Field notes

The rest of the Wachterhaus burglary: a husband ten years dead and minutes fresh, a letter from the devil, the truth told to Ireena at last, and the bones carried home. Then the town was told none of it happened, Fëanor came back missing two days, we reached Level 5, and the festival began with both rulers calling us as their witnesses. David played Muriel until Fëanor came back to us.

The master bedroom

At the top of the Wachterhaus stairs, behind glass and nailed to the wall, hangs the great map: framed, heavy, an heirloom. We left it where it was. (The plan, if things went bad, was to smash it and take it on the way out.) One door off the hall had a big sign on it: "No admittance. Lady Wachter only." We went straight for it.

Lily checked it for traps, found none, and got to work with a little guidance and rolled a thirty. It wasn't locked at all. The master of unlocking.

Inside: a struggling fire; over it a family portrait of a noble father and mother, two small boys smiling with mischief and a baby daughter in the father's arms; a closet, a mirror, and a canopy bed with a man laid out on it and coins on his eyes.

• He looks more like his portrait than Lady Wachter looks like hers. Time has passed for her, not for him.
• He isn't breathing. One of us judged him freshly dead, minutes ago at most.
• Drew's arcana found magic that stays decay. The DM reminded us that Lady Wachter's husband died about ten years ago. It's Gentle Repose, cast again and again, every ten days, for a decade.
• There's only one bed in the room, and her side of the sheet is turned back. She sleeps beside him.
• Osric wondered whether she's gathering the magic to raise him. He also proposed taking the body as collateral, since she'd hardly attack us while we had her dead husband. We decided not to carry a corpse about. (He has also seen a stage play called A Weekend at Father Bernard's, seven times.)

On a high shelf in the closet sat a small locked iron chest. Sirius called for a check for traps, just too late. Lily opened it and a poison needle put her on the floor, unconscious. Sirius's healing hands drew the poison out and she woke. Inside:

• a silver bag of 180 electrum pieces and a leather bag of 110 gold, all bearing the devil's face (that's just what money looks like here);
• the Druid Priestess' Tome, a dozen pages of leather and deer hide, pictures of druidic rites and turn-of-the-seasons celebrations, and a little writing in Druidic, which none of us reads;
• a letter, which the DM posted in the chat.

"…In the event that the Vallakovich family finds itself without an appropriate successor, you have my personal endorsement as Vallaki's next burgomistress. However, if such a tragic fate should befall the Vallakovichs, I would hate to find your hands bloodied and your good name no longer worthy of the title. Your Dread Lord and Master, Strahd von Zarovich"

The whole of it is in Strahd's Letter to Lady Wachter. "Wow." "I don't like this." "Smells of crime." It went into the bag of holding. There were no bones in the box. ("Bone-less box.")

(The DM ruled that the bones won't show up to divine sense. Their holiness only exists when altar and bones are together.)

The sons, and the moaning door

Behind the door where voices were coming from was Nikolai Wachter, helping a harried doctor with a sick man ("Come on, Jack. You can do better than that"). Muriel sent the doctor downstairs. Nikolai knew Sirius at once: "Sirius, is that you? Why are you wearing such detestable rags?" You're all wizards, aren't you? Can't you sort these people out? Sirius was out of juice. "Mama always says it wasn't safe and that the Baron was wrong. But I didn't really listen." And the rule he has to tell every guest: "Mama's room is verboten." Sirius mentioned we'd nearly opened it, and it seemed to be unlocked. It shouldn't be. Nikolai called his brother Karl out of the room opposite. "It's all hands to the pump right now." He'd rather not hear a vampire story.

Behind the moaning door was Stella, nearly insensate on the bed, and Ireena, sitting with her. "Oh, hello, Drew. I assume you're here to help, too. Lady Wachter asked me to look after Stella whilst she's looking after everyone else. I must say, she's a saint."

Drew took Ireena aside and told her everything. Lady Wachter is pretending. She's tied up with the vampires and had them delivered. The man she "rescued" from the Reformation Center is dead in her cellar, under a pentagram, killed by skeletons that came out of the ground. "We literally have a letter from He Who Shall Not Be Named delivered to her, and it's pretty incriminating." Ireena pushed back, then looked again at the bandages. Even a burgomaster's house wouldn't keep that many. "She knew it was gonna happen," said Drew. And: "I realise we were being as bad as your father was, trying to protect you from things, but you're a fully grown woman, and you should know the terrible things that are happening."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" Drew: "I don't really know. I think we were trying to protect you, and we didn't want to scare you."

Ireena gave us the thing we'd come for. "I can't believe Lady Wachter would've done this. She was getting supplies out of a room off the library. There's a secret door in there." She'd show Drew, but she couldn't stay away long. She can't leave Stella.

The bones

The raven came circling up the stairwell. Lily hit it with a thrown dagger from the shadows, and it dived over the banister and away.

Sirius kept the sons busy. He opened their mother's forbidden door and pointed them at the bed: "Is that Papa? Is that your father?" They went to look.

In the library (half full of books and full of wounded commoners) was the secret door, and behind it, "plain as grass, a pile of bones": the bones of St. Andral, neatly laid out on a tarpaulin, with five scrolls beside them. Then Sirius saw Lady Wachter coming up the stairs, with Ernst.

• Sirius ran for the library and got the bag of holding out.
• Lily peeked out of a cupboard, unseen, saw Lady Wachter's very distinctive hairdo coming up, and waved Muriel away.
• Muriel slipped into Stella's room.
• The raven came back and cawed, very loudly. Drew warned Ireena it was a fiend. "This cute thing is a fiend?"
• One of the sons: "Why is Papa in here?" Lady Wachter: "Did you go in my room, Karl?"
• Osric's door held another patient: a man in a coma with two holes in his neck. Osric hid behind the door to watch.
• Drew pulled Ireena into the storeroom and smashed its fixed window, leaving jagged edges. Through the doorway she saw Lady Wachter stop and say, quietly, "The bones." Then she came for the door, and Drew pushed it shut.
• Sirius swept the whole tarpaulin into the bag of holding and bellowed, loud enough for the house: "Blasphemy, she stole the bones of St. Andral! We must return them to the church!" He went out through the broken window onto a low roof, glass and all, and dropped to the street.
• Lily heard the posh footsteps running and a raven somewhere, and flattened herself against a bookcase: a little scampy child in a commoner's cloak. Ernst looked right at her, saw nothing odd, and shoved her roughly out of his way. "Me baby. Just a baby." She's not a killing person normally, and she wasn't going to start with Lady Wachter.
• Muriel, in the library among the wounded, was spotted by Ernst, who did nothing. She wanted to shoot the raven, now sitting on Lady Wachter's shoulder, and we talked her down: she's a spy. ("They're in their final form.")
• Karl: "Mama, I think we've got some questions for you."
• Osric climbed out of his own window, which opens normally. "Where are the others?" "Lily's competent. Muriel's resourceful."
• Drew cleared the glass, jammed a desk against the door, and jumped. Behind her, somebody sat down in the storeroom chair to wait. We think it was Ireena. "Now I feel like an asshole."

Lily and Muriel stayed behind as two commoners among the wounded and watched. Lady Wachter burst the door in, stormed out looking very angry, put her head together with Ernst, and went downstairs. Karl: "Mama, Mama." "Not now, Karl." "But it's disgusting." "We'll talk about this later." Then Lily and Muriel went out of the window too.

The bones come home

It was dusk. Sirius told the street as we went: Lady Wachter stole the sacred bones, she's in league with the devil, check the basement, she set fire to the church. We sent a guard, Dominic, with a flash of the writ, to tell Izek we were taking the bones to the church. ("You're not my sergeant." He went anyway.)

St. Andral's is a burned, roofless shell: stone walls standing, roof and pews gone. Father Lucian sat on the steps holding the statuette. "Father, we have returned the bones. They were in Lady Wachter's house." We showed him the letter. "This must be true. I, she…"

The altar rolls aside on greased wheels to the little room below, and the sub-altar there is stone and earth, untouched by the fire. We laid the bones on it together, respectfully. A wave of holy energy washed out through the church, and we felt safe, as if we were standing in a sanctuary. We rolled the altar back so nobody else would know.

Lucian: "Thank you, my children. I'm not gonna say it's a bit late, but thank you regardless. We needed this."

Izek brings Fëanor back

Up the steps came Izek with two guards, and Fëanor with them. "A token of friendship, we are re-releasing him into your custody." He snapped off Fëanor's armband. "You can have most of him back."

• We showed Izek the letter. "Oof. This will help, along with the false attack earlier."
• The false attack? "The men in very obvious masks were throwing firebombs and fled into the street." One of us said we saw he'd spoken to the Baron. "Yes. You remember. We were together."
• "I made my report to the Baron. He asked me to see his son."
• The festival is moved to tomorrow, and they'll hang Lady Wachter in the square. They've arrested Henrik for harbouring the seditious elements who pretended to be vampires, and he's in the Reformation Center. We said we don't think Henrik was part of it. It has happened, he said. No need to worry.
• "Thank you for assisting with the masked men earlier. We'll be relying on your testimony tomorrow when we hang Lady Wachter."
• He took the letter with him. We were too spent to stop him.

It's not what Izek remembers. He remembers different things.

Fëanor's last memory is going to the Workyard to ask about some nails. After that there's something the DM sent to David privately, and then he was standing in a burnt-out church. "Is this the mist? I feel like I've been in the mist again." "I just remember going into a room to ask some questions, but I met a nice boy." Boy height. Very boy-like. Sirius thinks he may have met the same boy. Osric: "I'm not the smartest man in the world, but I'm sensing a pattern here. People who go into the room with the boy come out with strange memories." Rule: never go upstairs in the Baron's house.

The criers

Bells, then:

"By order of the Burgomaster, last night's outrage was the work of seditious agitators in the pay of a hostile house, wearing masks and manners of vampires to spread terror. There are no vampires in Vallaki. There have never been vampires in Vallaki. To answer this insult, the Festival of the Blazing Sun is brought forward. It'll be held tomorrow at midday in the town square. Attendance is mandatory for every soul in Vallaki, whatever their circumstances. Bring your sick, bring your grieving. All will be well."

"Bring your sick?" Does that include unconscious people?

What we made of the letter

Most of us read it the same way. The devil wants the Baron left in power and things kept orderly. If she wants Vallaki, she's to get it without blood on her hands, "subtly", in a way that's fun rather than murder in the streets. It feels lawful and evil rather than fond of the Baron. And the Baron could spin it either way, now that he has it.

Other thoughts before bed:

• Stella worries us. Lady Wachter's fear that "that man had done something to her daughter" seems reasonable, even though the lady is plainly culpable for the vampires.
• The sons are normal nobles. Lovely chaps. Would drink with them again. Four and a half stars.
• Henrik was frightened, not a willing conspirator. (There was a long debate about coffin makers. "People always die." "Compelling.")
• We can't overthrow a whole regime, and we have nobody to put in its place.
• With attendance mandatory, nobody will be guarding the bones tomorrow.

The night

Sirius wouldn't leave the bones unguarded, so he slept in the roofless church, and Fëanor stayed with him ("I'm also connected to the church"). So did Lucian, who is already thinking about architects: "The church is the people and its rituals, not the roof, and never has been." ("The roof helps.") Drew conjured bedrolls and a blanket for them, and the rest of us went back to the Blue Water. We meant to ask the Ravens to watch the church too. Sirius told Muriel she'd be welcome to spend the evening at the church with him. He tries his best not to snore.

The five scrolls are spell scrolls. One is Gentle Repose (somebody guessed it as a joke, and the DM said "You are correct about one of them"); the DM posted the rest in the chat. They're in the bag of holding for emergencies. Fëanor and Drew can cast most of them.

The DM: "You feel, as you turn in for the night, Barovia paying more attention to you. You are now Level 5." Drew can make a weapon her arcane firearm ("I get a gun"). Fëanor has spirit guardians. Lily has uncanny dodge and cunning strike. Osric strikes twice. Sirius can call a steed.

Morning

It rained steadily from the night on. Nothing was on fire. It felt like a win and not a win.

• Muriel left us. "Yesterday was too rich for my blood. I thought I was it, but turns out I'm not." We thanked her; her pecking was incredible to witness. "I did get a lot of vampire dust in my face." She slipped away into the shadows.
• Sirius arrived at the Blue Water leading a horse: a gleaming celestial horse, mud dissolving off its hooves, the most conspicuous object in a starving, burned town. He had asked the Morning Lord for "a slightly more surreptitious horse, one that wasn't reflective of the glory within which I hold you". Fëanor: "When I turned twelve, the Morning Lord gave me a book token. I certainly didn't get any bloody horse. I'm just fighting my envy." The horse is named Clancy: "When Plan A and Plan B don't work, let's just call for Plan C."
• Urwin: short rations. Everyone's hoarding. "I'm not gonna be able to serve you more than one meal per week." Drew handed round the Wachterhaus beets: "You get a beet. You get a beet." Breakfast was beets and bland porridge.
• Criers in the street: all must gather in the square. The taproom emptied, resigned. If we survive the day, we leave town and go and save the wine, maybe by way of the lake.

The Festival of the Blazing Sun

Sirius brought Clancy into the square ("It's my emotional support horse"). Under a torrential downpour, a parade of unhappy children dressed as flowers trudged through the mud, followed by sorry-looking townsfolk carrying a ten-foot wicker ball. The Baron and his smiling wife walked behind with a sad bouquet of wilting flowers. The ball was hoisted onto a fifteen-foot scaffold. Nobody is in it, currently.

The Baron, brandishing a sputtering torch:

"Welcome to the Festival of the Blazing Sun. Today we celebrate the light that keeps the darkness at bay… We have survived. We are worthy, not they. Let us burn the unworthy. All will be well. My friends out in the crowd, these five fine examples of heroism from out of the town will attest that the Lady Wachter, she has been consorting with the devil. They have brought evidence, and they will attest. They will attest."

Lady Wachter, from the lip of the fountain:

"For too long the town has suffered under the oppressive rule of Vargas Vallakovich… His so-called sunlight is as fake as his smile. How dare he scorn our dead. How many of our friends and family died yesterday? You all saw it. They were vampires. Vampires in the town. He could not protect us… A tyrant whose own son abused my daughter and has avoided any and all consequences of that crime. These people, they may have had their differences with me, but I trust they will see the true evil. They will attest that the Baron's son and his Reformation Center are twisting the minds of the citizenry. They will attest. They will back me up."

The crowd muttered darkly, and turned to look at us.

Where we stand

• In the town square at midday on the day of the festival, in pouring rain, with every eye on us. Both the Baron and Lady Wachter have named us their witnesses. The crowd doesn't like either of them.
• Level 5. Rested. Fëanor is back, minus two days. Clancy is with us. Muriel has gone.
• The bones are home on the sub-altar, and the church is holy ground again, roof or no roof.
• The letter is in the Baron's hands.
• Henrik is in the Reformation Center, and Ireena was last seen in the Wachterhaus storeroom.
• Kit: 180 electrum and 110 gold (not yet divided), the Druid Priestess' Tome, the five scrolls, the bag of holding, our writs, and commoner cloaks.

Questions on our minds

• Who will we attest for? Answered, Session 14: neither. We proposed Ireena.
• Who has been casting Gentle Repose on Lord Wachter every ten days for ten years, and why?
• What did the Baron's son do to Fëanor, and to Izek?
• What happened in Fëanor's lost two days?
• What are the other four scrolls for?
• Is anyone in the wicker ball?