Episode 5 · Session V
Friend-Shaped
A mercy in a crypt, a friend at the door after dark, and a stranger who knows all five of our names.
A boy who cannot die asks us for mercy, and his father tells us to do what we must. A burgomaster confesses to a test. And one last quiet evening indoors ends with a knock at the door, and a visitor every one of us can see is a friend. Almost every one of us.
In the morning we take the one road west, past lights that cry for help, a standing stone that knows Fëanor's family symbol, and a wolf pack that meets Drew's newest invention. At a Vistani campfire, supper costs a story, and a stranger already knows our names.
Stay past the credits.
The recap
Session 5 in about 2 minutes. The full record is in the field notes.
It ended with a kindness. Lily asked that we not make Doru's father watch us give up before we'd even tried, so Doru was gently tied, and Donavich came down to hear his son. The devil had drunk from Doru and made him drink back, and every command since had become "a fetter on my mind". "I do not think I am in the Morninglord's light anymore. Please, Father, I think these people speak true."
"Do what you must," said Donavich, and fled up the stairs. Doru did not want this life, but he had been forbidden to allow his own destruction, and he fought us to the end. When it came he crumbled to dust. Upstairs, Drew sat beside the praying priest: "I think you both made the right choice."
Ismark drew us a map: Vallaki four days west, a Vistani camp by a pool a day out, a winery south of Krezk, and the castle, marked so we would know where not to go. Then Ireena marched him in to confess that he had known what was under the church and sent us down as a test. "You will learn not to trust people in Barovia."
After dark, back at Ismark's, there was a knock. "Everyone come out. It's fine." One by one we looked at the man in the hall and simply knew he was our friend. Only Fëanor saw the enchantment on us, and said so, and we thought he was just sad and drunk. He met the visitor on the stairs with a bolt of holy light and missed. "Ah, it is good to see some backbone in some fresh blood." Then Fëanor loved him too.
It was Strahd. "I am this land, and this land is me." As his guests, he said, we should offer our lord a token of fealty. He chose Sirius, who thought that sounded entirely reasonable, and drank from his neck, not deeply. "Remember this when tomorrow you feel more like yourselves. I own this place. You may have your fun, but I get what I want."
It wore off by morning. We checked Sirius for fangs and found only a craving for a bacon and egg roll; black pudding, we agreed, would be the real test. Lily woke eating another pie. Ismark's advice was to kneel if the devil ever looked our way. Sirius had other plans: "We're going to kill him in a bit."
On the road west, lights in the trees cried for help, and we didn't follow them. A mossy standing stone showed a winged woman with three eyes, ringed with the very symbol on Fëanor's stone. When seven wolves and two dire wolves came out of the trees, Drew built the thing she had been dreaming about, a small, cheerful cannon called CLOVER, and it burned a wolf to a crisp. The rest of the pack ran.
At dusk we reached the Vistani at Tser Pool, all firelight and fiddles. Supper cost a story, and Sirius told his true one: the vineyards, the wastrel father, and the grandfather who gave him the raven feather and sent him to a school for priests. "Good story. Good trade."
Then a large man came out of the great tent and looked at each of us in turn. "What took you, Drusila, Fëanor, Lilli-grai, Osric, Sirius? You are expected."
We stopped there, with our names in a stranger's mouth.