Urwin Martikov

Danika asked on our first night at the Blue Water, taking care to say she was not commissioning us: the Martikovs own the winery down south, and the latest shipment was several days late, which is not common. "Our family wine keeps this entire bubble afloat." It has not come since. Urwin has watered the inn's wine to half, then to a tenth, and now serves one meal a week. He sent Danika and the boys down to the winery to see what was wrong. Muriel's partner Falkon went to report to the clan there and never came back: "I reckon there's something afoul in the winery." Roger's band, forty-odd years ago, were warned off it at a dozen miles.

It has a promise on it now too. After their mother died in the square, Karl and Nikolai told us the inn was running dry, and we gave them our word: shut down the Reformation Center, then go to the Wizards of Wine. Danika's route is to stop at Krezk, if they let us in, and turn south from there; about a week's travel. Once the Center is dealt with, that is where we are going.

Who: Proprietor of The Blue Water Inn, husband of Danika, father of Brom and Bray. Also a wereraven of The Ravens of Barovia.
Where: Behind his own bar, with not much left to serve.
Status: Alive, tired and hungry. An ally.
First met: Session 7, our first night in Vallaki.

Urwin was the first friendly face in Vallaki and turned out to be one of the town's secret keepers. He watched us for days before he trusted us, and then he showed us what he was. Since then the fire, the rationing and the silence from the winery have worn him thin. He gave us the best advice anyone in Vallaki has given us, and we haven't taken it.

The innkeeper

He met us at the door on our first night:

"Welcome. I am Urwin Martikov, proprietor of The Blue Water Inn. This is my lovely wife, Danika, at the bar, and my boys, Brom and Bray. Welcome to Vallaki. I can see you're new here."

A six-bed room was two gold a night, and there was potato pottage, or wolf steak if we were feeling rich. When Sirius asked about the old man staring at us from a corner table, Urwin told us: "That's Roger. He is what remains of the previous set of Mistwalkers." He remembered the last time. "I was a wee lad when it happened last. Bad times. I hope it doesn't happen again." Sirius promised we would do our level best to bring no harm. Later that night he was keeping the Wachter lads in line: "Lads, lads, I don't want to have to tell your mother that you're being rowdy now."

The wereraven

Letters kept appearing in our locked room: one about Lady Wachter's raven, and then "Trust is hard. Want to prove yourselves." Danika went squirrelly when we asked who had been in. We invited Urwin up to look at our window. Things, he suggested, just flutter in if you leave a window open. Drew mentioned that she kept an alarm spell on the room. The door had been locked. Only someone with keys could have got in. Urwin said that was a big leap. Someone said, "But we never told you the cake was poisoned."

He stopped pretending. He edged towards the window and turned into something half man and half raven, the same size as himself, folded up in black feathers. It was terrifying, and it was beautiful.

"I am a type of cursed. There's two in this valley. They are the wolfkin and us, the ravenkin."

We asked whether it was one of his kind that Roger's band had killed on the road all those years ago. "Yes. Great Uncle Frederick." We asked who had been following us. "We have an agent watching you. Mirabel." Sirius asked him to pass on a compliment about her plumage.

Back in his own shape, he told us who they were:

"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. And we are told by them joking Vistani that one day a group of adventurers will come and topple him. There have been seven hundred years of groups of adventurers, and he is yet to be toppled. So, sorry if I don't hold my breath."

They were information brokers, he said, not fighters. The clan holds the winery. The inn is their information hub, and also his home, so they don't make trouble there. "You have mostly proven yourselves. I was waiting to see something grand and exciting, but you've mostly proven yourselves."

He told us what the bones of St. Andral did: together with the church, they cast a hallowing over the city that weakens with distance. While they are in place, lesser undead cannot enter Vallaki. The devil can come into the city, but never into the church. Of Ernst: "Don't think of him as a person. Think of him as an appendage." Of Wachterhaus: warded to the nines. "The inside of her house is a black hole to us." Asked whether we should help the Baron or Lady Wachter, he would only say they were both bad.

Later, when one of us lingered, troubled, he said the thing we keep coming back to:

"You seem troubled, my friend. There is more to Barovia than Vallaki. You can just leave."

The bad days

That same night, when we came back from the canapé party, his wife and boys were gone. "The wife and kids, I've sent them off to go and check out what's happening in the winery. Given the things we discussed." The wine was half water. He had Ireena waiting tables for him, and he sent us to talk to Muriel.

After the church burned, he was a man at the end of his rope. "Oh, what a terror. You were meant to stop this. What's the point now? Half the city's gone." And then: "I hate living in Vallaki. I hate living in Barovia." We talked him round: there had been six vampires, and it could have been so much worse. He apologised for being dramatic and gave us commoners' cloaks from the Ravens' stock. Then he told us the thing he hadn't been able to stop. "Your friend, she left. I couldn't stop her." Ernst had come for Ireena, and she had gone with him. The wine was down to one part in ten.

On the morning of the festival there was almost nothing left. "I'm not gonna be able to serve you more than one meal per week." Drew gave him the beets we had liberated from Lady Wachter's storeroom. "You get a beet. You get a beet."

What we owe each other

We promised him we would try to bring no harm, which the town might dispute. The Ravens offered to gather information for us, at their own risk, and the offer stands. We are going west to the winery once Vallaki is settled, and his family is there. See Go West to the Winery.

What we still don't know

What has happened at the winery? The wagons stopped, Falkon never came back, and Danika and the boys went straight into whatever it is.
Who else in Vallaki is a Raven? "I cannot tell you who else might be one of me."
Will we ever take his advice and just leave? Probably not.