Episode 7 · Session VII
All Will Be Well
Two frogs, one rout, the truth about the pies, roses from a wolf, and the smiling walls of Vallaki.
The windmill fight ends the way fights with three hags usually end, and it isn't pretty. By firelight, the woman from the silver net tells us what the pies are made of, and we wish she hadn't.
On the road a dire wolf delivers roses and a love letter, the raven from the village turns up again and turns out not to be a raven, and Ireena sees Sirius's wings. At dusk we reach Vallaki: forms to fill in, a festival that is punishable by punishment if you miss it, a church with an empty crypt, and an old man at the inn who has seen people like us before.
Stay past the credits.
The recap
Session 7 in about 2 minutes. The full record is in the field notes.
The windmill beat us. Bella looked at Sirius, "You, winged one," and he was a frog, a small one with wing markings and a hairdo. Osric was a frog a moment later. Lily ran in under Morgantha's claws and scooped up both of them. Morgantha smashed Clover to scrap ("And take your toy, too"), and the hags laughed from their doorway as we fled with the woman in the net. They didn't bother to chase us.
Her name was Vasha, a Vallaki girl, bitten, not born. Her mate Radu, born to the curse, was still chained in the mill. By the fire she told us the thing we can't unlearn. Werewolves regrow any wound not made by magic or silver. The hags cut off their arms, and the arms grow back, and the pies are the arms. "It's our arm, again and again and again." We cremated every pie we had. Lily felt bad about having eaten a person while still wanting to eat a person, and asked to be tied to a tree for the night. Vasha stayed behind to watch the mill, and told us her pack lives out in the west under an alpha called Kiril: "She controls the pack." We gave her our word we would come back for the hags.
Every dawn now Lily had an hour in which a pie mattered more than breathing. A dire wolf stood in the road in broad daylight with roses in its mouth, and left a letter for Ireena on very fine card. "My love, why do you tease me so?" If she spoke his name three times, he would come and whisk her away "to our castle, Ravenloft". It was signed "Your destined future lover, Strahd von Zarovich." He was, we pointed out, at least still in the gift-sending phase.
That night Sirius had himself tied up beside Lily so she wouldn't be alone, and the raven that had watched us in the village of Barovia found us again. Lily reached out to it with her gift for speaking to beasts, and nothing answered. "It's not an animal."
At an abandoned farmstead Sirius spread his raven wings and froze three shambling dead where they stood, and Ireena saw the wings. "Are you an angel?" "It seems likely that my family interbred with celestial creatures some time ago, yes." She dropped to her knees, and Sirius knelt and prayed beside her.
At dusk we reached Vallaki: high walls, and a gate with forms. Are you now, or have you ever been, agents of Strahd? The devil's name is illegal, the stocks are full, and the Festival of the Blazing Sun is in seven days. "Failure to attend this festival is punishable by punishment." All will be well.
At St Andral's, Father Lucian told us within minutes of meeting us that the bones of the saint, which made the church holy ground, had been stolen six days before. Little Yeska had told the secret to Milivoj the groundskeeper. "Right now, it's just a building." We decided not to tell Ireena.
At the Blue Water Inn the landlord, Urwin Martikov, let us a room for six, and pointed out a very old man at a corner table, staring at us white as a sheet. "That's Roger. He is what remains of the previous set of Mistwalkers."
We stopped there, with Sirius carrying two glasses of wine over to Roger's table.