Cast
Vasha and Radu
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The werewolf in the silver net and the mate still chained in the hags' mill. The pies were made of them. We gave our word we would come back.
Vasha is free and watching the windmill. Radu is still chained inside it.
- Last seen
- The Windmill
- First met
- Session 6
- Last seen in
- Session 7
What we owe, and what we are doing about it
-
Go Back for Radu
Our word to Vasha: we will come back and see off the hags. Her mate Radu is still chained in the mill.
At the windmill, Granny's cart held a woman bound in a silver net. We took her with us when we fled, and flee we did: two of us were turned into frogs, Clover was smashed, and three hags laughed us off the hill. By the fire that night the woman, Vasha, told us what was in the pies. It was her arm, and her mate Radu's, hacked off and grown back again and again. Radu is still chained in the mill.
Vasha stayed behind to watch the place. "I would really appreciate you coming back and trying to help mount a rescue, but I'm not going to expect anything of you." Our answer was "You have my word that we will come back and attempt to vanquish these hags, with you or without you." If we ever meet the pack in the west, she says the words "Radu and Vasha need help" might buy us a hearing before Kiril's wolves tear us apart.
The mill is back east, two days short of Vallaki, and we are about to go west. We have not forgotten.
- Who
- Vasha, a Vallaki girl bitten by a wolf-creature and cursed, and her mate Radu, a werewolf born. The hags' prisoners.
- Where
- Vasha stayed near The Windmill to watch it. Radu is chained inside.
- Status
- Both alive when we last heard. Vasha free, Radu not.
- First met
- Session 6, as muffled screaming from Granny's pie cart. We met Vasha properly by our campfire in Session 7. We have never seen Radu.
We went to the windmill thinking it was somewhere to sleep, and came away having lost our first real fight in Barovia, with a netted werewolf dragged along behind us. She is why we know what was in the pies. Her mate is still in there, and we promised her we would come back for him.
The woman in the net
Lily opened the side of Granny's cart looking for pies and found a grown woman, gagged and wrapped in a net. Fëanor went to cut her loose, and she begged him not to:
"Don't take me out of this net right now. I am cursed. This net is silver. It's stopping me turning."
There was a full moon somewhere above the clouds, she said, and the silver was all that kept her human. "My partner, they've already had him. He's in there. If you can save him." Then the hags came out of the mill, and it went badly. When we ran, Lily dragged her down the hill net and all, with two frogs in her arms that had recently been Sirius and Osric, while Vasha shouted after her mate.
By the fire
She stayed human all night inside the net, straining against it. "Don't let me out. I will turn if the moon is out." And somewhere in that long evening she told us what the pies were made of:
"It's our arm, again and again and again."
The hags had caught her and Radu out hunting, chained them in silver, and started cutting off their arms. Werewolves grow back anything that isn't done to them by magic or silver: "That's all werewolves." So the two of them were a larder that never ran out. There were no missing children. There didn't need to be. Lily, who had been eating those pies for days, felt bad about having eaten a person while still wanting to eat a person. We cremated every pie we had.
In the morning she told us the rest. She was born in Vallaki, "a normal girl," until a wolf-like creature bit her and let her go, and the next night she woke in the forest covered in blood. Radu found her, explained what she was and took her in. He was born with the curse and can control it. She can't. "I go to sleep, and I wake up covered in blood usually." She turns at the full moon, once a month. Fëanor asked, for the avoidance of doubt, what kind of mate Radu was. "We are pair bonded. We just bone."
The pack
There is a pack of them in the west, most of them born to the curse, and not friendly to anyone outside it. "I wouldn't call them nice people. I've fallen in with them because I kind of had to." They don't turn people as a rule: "Usually people don't get turned, people get killed." They aren't organised either. "They just do stuff."
"Kiril is our alpha. K-I-R-I-L. She controls the pack. She says what to do and what not to do. If she knew about us, maybe she'd do something, but she would most likely tear you to pieces as you got within three hundred…"
If we ever have to talk to them, the words that might buy us a hearing are that Radu and Vasha need help.
What we promised
She wouldn't come with us. "I am going to stay near here and watch and gather intel. I can't leave Radu." And she asked for nothing: "I would really appreciate you coming back and trying to help mount a rescue, but I'm not going to expect anything of you."
We gave our word anyway:
"You have my word that we will come back and attempt to vanquish these hags, with you or without you."
We also offered to carry a message to her pack. The windmill is east of Vallaki and we have been going west ever since, but we have not forgotten. See Go Back for Radu.
What we still don't know
- Is Radu still alive, and how much longer can he last in there?
- What happens to Vasha, a Vallaki girl who can never really go home, when this is over?
- Is the pack in the west the "den of beasts" from Lily's reading, where "one who howls there" will need her tooth? It's our best guess, nothing more.
- Would Kiril really help, if she knew?
