Field notes

A false fire and a true story at the canapé party, a new friend with a beak, a gift from the bard, six crates that were never going to wait for the festival, and a city on fire. David was still away, and Fëanor was still the Baron's guest. We stopped mid-fight in a burning church.

At the canapé party

We were all inside, having followed Lily in. (The printed recap said otherwise; we corrected it.)

"Fire!" Lily found a spot where a three-foot-one gnome goes unnoticed, under the furniture, and used her gnomish knack for illusion to throw a voice into the kitchen across the hall: "Fire, fire, fire, fire!" She hadn't told any of us she was going to. Haliq, the footman in the hall, calmed the room: "Stay calm, everyone. I don't think that's anything to worry about." There was no smoke and no smell. Drew tried to help it along: "Oh no, where is everyone? We're all going to die! We need to get out!" It didn't take. The crowd was merely confused. Sirius, who hadn't worked out that his friends were behind it, asked our hostess whether we should be concerned. "Probably not. My house is very safe, in a lot of ways."

Ernst's story. Sirius had sidled up to Ernst and mentioned the Baron's writ. Ernst already knew: we'd been flashing it about, and we'd "basically burglarised poor Bowyer", who was very distressed and paid way over the odds for a crossbow. Sirius asked whether the writ extended to bringing him in for questions. Ernst answered with a story.

• Two brothers. At one of the Baron's festivals the younger threw a rotten apple at the Baron. The elder tried to take the blame, and the guards took them both to the Reformation Center.
• "They have a tea that addles the mind and makes it hard to know truth from fiction. They have a room where if you're not constantly smiling, you are filled with bone-deep terror, and they leave you there for hours."
• The elder kept saying, "I believe in you. We will not break." They didn't break, so they became "no-hopers", kept in a lightless basement where creatures patrol the halls and bring food. Not much food.
• The elder passed his food through the wall to his brother: "You're still growing. I have plenty."
• Meanwhile the lady threw parties like this one, and kept up the pressure until the brothers were released. The elder hadn't eaten for weeks, and he died.
• "You probably can guess I was the younger brother there. I am going nowhere near the baron. There's only one devil in Barovia, and you are flashing his writ."

He wasn't lying, and there was fury in his eyes. "Haliq in through the hall, young Madalena there, each one of us was rescued by the lady. You, I hope, have not picked the evil side here." Sirius: "I've not picked the evil side. I'm not the one that took bones from the church." "Don't know what you possibly mean." Sirius told him there's a reason there are undead in the city. "There is evil in the city, certainly." Sirius said if Ernst wanted to come and see them, he knew where we were.

As we left, Lady Wachter said her piece: "I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in Vallaki. I just want to leave it out there that no one is beyond redemption. Anyone who comes to their senses can still do business with me. No one has done anything that could not be saved." The raven on her shoulder watched us, silent. One of us watched the whole way home for a raven following us, and saw none.

Muriel

At the Blue Water, Ireena was waiting tables: Urwin was short-handed, and she's enjoying pitching in. Urwin has sent Danika and the boys to the winery, "given the things we discussed", and the wine is now about half water and rationed. He pointed us to a woman at a table, with an undercut and feathers in her hair.

"Hi. I heard you were admiring my plumage." And: "You also snore." This is our watcher. Urwin called her Mirabel. She is Muriel Vinshaw ("like the wedding"), who married into the Martikov clan.

• On Urwin: "I understand the old man has let slip our secret that we've been holding for centuries. You say a few harsh words and he crumbles to dust. He's gotten old and fat."
• "I am more of the active part of the Ravens of Barovia. Things are getting a bit squiffy here in Vallaki. I will, if you'll have me, lend a hand." Why? "Because you've been mucking it up so far."
• "I can stab things. I can turn into a raven and follow things."
• She's followed us "from basically the start. We saw you in Barovia Village." She knows about the pies ("you shouldn't be eating those pies") and the reading ("that old woman gave you cards").
• "There's no good options. I lean towards the option that doesn't keep kidnapping people off the street." She's known people who went into the Reformation Center. "It's a bad business."
• "Falkon was with me, and he went back to report to the main Martikov clan, but he's not come back. I reckon there's something afoul in the winery."

Upstairs, Sirius admitted he didn't feel he had a good handle on how to do good here: "Usually, it feels very obvious." He wasn't happy leaving town with undead in it. We noted that the man missing at the lake is a friend of the Wachter sons, which might be a way back into that house. But we decided the undead come first, in the morning, with Muriel's help. We kept a watch and set Drew's alarm, and the night passed quietly.

Izek wants a status report

In the morning Izek was in the taproom. "The baron wants a status report." One of us offered three solid leads, six of them relating to undead creatures.

"There are no undead in Vallaki. It is impossible."

• Evidence? "You can't, because it's impossible." One of us swore it was true and was very persuasive. "It sounds believable to say, but it can't be true. It's impossible."
• Sirius: he can sense the undead. Izek wouldn't come and look. He was only taking a status report.
• He asked whether we were bringing undead into the town ourselves.
• "You were meant to find a piece of paper or something that said Lady Wachter's working with Strahd."
• The deadline: "Tomorrow morning, you will have physical proof of something to do with the Lady Wachter. Not to do with any other Tom, Dick, or Harry, but the Lady Wachter. Physical proof." We said we would.
• He is right-handed. "Do you find my arm amusing? Are you making fun of my arm?" (The DM showed us his picture: a massive axe, and a right arm that glows faintly.)

We didn't give him Henrik's name. The guards would torture him.

Afterwards we argued about the two sides. The Baron is obviously horrible and doing harm right now. The lady seems to do good works, perhaps to win the town. Her own request, evidence about her daughter, was reasonable, while the Baron wants her crushed. Maybe she's steering us into the Baron's path. Maybe, after what was done to her family, she threw in with something worse, because it offered her revenge. And someone remembered that the devil wants us stronger so he can have some fun, which is what happened to the other group before they got boring.

The bard's chest

Muriel came out of the kitchen carrying a hefty chest. "Just after you left the bar last night, the bard came up over to me, gave me this, and gave me this note." It was meticulously labelled, with everything in its own compartment:

• 3 flasks of holy water (they work like grenades on fiends and undead)
• 3 wooden stakes and a small iron mallet
• 2 potions of healing
• a potion of necrotic resistance
• a scroll of protection from evil and good
• a steel mirror, a set of manacles, a flask of oil, a crowbar and 3 torches

The note: "Hunt well those who hunt."

We know that phrase. Our ally card is a hunter of hunters. We think the bard is ours: "some kind of otherworldly thing", or a good man who's also "into the thing". We still haven't had a proper conversation with him. (See The Bard ("Riptarvo").)

Sirius took the scroll. He declined the necrotic potion, being resistant already thanks to his heritage, so Osric took it. Somebody now carries twelve torches.

Drew's night's work

Overnight, Drew had made a bag of holding and a silvered shortsword, "because it would make me feel better". (The DM: "It seems a bit OP, but if that's what you want.") The locket went into the bag.

The Coffin Works

We went early, straight at the undead, Muriel with us. Henrik had slept at the Blue Water. The shop was as we'd left it, door unlocked.

• Sirius opened his divine sense: six undead upstairs. Nothing consecrated or desecrated. The fiend is still in the locket. A very faint flush of something celestial, source unknown.
• Buffs: Sirius read the scroll, Osric drank the potion of necrotic resistance, Drew summoned Clover, and Lily summoned her knives.
• The ground floor: coffins being built, a room of clothes, a workshop of Henrik's particular nails, a musty room of thirty empty coffins, and a kitchen. No paperwork anywhere. Nothing looked "admin-y".
• On the stairs, a pristine alarm ward went off with a loud noise above us. (It would have taken a proper arcane wizard to spot it.)

Upstairs: six human-sized crates, curled-up cubes with loose lids. Sirius cut into one with his glowing sword. Drew worked out the lids weren't fixed and pushed one off.

All six burst open at once. Vampire spawn. One smashed a window and leapt out, and three more followed. Two stayed.

• The one on Sirius clawed and grabbed him, and he broke free. It knocked him out of his protection spell. "You made me lose my spell. I don't have many of those."
• Lily threw herself in front of the window to stop any more escaping. The other spawn went for her: "You will not pluck us from the master's design." Claws, a grab, and a bite, and she was on one hit point.
• Osric: "Get off her." He helped her fight free of its grip.
• Muriel: "Fuck this humanoid bullshit." She shifted into her half-raven form and tore into the one on Sirius with beak and claws.
• Drew stabbed with her new silvered sword. Silver made no difference. Clover's force bolts hit hard.
• Lily got free and drank a healing potion from the bard's chest. It rolled the minimum.
• Sirius smote his spawn for twenty-eight radiant. "I am going to end you." / "The master cares not for us." / "That sounds like a miserable way to live. I'm so sorry." / "It is what it is. It's a living."
• Outside: screaming, then guard whistles.
• Lily went down. The spawn bit her while she was unconscious: one failed death save.
• Osric, with inspiration and his surge, rolled a natural 20 and hit it for thirty-two, then forced his own healing potion into Lily's mouth. She woke "with a bottle in my mouth. Like a baby."
• Muriel pecked Sirius's spawn through the sternum. It crumbled to dust on her beak.
• Sirius, free now, reached over and laid ten points of healing into Lily, then put his shield in the way when the spawn went for her again. Osric's sentinel swing missed. Lily broke free once more.
• Muriel took the second spawn too. ("Go on, NPC. Steal another kill.")

Two destroyed, both by Muriel. Four escaped into the town. From the window we could see a dead guard on each corner of the street.

The race to St. Andral's

Lily climbed down the wall. Sirius grew golden wings and flew out of the window, eyes and sword blazing. Below, the streets were screaming "Vampires! Vampires!" A spawn crouched on a stack of crates with a man in her claws. She lifted her face from his throat, grinned at us, dropped him and ran for the main road. A guard shouted: "The church! They're heading towards the church! Defend the church!"

What happened on the way:

• The man with the torn throat. Drew mounted Clover on her shoulder like an Iron Man turret and closed his throat with a healing spell. He was saved.
• "The outsiders!" A man on a wheelbarrow: "They let the vampires in! They did! They must have!" The crowd turned on us. Sirius, winged and blazing overhead: "These were let into the town by the servants of Lady Wachter." He honestly believes it, and the crowd believed him. "Oh, Morning Lord. Avatar of the Morning Lord." They parted.
• The wagon. A big wagon lay tipped over across the main road to the church. Osric put his back into it and could barely shift it: "Someone's put some bricks in here." It cost us time.
• The donkey. A panicked donkey, kicking. One of us spoke to it and got it to safety. "Cold ones!"
• The shovel. Drew was knocked down in the crush and tucked and rolled out of it. "I worked on farms. The cows would get trampling."
• The toddler. A sobbing child: "Mama, Papa." Osric found the parents. "Sir, sir, missus, your child." And: "Stay in school."
• The split. A crowded crossroads split us in two. Lily scampered up a wall and steered us back together by our giant glowing angel.
• The crush. Black smoke rose over the church, and the crowd packed tight. "Do not block the path of Lathander's chosen." It didn't work; frightened or not, it was a crush. Sirius's wings gave out about here.
• The well. Three guards were trying to start a bucket brigade. We couldn't rally many people to help.
• The horse. A draft horse bolted towards us dragging a burning wagon. One of us unhooked it on the run. The horse ran on and the wagon rolled to a stop, still burning merrily.
• The window. A young woman hung from a third-storey window of a burning house. Drew: "Jump, it's gonna really hurt, but you won't die and I can heal you. Jump." She jumped, and Clover's burst of protection caught her. Her shins didn't shatter.

We did well, by the DM's reckoning. One of us asked how many people had died. Nobody knows.

The burning church

St. Andral's was an inferno. A guard came out carrying Yeska, alive and well: "Father Lucian's still in there. There's vampires in there, two of them." Clover wrapped us all in protection and we went in.

Father Lucian stood on his own altar with his symbol of the sun raised, and two spawn were struggling to get near him through the force of his faith. "The power of the Morning Lord compels you. Friends, friends, there are undead in the Church of St. Andral. All is lost." Sirius: "They won't be for long."

• Lily sprinted the length of the nave alone, straight at the spawn by the altar. "Father Lucian's in danger." She sold her crossbow long ago: "that's an assassin's tool." She's leaning, she says, far too hard into rogue paladin.
• Rubble rained down from the burning roof. Lucian was knocked flat, and so was Sirius.
• Osric ran the full length to stand in front of Lily. The potion of necrotic resistance is still in his veins.
• Lucian, from the floor of his altar: "You will not hurt a child of the Morning Lord," and put a sanctuary on Lily. She didn't want it. Tough.
• Sirius got up and came on.
• Drew hit the spawn menacing Lily with a natural-20 fire bolt for twenty-nine. She's not worried about firing a cannon in a church that's already on fire.
• Muriel came late. She'd flown in as a raven so the townsfolk wouldn't see what she is, and changed back inside.
• The spawn saw through Lucian's sanctuary and went for Lily anyway. Sirius's shield took some of it, and her protection soaked the rest. She broke its grip.
• The second spawn grabbed Osric and bit. Natural 20 on the save: "Not today. Get off me."

Where we stand

• In the burning church on the morning of the fifth, at the end of the first round. Lucian is down on the altar. Lily is sanctuaried and in the spawn's face, with Osric beside her. Sirius is back on his feet, Drew is halfway up the nave with Clover on her shoulder, and Muriel has just arrived. Two spawn are in here, one of them badly burned. Two more are loose somewhere in Vallaki.
• Lily went to zero this morning and came back. Nobody has rested since last night.
• Izek's deadline: physical proof against Lady Wachter by tomorrow morning. Fëanor is still the Baron's guest.
• The town: guards dead in the street, fires, and two rumours loose. One says the outsiders let the vampires in. The other says an angel of the Morning Lord came down and named the servants of Lady Wachter.
• Muriel Vinshaw fights with us now.
• Kit: the bard's chest (holy water, stakes and mallet, one healing potion left, mirror, manacles, oil, crowbar, torches), Drew's bag of holding with the locket inside it, and her silvered shortsword. The scroll, the necrotic potion and two healing potions are spent.

Questions on our minds

• Were the spawn meant for the festival, when the whole town would be in the streets? We think so, and we let them out early.
• Who weighted that wagon with bricks, across the church road, before any of this started?
• Is the bard the hunter of hunters?
• What was the faint celestial flush at the Coffin Works?
• Will Ernst come and look?
• What's wrong at the winery? Where is Falkon?
• How many people died today?