Episode 14 · Session XIV
All Is Not Well
Two rulers want our testimony. We give the square a third answer, and the devil comes to see the mess for himself.
The Baron wants us to swear against Lady Wachter, and Lady Wachter wants us to swear against the Baron. We give Vallaki a third answer instead, and the square goes up.
A lance of silver, a hug that stops a fight, a surrender the crowd won't accept, and then bats, a burning horse, and the devil himself, here in person because we have spoiled his view. Afterwards come the quieter discoveries: an empty attic, a book we wish we hadn't read, and Ireena's first order, which takes us through the doors of the Reformation Center.
Stay past the credits.
The recap
Session 14 in about 2 minutes. The full record is in the field notes.
The whole of Vallaki wanted an answer, and we had not held a planning meeting. So we gave it a third one. Lily told the square that everyone was good people and it was important to do the right thing, which was true and moved nobody. Drew did better: with a natural 20 she got Karl and Nikolai to say in front of the town that their mother had kept their father's body in her bedroom for years. Osric brought Father Lucian forward to swear the vampires had been real. Sirius opened his wings and cast Zone of Truth over the stage. The Baron failed. He could not say why his son had missed a mandatory festival, admitted the devil's letter mentioned him, and would not read it out: "Words from the devil. It should not be read out loud."
Sirius proposed Ireena to govern, with Lucian beside her, and Lucian, carefully, agreed. Someone on our side shouted "All is not well in Vallaki!", and the square turned on both its rulers at once.
Izek plucked Sirius out of the air by the foot with his demon hand, and the Baron ordered him killed. Fëanor put a lance of silver through Lady Wachter's raven, now an imp, through Izek, and through the Baron. Izek stood. The Baron died on his own stage, and his wife went on smiling. Osric cut the imp down, and from under the crowd's feet Lady Wachter cried "Oh, my compact." Sirius, still hanging from Izek's hand, hugged him. "Hold," Izek told his guards. "I don't know what to do. I have always had instruction. The son by rights should be in charge, but that feels wrong." Across the square Lady Wachter called out that she surrendered. We did not stop the crowd, and they trampled her to death.
Then came the bats, and a horse on fire, and Strahd stepped down into the square. "You have reinstated those damn bones," he said. They had spoiled his view of the town, so he had come to see the mess for himself. We were doing far better than the last lot, who had to be put down. Ireena as burgomistress was "not too untenable". Sirius called him Baron, then Earl, then Marquis, and suggested a really good ball in Neverwinter. "Count Strahd von Zarovich at your service." The bones hinder his agents, he said, "but should I see fit, I may enter." He drank a man dry in front of us. "Don't stay too long in Vallaki... So get out there and be interesting. Do not be boring."
The rest was quieter. We promised the Wachter brothers help for Stella, and wine. Lucian took the Baroness to his church. In Victor's attic a spent teleportation circle was still cooling beside a book in which Victor described wiping Stella's mind over and over until she broke. On the middle floor we freed Udo Lukovich, manacled to the wall of a room for the Baron's temper.
Ireena's first order was to empty the Reformation Center. We went in with Izek, put two dazed guards to sleep, and opened a door on two elves in armchairs: Ilimir and Ivalice, the twins. "We're making them think right. Cleaning their heads." We told them to stop. "This is going to be annoying to clean up."
We stopped there, in the twins' doorway, with Henrik somewhere in the cells and initiative still to be rolled.