all of them are brokers. Muriel Vinshaw married into the clan, and had been following us since the village of Barovia. "I am more of the active part of the Ravens of Barovia." She fought beside us for two days, killed two vampires with her beak at the Coffin Works, got us into Wachterhaus, and then decided it was too rich for her blood. The night we met her, she told us her partner Falkon had flown to the winery to report to the main clan and had not come back. "I reckon there's something afoul in the winery."

Urwin had already sent Danika and the boys there. The wine at the Blue Water went to half water, then a tenth, then one meal a week.

Confirmed, by the devil

When the devil came to Vallaki's square, he told us what the Ravens had told us. The restored bones had spoiled his usual way of watching the town and would hinder his agents, but they would not stop him walking in. He had had to come in person to see what we'd done.

What we owe them

We promised Roger we would not kill ravens, and we promised ourselves the same. Standing order: never harm a raven, and use divine sense before violence on anything with feathers. Their family is at the winery, and we mean to go there. See Go West to the Winery.

What we still don't know

• What has happened at the winery, and to Falkon?
• Was the raven that watched our camp on the road one of them? Muriel says the Ravens were watching us from the village. We think so.
• Are the ravens of the lady on Sirius's blank card the same Ravens? Sirius believes her ravens are our friends.
• Who else in Vallaki is one of them?